7 day silence with no warning or known reason. Abuse?

Support Customer Support
1

Since the person in question can’t post anything (I wasn’t aware that in-game silences applied here), I am writing on their behalf.

Earlier this evening we were in a TW raid (Yogg skip) that we started. The listing was benign, with no mentions of sales, etc. Just that they send a password from previous runs to get back in, or to send a cute response as a tool to weed out some of the more toxic behaviour. On the 3rd of such raids my friend was booted offline soon after listing and then silenced upon returning.

Two emails were received in quick succession(a few seconds at most). The first said that Blizzard has modified the listing. The second said that they were silenced as a result of language, advertising, etc. which was clearly not the case.

There were some seriously terrible things that were said to them via DMs for not being invited to the group. They were just ignored due to the sheer numbers of them.

I’m writing this to bring notice to the public (though from previous posts I’m reading, many are comfortable ignoring that this may be an issue of note).

This seems to be unfair action. Either as a result of automated/mass reporting, a broken automated system on Blizzard’s end, or Blizzard employees who have no intention of reading the responses and just say “Ban/Silence” to everything. None of these things should be tolerated.

The continuation of events like this seems to be wicking the few remaining non-toxic players and leaving the game in much worse condition.

This experience has left us truly disheartened and considering giving up on Warcraft and the communities we have helped create and joined over the years.

Hopefully this can garner the attention of someone who can help implement change.

*Also as a note, as of writing this post, there are only two Yogg listings, both of which are asking for money to do so. We would never ask for such a thing.

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2

Punishments aren’t usually instant. It could have been the result of something that happened days to weeks ago and might have nothing to do with what you think could have resulted in the punishment.

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4

The only thing the person can do is apeal nothing you or they say will alter the ban blizzard goes by logs and reports.

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5

No, they aren’t. As for the rest of your nonsense post - please don’t troll here.

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6

The claim about the system being broken has been debunked by blues so many time it should be a meme by now most players wind upnwith egg on there face in the morning.

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7

The most a “mass report” for chat offences can do is put a temporary (24 hour) squelch on the account until a GM can review the reports. If nothing wrong was done, the GM removes the squelch, if the GM finds the reports to be legitimate then they apply an account action. A 7 day silence is a first offense applied by a GM. The penalties escalate from there for further offences. Other offences such as botting or using exploits can start off with longer penalties for first offences and are determined case by case.

The first email received was probably due to a squelch, the second was probably sent by a GM. And before you say they’re AI responses, no they’re not. Blizzard uses boilerplate / template responses to be keep communication consistent and fast.

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8

This topic has been debunked so many times now that even the needle of the record player is broken. Here’s the hard pill to swallow: If someone is a consistently toxic player, their odds of being “randomly” punished are consistently higher and they are more likely to consistently associate their most recent toxic event with the ban.

Personally, I’ve been banned/punished multiple times over the past 20 years for being toxic or violating the ToS. It’s been a while since the last time, thankfully, but nobody is perfect. However, I’ve never really been consistently toxic and when the punishments came, I wasn’t surprised because my brain was automatically thinking “Oh yeah… I did say some toxic stuff the other day in that pug LFR that I was getting super frustrated with that kept wiping on easy mechanics…” If I had been toxic every single day, my brain might automatically associate my most recent event with the ban and that’s the trap that a lot of the forum “auto-ban conspiracy theorists” fall into.

Moral of the story: Don’t be toxic and you won’t get silenced or banned. Be nice to others.

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10

The support article has nothing to do with people being mislead with how the penalty system works, but more just generic behavior from people from following their favourite content creators or just misleading words by other players.

Blizzard does try and have as much information around for people in regards to certain things, but not everyone would go read a support article, but would listen to others who don’t have a full clue into what they are talking about.

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And that number is one. One validated report is all that is necessary.

If you take issue with the wording of a support article, I know you know how to leave feedback.

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  1. “Mass reporting” is not a thing.
  2. Automated account actions (outside of the squelch designed to deal with gold sellers quickly) are not a thing.
  3. All accounts actions are applied by a GM after reviewing reports.
  4. It only takes ONE report to trigger an investigation/account action.

Anything other than those 4 points that is misinformation spread around by “streamers” who lie for clicks.

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18

It won’t. There is actually nothing you can do to influence the review of anyone elses account.

But when you claim that no human looked at the evidence or have reviewed it - you’re quite wrong.

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19

The category “Abusive chat” is the title for all social infractions that fall under “abuse of the chat system”. That does not have to be offensive things. It can be anything that is inappropriate for the game and breaks the rules. It also includes advertising, spamming, trolling, etc.

Don’t get bogged down with the category into thinking it had to be abusive or offensive to be penalized.

Chances are if it really is about a posting for a group, that it was reported for spam or advertising. If a GM felt it was valid, they will apply a penalty. If not, they just close the complaint. They DO make mistakes sometimes though - hit the wrong button and vacation someone they meant to clear the complaint on.

The person who is penalized, and ONLY the person who is penalized, needs to appeal. They can appeal up until they say no more appeals on that subject will be allowed or it crosses into GM abuse territory.

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20

I am nearly 100% positive I was in one of the last few runs you did last night on my very low geared DH that just hit 80. I remember the note asking for a cute comment.

I’ve been reading this forum for quite awhile now and want you to know there have been numerous official posts explaining how mass reporting does not work the way people think it does and real people look at these.

It doesn’t make it any less frustrating, especially when (in my humble opinion) Blizzard could do a much better job about communicating things.

I saw a similar post where this happened to someone that was not doing paid carries but was silenced due to crossing a technical line about posting carries. Since you mentioned they adjusted it, it made me think of it. Someone reported and maybe it was a technical foul but still a violation. This is my personal impression.

Unfortunately, it seems the week silences seem to be standard because lesser things didn’t work.

I am posting because your group was incredibly nice and welcoming and I think you probably help a lot of people. Blizzard is trying to catch a lot of the problematic people to make this game better, but sometimes more mild things get caught too.

I hope you aren’t disheartened about helping people because people like me see these things and pass it forward. I recently joined a community to help people learn to raid because of my experiences with people like you.

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21

Thank you for the clarification. I’ll pass the information along though I know they have already appealed. They do a great service for our community so being silenced affects all of the community members so it’s unfortunate. But hopefully it’ll get resolved soon.

Edit to add: I just spoke to her and she also offers her thanks and hope it can be resolved soon.

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22

Yes, that is correct. They have tried many different penalty structures in the past, including the least restrictive one of a 24 hour silence as a first offense. It did not have the effect of deterring unwanted behavior unfortunately.

Penalties for social infractions now start at a week Silence. Second offense is a week Suspension, going up from there each confirmed penalty. Up to WoW license closure.

People also need to keep in mind, what they are doing at the time, is very very very rarely what they are penalized for. Part of the system not being automatic (other than squelches), is that it takes time to get it reviewed by a GM and get a penalty applied. The offense can be days or a week prior.

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23

Well, I can usually shed a bit more light on these - but I can only do that when it’s the player impacted posting. We can’t give info to 3rd parties even though I know you are simply trying to help.

This is the 3rd one of these I’ve seen popup this week, and in all three cases, password seems to be involved.

That’s not an issue in itself. The issue presents when that’s also one common way that people running these for cash present themselves. Password usually is referring to a discord channel where the deals are actually struck.

My theory at the moment is folks are reporting these THINKING they are cash runs - as they should.

If you can get a ticket number, I could research a bit more on this, although I won’t really be able to share anything with you.

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Thank you! Is it okay to share the ticket number here or is there a more appropriate place to do so?

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Here is fine, ticket numbers aren’t useful for much of anything else.

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This is the ticket number for her appeal: Issue ID: #101592489

If that’s not correct, let me know. She would also like to apologize for any delay as she’s at work (so am I so further apologies from me.)

Thank you again for looking into this!

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I also run with this in-game community. It’s been a great place to connect with other players who enjoy the game, respect individuals, and accommodate differing play styles. I was in the raid last night, that is suspected to have been the cause in this situation. I cannot imagine our community leader ever treating another player in a manner to violate the overall community guidelines and TOC. In fact, that kind of unfriendly behavior is frowned upon within this in-game community.

I appreciate your willingness to look into this further.

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