Appeal ban for 2 weeks - abusive chat

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I was banned for two weeks recently. The reason given was abusive chat/ toxicity. The reason I’m trying to appeal this action is because I believe the reports that went against me stemmed from ‘mass reports’ and me being victim to harassment.

I’m unsure what it was exactly I said that was considered toxic. It would be helpful to know what it was I said so that I don’t make the mistake of saying something again in chat and receiving an even longer penalty. Anything can be viewed as toxic if a player has thin enough skin. And given the social contract we signed, am I supposed to not type in game at all out of fear someone might report me simply because they don’t like me?

However, given what I believe to be the reason for my punishment, I think it is the result of harassment by other players and a guild mass reporting me with the intent of limiting my game time. I know for a fact that I never said anything containing homophobic, xenophobic, or racial. I believe any type of chat that contains that type of language should definitely receive a 2 week ban or more.

I am sorry that I had offended someone and they felt the need to report me. But it is different when I’m being harassed by several characters from a guild. I ignore their character, they make a new character, I ignore it. And then I get whispers from their other guildies. At which point I then ask them to stop messaging me or I will have to report them. I think this is what got me reported for toxicity? They ganged up against me because I threatened to report them. Is it fair? Did I actually do something wrong and deserve that? No, I don’t think so.

This is just speculation though. I have requested clarity from blizzard into what is the exact thing I got reported for. Looking at my account, I have had good behavior for over a year now. The most recent time that I got banned, that suspension was overturned. It was found that the reports against me were the result of a mass report scheme.

I’m not sure if I got banned for calling someone a scammer? Or telling other players to report a bot. Am I being toxic if I call someone a scammer who doesn’t pay me? Or am I the victim? Am I toxic if I call a character that is glitching and turning 90 degrees, fly hacking, or exhibiting botting behavior a bot? Or am I the victim of a person trying to cheat the game? Neither of these situations should be banned.

I have carefully reviewed the terms and guidelines outlined by World of Warcraft, specifically focusing on communication standards. I understand the importance of maintaining a respectful and positive gaming environment. After a thorough self-evaluation, I am confident that I did not intentionally violate any of the listed terms. If there has been any oversight on my part or if there are specific incidents that led to the ban, I genuinely apologize. It was never my intention to use offensive, vulgar, discriminatory, or disruptive language during my interactions within the game. I value my World of Warcraft experience and the community it fosters, and I am committed to upholding the standards set by the game. I kindly request additional information about the nature of the violation so that I can take appropriate measures to ensure it does not happen again.

If the ban is not overturned, I kindly wish this be lifted and looked at as “time served”. I’ve been the victim more that once in this game. The ignore system doesn’t work. They can just log onto a 2nd account and harass me from their or get their whole guild to report me. It has already been a week of time lost. I think the review of this ticket was done without looking at the context of what players were saying to me and/or discord conversations. I appreciate your time and consideration in this matter. I am eager to resolve any issues and continue enjoying World of Warcraft with the respect and courtesy it deserves.

Given the recent lack of customer support by blizzard due to layoffs: I would propose implementing some sort of tribunal system for instances such as this one. Where real players review a case(from other servers they don’t play on for sensitivity reasons) and then they vote on what action to take in that circumstance. I’m fairly confident there would be a decent amount of players who volunteer for this if there is some small reward. Say some handful of days added to their account playtime for ‘x’ number of scenarios reviewed and voted on.

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I’m happy to inform you that this is not the case! All mass reports against you could do is squelch you temporarily for 24 hours.

A two-week suspension was manually applied by a game master.

You are correct on this, however-- context is never a factor when making these decisions, only whether or not you violated the rules.

They also cannot see what conversations were had on Discord, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a simple black and white situation.

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Penalties are based on your account history, as well as the nature of the infraction. While some can skip straight to an account closure, most don’t. They start with a week Silence and then proceed to Suspensions. If you were suspended two weeks then this is your third penalty, at least. Past penalties don’t drop off. They still count against your account.

Keep in mind that Blizzard’s policy does not allow ANY profanity, masked profanity, slurs, hateful speech, insults/harassment, sexual innuendo, etc.

“Mass reporting” does not do a thing to you if you don’t break the rules. Worst that can happen is a squelch pending GM review. In this case, it sounds like a GM reviewed the logs and found them to be in violation of the rules. Based on account history a penalty of 2 weeks was applied.

Reporting you is not harassment by the way. It is a response to what you said. If someone is contact you that you don’t want to hear from, put them on IGNORE. Do not interact with them at all. Never get baited into breaking rules.

If the circumvent the Ignore using a diff account, record the charname-server, time, date, chat channel, and nature of the contact. Do NOT reply. Put them on Ignore. Then file an Ongoing Harassment ticket via the website.

That will not happen. Blizzard, and only Blizzard makes the call on rule enforcement. Not players. Someone does not need to be “offended” to realize something is not appropriate for the game and to report it. Further, having players do for free what GMs do as paid work is illegal in California. Labor laws prevent that sort of unpaid labor.

Don’t use profanity, masked profanity, insults, trolling, spam, advertising, etc.

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Irrelevant. One report or many does not apply a suspension. Anyone can report for anything but unless the rules were broken it doesn’t matter.

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People need to understand, doesn’t matter if you were reported a THOUSAND times or just once, if you did nothing wrong then you will not get your account actioned upon. ALL reports are reviewed, and if a GM finds that you broke the rules, then you will get a penalty. Now, mistakes can happen, so that is why you can appeal the account action.

It does work, if someone tries to circumvent the ignore, then you just ignore them again and report them for continued harassment. Have you done that?

Blizzard can’t monitor Discord, if something was said there then Blizzard cannot see it and it does not apply to any report. Context may matter, but if you clearly used abusive chat, then you broke the rules.

Let’s not spread misinformation. The CS team was not affected by the layoffs.

No, I don’t want other players involved or participating in the penalties that can be applied to my account. My contract and agreement is with Blizzard, they are the ones that will decide what happens to my account, not other players. They can report me all they want, and if I ever do something that is against the rules, then they can punish me, not the players.

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Doesn’t matter what was said or not said. If you violate the rules you get suspended. If they violate the rules they get suspended.

This won’t happen again if you never respond to them. Always ignore them and if they have friends whisper you ignore them and put in a harassment ticket that states the person you ignored is having friends whisper you. This is how you avoid getting suspended. Never respond always ignore and put information about them circumventing the ignore feature in the harassment ticket.

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Why call them out? Do not engage, do not confront them. Just report and move on.

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Would be nice to know what it was I said so I don’t say that again. “toxicity” is so broad of a term to use in video games. I remember a time where you would be told you got in trouble for saying a specific word in chat.

And contrary to everyone saying mass reports don’t affect you, that’s false. It’s all automated these days.

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Perhaps. Even if you are 100% correct, all it does is create arguments and strife in the chat channels.

No, this is a valid thing to ask of others, even if they don’t want to hear it. Make sure you report, as that will get Blizzard to investigate.

See above.

Yes. It’s not up to you to make judgements about anyone else. That is Blizzard’s job. Report them and move on with your gaming.

Customer Support is perfectly fine. Layoffs happened in the development areas, not Customer Support. Replies are taking longer with the new SoD season, and the influx of stolen gold and RMT infractions, but that doesn’t mean it’s a lack of support. Just a longer line to wait in.

Well, you are free to suggest this in the General forum. But I would not hold your breath. Not only will this never happen for any reason, but other games have done this in the past. It resulted in many issues because there’s no accountability for the players making decisions, leading to bias, corruption, and eventually, real-life lawsuits against the company.

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No it’s not. Stop spreading false information.

The only automation is a squelch which triggers after you get numerous reports. This is to prevent spammers from continuing to operate. A GM then reviews the reports and applies any penalties if necessary or removes the squelch if unwarranted.

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Yes, the past system did send a snippet of some of the logs around the reports. It helped remind players what they did. That does not seem to be the case anymore.

As for automation, no, the actual penalty applied to your account is not automated. Squelches are in response to enough reports in a short time. Warnings are.

A suspension is not. There will be no list of “bad words”. That would take volumes and people would try to rules lawyer it.

The rule apply to ALL Blizzard games and platforms. The best break out of the details is the forum Code of Conduct. The rules for all Blizzard games and platforms are very family friendly.

Read this:

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Then this was definitely not your first infraction.

You should receive the actioned chat in the suspension ticket.

If this is happening then it is harassment and you can report it.

Reported, maybe, going on your word that you were being trolled. Actioned? No. Asking someone to stop harassing you is obviously not something you would get in trouble for, though we both know that isn’t the case if you got suspended.

Doubtful.

Nope.

You don’t need to do this if you’re trying to not be actioned. All you have to do is behave.

Skipping over how monumentally bad this is as an idea, it is strange that you would propose a player-controlled penal system considering you’re also speculating that you were wrongfully suspended due to malicious player reporting and harassment.

All you can do is submit an appeals ticket to try and get your account action overturned. If you get rejected, then you can keep submitting appeals to open new investigations until you are told not to submit anymore tickets. Outside of that, posting here will not help you with anything.

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Okay. So foul language and leaning into attacks on someone’s ethnicity, sexuality and any other state of being are not the only ways to be toxic.

See, this is a form of attack. Assuming folks to be thin skinned because they don’t agree with you? That’s a strike.

Two weeks means this isn’t your first rodeo. Sanctions stack and previous infractions never fall off. So if you were dinged and suspended a week four years ago? That mark still remains and so it doubled your suspension.


Source
So the part you missed “threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used.” You’re harassing another player by naming and shaming them. You’re trying to illicit a mass report on the assumption of them being a bot. Report them. You calling out people for any reason is unacceptable.

Report these people. If you’re scammed, report them. If people are harassing you? Report them.

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Did you look at the ticket you received regarding the suspension? The specific chat should be listed in it if a word or phrase is what got you into trouble. If it was just general misbehavior then all you can do is respond to the ticket asking for clarification if it wasn’t given, or wait for a moderator to join this thread and give you some clarity if they choose to.

If you’re wondering why your post was flagged, this is probably why. This is blatant misinformation and you provided no evidence for your claim whatsoever. In order for an account to be actioned, a Game Master has to investigate reports, based on priority level as I understand it, and manually issue an account action or drop the reports. But reports themselves do not cause account actions.

The only “automated” response from reports is a squelch if a character is reports enough in a certain period of time, which is not an account action. That is a defense mechanism to mitigate potentially out-of-control players in the immediate absence of blizzard staff to deal with them.

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They’re not doing this anymore, I’m afraid. They’ve removed this as well as the snippets in the emails.

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You and it seems nearly anyone who is reported for anything believes the same thing. That stems mostly from not understanding how the entire process works, which is nearly invisible from the outside, so I get how it all continues to spread.

No, but you may wish to avoid sending people whispers calling them garbage over and over again.

Not exactly. I can definitely see the chat from others, which you mostly ignored, but it seems this started with you.

While our Code of Conduct prohibits that use of inappropriate language, toxicity in games has also become a severe problem in online games and our policies do extend to that as well.

That would be more for our Game Developers to decide but something like that is unlikely to ever happen. Due to privacy laws around the world there is no way we would be able to provide chat logs to other users.

It isn’t though. Over the years we have worked to use what automated systems and processes we can to make things easier overall, taking advantage of machine learning and other such options but it continues to be false that “it’s all automated these days”.

Especially in your case. The reporting system takes the reported logs and compiles them in a report for review. From there it is determined if the reported chat violates policy. IN your case though, this was entirely a manual review. The Game Master ran chat logs manually to verify complaints.

If you believe an error was made you’ll want to submit an appeal, that is the only means to have this reviewed.

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