Blizzard is hurting too many legitimate players in their efforts to combat bots. I understand bots are a problem, but if certain measures were put into place, we can allow the real players access without too much trouble.
Here are suggestions I hope Blizzard will consider:
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Make an error message that informs the player they are being blocked. Currently, Battlenet just doesn’t work and there’s no indication why. We wasted a bunch of time checking things on our end that aren’t the issue (internet connections, restarting computer, etc).
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Include the exact reason why we are locked out. Is it a VPN that I might have unknowingly enabled? Is my CD key in use by someone else? Have there been numerous logins from my IP address? How can I solve a problem when I don’t know what I’m trying to solve?
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If we do get banned, please tell us the date that will get lifted. I keep reading that attempting to log back in while banned resets the clock. If I don’t know when the ban is lifted, how do I know when to try the next idea for troubleshooting the reason I’m banned? At this point, it feels like I can only try one new solution every two weeks. At this rate, it’s going to be a year until I can successfully log in.
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In the current, no-feedback environment, a 2 week ban is a long time when there’s at least a dozen things I need to try solve this issue. Can we make the ban 2 days instead of 2 weeks? Or give me more chances to solve the problem before making the ban?
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If Blizzard won’t put this error feedback into a message back to the user, at least allow Customer Support some way to find out. When my friend has contacted Blizzard, the answer we gets is: “We don’t know why you’re banned. We don’t know when the ban will end. We can’t manually intervene.”
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Allow Customer Support to override the ban, if they believe a player is legit. There must be some way to put someone on a whitelist. Then Blizzard could still monitor that player for behavior that violates their rules.
Blizzard, my friends and I are not IT guys. We don’t know how to easily solve some of the issues causing us to be banned. We’re just some guys who want something to look forward to each week during a pandemic Winter. I suggested playing D2 because it’s a fun way to escape, but this has been more difficult than I expected.
Years ago, my brother ran a popular website devoted to D2, Angels of Hell. He respected the thought and quality that Blizzard put into everything they did. I think if he were around today, he’d be disappointed in the direction of things.