I’m brand new to game. I placed in top 5% of my team for honor gained in nearly every game. I backcapped with a 4 man squad in a discord of veteran players. I was the only one who got banned. I don’t use in game chat. I don’t AFK. I just played and stunned/blind as many targets as I could. I never had high damage or kills. Just confused how I got banned for 30 days. Furthermore I can’t even view my character in the forums, so I am worried it was deleted by blizzard. I was actively playing each game. So confused as to what I did wrong. I’ve played other blizzard games and same thing happened. I achieve top 10 on leaderboards and get a chat suspension randomly for 7 days. It falls off, 14 days. It falls off 30 days. It’s why I came to WoW, to avoid being targeted for mass reporters for being competitive. I am at a loss for words on this topic.
Chat penalties will get bigger every time it is applied. Did you get 30 days for non participation or for chat? Because if your getting repeated chat penalties you probably will want to watch what you are typing as Blizz are going back to longer penalties as the shorter ones were not working.
No matter the reason for punishment, they have never deleted someone’s character for it. So please don’t worry yourself on that particular account.
As for the rest, that is what the appeals process is for. While in a perfect world, everything would always be done perfectly all of the time - we don’t live in a perfect world. And while so many people are screeching about automated bans and suspensions? If they were automated then there would be no reason to appeal. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), people are rarely perfect. Human error can happen. Every time you appeal, a fresh pair of eyes will look over all of the data. Not just your damage, but your involvement over several games. If there is a pattern of behavior, they’ll see it. We are all your fellow players here on this forum, so we cannot see your data that the GMs can.
It may take some time, but be sure to follow the appeals process from the e-mail you received. I will also note that you can actually appeal more than once. Appeal and appeal again until you are warned that no more appeals will be accepted and any further may get you sanctioned a touch longer.
So people are just mass reporting players for being on top of the leaderboards and Blizzard doesn’t do anything about it? They don’t punish the players who are mass reporting? It just feels shady. I don’t know that I will continue to support this community if that’s the case. I am definitely frustrated that I lost my account for 30 days when I don’t use text chat and I don’t break any rules. I am a pure player. I don’t buy gold or anything. I just do pvp and apparently being top ranking puts a target on your back. My guess is Blizzard bans = more money as most players will just make new accounts which is why the sell the boost. It all is beginning to make sense. I couldn’t understand why players would purchase a boost until now.
Alrighty. First off, mass reporting isn’t as much of a thing as people like to believe. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but the sword cuts both ways and those who weaponize reports will get slapped back.
Secondly, people can report anyone at any time for anything. It doesn’t matter if half your server reported you for saying the sky is green - you weren’t breaking the rules by saying it. If you’re not breaking the rules, all of those reports mean nothing at all. If someone just sits there and reports everyone all the time for existing? That person will find themselves on the bad end of a sanction.
Unfortunately the loudest people are most often the ones who don’t really know how things really work. It’s easy for everyone to scream about automation and mass reports and that no real live person doing anything behind the scenes at Blizzard. They’re just repeating what one wrong person says and it balloons out from there. That’s why one should never make assumptions.
I can understand you being frustrated and I am sorry for it. Look at it from this perspective though. If one thousand suspensions went out today (hypothetically, I have no clue the true number), and out of that thousand, maybe five are false positives. It’s terrible that those five were caught up in the furor, but there are now 995 suspended accounts out there that aren’t doing what they shouldn’t. And it’s still not the end of the line for the five false positives. Blizzard regularly admits that they are not perfect, mistakes do happen. That is why the appeals process is in place. Ban waves suck for everyone involved, especially since the ticket system is now absolutely flooded with appeals.
Blizzard bans are not done with the mindset of making money like that. Most players would rather quit than give another penny to the company that just stripped them of their 15-year-old account. Suspensions and bans are not done lightly and it’s done to preserve the well-being of the game itself and the experience of the game for those who follow the rules. There is nothing more beyond that. There is no greater conspiracy, no need to reach for some tin-foil theory to make sense of.
I will tack on too. The appeals process does work. We’ve had people come back and let us know that their appeals had sanctions overturned. It’s not hot air I’m blowing. And for what it’s worth, you absolutely can ask to be recompensed your game time lost if the sanction is overturned. I don’t recall ever seeing someone denied that in my time here on the forums.
I wouldn’t call my comment a tin foil theory. It’s a fact. People get banned. Blizzard makes more money if they purchase the game again. I read your reply and noticed a few things.
Alrighty. First off, mass reporting isn’t as much of a thing as people like to believe. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but the sword cuts both ways and those who weaponize reports will get slapped back.
If one thousand suspensions went out today (hypothetically, I have no clue the true number)
You say mass reporting isn’t a big thing, however you are aware that it’s an issue and a large amount of people are dealing with this.
It doesn’t matter if half your server reported you for saying the sky is green - you weren’t breaking the rules by saying it. If you’re not breaking the rules, all of those reports mean nothing at all.
The above is false, if you have 100 people report your comment in world chat at same time you will get chat suspended immediately. That’s a fact, not up for debate.
This isn’t my first encounter with blizzard suspensions. They only occur when I get to top 10% of the leaderboards. EVERYTIME I hit top 10 or similar on a blizzard game I randomly get mass reported and have an account action taken. Sometimes they reverse it, sometimes they tell me there’s nothing that can be done. If you just simply research the word “mass report” you can see it’s a very valid thing in the game that has to be dealt with.
Bottom line - NO player should have the power to control another players suspensions and or bans and by allowing a system that enables toxic reporting only facilitates these toxic gamers. If they even game. I do appreciate your replies and hope that you never have to deal with a ban yourself. While typing this message I just got word from another player who was banned as well. What’s more believable, 40% of our guild is a toxic global chatter and deserves a name change on the day of a tournament (while in game so you get kicked from the tournament), or that someone is abusing a system that will take our their opponent without having to fight them ethically. It’s common knowledge that mass reporting is a very real thing. I’ve had tickets opened with blizzard for months now still fighting this issue from their recent gacha game. I’ve since quit supporting their mobile entertainment because of the bullying/harassment my account has endured. I do not type in global chat for the shear fear that I will be banned. I still get chat suspended when my current ban is finished over and over and I don’t even play the game. Blizzard is doing nothing about it. A game I DO NOT play i’m currently getting banned on regularly. I see the emails saying “actions have been taken against your account”. I submitted multiple tickets that are still open to this day. I asked how I could be banned repeatedly when I haven’t logged on in over 45 days. They reply with “we found your suspension to be just and will not overturn the penalty”.
Have a good day I hope you see this is a serious issue and people will not stop paying even when they get banned. It’s an addiction. This is a predatory way of getting people to pay more. Not a tin foil theory. Just read the recent article on Forbes about Blizzard. Unless you think everyone from Forbes are wearing tin foil hats.
So which is it then? If you’re a new player genuinely asking questions, you wouldn’t be so intimately familiar with Blizzard and sanctions. I was going to respond more fully to break that all apart, but you’ve tripped yourself up and I’m not going to derail OP’s thread any more than it already has been for you to push your false narrative and conspiracy theories.
Again, I will wish those with appeals in all the best.
I’m brand new to World of Warcraft. Not sure what you’re referring to with false narratives and pushing my theories, but yeah wish you the best to. Sick burn i guess…
Alot are getting reversed, check email
Agree 100%
Going forward, if Blizzard wants to let the hive mind run the BGs, then remove all objectives and quests, period. Anyone thinking Blizzard is being fair at this point isn’t making any sense at all.
Classic toons don’t have an armory page.
Blizzard don’t delete characters.
Your understanding is extraordinarily limited.
Hmm then why is my current avatar my classic mage, but my classic rogue is nowhere to be found?
edit: Sorry I’ll avoid derailing the op. thanks for the support not sure if i can priv message you guys or not, but sucks to not be able to communicate with each other.
You can choose Classic characters to post with of course.
Nobully just made the observation about Classic characters not having access to the Armory pages.
The fact that players are even having to appeal bans over this worries me. What bothers me the most about all this is the fact players are abusing the reporting system and I feel like not enough is being done to deter players from doing that. That is the biggest problem here.
To reiterate again here - reports alone are not enough to trigger sanctions. It does however, trigger the system for a GM to investigate someone. If that person isn’t breaking the rules, if they’re participating as they should be? Then nothing will happen no matter how many reports are received. For it to merit a sanction, they look beyond a single match to see if there is a pattern of behavior. It’s right there in Blue font the third post into this thread.
I’m sorry but if you’re trying to make the argument that everyone who got hit by the ban wave recently deserved it then I don’t think you’re understanding how a lot of players feel about this, and we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
Sweet fuzzy bunnies. Did I say anywhere that “HAHA! THEY GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED, GO FORTH AND SUFFER!” or remotely anything like it? No. Did I say that I didn’t care about how people were affected? No, I actually said a few times through here that I was sorry folks were caught up in it and wished folks luck with their appeals. I am well aware that players are upset, frustrated, irritated and angry beyond words, just from what has come across this forum alone today has been more than enough proof of that. Nowhere have I ever said anywhere that anyone was deserving of what sanctions went out.
What I have said though, was that people are making a lot of very wrong assumptions in how things work or the processes. I have said that Blizzard isn’t perfect, that their own staff says it. I have provided facts that have been stated time and time again by our SFAs to try and combat rampant disinformation and clarify why people are getting hit by non-participation by camping out in towers and such. I have told people to appeal and keep appealing if they believe their sanction to be a false positive.
Alright folks, I think this has gone on much longer than it should have.
Discussion about account penalties are not appropriate for these forums and the only place to appeal or seek additional information would be through the appeals process.
If there is any more information to be had outside of that, it will likely come from our Community Management team, though that is unlikely.