My guildie has been a long time wow player. We go back 16 years. He was using the Portal Helper weakaura that 99% of the mages use.
The actions are similar to any addon that invites you using a keyword.
Anyway, his account was perma banned. Apparently he’s having zero luck getting it back.
Why is using a sanctioned addon bannable?
The player in question is the one that needs to use the appeals process if he wants this re-reviewed. We will not divulge any information to a 3rd party.
Any addon that functions solely in the addons folder is not something that will get you banned. Those addons can only do what Blizzard allows them to do.
Your friend also would not have been given such specifics from Blizz on why they were banned. So your friend is making an assumption (a wrong one at that) that the addon in question is the reason they were banned.
Unfortunately, this is only between your friend and Blizzard. They’re welcome to appeal it until they’re told no further appeals will be accepted.
Blizzard does not sanction addons. They never have.
In the past, there have been addons that Blizzard has decided were a problem, either in part or in full.
There used to be an addon, which name escapes me, that drew on your screen to show you where mechanics were going to happen during fights. Blizzard felt it went too far towards automation, so they changed the API to break the addon and those of us who used it were not punished.
There was functionality in WeakAuras (I think that’s the right one) that allowed malicious scripts to steal a user’s gold. We still use WA, but that particular functionality was broken (and the addon author made some changes too, IIRC.) I don’t know what happened to the people who were spreading the code that allowed them to take people’s gold.
The point is: if an addon does something improper, Blizzard breaks it themselves. Innocent users of the addon are not penalized. So, it’s HIGHLY unlikely that a Weak Aura is the cause of the problem.
Technicaly there is one addon that a specific clause in the EULA was created for thats still a immediate ban/close if detected by warden.
Whoa. I have never heard about this, but it sounds like something more than an add-on. I’m off to find the story behind this.
I recall when that happened. A couple of guild members fell for it. People offered a “fantastic new script” that could be copied and used in WA.
That was power auras add on I believe.
Nope - definitely WeakAuras. Six and a half, almost seven years ago (sheesh!). I remember the hullabaloo from when it happened. There’s a Reddit post about it.
I head to org and he links me a Weakaura string in chat, i click on it to have it load since he says he is having issues with it. something about it seemed off, i then suddenly notice i am exactly at 0g0s0c.
That weakaura would open a trade with the other player, and trade all your gold. Blizzard would only see the player opening a trade window and trading all their gold, so there was no “scam” and no way to recover it. Although if they put something in chat indicating what they were doing they may have gotten actioned under the scam policy. I believe that the API changes Blizzard made to fix this was to make it so addons could no longer do stuff in the trade window without the user clicking to confirm. Anyway, that was fixed a LONG time ago so that’s definitely not what happened to the OP.
You’re right, of course. The discussion had wandered a bit though, toward that old issue. At this point, I think we were just reminiscing.
My friend’s account was unbanned. I won’t take this time to gloat, We can close this topic.
I am very glad to hear the appeal went in their favor. This is EXACTLY why they have an appeals process.
Thanks for the update and letting us know.