18 Year old account closed - Have barely been interacting with the game/economy

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My account got closed yesterday morning and I just noticed today after going through my inbox. It was closed for “Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy” or basically RMT. The thing is that I’ve barely even barely even interacted with the economy at all in the past 12 months let alone done any kind of RMT. The most I’ve done is sell a WoW token on DF AH when prices were at its highest 2-3 weeks ago. So I’m completely confused to as what actions would cause my account of 18 years to be permanently closed.

I just resubbed last month after not playing since Dragonflight launch and then 10.1 launch and I completely quit Wrath Classic in October of 2022. I opened a ticket to appeal the ban, was just wondering how common this is to have an account closed and an appeal actually get it over turned since i’m still in a state of shock that I could lose 18 years of playing this game for pretty much no reason whatsoever.

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All you can do is apeal nothing is garunteed but thats all you can do.

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There have been similar situations recently of people who have posted here that were banned for similar situations. Blizzard does make the occasional mistake and may have targeted you by mistake. The best thing you can do is put in an appeal and wait to see what they say. As long as you truthfully were not involved in any form of RMT, you should hopefully be okay after your appeal processes and they do a thorough investigation. Good luck to you my friend!

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As an update, I got a response to my appeal and the account was reinstated.

I am thoroughly satisfied with the customer support. It’s probably the fastest I’ve had something addressed by the support team ever.

I’m not 100% certain what caused the initial ban, but based on the limited information in the response I think an entire spam guild I had one of my old bank characters in on Wrath Classic got hammered.

Very thankful they were to take a second look and exonerate.

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Wow that’s fantastic! I’m happy for you man. Cheers!

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Quite frankly, you’re probably not going to know. Most things are kept internal by Blizzard, as they do not want bad actors to know detection methods.

But what we can glean, as Trizzell said above, is there seems to be an uptick in players getting hit for Economy Exploitation. This points to a large ban wave hitting accounts that are tangentially related to gold selling, often through things like GDKP runs and such. Through investigations, they flag accounts that participated, and when the ban wave hits, all accounts are nailed. But when you appeal, they look at your actions alone, and they determined that you had nothing to do with it, and were just caught up unwittingly.

Other issues that you may read about are always treated as separate situations. Sometimes the player were not as innocent as they claim and the penalty is upheld or only reduced, sometimes the player is innocent and the suspensions can be lifted.

There’s really no advice that can be given to 100% avoid this in the future. You can limit the chances by avoiding GDKP runs and such, but then again, there are a vast number of those runs that are perfectly fine. Just keep doing what you do, and if it happens again, go through the appeals process.

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If you run with GDKP runs you might want to reconsider them, That could be what triggered this in the first place.

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If you were falsely accused of RMT then you can appeal, they seem to reinstating everyone’s accounts that were affected by this mistake.

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They already did, they reply with their appeal results.

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Theres a reddit post aboit this on wotlk reddit btw.

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and? I read that post, most of it is misinformation and mis-truths. Suspensions are not Automated, just a squelch. That poster is looking for Reddit mob support.

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Quite frankly, no one cares. Reddit is not any source of truth for anything dealing with these situations (unless it’s directly from a Blizzard poster, which can happen on Reddit). The only source of truth is Blizzard. They investigate, they take action, and sometimes, those actions are overturned upon appeal.

Again, just because a situation seems similar on the surface does not mean they are related in any way. If someone has an account action, they can submit an appeal, and Blizzard will look at their personal issue.

That someone else’s account was reinstated does not mean that everyone is going to be reinstated. That someone else’s account remained banned does not mean that everyone is going to remain banned.

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No one said every situation is the same. I dont know as a matter of fact that AI is used to determine who to ban or not for potential RMT, but you think 300,000+ accounts are being banned by someone who just reads the logs all day? I think a lot of companies are elevating AI and algorithms to create spreadsheet. Staffing is low and productivity requirements by management is unreasonably high so its not hard to believe they dont review every ban that gets sent out.

Pull the trigger now and apologize later. Its an understandable, but flawed approach imo.

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By one person? No. Not understanding how the process works is fine, and that’s where we can clear it up, but this tactic of saying “well, random guy on Reddit says this, so I believe it” is not the way to go.

Player 1 buys gold from an illicit site. Then, they buy an item off the AH from Player 2. They do a couple in-person trade with Players 3 & 4. Then they join a GDKP, where their purchase is split among Players 5-25.

When Blizzard investigates stolen gold, and where that gold went, and who has it now…they find 25 players sharing the gold. Those 25 accounts are flagged for account actions when they are done with the full investigation. Those account actions are done all at once, with a “ban wave” (not a very accurate term, as some accounts may just be suspended, but you get the idea).

So no, one person is not manually actioning 300,000+ accounts. There’s an investigative process that goes into it.

Then, when a player who simply participated in the GDKP run (for example) appeals their action, they look at that player’s actions on their own. Just participating and unknowingly receiving the gold will likely lead to a reduction or immediate reinstatement. Players who knowingly participate and happily take what they know is stolen gold will likely not get a reduction or reinstatement.

Your opinion is irrelevant to the current process. If you think it should change, that’s understandable, and you should leave feedback in the General Discussion Forum. That’s where they gather feedback to consider for the future.

In here, it’s the current policy. Not liking it is irrelevant. There are many things I may not like, but this is Blizzard’s company. I don’t get a say. I only pay to access the game, not make policy decisions.

Your impression of what may be happening is also irrelevant. They are very upfront that automation is used where it makes sense. But that does not involve account actions. A live human decides on account actions, and a live human decides on the outcome of an appeal.

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This thread seems to have veered off into some other discussions. Since Beanmam appears to have received a resolution through their Support ticket, I’m going to close this one up.

Thanks, all.

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