I strongly believe my ban may have been triggered by mass reports rather than actual evidence.
It seems like false positives are becoming more common due to the way in-game reporting works. The current system allows players to mass report someone, and it appears bans are being issued automatically or with minimal review. This is concerning because it means innocent players can be removed from the game simply because they were targeted by a group of people.
In my case, I have already appealed through tickets, but I’ve only received generic responses that do not address my specific concerns:
my expansion acc was ban for 6months and the other account which has been
inactive for years – yet it was still flagged. How is this possible?
my guild and friends, who have asked me to appeal again because they miss having me in raids and m+ . I love this game and just want a fair manual review by a senior Game Master.
If anyone from Blizzard or the community has insight into what might have caused this, I’d appreciate the help. I just want to get back to playing within the rules and enjoying the game with my friends.
@BlizzardCS, please help escalate this to someone who can do a deeper review!
all reports are looked at by a real gm before any account action is taken. One report or 100 makes no difference. all appeals are done by a real human, ever time you appeal a new gm looks at the logs to see if there was a mistake made. they use templates to keep the message consistent for everybody.
People need to get over the whole ‘mass reporting’ thing. It’s become a convenient yet false excuse that has been debunked countless times.
While you can be reported by multiple people, it has no effect on the actual outcome (namely the penalty). Now, if you have been reported for a series of infractions, then yes - that could have effect as penalties get greater and greater every time.
This is absolutely false too. Reports themselves do NOT get you removed.
If Warden, Blizzard’s anti-cheat system that looks at your computer, has detected something - generally any account that logs in on that computer could be be flagged and investigated.
Was your account actioned for hacks/cheat program or something?
If it’s a six month ban this is not your first offence and have possibly done things in the past that now deem a six month ban for your behaviour. If that be through chat violation or use of hacks or software.
This is how it works:
Player reports any possible violations, Blizzard investigates those reports. And if Blizzard does find any violations, they will take action towards the accounts. And all this can be done from just one report even.
Now, you would’ve had an email sent to you giving you information on which policy you have breached. Yes, if you feel this is a mistake on Blizzard’s behalf, then you’re free to appeal it, but…
Support Forum Agents can not escalate appeals. That is up to the team responsible for investigating the reports. They have access to the logs, and they’ll ever give you the answer that the decision will be upheld, or that they’ll reverse the decision.
Now, I can’t say what you have done, I don’t have access to the logs. But if there is one thing I’ve seen here on the forums, the amount of people claiming “false positives,” it’ll be interesting on what the Support Forum Agents would say.
Your entire narrative is based on intentional misinformation and rumor. You have been misled, unfortunately. You are mixing up the Anti-Cheat system, with some aspects of the Social/Chat penalty system.
Your 6 month account action is in the Anti-Cheat category handled by the Hacks team. That has zero direct association with reports. Zero. People can report you for cheating all day long and nothing is going to immediately happen to you.
Reports for cheating/exploiting go to the Hacks team. They use reports to help their research into new botting, cheating, or exploiting methods. Once they research those methods and verify they can detect them, they program it into the anti-cheat software. That software runs at all times and flags people using the software, exploit methods, or whatever else the Hacks team is looking for. Much like antivirus software gets updates for new malware and virus software.
If you were flagged for the anti-cheat/exploit category then you were flagged by the anti-cheat software, NOT direct reports. Zero.
The anti-cheat software can have false positives - so if you feel that is the case your only option is to appeal. You can do that until they tell you to stop, that you are bordering on harassing GMs. Always be polite and you can hope they escalated it back to the hacks team to look for a false positive in the ban criteria.
It would be illogical to let players just flood reports and cause lost subscriptions with out Blizzard actually having data to back it up. That is why they don’t directly allow cheating reports to do anything. They do it with their own data and software.
SOCIAL chat penalties are handled by the GM team and DO use reports. They don’t go looking for social violations (chat/names). They depend on players to report it to the GMs for review. There IS an automated SQUELCH that can be triggered if someone gets enough chat reports in from unique accounts within a short enough time. That SQUELCH is pending GM review who then apply an actual penalty if needed (Silence or Suspension), or they lift if it was an error.
NONE of the social system applies to the anti-cheat system.
tl;dr: No, you are quite wrong. You got a 6 month suspension because the anti-cheat software flagged your account.
Even see videos out there telling people how to avoid getting suspended or banned for botting. Best way to avoid that is to not bott but can only go so far to lead some to water.
