Banned - Waiting on appeal

Support Customer Support
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Hi,

I’ve been falsely banned for Unauthorised Cheat Programs, for which I’ve submitted an appeal and have been waiting on a response for 4 days now.

I’m not here to complain about the time it’s taking. The fact it’s taking time means it’s in queue to be reviewed by real people.

But in the time I’ve had to sit and wait I’ve been wracking my brain about what could’ve triggered it. I’ve had my account since OG Vanilla, and the silence from Blizz while I wait makes my imagination run wild with “what if’s”.

I play Cata Classic, and I was farming lovely charms for the Love is in the Air event, since the Swift Lovebird sells for a lot of gold. I farmed for ~8 hours total, with afk breaks, so i dont think it was the length of activity/play time. I was farming the level 1 hyperspawn in the undead starter zone with an enchanted/heirloomed, exp locked lvl 5 druid, so that moonfire was essentially one shotting mobs.

I was courteous to other players. Knowing I was hogging the mobs they needed for the first or second quest, I’d invite any fresh toons I saw to my group to help them get it done. I had conversations with a few of them when they asked me what I was doing.

At the same time as all this I had YouTube/Netflix playing on my second monitor.

During that session, I swapped my moonfire macro keybind from “3”, to “k” (bound to a button on my razor naga), finally to scroll wheel up/down.

Here’s the only thing I can think of that MAY have triggered it, and I don’t know where else to write this that someone even tangentially related to reviewing my ticket might see it.

One thing I’ve noticed about what I believed to be unintuitive UX design from Windows OS (I’m not sure about other operating systems), scroll wheel will interact with unfocused windows, without re-focusing it.

I’m clutching at straws here, but as I was alt tabbing to play the next episode on netflix, or find the next youtube video, I probably cast moonfire while the window was unfocused… and i probably did that a few times over the course of the session. But each time would’ve been 1 or 2 max before I alt tabbed back in. I can see how “applying actions while the window is unfocused” might be on the list of criteria to watch for in anti-cheat software…

I only want to get this out there because the “what if” in my mind right now is, “what if this is an unknown phenomenon, and without that knowledge, the only other explanation is cheating.”

tldr: Just want to get it out there that scroll wheel will interact with an unfocused window without refocusing it, at least on windows.

source: anecdotal evidence having to deal with issues relating to this in my day job

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From what I’ve read in previous customer support threads, scroll wheeling to activate abilities on an unfocused window is streamlining and will get you nabbed up.

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Hack program cheat apeals are taking a week.

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I would guess that it’s the scroll wheel issue. Even if you weren’t multi-boxing, anything that can send commands to a WOW window when it doesn’t have input focus violates the multi-boxing policy & is likely frowned upon in all cases.

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Yea I’ve gathered that after reading previous recent posts here.

I really just wanted the piece of mind of explaining what I think might’ve caused it, somewhere that has even the slightest chance of being seen by a GM looking at my ticket.

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That’s not how the appeals work - they go off their inturnal logs for their reports. They don’t take what someone thinks cause it as it has no bearing on what they found.

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Just to reiterate, any casts that happened because of this were unintentional. But I can see how as I alt tabbed, I might’ve been midway through scrolling.

I wasn’t even sure this was a thing, and tested the interaction on a second account to make sure before posting (rip wow2?).

In my day job I’m a software developer, and coincidentally a few months ago had to deal with an issue where scroll events weren’t being captured while the window was unfocused, which is how I connected the dots.

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Mageshadow,

It’s good that you have the appeals in.

We’ve seen a number of posts where players try to figure out what got 'em popped. Blizz remains silent for a very good reason, so all this player guessing is kinda useless. But, we have seen some stuff about mousewheel. /whoKnows if that is of any value.

Old accounts have a lot of value, 20 years is a long time, and as a software developer you should have the comp/software insight to be very careful because you see more deeply than most. I do hope you are careful moving forward whatever the outcome of the appeal.

Good luck.

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DO u use autohotkey by any chance. for non wow uses.

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To be completely transparent - I installed it once, a few months ago, as part of a research task to find better ways to automate testing of an app. Messed around with it for maybe 30 mins, labelled it as unviable for our purposes, and then uninstalled it.

Just checked, I do still have the setup.exe sitting on my computer that I never deleted, but surely that wouldn’t trigger anything…

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Yeah even having it on ur computer will get u into trouble.

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That would suck. I specifically remember making sure to uninstall it in the add/remove programs because I knew it could get me into trouble.

Now I got another thing to stress about I guess :frowning: .

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This is why its usualy better to keep wow and work computers seperate you woudlnt be the first player.

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This is a violation of the multiboxing “streamlining” rules. So yes, this could’ve resulted in a ban.

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If your macro was programed to do more that one action per press, then yes that could have triggered it. You cannot create macros using outside software that cannot be legitimately created by the standard in game macro system. We’ve seen a lot of people actioned because they used their scroll wheel to switch between monitors instead of manually switching between screens.

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I highly doubt this was the cause of anything. It isn’t installed so there is no program on your computer for Warden to detect.

But this is the problem with these sorts of threads, none of us have any real idea what may have triggered the ban and it’s a bunch of throwing ideas out.

Good luck on your appeal, and make sure you keep appealing until they tell you they won’t review your case anymore.

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The macro was just

/targetenemy
/cast Moonfire

Very simple, no outside program of any sort.

If you are alt tabbed from Wow so that it’s not focused, place your mouse over the unfocused window, and scroll, a keybind bound to scroll will still activate, as it is built in functionality of the Windows operating system, and possibly other operating systems.

Like I said already, clutching at straws, but this behaviour is the only thing I can think of that may have triggered the anti-cheat.

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I typically don’t like to speculate in these sorts of situations, especially since Blizzard can’t provide details on how Warden operates, for obvious reasons. However, I feel I can provide a bit of advice based on what was stated already.

The most I’ve ever done was zoom in and out with the WoW window unfocused. I’ve never had any abilities or macros bound to the scroll wheel. It is entirely possible Warden can detect if the WoW window is focused or not. If so, and abilities are going off while the window is unfocused, it’s possible Warden is flagging that activity as being in violation of the third-party software policy and notifying the Hacks Team.

For that reason, I highly recommend not binding any abilities or macros to the scroll wheel.

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This was sent up for deep review on 2/9, but those can take a little time.

If this is overturned, they should let you know.

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Just so I understand you correctly…

Twinks are not against the rules, and not every ban involves a twink… but you still think twinks are the common factor?

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