My account (only wow, not account wide) got banned and the reason given was Economy exploitation which is comical because my char is lvl 46. I don’t care about gold in games, I often don’t even loot it. I almost don’t use AH. I don’t like interacting with others much and was just questing, killing elite mobs and getting honor. I read through tos and did nothing of that. To make it more ridiculous CS mentioned huge magnitude of what I did. Seriously, like with lvl 46 I can scam others for millions?
Of course CS refuse to give any details on that, so there’s no why I can fairly appeal ban.
I even requested GDPR data. There’s nothing there indicating Economy exploitation. Checked that.
I read though many similar topics and I suspect:
bug in system
somebody used same IP to buy gold
I’m considering buying another account but I doubt if it’s sensible, if they can wrongly ban my account anytime.
I ask you to list all possible reasons for economy exploitation. So at least I have hint what could cause that.
Nothing can be done by posting here. Spitballing what may or may have happened isn’t going to help you as the Blues here don’t really allow such because those kind of things just snowball fast.
If you think you did nothing wrong, then you can appeal until they told you no more appeals be heard. And to touch on that, an appeal is a request to look at the logs, not have a chat or debate the issue.
You do not need to know exactly why to be able to appeal your ban. All the appeal does is have another set of eye’s look at the logs and see if everything matches and the information also concludes the same thing or not.
An appeal is not a plea of any kind, Just a review of the logs. You do not get to plead your case.
The customer support forum is a player help player forum.
You will intentionally get a vague reason regarding account action - for a very good reason - it’s exactly the information that cheaters want, so they can navigate around and rule-lawyer or avoid detection.
They do not give exact details to protect showing how cheaters got found out!
Bans like this have also happened from when people hire a power leveler to level their toon for them. But 99.9 percent of them use bots to do this and most get nabbed and end up with a ban like this.
Bliz knows the account was not hacked in cases like this, Yes they see an odd ip address but they also look at what the account was doing. Doing anything that would help the account holder and not themselves makes it obvious the account was not hacked.
So put in your appeal and wait for the answer and that is your only option. They will not give more details ever.
It’s not sensible. If they don’t say in rules (not this specific case) what account might be banned for, then how can you know if what you do is allowed? I asked for listing all reasons to get Economy exploitation ban, I asked to know the rules, I should get answer to that.
If you want to know the rules, then you can read the EULA because that’s what we agreed to. Nothing more will be offered as the Blues here ain’t going to detail what got you action.
I red that. There are no examples of Economy exploitation. Gamers need to read different forums to find examples of what others got banned for. They find out this afterwards. It’s comical. Imagine you got convicted for a crime that is not specifically listed as crime in your country. It that tolerable to you?
Doesn’t matter what I think: what anyone of us say doesn’t matter by the end of the day. More to the point, the blues here ain’t going to tell you what triggered caused the action. You was given the reason why you was action. No amount of trying to say this or that will change that. No amount of demanding to see a given rule on such will change that.
All that matters is if you appeal and if they upheld it. Nothing anyone say here will change that fact.
They can be vague and not list reasons for ban (not even related to this case). Even if they did wrong just deal with it. That’s so encouraging to buy another game time and attract more gamers.
The EULA does have a whole section on that. It covers buying or selling in game currency (gold)/items or services (boosting, carries, etc.) for real life money. Advertising falls under there too.
Prohibited Commercial Uses: Exploit, in its entirety or individual components, the Platform for any purpose not expressly authorized by Blizzard, including, without limitation (i) playing the Game(s) at commercial establishments (subject to Section 1.B.v.3.); (ii) gathering in-game currency, items, or resources for sale outside of the Platform or the Game(s); (iii) performing in-game services including, without limitation, account boosting or power-leveling, in exchange for payment; (iv) communicating or facilitating (by text, live audio communications, or otherwise) any commercial advertisement, solicitation or offer through or within the Platform; or (v) organizing, promoting, facilitating, or participating in any event involving wagering on the outcome, or any other aspect of, Blizzard’s Games, whether or not such conduct constitutes gambling under the laws of any applicable jurisdiction, without authorization.
I should write there are no examples that aren’t completely obvious. Buying gold or buying leveling is obvious.
I assume there is a hidden list of activities and you can’t know if you do any of them as it’s hidden.
Also “including, without limitation” is simply “whatever we think about”.
I didn’t do any of the things listed there.
It really doesn’t matter in the end: Blizzard own the game and they’re within their right to close any and all accounts they see fit. Much like anywhere else in the world, places have the right to deem fit what they want to action someone and they don’t have to give a reason.
I assume there is a hidden list of activities and you can’t know if you do any of them as it’s hidden.
Also “including, without limitation” is simply “whatever we think about”.
Players try to play rules lawyer. They can also be very creative in getting around rules. That is why Blizzard reserves the right to enforce the spirit of the rule with whatever the players lately came up with.
Every tiny bit of your data is logged so Blizz has that there to review when you appeal, as long as the appeal is timely. They know when you logged in, from where, on what PC, on what account, on what char and what you did and said. They also have that information on accounts you interacted with so if another account is investigated and you were part of whatever happened, that can get you banned too. Accidental one time things like buying an item on the AH from a char you did not know was a gold moving account, may get a temp suspension. Repeated patterns gets a ban.
That is what the appeals process is for. Blizzard understands that they are not perfect. Mistakes do happen. We’ve seen suspensions and bans overturned when the system makes an error. But you have to appeal and go through the process.
They try to be insofar as they can to not give so much information to the true illegal players and botters to get around the system.
Two wholly different things. This is not a democracy and you can live without playing a Blizzard game. You think that you’ve got all of these rights to information and some other kind of process when you do not.
We pay to access their servers. They don’t even have to offer us the right to appeal, but they do. Something you or your computer did triggered Warden. Send in your appeal and let the process work. You’re allowed to keep appealing until you are warned that no more will be allowed.
I requested GDPR data. There’s nothing there indicating Economy exploitation. Checked that.
I appealed, they refused to cancel ban. People say they had to appeal many times, after somebody finally canceled ban. Sometimes they change the reason of ban or time for which account is banned. Somebody applied 16 times before he got ban cancelled. Automatic system is not good, ban appeal is also not good. CS employee has hundreds of tickets a day and less than a minute to check your appeal so he will go with what system says.
I assume there is hidden list of forbidden activities because I did nothing what is in described in tos. They don’t give you detailed answer about ban reason because of “privacy concerns” yet you are the only one concerned and should know about that. It’s also comical you have to prove your innocence instead of them proving you did something wrong. And you can’t prove anything if they don’t tell you why they banned you.
It’s about how you run business and care about customers if you want to maintain it.
You’re not proving anything as this isn’t a court of law. More to the point, Blizzard owns everyone’s account and we’re renting it. We don’t own we own on the accounts. They’re within their rights to close anyone’s account without a reason because they own it.
Agreed. Which is why Blizzard doesn’t “automate” bans. They ban/suspend based on collected data and not an automated system.
Source? I’ve never seen any posted info on how many tickets a GM handles in a day, nor how much time they’re allotted to answer those tickets.
o.O They have no reason to have a “hidden” list. In fact, there’s no reason to ban/suspend innocent accounts either. That’s why there’s an appeals process.
That said, it actually is against the rules to discuss account actions on the forums.