I’m going to hijack this one to help clear up some things. I doubt I will unlocked it at the end, as the discussion has already gotten a little unproductive at this point.
As noted by several others, Vixenviola, we really don’t have “Auto Bans”. We definitely have systems in place that can take some actions semi-automatically. There also have been a lot of advances in technologies that really help our staff address various social and exploitative violations, and we aren’t adverse to exploring those to help better improve the gaming environment.
Response times have been fairly low recently, with appeal tickets usually addressed under 24 hours.
Without being able to look at the players that received a penalty it’s difficult to verify. We aren’t without fault and do make mistakes on occasion, it is what the appeal process is for. However, we do find that there is some confusion when discussing friends/guildmates, as they may not always be entirely honest on what happened and looking into it usually shows that the penalty was indeed justified. Hopefully, that isn’t so in your case, Vixenviola, but this really isn’t the place to discuss it.
We do have checks and balances, but in most cases actions for exploitation/botting do not go through a Game Master. Primarily because Game Masters aren’t the ones responsible for the investigation, nor do they have all the tools and qualifications necessary for those investigations (depending on the type of violation we are referring to). We have specialized teams in place that handle the majority of those investigations.
You weren’t. To be clear, you were penalized and your thread was removed because your name was deemed inappropriate.