Hello,
Earlier today, my husband (Rhuaarc) posted here to try getting help for my suspended account that was suspected of automation/botting. I am super thankful for your breadcrumb in what the issue could be. For the past few months I’ve been trying to figure out what the issue is - because I was honestly shocked when I got the news.
Support would not re-open my ticket or give me any clues as to what I could have done, so when you say it has to do with fishing, I had to give in and open a second WoW account to post here (I was silenced in forums), because I honestly believe I was mistakenly suspended.
Why? I don’t actually fish - look at my achievements - it’s not an area of the game I have interest in. I’ve mainly supplied our guild bank with herbs. I don’t know if you can look at my logs, but what little fishing I have done has always been done manually. I’ve almost always had the exact same window of time I play, and log on for raids, timewalking with my husband, or doing weekly quests for rep. My only professions I’ve even leveled to max are Herbalism and Alchemy, and usually gather herbs while waiting in queue or doing weekly quests.
I would greatly appreciate if you could look into this further.
Just to get to the point of the matter - the blues here ain’t part of the appeals team, nor they handle appeals tickets. If its related to botting/automation, they can’t really tell you much. Even then, the most they will tell you to appeal it until the appeals team tells you to stop.
And just to be clear, they’re not going to be able to give times, dates, or what programs was found. That’d be info that bot makers would like to know as well.
Thank you for this information, Orlyia. I’m still not sure what it was, and I know you can’t tell me exactly what. To make sure it doesn’t happen again, I’ve deleted everything from my addon folder and will stay very minimal on what is freshly installed. Whatever it is wasn’t intentional, but I know ignorance is no excuse. Thanks again.
I don’t have that installed on my computer at all. I had to look up what autohotkey even is. I made sure my mouse didn’t have anything beyond being a basic mouse set up either. I appreciate the suggestions though.
Just to make sure, did you install an addon that made you download some extra piece of software or code and install that alongside the addon?
I’ve seen several addons that were advertised as “blizzard-approved” (to be clear, they are NOT) that if you read through their description they state somewhere in there they require a piece of third party software. Unfortunately some people don’t understand that an addon itself is fine, but anything else that is used alongside said addon is almost surely not going to be fine.
I am not saying that is what happened in your situation. I just wanted to make it clear that an addon by itself won’t cause any issues, but an addon that had you go download something extra from a website is different, no matter how official looking it appeared to be.
Yep…they obviously aren’t going to clarify exactly what it was, but evidence points toward a fishing bot.
Just a reminder that Blizzard can see everything you do in game, every action is logged, and they can also see other software on your computer that interacts with WOW in any way.
By the way, it wasn’t clear from your husband’s thread whether you were told to stop appealing, but if you haven’t been told so, then you can keep appealing if you believe this was in error. Absolutely do not keep appealing if they have asked you to stop or said that no further appeals will be considered.
That’s what I thought they were hinting at too, but I don’t have anything like that. I have almost no fishing skills. Would something like Auctionator or Trade Skill Master be the culprit? Or a rotation helper like Hekili? I thought I had pretty standard fare addons installed through the WowUp app.
Again, thanks to everyone helping me troubleshoot.
I’m not sure that would flag it. I’ve used my mouse for years to help with arthritis combined with in/game macros and I’ve been fine.
Honestly, not sure how I could even play without it these days. I’d be in pain part way into a gaming session.
It’s more outside programs in said keyboards/mouses - press a button down and it does a number of actions while its pressed. The items themselves won’t get into anyone in hot water, but folks tend to forget that those programs would go against the rules when they use such for other things.
You have maxed out fishing in many of the older expansions and Dragonflight, just not some of the other more recent ones. Granted, these are just for Retail characters.
You might also want to make sure that anyone who might have access to your account login isn’t running it as a fishbot on the side, and that your account is secure.
The only thing I can recommend to try to pinpoint what’s on your system is to check running processes. Some of the ones related to addons (botting programs) may actually remain hidden unless you have WoW active.
Open WoW to the character selection screen.
Open Task Manager and check all running Apps, Backround Processes, and Windows Processes.
Do a google search on any program that you’re not 100% sure is a legitimate process that should be running.