I multibox 10 accounts, but manually, without the use of any software. I rely entirely on in-game commands and addons, and I move my cursor across the monitor, interacting with one client at a time.
Today, 7 of my 10 accounts were hit with a permanent ban (a.k.a. account closure), for the use of “cheating software”. Is there anything I can do about this? I do not use any third party software to play WoW, and multiboxing is not against the ToS. I have the ISBoxer addon my my WoW addon folder, but it was installed there automatically after I reinstalled the ISBoxer multiboxing software for another game. I believe this may be what led to the ban, even though I have not used ISBoxer or any other key-mirroring software to play WoW since before the original policy change on multiboxing.
You received an email for each account closure. The bottom of the email should have a link to submit a ticket to appeal. Submitting an appeal is literally all you can do. No one here, not even the actual Blizzard employees, can do anything to help you.
I have heard of it happening. When a mistake is made the GMs do have the option to add a few days game time if the situation warrants it. That would be done on a case by case basis, and is usually when Blizzard has made a large false positive mistake.
Blizzard does not talk about their detection methods and exactly how they make determinations. It is possible you are correct, but also possible that is not it.
As far as we know, volume of reports doesn’t matter. 1 report or 1 million, it’s still the individual GM’s discretion that decides whether a violation occurred.
The most that other players can do with reports is get an account Squelched pending GM review.
Any action against an account is applied by a GM. So, that means a GM decided to close 7 of your 10 licenses.
I would have no idea why. It is possible those were the ones reported and brought to the attention of the GM. As in, the 7 follower licenses on one Bnet account with the 8th being the “main”. With your others on a diff Bnet account? Maybe?
That doesn’t explain why they selectively banned some of my accounts. I multibox with 6 accounts on the same battle.net account, and the other 4 are on other battle.net accounts. They banned 4 of my WoW accounts on my main battle.net, and some on other battle.net accounts. But I have been playing the same accounts together for a long time now. It doesn’t make sense.
I use 6 licenses on my main battle.net account, and the other 4 licenses are each on a separate battle.net account. They banned 4 of my WoW licenses on my main battle.net account, and 3 licenses that are on their own separate battle.net account. 2 licenses on my main battle.net account and one license on another battle.net account were left untouched. I received an email for the same reason for all of them: using a cheating software.
I find this strange because, as I said, 1) I have not used any key-mirroring software since the original policy change on multiboxing, and 2) I have always multiboxed with all 10 licenses at the same time.
Sometimes there is a delay. I can recall at least one other instance where someone with multiple accounts lost a couple at one time, then more at another interval. It’s likely that there were different folks investigating the flagged accounts, and you may get the others hit in the days/weeks to come. Or you may not, it’s hard to say.
It’s on your system. Warden doesn’t differentiate what is being used versus what is installed, so you’ve likely got your culprit right here.
Appeal so that logs are verified. Keep appealing until you’re told to stop. If at any point though ISBoxer was used, you’re certainly going to be out of luck.
Do you use ISBoxer on your other games while WoW is running by any chance (multiboxing multiple games at the same time)?
I installed ISBoxer recently on my computer and messed around with it to see if it worked with Diablo Immortal. I did not even play the game, I just launched a couple of DI clients to see if ISBoxer supported the PC client of the game, out of sheer curiosity. That’s all. I have not launched any WoW client using ISBoxer since the original policy change on multiboxing.
I also use a script to rename and re-size my 10 WoW clients as I launch them, to make them all fit on the same monitor. Could this be the culprit? I certainly do not use any key mirroring software. I move my cursor across the monitor and interact with one client at a time.
I’m not sure, to be honest. It’s possible that the ISBoxer toolkit software or the InnerSpace software (which is used to launch the ISBoxer game profiles) were open while I was playing WoW, but I would not recall. I don’t even have a WoW profile in ISBoxer.
I think I made this post because I’m nervous about losing all my accounts that I have worked hard on, and I’m looking for some sort of reassurance. I know it’s irrational, but imagine logging in on a Sunday afternoon and getting the message “this account has been closed” seven times in a row. It doesn’t feel great.
This is what I would imagine got you. My understanding of Warden is that it scans running processes. It wouldn’t have any way to distinguish between “ISBoxer is not being used on WoW” vs “ISBoxer is being used on WoW” - if it sees the process, that’s it, it’s done and you’re in for a ride.
The only thing that could probably save you (assuming everything is correct of course) is whether log verification can show you didn’t use ISBoxer in WoW. Something like “did this flock of 10 druids mine any nodes at the exact same time? No? Unban” if that makes any sense.
It’s all speculation at this point. Just a best-guess really since we’re not GMs with any insight. Appeal away and hope for the best.
Yes I have appealed. But I would like to say that I do not use any key mirroring software, so if Blizzard checks the logs, they will find that there was never a single instance in the past 2 years where I have a pressed a key and it resulted in an action being sent to all 10 accounts at the same time. There is a small delay between each action, because I move my cursor across the monitor to interact with each client.