Hello. I’m currently attempting to appeal my ban. I’ve received the first of my form responses:
Greetings,
This action has been taken in accordance with our Terms of Use and our In-game Policies ( https://blizzard.com/support/article/42673 ), which all players acknowledge and agree to prior to playing. These policies and conditions allow us to maintain a fun and safe game environment for all of our players.
In my appeal, I detailed that I don’t really have any idea as to what I’ve done. I love this game and have been playing since Beta, I would never do anything to knowingly jeopardize my account.
I have mods installed, but I haven’t installed anything new in about a month. I don’t think anything of what I have installed breaks the terms of service.
I’m a casual player, I don’t raid beyond LFR, I don’t pvp beyond what little I do for holiday events. I don’t do dungeons beyond heroic, I don’t really talk to people much unless someone asks for help.
The last thing I did was I was questing on one of the new Dracthyr (a hunter) in Dragonflight. I did a bunch of the starter quests before going to work. Four hours later my account was banned.
I’ve changed my password in case I was somehow hacked, but I don’t see how that’s possible, as I have an authenticator attached to my account.
Please, any help is appreciated, I honestly don’t have any idea what it is I’ve done. =(
Generally speaking, you’re not provided explicit details beyond the reason given for the account action.
Keep in mind that appeals are not a means for you to ‘plead’ your case or for asking for specifics. They are simply there for you to request that the account action and the logs that lead to said action are reviewed again to ensure that a mistake was not made.
I’m going to assume that you mean addons here. As long as the addon runs in the addon folder, then those would not result in an account action.
At the end of the day, all you can do is re-open your appeal.
I’m sorry, yes, addons. What I have installed are addons that millions of other players have installed and used without issues. I don’t know how to program. What few macros I have are basic targeting macros like /target X for pet hunting.
I have seen others successfully get responses here, so I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask. I’m honestly completely floored that my account has been banned because I don’t know what, of any of the stuff I actually do, could have been considered cheating. I’m at risk of losing an account I’ve nurtured for 20 years and I can’t even face my accuser (what the game says I’ve done) and I’m honestly panicking. This is my main source of entertainment.
I’m a casual player, I don’t need to cheat to do any of the things I enjoy doing. =(
Anything that runs entirely inside of the addon or macro API as defined and implemented by blizzard is allowed (at least from a hacks/exploitative viewpoint, it may still get you in trouble if it’s spamming chat). Anything that interacts with the game outside of those is likely to be a problem.
As long as the macros were made in-game and not via outside software, those should not be the cause.
The best thing to do is re-open the appeal. You may need to do that several times.
When it comes to the category of “Cheating”, usually this means some sort of outside software or it involves multiboxing and using software to ‘streamline’ the ability to multibox. If you’re not multiboxing, then that’s not the case either.
That is indeed very broad, and could point to basically anything. I would expect there to be something in there that gives a general category (IE: social, exploiting, abuse of economy, etc) just to indicate what the action is for.
I don’t multibox, one account is more than enough for me. The second account I have has been dead for about a year.
I have no external software running, I play WoW as it’s meant to be played. The game has accused me a cheating and I can’t fathom what I’ve done that would be cheating. I wish I had some sort of idea, any idea, what has flagged me, I would happily delete it in a heartbeat, but I just don’t know. The ban was deliberately vague leaving me to just sit and stare at my first time offense ban =/
Emphasis mine as it relates to the category they were likely actioned under.
Yes, and that’s how they’ve always been since the game launched. Banning someone is the absolute last thing that they want to do. Additionally, it’s why they have an appeals process. Not all games do
If you’ve re-opened the ticket, then please do wait on that.
But I don’t use any cheat programs. I don’t know what, if any, of my addons might have flagged this on me, what I use I’ve had for a long time without issue.
Now, this is a category where you will not get any more specifics than that. It’s not like social penalties, where they will sometimes give you an indication of what they have logs of you saying that resulted in the action. There is nothing that bot/cheat developers would love to know more than exactly how blizzard is detecting them.
Thank you kindly, I’ll wait. I’m sorry, I’m just so upset. I’ve never been banned before and now I’m accused of something that got me a permanent ban without any prior warnings. I never believed this was a thing that could happen =( I love this game, I don’t need to cheat. =/
Do you happen to use your computer for other purposes, such as work from home?
Do you happen to run anything that helps automate certain things if you do? For example, Autohotkey?
Even if it’s not used expressly for game play, having such a program in memory will usually be detected by Warden (Blizzards anti-cheat system that scans your computer for such things).
Some categories will attract a permanent ban without prior warnings - particularly something like this which is considered extremely serious by Blizzard.
I don’t work from home, I don’t, to my knowledge, have autohotkey (I confess, I don’t even know what that is.) I don’t run anything else besides a web browser while playing WoW. I just log in and start playing. I’m not sure my computer could even handle running anything else while playing WoW. I only recently got it to stop crashing due to a corrupt ram stick.
My husband used to play, but he hasn’t touched WoW in about a year now, he has other games he’d rather play. He has access to my computer, but no reason to log me in as he’s just not interested in WoW anymore. I also have an authenticator on my account, anyone trying to log in would ping my phone with a request.
