Blizz support suggested I try a VPN to lower my ping not long ago (It didn’t work though) so I don’t think they’ll block them. My guess is that “smurfs” are usually account boosting.
What are you even talking about?
How can you tell if someone is smurfing or just trying to climb the ladder. Max placement is 3K I believe
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Most ISPs use dynamic IP which means there is no way to effectively block such people without causing other to have problems (meaning person A is a smurf, gets blocked, then restarts router to receive new IP to get unblocked and suddenly you are blocked now bc you got their IP, assuming you share ISP).
Also, don’t forget things like sharing flat, having siblings, dorms etc exist you can’t just block people via IP bc more than one account (people) logged in from the same IP address.
MAC block would be unfair too. Some families have only one pc to share so not everyone could play because you think everyone who you lost to is a smurf.
What is an obvious vpn ip?
I don’t know about smurfing, but i have noticed that a lot of hanzos are suddenly very good at getting headshots…
How do you expect the community to act on that? It won’t be enough.
They are complaining NOW. Meaning that there are already enough smurf accounts to disrupt people, or at least give the impression that smurfs are disrupting games.
So banning future accounts won’t solve the problem. It just creates a new one: a new divide between people to argue about.
But you know? I am almost 100% sure that calling people “smurfs” is just another way for the pathetic sore losers amongst us to justify their loss and call the enemy names because it is literally inconceivable that the enemy is better than them.
It’s not as big of a problem as people say. It’s hyperbole. An imagined problem only grown stronger because of an echo chamber.
I did the math once, just out of curiosity. IIRC: Even if every plat, diamond, master, GM and T500 had at least 1 secondary account, chances of meeting them would be less than 5% per match. And that is a generous rounded number with a very generous assumption on how many smurfs there are. Not even taking into account that some people don’t play in comp, and that most people don’t use their secondary accounts for throwing.
5% is an acceptable number. And it evens out. The few matches you might have a smurf they might also be on your own team and winning. Or throwing. Or they might do this to the enemy. In the grand scale of things they don’t affect your SR whatsoever.
Yeah more money for them.
And OWL is their main focus now, we’re just the PTR for the OWL servers anyway.
Having multiple accounts is not against the rules tho.
VPNs can be traced to certain network IPs and then you just ban that network IP.
The issue isnt banning them, because banning players who smurf is easy, just point at some guy and ban him for smurfing.
But it gets complicated when you start to think about what a smurf is. Are they actually smurfs? is this just a new player? Its very hard to tell them apart which is why blizzard hasnt said a word on this topic.
Nope they only do account bans.
Also i cant find it now but, Jeff has said smurfing is not a bannable offence unless you are trying to force a loss.
I play on smurfs to get better at certain heros, but I can see the frustration. I dont think many people just go and derank an account just to play against some bad players, but I do see many many boosters in diamond+ and it is awful to just be stuck in spawn bc they have a perma 100 charge zarya and god tier widowmaker. These people should be banned. But not smurfs. I have never thrown on a smurf, unless you consider 1st time doomfist a throw (I try my hardest), but I still dont think they should just ban players because they are on low lvl account and pop the hell off on widow or something.
Why would Blizzard ban customers? That’s their logic 
What if multiple people live at the same address? Then what then?
I disagree because I have an alternate account(not a smurf, this account is my same rank) and I play on it because My main account is on a losing streak and I don’t want to drop from high plat to gold, so I play on my alt account. yes it is annoying to play against smurfs, but everyone I know who has an alt account is because they want to practise other heroes. maybe get rid of the rotten apples, but not the whole bunch.
apparently everybodies in gold and under because of their smurfs and other heroes being overpowered. quit whining and actually put in the effort to improve
2 things
Smurfing isn’t bannable
You can change your IP address.
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1 more thing.
Blizzard will find you.
And they will ban you.
Just like Liam Neeson.
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thank you for that.