I just got a permanent ban\account closure due to BGing and some RL stuff came up. It happened a couple times (having to do with children and work) and I must have been spam reported. Can you guys look at the appeals please and reinstate? Been a loyal paying customer since original TBC with no history of suspension or ban. Seems like an automated process that is severely flawed. Thank you.
I’m sorry, Grumpkin, but no we cannot. This is not the appropriate place for appeal and the Support Forum Agents that monitor this forum do not review appeals.
You’ll want to submit an appeal through the Support Site if you haven’t already. The matter will be reviewed there.
Good luck.
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Alright thanks, I have submitted an appeal previously but was seeing if anything could get done here.
Just to touch on this detail - life can happen, yes. But all the reports in the world wouldn’t matter if you weren’t AFK or if there wasn’t anything wrong going on that the investigations team didn’t pick up on. People automatically seem to think spam/mass reporting is the cause of all of the world’s woes, when it only takes a single report to bring someone up for investigation. And historically from what we’ve seen come through here, it’s never just from one or two occurrences. When someone is suspended or permabanned (which rarely comes as the first sanction unless it was something horrendous), it’s due to a culmination of several days/occurrences worth of data.
Mind you, I obviously don’t know the ins and outs of your particular case, and it’s not my place to. I just wanted to clarify a bit and offer a touch of insight of what has previously been brought here to CS many times before. And also to make sure you know that you can appeal and keep appealing up until you’re warned that no more will be accepted, and to explain that appeals are not for you to plead your case. It is a fresh pair of eyes looking over all of the data used in the investigation that brought you to this point. It’s not automated, no matter what rhetoric and such that people like to spew out.
All of that being said, I do wish you good luck in your appeals. If you think to, please do let us know how it turns out for you.
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Thanks for replying. The written cause was "This account was closed for use of unauthorized cheat programs, also known as hacks or bots. " I understand it can take a single report, but I do not have a history of any ToS violations or hacking\botting which was the reason given.
I also don’t personally believe someone looked at every one of those 120k accounts that were banned with the DK botting. I believe people fall through the cracks and I was one of them. I appreciate your insight but respectfully disagree without knowing the actual workflow of the process since I’m not an internal employee.
I did not know about the multiple appeals being allowed till told to stop since this is my first offense. I appreciate that and will keep it in mind if my appeal is denied, which I truly hope isn’t the case as I’ve been a loyal customer to this company and game for over 15 years.
Just a few things…
If the reason given was Hacking/Botting, then this is not the reason your account was banned. This category would be Non-Participation. While there can be an administrative error in sending the wrong category, a non-participation action:
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Does not happen immediately. It takes time between getting the reports and investigating, so it is not what you were doing in the moment you were hit.
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Takes several instances. They do not action accounts (and certainly not a permanent ban) for just one time of something coming up. These suspensions are generally when there’s a pattern of consistent AFK’ing over several BG’s.
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Does not go straight to a permanent ban. If this is the real reason and it went to a permanent ban, that means you have a colorful history of actions. Penalties stack and do not fall off over a period of time.
This does not matter when discussing certain violations, and hacking/botting is one of those violations that can be a ban for a first offense.
There is nothing automated about an account action, especially with botting/hacking. Every account action is investigated, and they go by their internal logs, not just blindly believing what another player says.
Well, yeah, they did. Do you think they just blindly added accounts to the list for no reason? But onto the main point…
100%. The fact that there’s an appeals process in place shows that they know there can be false positives. But posting in here does not speed up the appeals process, and more importantly, just appealing does not guarantee reinstatement. The appeals process is for a different person to look at the data, and check if the action was applied in error.
If it was an error, they will overturn it, and you can request compensation for the time you were wrongfully banned. If it wasn’t an error, the penalty will stand.
There’s nothing to “disagree” with. What Leilleath said is simply fact, and more importantly, it’s the process Blizzard uses whether you believe it or not. I understand being skeptical of the answers you get, but in this forum, we deal in the facts of the situation. Any incorrect info will be corrected, not only by others, but by Blizzard as well.
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Since I don’t believe anyone else has yet mentioned it, be aware that when this category of account action is a false positive, it’s sometimes triggered by the presence of a program on your system that could be used for automating/botting in World of Warcraft even if you aren’t using it that way.
There have been instances in the past when people posted here about account actions related to botting/automation and it turned out that while they (most likely) hadn’t been using any bot/automation programs for WoW, they did have programs installed that could do things like automating keypresses, tying multiple actions to a single keypress, etc. Some used those programs for work, some used them in games that weren’t WoW, but regardless, the Warden program saw the program on the system and flagged their account.
The account would, then, have been reviewed by a GM to see if the flag was valid. I don’t know enough about programming or Blizzard’s systems to have any idea how easy it is to tell whether a program is merely present alongside WoW or has been used in it, or what other factors may be involved in making that determination. But even if there is a way to tell, GMs are human, and so they sometimes make human errors.
If you have such programs – and if you either get your account back or make a new one – you’ll want to either remove them or play WoW on something else to avoid this happening in the future. If you’ve had them in the past but uninstalled them, they may have left files behind.
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Appreciate all the feedback.
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The sad thing with the appeal is that you get an answer, and the case is closed. You do not get a chance to have a conversation if you disagree with the conclution made.
I was also wrongfully banned, for botting many years ago. But Today I can’t prove that I did not use a bot. And I dont think I ever can, and I dont think any Blizzard employee cares.
I will try again in a few years, and hope a pair of new eyes can look at it
An appeal isn’t for a chat or debate what is or isn’t found. It’s just a request to have it looked over to see if there’s any errors.
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You can keep trying untill they tell u to stop if they do they have more then enough evidence to back up there finding.
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Full game logs are only kept for a certain period of time. Appealing years later will not assist in your appeal.
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Correct. Because these situations will always boil down to them seeing what happened in their logs, and the player maintaining their innocence. How long does that conversation continue? How many employees and man hours should be spent on “Our logs says this” and the response of “I’m innocent”?
I think it’s unfortunate that Blizzard doesn’t reveal what their logs show, but I completely understand, because 1) most players wouldn’t be able to interpret the logs, and 2) people hell bent on cheating would use those logs to determine how they get detected and adjust accordingly.
It’s not about what you can prove. It’s about what Blizzard can prove. And it seems that they are able to see something different than you claim.
I think you would be wrong. Making a decision like this can seem cold and callous, but it’s simply going on what their logs show. I’m sure they’d love to just tell everyone “yes” and make everyone happy. But that’s not the way it works. That’s not the way anything works.
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Yo the exact same thing happened to me just the other day. I submitted an appeal, no response yet. What ended up happening in your case? Ive never done anything shady, never hacked, cheated, botted, never bought gold or anything like that, no clue how this couldve happened.
Doubt the OP is monitoring this thread anymore as it’s several months old.
Your appeal will be answered but after they investigate the evidence again beforehand, and will either uphold the account action or overturn it.
You can keep appealing until Blizzard tells you no more.
Keep in mind that it is very unlikely they will tell you what triggered the account action. They keep in vague because it’s information the cheaters want.
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