Temp vpn restriction?

Legacy Games Tech Support
1

This is absolutely ridiculous, my computer updated last night and in the process it turned my VPN’s autostart function back to “on” which had previously been turned off because despite not one mention on the game’s box nor the documentation included within, nor does it say in the EULA ANY-F$#&ING-WHERE that VPN’s are bannable, apparently they are, and I was banned. I shouldn’t have had to comb through the forums or visit A SINGLE WEBSITE to learn that a completely ubiquitous software that I use with ALL OF MY OTHER GAMES (including my other Blizzard titles) is not allowed to be used… I mean, just because Blizzard doesn’t give a crap about my privacy and security doesn’t mean I shouldn’t… but hey, I figured it out, I turned my VPN off and went about my business, and now just a few short weeks later… I’m having the same problem because a Microsoft update decided to revert my settings.

So, clearly, yes I’m temporarily restricted. Clearly, it was because I have and use a VPN to telecommute and it somehow, someway got turned back on (AGAINST MY WILL) … so then, the real question is, how long am I restricted this time?

6 weeks back on diablo, 2 weeks temporarily restricted over something that wasn’t in the EULA and I had to dig through a BUNCH of pissed off player’s posts just to figure it out, which I did, and now another what? 2 weeks? 8 weeks back, 4 weeks banned. Yea, I’m a real f&*#ing happy camper.

PS: Just a thought, have y’all ever considered a warning message that goes something like “Please turn off all VPN, Proxy, Tor or Cloud-based ISP connections and try connecting to Battle.net again.” or… is everyone over there as remedial as Blizzard’s arbitrary and archaic game rules?

Thanks for letting me vent you bunch of… mumbles under breath …

1 Like
2

Just to be clear. This temporary restriction has effected 2 other players as well (and to think we were thinking about getting 2 more game keys for our daughters the other day. You banned 3 people. Not bots, not hackers. You didn’t make the server more secure, you didn’t make any extra money by causing one of the bajillions of botters to buy a new game key… what you did do was piss off yet another family of gamers.

I’m so close to a lifelong boycott on Blizzard, y’all just don’t understand. I probably won’t wait 2 weeks, I’ll probably find another game and forget all about Blizzard and all of it’s associated games in it’s entirety, I came back for the nostalgia I’ll be leaving for better security, better support, and to put as much distance between myself and Blizzard as humanly possible.

3

So long and fairwell to you sweet fair Spanish ladys so long farewell to you ladies of Spain

4

It wasn’t until the time that I realized that our 2 newly created characters, with newly transferred end game gears, both of which will expire before we would be allowed back on the server (assuming it’s the same ridiculous 14 day VPN ban) that I actually debated quitting D1, D2, D3, SC1, SC2, WC1, WC2, and WC3/FT… Literally the 4 weeks I actually got to play after the initial UNJUSTIFIED temp ban and all our progress with the gears my wife and I had made will all be removed from existence. So… yea maybe a “So long Spanish ladies” is in order.

It’s not like we enjoyed sitting in a queue of 4500+ (30-40 minutes) to create a game. It’s not like we enjoyed watching “Failed to join game” any time we attempted to join a game instead of create one. It’s not like we enjoy being disconnected/timing out every 3 or 4 games, 5-10 times in a row each… It’s not like this is even a decent game anymore. Clearly this game has been abandoned and thus this game has become something of DUMPSTER FIRE. We came back for nostalgia, we’ll be leaving because of the smell of the burning trash.

So yea, we might just boycott after all.
Thanks for the smart aleck comment btw. Suuuuuuper helpful.

5

5 hours later. Still no moderator, tech support, or game master reply. Is that normal? All we need to know is the length of our IP/CDKEY restriction.

Normally, we’d email support directly… but asking for as much information about ourselves and the machines we use to play after banning us for using privacy and security tools is completely idiotic. No, you may not know what I have installed on my PC, no, you may not know what settings I have, no you may not know what hardware I have. None of that is relevant to the question. Our privacy matters. It’s literally how we got to this impasse in the first place.

6

The restriction from using a VPN is 14 days from the last connection. Attempting to connect during the 14 days with an active VPN will reset the restriction timer.

On a side note, the forums aren’t official contact point with Bliz. They are designed to be player to player help desks. SFAs do occasionally post when they can but it’s not guaranteed. The official support contact point is the support ticket system.

7

We were unwilling to use the ticket system because it was asking for insane amounts of unnecessary information including tracert info, msinfo, and dxdiag info which are all completely irrelevant to the question we were attempting to ask, which seemed to be an intrusion into our privacy, as was the request for us to cease the use of our VPN whilst playing an internet based game that quite literarily didn’t have a single mention about VPN’s being a bannable offense in ANY of the game’s documentation.

But thank you for the more prompt response than we had been witnessing with other players. As someone who is part of the technical support team, y’all should be ashamed of how you’re handling these support requests and tickets. If you haven’t figured it out yet, your company is alienating it’s loyal player base. Truth is,

However, if you’re telling me that we just wasted 4 weeks grinding our butts off trying to put together the gear for our new characters, who are at this point holding most if not all of the gear intended for them and will be deleted before we can log back in, or the new mules we just made that will expire in 10 days holding all of our high runes and skill charms… well… nothing says “we don’t care about our players” more than that. I know you don’t specifically make the policies regarding the games but as a whole your company should have been in talks with the players, in talks with the coders and in talks with the customer service techs in order to make more prudent changes that wouldn’t hurt the player base as this issue CLEARLY is. And before ANYONE starts off saying it’s not that big of a problem I’d invite you to do a couple of Google searches and try telling everyone who reads this post that they AREN’T literally THOUSANDS of players complaining, trash talking, and boycotting your company over these issues… because if you say there aren’t THOUSANDS, you’d be LYING.

I WANT YOU TO SHARE WITH YOUR SUPERVISORS THAT…

TODAY BLIZZARD, ACTIVISION, AND BATTLE.NET HAVE LOST 2 LOYAL CUSTOMERS. WE WILL NEVER — N-E-V-E-R – AGAIN IN OUR ENTIRE LIVES SPEND ANOTHER DIME WITH BLIZZARD, ACTIVISION, OR BATTLE.NET.

Without warning, without justification, without a care in the world, you push the players away, you push the players into the fray, and when you’ve pushed the players so far, THEY NEVER RETURN. I’ve purchased and played nearly every single Blizzard title ever made INCLUDING The Lost Vikings on SNES.

Y’all might be legitimately retarded because you just threw away someone who has convinced COUNTLESS people to join me in playing Blizzard titles for OVER 25 years. Like… I literally just purchased a copy for my Dad, i convinced my little brother to come play like 3 weeks ago… and now, they’ll think you’re a bunch of retards too. I was you’re poster boy, and now, I’ll be your worst critic, never again.

And now the long process of reclaiming my drive space from Blizzard.

Game on, Amigos.

8

So basically, they banned us when we showed up. We waited for the ban to be lifted. We worked our butts off to get where we are, transferred some of the most expensive, extravagant gear we’ve ever had in the game to brand new characters, got banned over some BS rule about VPN’s that is posted NO WHERE in the game, NO WHERE in the game packaging, NO WHERE in the game documentation… in fact the ONLY place you find out about the VPN bans is WHEN YOU GET BANNED FOR IT and are searching for a solution. THAT is not transparency, THAT is shady as funk. I hope Blizzard hurries up and goes out of business soon so the masses of banned and alienated players can laugh laugh laugh all the way to the bank with all the money Blizzard will never receive from us. I can’t believe we tried to come back to this 20 year old game. Nostalgia? Pffff.

SHADY AF.

Good day.

9

MVP’s aren’t employees so I’m unable to forward anything on to Bliz.

If you wish leave constructive feedback about the anticheat systems in Diablo 2, you’ll need to post in the Diablo II General Discussion forum. Feedback isn’t collected from any of the support forums, and the SFA’s aren’t liaisons to the developers themselves.

10

Your title reads “MVP - Technical Support” I’m sorry if that means something else to you but to an average user, that says that you’re a company man, so to speak. So basically, no one cares, no one cares, no one cares, posted a few links, shrugged off the fact that someone who’s paid for literally EVERY Blizzard game ever made just boycotted your company… annnnnnd … Great work everyone! What an effin joke.

They won’t talk to you unless you basically let them fingerprint your hardware/software/network setup (given the fact that you banned us for using a VPN, they don’t deserve any more information than we’re willing to provide), they don’t check their forums (which is a no brainer if you want to know what your users are thinking, feeling, and talking about) the moderators on the forums aren’t actually company people, and the company policies regarding one of the most common security technologies are so far behind that you’re alienating your user base because unlike Blizzard and the Diablo 2 team, the users kept up with technology and we hold our privacy and security at a higher level than Blizzard would prefer us to. Enough said.

STILL SHADY AF.
I said, Good day.

1 Like
11

If you were to say that we didn’t have some good points, or that ethically speaking forcing someone to abandon their privacy or security for the sake of a bunch of lazy coders who couldn’t take 20 minutes to whip up an extra little…

{ if VPN.Connection.Status = True;
then BattleNet.Start = False
BattleNet.Button.Greyed.Out = True
}

(let’s pretend that’s actual code for a sec, k?)

or… that banning someone for using a ubiquitous security software without prior warning and without remorse or recourse, with an utter lack of transparency isn’t morally reprehensible, you’d be lying.

Blizzard is sitting here bouncing legit players off the servers left and right and everyone just sitting there acting like they don’t see what’s happening. Acting like this is somehow normal, or that it’s somehow okay, that’s what blows my mind. Once it’s down to the last 10 players and 10,000 bots maybe then Blizzard will stop piledriving it’s own stock into the ground because while the bots are buying up the cdkeys, they’ll stop when the demand for items ends completely.

Thanks for your help Leviathan. Remember to turn off your security and privacy software before you go out on the Internet today because that’s what a total idiot wouldn’t do, right? (No need to reply, just having a little fun. LoL)

Game on, Amigos.

1 Like
12

That’s understandable. For clarity sake, Blizzard employee posts are in blue. There are a couple indicators to help draw people’s attention to a Blizzard post:

  • On the main forum page, “Blizz” will appear next to the title of any thread that Bliz has posted in.
  • Within a thread, under the vertical slider bar, there are arrow buttons that jump to the Blizzard posts.
  • Behind the employee’s avatar and screen name, there is a blue “Blizzard” graphic.

It’s not a matter of caring, GitsieRoses. Technical Support has no hand in the development of Diablo 2 (or any of the games), nor can they change/circumvent the policies set forth by the games’ developers. That, combined with the support forums not being for feedback…

… you were not shrugged off. In fact, you were provided with the location where feedback is monitored: the general discussion form.

I’m also not a moderator. In terms of forum powers, I’m no different than any other community poster. The moderators, however, are employees.

Understand, GitsieRoses, you’re playing a very old game that is in the same state it was when development ceased years ago. It hasn’t been updated much beyond compatibility with more modern OSs. In choosing to play a 20 year old game, you have to be willing to deal with the idiosyncrasies of archaic code and systems. After all, it’s categorized as a “Classic Game”.

You’re definitively not alone! This forum is sprinkled with posts about sudden Diablo 2 restrictions. They range from simply asking what happened/how long the restriction is to frustration/anger.

I have no doubt that every D2 fan in Blizzard would love to update the game, but unfortunately that’s not how the process works. Like with any businesses, money, time, people, etc are allocated to where it’s profitable. And at this point at least, an old, twice superseded game is not where those resources are going. It’s being left as is with all its outdated systems and security, i.e. being left as a classic game.

One thing that distinguishes D2 from all the rest of the current games is that it still uses the “old” Battlenet. Even the updated ‘classic’ games Starcraft Remastered and Warcraft 3 Reforged were moved over to the new (current) Battlenet.

The old Battlenet is extremely dated with far less effective technology, which includes security. For example, the new Battlenet allows VPN use because it has in-built security systems to offset the abuse that can occur with VPN’s. Unfortunately, the old Battlenet does not.

Perhaps some day Diablo 2 will be updated like SCR and WC3R were, but so far there’s been no word about it.

Now, having said all that, I do absolutely sympathize on your point of there being no warning about VPN use. I even agree. So in attempt to help you all out, even if it is too late, here is the support article that covers the play restrictions for Diablo 2. (Note the attempting to connect from a business IP. That is another big one that we see here on the forums.)

2 Likes
13

I am picturing an old dusty storage room where the old servers are kept cool with huge industrial fans and a noisy refrigeration system. The main and sole AT connector keyboard used to access these ancient servers may be a Fujitsu manufactured keyboard for HP or IBM. You know, the forum peeps who often jokingly share that it may be the janitor who is the sole remaining IT peep to care for the old servers may not be off on their playful conjectures. I have met janitors who possess several degrees, some, even, a masters in physics, philosophy, and/or psychology.

:coffee:
It was in November 30 of 1996 when BattleNet first came online. In 2006, which was when BattleNet 2.0 was created, it did not include updating Diablo 2. This resulted in restricting Diablo 2 to the old servers, BattleNet Classic, as it was aptly named when 2.0 came online.

:alien: :dolphin:

14

My account just got banned for the same thing. No offense Leviathan but you’re full of it. GunsenRoses and GitsieRoses not only make sense but their argument holds water. In fact, it would SAVE the company money by putting GunsenRoses’s little code in to the game because then the folks in the tech support department wouldn’t have to deal with the questions or the angry customers.
The fact of the matter is they don’t tell you a VPN connection is an offense before you get banned and sure it’s a short 14 day ban but this whole “we can’t undo a ban” and the “there’s nothing we can do, our hands are tied” crap Blizzard support pulls is garbage AND WE ALL KNOW IT.

1 Like
15

(double posting is lame I know)
I couldn’t help but notice Blizzard in general avoids acknowledging anyone’s points that are right on the money. This conversation kind of highlights that. Between the nonchalant way legit players are banned everyday and the lack of response from Blizzard I can see why the players are leaving Diablo 2.

If the game itself is so old that it is no longer properly maintained, why do they still run the servers? That’s the fault of Blizzard, not the players, and not the technologies that Blizzard failed to keep up with. One can only hope that in time Blizzard will see the error of their ways and rectify the transgressions against it’s legit players. With that being said, I would seriously hope that moderators and forum support people like Leviathan would use all/if any connections to pass the information forward because quite literally if Blizzard really doesn’t check these forums and take in the pulse of the gamer culture, they’re destined for failure. I for one don’t give a crappy crap that my other account was banned. To me it feels invigorating to break free from the monotony that was cbaal runs with hundreds of different bots every day. I think I saw maybe 5 actually humans playing on a daily basis and Blizzard is acting like banning folks using a VPN in order to protect their privacy is the end of the world.

1 Like
16

I’m not sure where you’re getting that from, KilHuma. I agreed with their point about no warnings.

1 Like
17

(triple post, omg what’s wrong with me)

And GunsenRoses, I’m not sure if you’re gone forever but you are absolutely right bro. When contacting support, why the heck would you need a tracert, a DXDiag, and an MSInfo readout just to ask a simple question? I spent 45 minutes to an hour trying to figure out how to get all those data sets together just so that I could find out if I was banned or not. When I came across this post and another one you were involved it, it explained everything to me without having to contact support. You know why that’s sad? Because I searched and searched and searched and I only figured out what happened when I came across all the posts from the (as you so eloquently put it) “bunch of pissed off players’s posts”, Blizzard wasn’t exactly handing out that information freely, most folks seem to figure it out when they forum moderators hit them with the lame canned responses and that link “Temporary Play Restrictions in Diablo II (2000) - Blizzard Support” which is FAR TOO LATE to have told someone that it was a bannable offence.
If you do come back to the game GunsenRoses, you should hit me up, you seem like a cool dude.

1 Like
18

That was because of the ticket path they chose. From what I can tell, they chose the ‘cannot connect’ ticket. Since that’s a technical issue, blizzard asks for those files to review to get a handle on the customers system before contacting them.

There are other ticket paths that don’t require information about one’s system.

1 Like
19

Yes, I’ll give you that one Leviathan. You agreed that without a warning anywhere, and information given only once it’s too late, it’s “unethical” but as someone who represents the company I feel like you and all the other moderators/admins/support folks should be doing more.

But you avoided all the other points which are not only valid but they would fix the problem with us totally legit non-botting, non-hacking, non-cheating players getting banned. Acting like the game is “too old” to slip a few lines of code to save the tech support team hundreds if not thousands of manhours is totally asinine. If they’re going to keep the servers up, they should properly maintain the software, PERIOD. Otherwise, the software should enter the END OF LIFE sequence and the servers should be taken down. I don’t think anyone is working under the assumption that Diablo 2 is a new game, or that it requires weekly or monthly updates and patches but it should retain basic functionality and user intuitiveness <— is that a word? It is now!

Microsoft does it, Apple does it, EA does it, Epic Games does it, hell even GOG that sells 30+ year old games does it (by proxy through the original software developers and/or the new design team). I guess by reading through GunsenRose’s posts I felt for him. Imagine wasting 4 weeks of your life on a 20 year old game just to be told, too bad, so sad. I’m just a bleeding heart over here but I couldn’t help but notice that he isn’t the only one. There are literally hundreds of posts about this exact same issue and Blizzard has chosen to do nothing.

2 Likes
20

So what you’re saying is, we should just lie to support about what support we need so we can ask a question? Because not being able to connect is what is issue was for me. I feel like I’m kicking a dead horse right now because we’re just gonna blah blah blah back and forth and the guy who needed the support is probably long gone. Again, my bleeding heart goes out to anyone who falls into this trap. My heart also goes out to Blizzard because if what he said is true, they lost one of their loyal customers, you know what I mean? (Blizzards loss)

1 Like