Hello,
I’m not sure what I did that was an exploit. I multibox and assume I was reported for botting, but if that were the case wouldn’t the email say so? I have submitted an appeal because I absolutely do not run any software OR hardware to aid my multiboxing. But was it something else? I haven’t done anything that I know is rule breaking so I’m very confused. Can I get any more info so I can update my appeal if needed? Thank you very much.
They will not provide any more info than was already given to you in the email.
Darn it. Thanks for your reply!
All you can do is appeal via the link in the email you received until they say no further appeals will be heard.
I sent off my first appeal, so now I wait. Meanwhile I drive myself crazy trying to figure out what I could have done that was against the rules. I know half the people who get banned cry innocence, but I really don’t know what I did. 
Thank you for your reply!
By chance do you use any macros created outside the game? With say Razor synapse software for example?
That could cause an automation flag as well.
I have a /follow macro on my action bar and use a button for toggling AFK that’s a part of Total Role Play 2. Other than that, no. And each one of those have to be pressed within each Warcraft window manually.
EDIT: I wonder if it has anything to do with shard phasing? When I log into each account they sometimes end up on different shards until I create a group. Or because I recently farmed on my Horde toons where 2 were on one server and a 3rd was on another? I didn’t repeatedly hop shards or realms, though.
The sharding is normal. Grouping to get on the same shard is not against the rules. Even hopping shards is not against the rules.
That’s good to know, thank you.
Personally I think you are fine. As long as you didn’t bot I have seen so many multiboxer bans overturned here. Just let the ticket run its course, and you should be ok.
Thank you for the optimism, I really needed it. I’m trying to not freak out over 13 years lost to something I either didn’t do or did on accident with total obliviousness. I’m a GenX having a boomer moment.
EDIT: Now I’m wondering if it has anything to do with name changes I did last week. One of them was done on the same character on the same day. After some digging I see that you can only change your name once every 3 days but I was able to do it all in the same day.
UPDATE: My ban was turned into a 6 month suspension. They said it was Use of Third Party programs to automate gameplay. I am not running any to my knowledge, so I’m super confused as to which add-on is being pinged as such. I want to figure out which one it is so I can remove it before this happens again. My mouse is a low tech USB laptop mouse, my keyboard is attached to my laptop.
Use of third-party software that is commonly used to facilitate key-cloning for multi-boxing was recently prohibited by Blizzard. Is that how you’re multi-boxing?
Nope. 4 open windows, clicking each of them one at a time. Nothing I have helps me multibox at all.
Nothing that goes in the addons folder can do this. The only things that can:
Multiboxing software, that does keystroke broadcasting (also called keystroke multicasting). Basically, you press a key, and the software “echoes” the same keystroke to multiple active windows. That used to be allowed but no longer is.
Keyboard/mouse software that lets you make external macros. Virtually all gaming keyboard/mouse software lets you do this (Logitech Ghub, many others). Any external macros that use things like delays, repeats, things like that are automation and not allowed. It’s always best to make macros in-game (you can’t break the rules with in-game macros as the macro would simply fail to work if it tried to do something bad), and then use the software to bind a G-key or whatever to the in-game macro. ALL gaming keyboard/mouse software is capable of breaching WOW’s ToU if you use it incorrectly.
Botting software (noone is accusing you of using things like this but I’m still listing it because it’s something that’s not allowed) that is designed to automate gameplay.
“Use of third party programs to automate gameplay” will fall into one of those 3 things.
I don’t have any of the 3, and the only thing bound on my mouse is an in-game keybind to move backwards with the wheel pressed down.
But this line makes me wonder if the afk toggle button included with TotalRolePlay3 is what caused it? It’s a single button press to turn AFK on or off, though it still needs to be pressed within each window separately. I’m going to run some antivirus and malware scans today to see if anything on my system is running in the background that could look like a botting program. I’m out of ideas here.
Nope, can’t be that. That’s an addon. Addons are not considered third party software by the definition in the email, as they run inside Blizzard’s Lua sandbox and cannot violate the rules (the only way an addon can violate any rules is things like chat violations/spam). You could make an addon that spammed chat, spammed emotes, spammed guild invites, said “naughty” things, etc…but that’s the only way anything in the addons folder could ever break any game rules.
Thank you so much for explaining it to me.
While I still don’t know what program they say I’m running, this helps me keep my add-ons without fear. I appreciate it.
Note: by “addons”, I mean things that go in the addons folder. Not the idea of addons in general, especially things that use executables that run outside of the game. While there are some such things (TSM comes to mind) that don’t break any rules, anything that uses an external executable can.
I’m going to have to do some digging to see if I run anything like that. I do use TSM, but had no idea how it actually works.