In light of how many posts I have been seeing recently regarding similar issues. I want to address what happened to me a couple of weeks ago. As a competitive parse raider, my second Bnet account was registered under my name and real billing information to level a clone for split raiding and dungeon running my alts (obviously not a burner account that people automatically assume is the case when they hear alt account). I was feeling annoyed by the state of the game and called out an RMT player in trade chat over selling items for exorbitant gold prices and even real money. The very next day, my account was closed permanently for exploiting the economy. No prior offenses on the account. I appealed and kept getting generic no-name automated replies and GMs denying any scripting or automation being used in their replies. After very kindly and patiently requesting a real human to investigate, my entire BNET account got banned for breaching the end-user agreement. I guess they were feeling malicious due to receiving multiple appeals. I never even received a warning regarding the appeals. I genuinely think the cs team is oblivious to the state of the game and just how easy it is for these agencies of RMT sellers and botters to get players banned just by aggravating their business. I’ve yet been able to get ahold of anyone to correct the unjust actions taken.
It truly blows my mind how all these players who have been gold buying for consumables due to the black lotus wall hacker crises get 2 week suspensions, and I call out a RMT seller in trade chat then get insta account closure… the cherry on the cake was I reported this seller on my main and several days later, I STILL saw him advertising in trade chat his RMT services… no justice at all. The system is broken, and I have no way to log into that account or contact an actual human other than trying to outreach on this forum or Twitter…
This would not be related. No amount of reports can directly result in an Anti-Cheat penalty. The Hacks team uses reports to help their investigations into botting software and cheats. Then they update their Anti-Cheat software to flag account using the targeted cheat methods. Much like antivirus software. That is handled by the Hacks team.
Further, penalties are not instant. What you were just doing is rarely related to a penalty. It is usually something you were doing days or weeks before.
That would be a Chat penalty/Social system penalty for advertising. Those reports go to GMs. It does take time on those as well. It is not an instant result and they won’t tell you what was done. The criminal organizations also use sneaky methods - like spamming on a stolen account, deleting that char, remaking a new one of the same name. It makes it look like nothing happens. They ban hundreds of thousands of stolen/spam accounts a month.
This may have been for harassing the GMs. If they tell you to stop, they really do mean to stop. Was that what got it closed?
It was the exact same name a week later, I have a screenshot with the name date and timestamp; also, they are currently selling the item to this day in trade chat under a new name. I have another screenshot with date and timestamp for that character too.
Regarding the human GM, they must not have wanted to do a thorough investigation then, as it is very evident that no RMT had ever been conducted on that account, like the closure email stated. How could it be that huge of a coincidence that the morning I woke up after that altercation with the seller, my account is closed for RMT? What could warrant such an extreme action when all that was ever done on that character was dungeon farming to get preraid bis, an ony, MC, and a few RFCs/SFKs helping my rogue on my main account? It makes no sense…
Please read what I said about how they do the advertising. These RMT groups are large criminal enterprises cycling through stolen accounts, and accounts bought with stolen credit cards/payment info. They intentionally TRY to look like they are using the same char and that “nothing happens”. Each customer they lure is another sucker they can hack and exploit. It is right to report them, but just seeing the same name does not mean nothing was done, or that nothing will be done.
GMs do not handle Anti-Cheat investigations. That is done by the Hacks team. The most a GM can do is verify the account is flagged and check the notes on it. They can escalate back to the Hacks team, but GMs don’t do the investigations for that. GMs handle Social/Chat reports only and base their decisions on the chat logs attached to the reports.
I understand that, that’s why I opened my own thread.
The problem is that the wow license ban makes no sense, and I never once breached the ToU/ToS regarding exploiting the economy. The appeals were honest and kind, genuinely seeking support to correct what seemed like a false positive or malicious attack on my account. (I develop anomaly detection algorithms for my professional job so I know there is no such thing as 100% accuracy)
I think it’s a pretty reasonable response and understandably frustrating experience when you’re openly rejecting buying gold with real money, which has become the norm for a huge population of long-term and loyal players since it’s publicly visible that Congolese, SA, and SEA companies are farming gold daily for selling. I don’t even agree with the WoW Token and cash shop being a thing in retail. I believe RMT has ruined the game both by creating a market and demand for illegal activity. It’s so sad to see what has become of the game, and who is the one suffering? The honest player putting in full days of grinding just to keep up with the economy, so I can competitively parse and speedrun… that is just plain old wrong to me and makes me question more than just ethics in the business.
Just going to be blunt on this: Are you just to fight with folks here? Because you’re bringing up things that has nothing to do with your account action, like talking about the wow token, what you believe should be done, etc. If you want help, we can try to help ya in what we can. But that kind of stops when it feels like wild thoeries about stuff that feel totally unrelated to the topic at hand.
The WoW token is directly correlated to the topic as it was introduced as a pay-to-win service in which you exchange Real Money for in-game Currency (RMT). This served to redirect the flow of money from going to those illegal farmers to Blizzard themselves. Sure, it mitigates some of the inflationary aspects of the problem, but bots and hackers still flood layers in retail farming mats and selling items/gold.
The point was that I do not support pay-to-win game mechanics/systems or believe real-life economies should have any connection to MMORPG economies. IE RMT/Tokens. Two highly correlated parts of the game experience, and I used it as an example of how opposed I actually am to the concept of RMT. I apologize if this is not evident enough.
Your opinion on the rules isn’t evidence. There is no way to submit outside evidence separate from Blizzard’s logs. All that can be done here is to point you in the correct direction. If you wish to, you can request a review of your battle net ban if you believe it was in error, as Orlyia stated.
If your battlenet is unbanned, and you have not exhausted appeals on the account action on your wow license, you can appeal that action.
Purchasing WoW tokens is not an action which will get you banned, so it is not relevant here.
If four genuinely kind and understanding appeals were not enough to have several GMs working web-ticket appeals, forward my request to the Hacks team for a thorough review on the unjust and immediate closure(not suspension) of my wow license (no warnings or suspensions on any license or the battlenet account). I genuinely don’t think that avenue works as intended. Unless the point is to provide impersonal and robotic customer support to paying customers and cold shoulder the genuine victims of a broken detection and classification tool? Losing the Texas CS team was a huge loss of what was left of positive CS experiences. Which is why I am so at a loss with how to connect and communicate at this point. I’m not here to start battles, I am simply trying to emphasize the magnitude of how out of nowhere and mind blowing such radical experiences with the state of the game and this appeal process has been, ultimately killing my will to continue playing a game that I have been passionate about through the good, the bad, and the ugly, of the past 20 years. I’m not a linguistic expert or a communication professional. I am an engineer who knows how a system should work and how to improve it. I can only communicate my analysis of the problem and seek a solution, and yet I am seemingly powerless compared to the criminals manipulating the economy on the daily.
If Orlyia were to say, “I understand how frustrating this experience has been, let me connect you directly with someone from the hacks team to remedy this issue” or “Let me try to connect you with someone you can personally speak with on the phone to resolve this”. I would immediately recompose myself to a state of calm. Instead, my emotionally frustrated and yet still rational state is met with people cherry-picking parts of posts as subjective and wrong to then reemphasize avenues that have proven to fail me and do not actually move the issue forward in a productive manner, instead putting me in a cycle of traumatic experiences and deeper frustration.
That is NOT what the Blues here do, nor will they. This is an Information desk to direct people on where to go. The Blues here are not liaisons to other departments.
But that would also be asking Orlyia to do something that is not part of their job scope within the company, similar to how GMs are not dialed into the Hacks team’s responsibilities. It’s very easy for the consumer to say “I don’t care, just get someone to do it” thinking it a flawless assumption that that’s how any business operates, no matter who you’re speaking to.
That is just not how the reality functions.
Same with how easy it is for you to say “I know how a system should work and how to improve it” is based in a lack of understanding how Blizzard’s system works. How you want it to work and how it actually works are at odds.
Blizzard has never handled appeals via a personal discussion or debate. They don’t let people argue with staff and don’t accept any “evidence” or anything from players. They won’t tell people how, or what exactly was detected.
What you want, is something Blizzard has never offered. Even when they did have a dial in line a decade or more ago, that was for Billing, Account services, and some tech issues. Not for appeals or in-game issues. Those were always via ticket. They really don’t debate or discuss it with players.
This form is an Information Desk to help folks navigate the ticket system, explain policies, explain account services, etc. It is not a means to reach anyone who handles appeals.
Oh, and Orlyia is in Texas and works for Blizzard. Forum Support Agent and not a GM, but still in Texas. They did not get rid of all their TX CS/GM staff that I know of. They DID cut the Tech Support out totally though.
Sure that makes some sense, I have worked CS positions before in many different industries/domains, across macro/micro scales, and I understand that my willingness to go out of my job scope to connect frustrated clientele and customers to the right people to resolve issues is purely out of a willingness and kindness of my own heart, and it genuinely brought me joy to see those people get solutions. I understand that not everyone wants to do more than the bare minimum, protocol, or script and that is very evident from the experience with the web ticket system. That is also why this is so frustrating for me and is indeed something I need to work on.
I think you’re missing a BIG point here though…they’re literally required to use the templates. You want someone to risk their job by not following their protocols or scripts? That’s not something most people are willing to do while at work.
It has nothing to do with kindness or willingness. It has to do with their logs and whether or not it supports the account action or not. Nothing more, nothing less.
Hi, welcome to ______, my name is ______ here to take your order, can I interest you in trying our new _______ or the limited time _____?
Go to any fast food place and 99% of the time, you will hear them stick to the same script. Does that make them an automated bot? No, it just means they have a template script that they follow. The same applies in any other CS in any other industry and as someone claiming to have worked in CS, you’d know this through and through…
I’m well aware this discussion stopped being in good faith many posts back, but you hopefully also understand that not everyone is trained in the same capacity, see back again my comment about job scope. It’s less about them not having the care or drive to perform above and beyond their responsibilities, but their directive to do the exact opposite. “Stick to the script, do not deviate.”
As a supposed CS engineer, you’re hopefully versed enough in support roles having metrics to meet if they wish to stay employed. Higher number of contacts resolved, lower amount of time spent on individual contracts, etc. It isn’t often that a CS role does not have those burdens.
There’s a vast amount of work that goes into these jobs, often to the point of it being overwhelming, and that’s before you introduce the idea of variance.
On top of that, there’s also the other discussion to be had that GMs are not hired exclusively for WoW. It may be the largest workhorse in their portfolio, but Activision has a vast swath of titles that GMs give support for.