Ban process recommendation

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1

I have 2 guildmates that within a little more than a week were banned from playing World of Warcraft. Both were notified of the ban citing “Terms of Use and In-game Policies” violation (Article 42643). This is not a post to try to get them unbanned. I don’t really know what is true or not, because I am not playing the game for them. These guildmates could be banned for legitimate reasons. I am not defending them in any way. I understand that bans are used to ensure a safe gaming environment for everyone playing this game within all terms of service and rules/policies.

For both of their cases, neither of them say they have any idea as to what they did to receive the ban. Again, I can’t say it is justified or not, but I can use these two cases to illustrate how this system fails at least some people and ultimately drives legitimate business away from Blizzard reducing potential revenue.

The overall ban process is as follows:

  1. The user’s account is banned.
  2. The user receives an e-mail citing an extremely high level reason for the ban.
  3. The user can appeal the ban via ticket submission.
  4. Blizzard reviews the appeal, and makes a final determination and sends a canned response (this is standard practice for support staff).

For both of my guildmates, the article cited covers Communication, Naming, Cheating, and Behavior violations. This could range from in-game activities, or something manipulating their game or play. This could be software detected that might manipulate , malicious or not.

There are 3 scenarios for players that receive a ban, and how this process affects them logically.
-Someone is actually cheating, or knowingly violates policies.
-Someone who is “trying out” something against policies.
-Someone who legitimately has no idea why they were banned.

In the scenario that someone is actually cheating or knowingly violating policies. I would assume most accounts banned that fit this scenario are botting, or otherwise knowingly manipulating their game. I would also assume these accounts are being used for monetary gain. The mentioned ban process does little to deter this activity due to the potential upside. The account may try to get unbanned, but ultimately the account holder knew they were cheating. If their motivation is to keep playing, they will purchase another account and continue playing. The account holder knew they were cheating or in clear violation of policies. Bans in this scenario increase Blizzard’s revenue with account re-purchases, and probably covers the majority of bans overall.

In the scenario that someone is “trying out” software, the ban process would absolutely be effective. I will assume most people in this scenario would include people making a dumb decision, or someone fed up with the game and looking to ruin the experience for others until they are ultimately banned. They may also try to appeal stating regret for the decision they made, but same as the first scenario: the account holder knew they were cheating or in clear violation of policies. This likely reduces Blizzard’s revenue, but realistically that business was already lost at this point.

For the scenario that someone has no idea what they were banned for (my 2 guildmates position, allegedly), the ban process absolutely fails them. They aren’t knowingly engaging in any activities that would violate terms of use, or policies. At the conclusion of the process, they still don’t have any idea what the underlying cause is. If that account holder wanted to keep playing, despite the account closure, there is a constant fear of being banned again for violating something they didn’t know they were doing, reducing revenue for Blizzard.

This is currently leading my two guildmates to not create a new account to continue playing with the rest of the guild, in fear of being banned again for something they don’t know they are doing or violating.

If anything about the ban process could change, I would recommend that for bans using this article to at least include the specific paragraph in the article during the appeal review. This leaves the ambiguity of the investigation in tact without revealing any details on the detection methodologies or actions actually taken, but informs the account holder of the nature of the violation, which would only affect users in the third scenario who don’t know what they did. If this were enacted, they would at least know vaguely what caused it, being a behavior or software.

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You could put in a sugjestion or post this in general. Posting this here will not go any place since the powers that be do not come here for feedback.

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Generally, they would give this during the ban email itself for example “Abuse of Game Economy” “Third party programs” and “abusive chat” and so on. A generalised reason could mean multiple infractions of some sorts but they do give a reason.

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If I would have seen a suggestions channel, I would have put it there. If it’s in the wrong place, I’d gladly work with whoever to put it in the right place.

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First, you won’t find much disagreement that Blizzard should provide a little more so players understand what rule they broke. Many of us regulars would agree with that.

However, Blizzard does not give specific information for two reasons: 1) nefarious people (those who bot/cheat/etc) would LOVE to know exactly how they were detected, so they can adjust to not get detected in the future. And 2) giving Specific Reason A for an account action can lead players to think “hey, this other thing wasn’t listed, so it must be ok to do”.

Blizzard wants neither of these circumstances. In the end, the onus is on the player to know what the rules are, and ensure they are not breaking them. While it’s understood that there can be some legitimate confusion, usually players have some idea what they have done wrong even if they don’t want to admit it.

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If you were to look at article 42673 (https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673), the article references both behavior and non-behavior violations. That is what is vague.

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THey can create a new account lvl it to 10 then post here and maybe a blue can shed some light depening on what caused it.

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Also, if this is a permanent ban, then they know. Confusion can definitely happen on a first offense, especially for a chat or name violation.

But to rise to a permanent ban, they either did something so egregiously bad, or they had plenty of warning/suspensions before.

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To reiterate, I’m not trying to get them unbanned. That is their fight, not mine. I’m just highlighting a communication issue with article 42673 violations, and providing a recommendation that would both provide a less vague reasoning while also not providing details about the investigation or detections.

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RIght but the blues have been known to shed some light when the emails are lacking if the players are asking nicely .
Botom line is they can keep apealing till blizzard tells them to stop every apeal is handled by a different GM.

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Sort of, but not really? The reason given will be more of a category, like “Abuse of Economy, ect”, than a specific reason.
As to the review there is simply a new set of eyes looks at the account to see if there was an error made or to verify the account action was correct. A person could write a Stephen King novel sized explanation and it would be irrelevant, Blizzard only looks to ask “Did a violation occurr? Yes/No”.

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In the notification sent to my guildmates, this is what they were notified with:

That article is for both behavior based and non-behavior based violations. It leaves the vagueness of something they DID, or something that was on their computer.

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This looks like the reply someone gets when they first file an appeal. It is a automatic email they send until they complete the review. The email when they ban you has a bit more information but still very vague of the reason.

Most common is use of third party software, abuse of economy and so on.

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Nothing like that. Just said they reviewed it, and the ban stands. Summarized.

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The OP is correct, they do sometimes send generic ban emails that only cite the EULA, which we all know is very generic. I have mostly seen those for things at the account level like purchase failures. Where the system thinks the account is fraudulent or engaged in fruadulent activity.

For other categories they normally include that category:

  • Abusive chat (language, spam, advertising)
  • Name violation
  • Third party software/botting/automation
  • Abuse of the economy (RMT, gold selling, gold buying, etc.)

Sometimes those emails do not arrive in a timely way so the person sees the ban, way before the batch of emails gets to their respective accounts. Very frustrating for the recipient.

The emails for Abusive Chat also don’t currently include any of the reported language. The feature that used to include at least a snippet of the reported chat into the email form, broke I think. This results in additional tickets and posts asking why the person got penalized.

Blizzard is aware of all this and that it is less than optimal! I do hope they improve this process or fix it, going forward.

  • Display the category of account ban on login with the ban or suspension notice. Link to article to appeal is also helpful.
  • Include the reported and actioned text in the email for abusive chat actions. That lets folks see and learn from it. Could be spam, could be name calling, could be profanity/masked profanity, etc.

The place to make suggestions is the General Discussion forum. However, this forum serves as an Information Desk to explain policies which is a great place to start before making a more formal suggestion through the right channels.

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Thanks. I’ll move it over there.

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If you don’t mind me adding in, for the sake of avoiding issues, I’d remove the part about your guild mates. Can detract from the topic as I don’t feel it don’t fully relate to it as you can remove it and the statement can stand on its own.

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18

I think that it is important to add in, as having 2 different guildmates at different time points helps detract from being part of a “banwave”, which also happens in a short period of time, but a week separated is not usually indicative of a ban wave.