Myself and a handful of other people in the Classic Era swapping discord have received 2 week suspensions for swapping gold on SoD and Classic Era. Swapping gold is not against terms of service. I provided evidence of conversations and have trade logs via in-game addon (Nova Instance Tracker) and still get hit with an auto deny. It’s absolutely impossible to speak to a Blizzard Employee to fix this nonsense. I’m posting this on behalf of my main account that is banned that I’ve had for 15+ years with zero strikes regarding this type of activity.
Correct. Blizzard does not provide live chat as a means of appeal. That has never been the intent of their appeals process. Your only option is to use the ticket system to have a GM double check that your account was flagged for a violation.
No, it is not. However if the gold you recieved is from illicit sources, then THAT is a violation of the rules. Swapping gold is not against the rules, but it is unsupported and they don’t help if things go wrong. Very much an “at your own risk” activity.
The ONLY evidence Blizzard uses is their own logs.
EDIT:
Relevant Blizzard Blue post from a similar thread.
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How would it be MY fault if I received gold from someone who received their gold from illicit sources? It’s not my responsibility to know how every single person earns their gold. I swapped gold that I earned fairly to just have it moved to a different server.
I have received word that the SoD Customer Support team is just automatically denying all tickets to appeal suspensions because they implemented a new system that banned accounts that had been “flagged” by automated systems for suspicious trades (that reach specific parameters such as not interacting with that person previously, not BNET friends/Guildies, etc.) and then they decided to hit the nuke button and ban all accounts that were flagged without ANY investigation whatsoever.
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I am going to bet that Blizzard did not tell you that. You should be very careful believing internet rumors, just like you should be very very careful when engaging in unsupported activities that tend to heavily used by gold sellers to move/launder money.
It is just like buying a too cheap TV in a back alley. Maybe not exactly illegal, but if you have stolen goods you may end up in hot water.
It is our responsibility as players to evaluate our risks, and to understand if we do something unsupported, like engage with unknown dealers, it may just go wrong. It sucks, but dealing with the consequences of our choices sometimes does.
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That’s why it’s an UNSUPPORTED transaction. Not only is there a risk to be scammed out of your gold, but it opens you to issues if you’re given illegal gold. You opened yourself to that risk when you didn’t have to trade gold between game iterations. If Blizzard wanted this to be a thing, they’d open a path to do it. Yes, it’s not been banned, but it’s still risky business all around.
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The discord community is a public server and can be accessed by anyone. I didn’t buy a TV from a back alley, I bought it in the store and have receipts and the cops arrested me at the door. THAT is exactly what is happening. It’s foolish to compare the two when its the internet.
But it’s still a third-party platform. It’s not monitored by Blizzard nor is it sanctioned. If you have to use something outside of the game, then you’re putting your account at risk. Period.
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Blizzard doesn’t own Discord, and they can’t go there because someone said to check it out. Anything related to outside information isn’t taken by them as it can easily be faked to support whatever someone is saying.
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If you did not get something from Blizzard directly then you did not buy it from “the store”. You went to a third party alley where anyone can chat and trade things - where you don’t have any knowledge of where it comes from. Where nothing said or done is recorded as proof of anything. Blizzard does not run Discord or that server. Nothing there is supported.
The ONLY thing Blizzard uses is their own logs. The only option you have is to appeal via ticket. If the gold was illicit gold, then the action will stand. If it was a mistake, hopefully they overturn it.
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TEMPLATED. A real live person sends a templated response. It’s not automated. Templates are used to keep uniform information going out. That’s all there is to it. There’s no grand conspiracy theories or anything of the sort.
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Yes, yes they do. There are laws about selling 2nd hand goods and any places dealing with 2nd hand sales will learn fast on how to find and ensure something isn’t. They don’t take anything that walks through the door because someone said such. Much like buying a car, you’d need to ensure eveyrthing is up and clear before buying any card, or TV, or other items.
Just because you didn’t know, at least say such, doesn’t mean the cops ain’t going to ask you to come down town with them.
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It is very much your responsibility! More over your doing a unsupported transaction that could greatly go very wrong. Turns out the gold sellers are seeing these trades as the the goose that layed the golden egg as they say.
If you got gold that is from one of these sellers then you received stolen gold and that will lead to this action. Just like in the real world you can get arrested for receiving stolen property, The same thing happens in wow.
Best to avoid these gold trades unless you really know the person on the other side.
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This was researched, as was your appeal - and I just looked at it myself.
This was absolutely from an illicit source.
This isn’t a ban - it’s a suspension. You keep saying ban - those are two VERY different things.
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So if I gave an illicit source gold and they in return gave me gold at an agreed upon rate and ZERO real world money was used during the transaction, its still my responsibility to know how they earned their gold? I fished in STV for 2 weeks straight, wanted to move servers, swapped, and got banned the day of P2 dropping in SoD.
They have a reputation system in these discords that are checked by moderators to not falsely boost reputations. I did my research in making sure that I was trading* trusted players and still got burned. I made sure that swapping gold was allowed and still got burned.
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To be fair, the person you got the gold from might not have even known that THEY had gotten their gold that was tainted. We don’t know how far back in the chain of possession the GMs go, so it is possible. And that person may be under investigation now.
All you can do is appeal and appeal again until they warn you no more appeals will be heard. And also I personally would be sure to note in your Discord server that you were sanctioned by dealing with X seller. If people are shopping by reputation, that person needs to be noted there.
Good luck to you in your appeals.
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Not when it’s a direct transfer. Straight from the horse’s mouth one might say.
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Why wouldn’t Blizzard just make swapping gold a bannable offense in itself to prevent these types of things from happening. If there was a rule that 100% said that swapping gold is a bannable offense, I wouldn’t have done it to risk my account for a small amount of gold on SoD. I’m an honest player. I absolutely HATE gold buyers and think they ruin the game.
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Hello Dispella,
You got burned because the gold you traded was from criminals. There are numerous SoD threads covering this recently. I’d be verty careful moving forward re: who you trade with, if you choose to do xrealm/version gold swaps. Acccount actions do not drop off.
In fact, the smart choice here is rather obvious and has been for some time.
I’d strongly suggest that you earn your SoD gold on the SoD server you are playing on.
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Swapping gold is not against the rules. It is the part where you directly got gold from a gold selling/illicit account. That has always been against the rules. You took that risk when you engaged in that transaction.
Those folks on the Discord - not as honest as you thought.
When your suspension is up, just never do something like that again. Stay away from all things that are unsupported to be safe. If you do decide to swap gold, only do so with a friend you know very well, maybe even IRL. Still a small risk, but better than some Discord.
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“Just never do something like this again” but yet it still isn’t a bannable offense. That makes absolutely ZERO sense. Just make swapping gold bannable in the first place if its just a shot in the dark. Honest players like myself wouldn’t do it and then you’d have none of these posts in the first place of people truly believing that received a false ban. I’m obviously not going to do it again because of the massive headache it’s given me. But for me to just sit here and say I got suspended for an action that IS and ISN’T against the rules is silly to think about. There should never be an “ehh you might get banned, we’ll see though” rule. Just make it bannable.
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