I have been playing for nearly 2 decades. I have had one account for nearly TWO decades. Longer than most people working at Blizzard even considered the idea or maybe even knew of the company. Dealing with customer support used to be a timely, pleasant experience. What happened? I’ve been enjoying SoD so much. I had 4 BiS characters, was leveling a warlock a few days ago and bam. Account permanently closed.
Why? What have I done? The email says that I broke ToS by hacking/botting. Surely its a mistake, I wouldnt even know where to begin with doing either of those. So I open a ticket and started getting anxious after a few hours of reading about how terrible the experience is trying to get a false ban appealed. And then I get my first reponse at 12 am saying “refer to the email”. Ticket closed. What?? No explanation. No review of an obvious mistake on your behalf? I put in another ticket and waited another day and a half to get THE SAME MESSAGE. Im now on number three praying I dont get the same copy/paste message, and i get an actual person to just looked at my account and realize i have done nothing against the rules. To call me anything along the lines of a cheater just tells me theyre lazy and not looking. To tell me you’ve investigated any aspect of my account is to LIE to me.
And before anyone starts barking in the comments “you probably did this or that” just put yourself in my shoes. If it was you enjoying this game more than you have in over a decade and blizzard stole it all from you and labeled you a cheater, knowing you weren’t and it was an obvious mistake, yet every time you beg them to double check they just tell you no, how would you feel?
Is there anything else I can do, aside from put in appeals until someone actually looks at my account?
Put in an appeal, Nothing else you can do. Posting here will not change anything and posting about an account action is a violation of the forum code. Most of the time if your seeking advise the forum support agents will allow the post.
I recently replied to a very similar thread on the Battlenet Forums.
I don’t think much more can be added unless a Blue can clarify any of the support procedures.
That is not what a reply would say. They don’t say “we did not investigate”. They DO check that the account was indeed flagged as having met criteria for third party software/hacks/cheating. They use a set of templates that are the same for everyone, depending on what the GM finds.
That the penalty is upheld, often with a link to the Blizzard EULA/Policies
That the issue has been escalated to a specialist
That the penalty is overturned and they apologize
If the detection criteria is incorrect, it can result in false flags on accounts. That is rare, but does happen. When it does they usually unban those impacted as a group. That can take a few days after a ban wave for Hacks to realize and sort out.
Appeals via ticket are the ONLY way to contest an account action. You can appeal until they tell you that your Bnet account is at risk. Blizzard does not engage in live debates about someone’s account, and never has. They will not tell you specifically what they found, as sadly the bot and cheat makers would love to get a hold of that info. That means players are left guessing sometimes.
Keep in mind that botting/hacking/third party software is not “just” using a fully automated bot.
It is:
Using a macro outside of a game to automate any portion of your keypresses or rotations. Only macros made with the in-game macro maker (WoW) can be used.
Having prohibited programs running like Autohotkey or multiboxing software.
It is exploiting a bug in game for gain
It is any software or overlays that provide information from a game that is not provided by the game itself. WoW addons work in Blizzard’s sandbox using data Blizzard provides them through the API. Those are generally fine.
This recent post on WoW CS to another banned player covers some of it.