A forum silence does NOT impact your game. Again, that is not actually possible.
There is a bug that can sometimes cause game start issues but changing chars, switching out pets, or restarting fixes that. The second bug is one that is related to an in-game silence but that is not forum related.
You are conflating two different things. You can get totally forum banned and never have any impact on the game - for better or worse.
but i was blocked from using general chat in game when i got silenced on wow forums
I wish that were true that getting a suspension from the Blizzard forums, in any game, impacted in-game activity, but it does not.
There is SUPPOSED to be a forum suspension for anyone silenced in game - but that does not seem to work on the new format.
Sadly…
Blizzard has never ever punished people in-game for forum infractions. Only the other way around.
Note - I should say I don’t know of any forum infractions causing in-game issues. However if someone were to do something so horrible on the forums that Blizz closed their whole Bnet account, that would obviously impact games too. I imagine that would be rare and we would not get told publicly about it.
interesting.
I wonder why i can not access general chat in game then.
i dont troll in game, im a good boy, i’ve only used general chat a few times in the last month and that was to help powerlevel people requesting help.
I like to watch general chat while i play.
I can in fact confirm that an account silence does in fact effect the ability to play D3 rending it impossible. While the silence supposedly lifts in 3 days from now. It also has Locked any game play in-game whatsoever. Everything is met with [Only available to party leader] which also includes Solo Campaign and Private Matches while not even in a party to begin with.
Yeah, that’s why it’s been in the Player List of Known Issues for a while now…
Also, a quick search for “party leader” finds 39 results…
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/search?q=%22party%20leader%22%20category%3A23%20order%3Alatest
And in most of those threads, you’d find my standard response…
Error 315000 - Chat Silence - Only available to party leader
There are two scenarios for this.
First…
It’s a temporary bug which can usually be resolved by switching to another hero and then back to the one you wanted to play on, changing which pet the hero has selected, and so on. Alternatively, closing and re-starting the client should resolve it.
Second…
If you’ve received an in-game chat silence penalty from any Blizzard game.
There is a long outstanding bug (since October 2019) whereby if you receive a chat silence from any Blizzard game, you will be unable to start or join a Diablo III game session. This will last until the silence period is over.
If you have received a chat silence, you will have been sent an email to your registered address with an explanation of why the silence was issued, and how long the penalty period will last. For a first offence, it’s 24 hours. For subsequent offences, the penalty period doubles each time, i.e.
| Offence | Silence (Days) | Silence (Months) |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 1 Day | |
| 2nd | 2 Days | |
| 3rd | 4 Days | |
| 4th | 8 Days | |
| 5th | 16 Days | |
| 6th | 32 Days | 1 Month 2 Days |
| 7th | 64 Days | 2 Months 4 Days |
| 8th | 128 Days | 4 Months 8 Days |
| 9th | 256 Days | 8 Months 16 Days |
| 10th | 512 Days | 17 Months 2 Days |
…and so on.
If you believe you were incorrectly silenced…
Appealing a Silence, Suspension, or Ban
If the penalty was correctly applied…
While it is theoretically possible for us to unmute players which might work around this, we’re not in the practice of reversing these kinds of account actions for this sort of reason. Regardless of this unexpected behavior, the accounts which have been muted were muted for a reason. If you have an extended duration suspension, a user of your account must have broken our terms of use several times. As such, the account actions will stand until they expire.
I have this issue, and I haven’t been silenced, banned or any of the sort.
Switching characters, region, reinstalling the game, relaunching the client and game, resetting router etc. renders the same error.
I’ve made it work for one gaming session after I changed my password - next session I was back to the same error - and now resetting my password does no longer work.
Can you guys please push this issue, I really want to play thx
Several days ago I played normally. I joined a party yesterday, had to leave later, I can’t recall if I left the game or clicked exit game. Up until this moment everything was fine. Since then it takes a while for “Authenticating Credentials” to process. When the game finally shows my character screen, I’m unable to start game (Only available to party leader).
At this point I tried to join party, error 315000. I restarted the game, suddenly could play, (Authenticating Credentials still didn’t process any faster), but I wanted to check if a party invite would have worked. My friend sent me invitation and right after creating the game it crashed. I hadn’t received any e-mail about silencing, I also doubt someone could’ve reported me. I seldom play in parties and barely speak to anyone while playing.
I read through almost every post, tried all suggestions (i.e. repair, reinstall, actualize drivers, flush DNS, renew IP). To no avail.
Can you see this through? Thanks.
read this thread
blue post related owo
Hello!
I cannot play diablo 3 as well, and I’m not silenced on any other games. I have only hots account and ow, and I am able to play hots, didn’t play ow since a year or more.
Started a seasonal character today, logged out and cannot log in now.
Never had this problem before - played for many years.
today when i logged in the “play” button was greyed out and on mouseover it stated that this was “only available to party leader” - i am not in a party. It does it on both america and eu servers and both non seasonal and seasonal toons.
chat doesn’t work either.
i am 54 years old and play mostly either alone or with my 3 friends who are the same age as me - so I don’t think i have broken any rules.
please advise
I am also having the same issue, the “join game” button is disabled and it says “only available for party leader”
same as Bunkus mentioned before, I don’t even use the chat function, just to say hello and GG.
Please support!
Same problem here, havent been silenced or anything as i played solo the last week and have not been active in any Blizzard forum for years.
Tried emptying cache, resetting pw, scanning gamefiles, playing from another computer, another network connection… nothing helped. Hope this gets solved soon.
Me and my wife were also just playing logged out to switch Toons and all of a sudden her game says that only party leader can start a game yet she was the party leader. We just started playing this game so what is the use to buy a game if it is unplayable, I would really like to know what Blizzard is doing about this issue yet we will most probably never get a reply!!! 
I’ve been playing diablo 3 for 3 weeks now and suddenly i can’t play. I’ve never had this Issue, I don’t even use the online chat or anything like that, i didn’t sign up for Diablo 4 because i am waiting for the game to Launch. I don’t play the game with anyone other than my husband and my one friend, i barely play solo for that matter. PLEASE HELP.
I have also just gotten this issue, i have not tried the following with it not working
switching Heroes
trying to change pets or other cosmetics
changing passwords
repairing the game
reinstalling the game
i have not played online so i would not know why i have been silenced
if you got some idea please say so
It won’t help i did everything of the above. Same thing i even Restarted my Internet and my pc multiple times
Got the same issue, tried to force everything out of the world but my account is unusable.
just another cry for help thats all.
as far as i see this is only a diablo problem as i can log into WoW without problems
i have also not gotten an e-mail that says i am silenced
same problem today…