I’m posting here to try and find a Blizzard employee to read and respond to my question, as I have received three consecutive ticket replies that don’t even address the reason for my ticket.
For background, I came back to the game and got perma-banned for hacking within a week. I was not hacking. Initial appeal denied, when I made a post about it here the case was escalated and the perm was removed, but I was then given a 6-month suspension for “gameplay sabotage.” The suspension still says it is for gameplay sabotage, the suspension email even specifies I received “player reports” for this.
This is simply impossible. This account did zero max-level group content that would qualify for “gameplay sabotaging” someone- zero raids including lfr, zero mythic dungeons, zero pvp. Obviously I wouldn’t “gameplay sabotage” anyone, but it should be easy to verify that this is impossible.
I’ve gotten three ticket responses about this, and none of them even mention gameplay sabotage, the thing my tickets are about, and the thing my account is suspended for. I do not understand how a human could be reading and responding to these tickets, and not mention a single time the topic of my suspension, or the topic of my tickets. Instead, I am getting the default “we looked into it and yeah you’re a hacker” responses, even though my account has no current penalties related to hacking.
This is unacceptable and puts me in an impossible position. I understand Blizzard is not going to give me the exact details of what I did, but at the moment I’m not even being told what category my offense falls under. My suspension is for something that is impossible, and that I categorically did not do. How do I defend myself if I’m not even told the category of offense?
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You do not get a chance to defend yourself. Not a court of law and they only go by what they see in their own logs.
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Yes and appeals when you make one they review their logs. Anything you say they do not listen too.
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The appeals system is a friendly request for Blizzard to double check the logs incase they have made a mistake. It is not for pleading your case.
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That is not correct. Your appeal was already escalated since the last one as noted by Orlyia and she had nothing to do with it.
That means that they’ve found you to be in violation of their policies but not in an “organised crime” manner e.g. part of a botting workshop ring or cheat creators etc. So your permanent ban has been reduced to 6 months.
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That doesn’t make sense. Gameplay sabotage is griefing; the suspension message specifically says other players reported me for this. This is totally distinct from hacking/cheating, it’s a completely different type of offense.
If I didn’t do this, and if I wasn’t reported for this, then why is this my suspension reason, and why does the suspension message specify that I received multiple reports for this? It makes absolutely no sense.
Your only option, as there are no GMs on the forums, is to wait on your appeal.
Despite if you were reported or not, a GM looked at the logs and decided to action the account. Then during an appeal, another GM would look at the info and determine if a mistake was made.
Posting here does nothing for your appeal. In fact, posting about account actions is not actually allowed on the forums though some leniency is given in the CS forum. But once it becomes a debate on what you did or didn’t do, these tend to get locked up.
Appealing the account action is all you can do. They will not give you any further details or tell you exactly what you did.
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I’m not even appealing at this point, I’m trying to figure out what is going on. My last ticket was specifically classified “I don’t understand why I was actioned,” and this did not help.
And as mentioned, they are NOT going to give you that sort of detail. Either appeal if you feel a mistake was made or you can always start with a new WoW account if this one was closed permanently.
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It is entirely possible that the wrong template was selected when replying to you. They use a set of templates for appeal responses (and a lot of other things). Sometimes they do make mistakes and select the wrong one.
Some things are not investigated until reported - such as chat infractions, some PvP/game behaviors. Action on an account is only carried out though if the logs confirm the reports are valid. An example would be a person reported for PvP non-participation. The logs show that over 50% of their matches have no healing or DPS - that would qualify for a penalty to be applied. The reports alone won’t do it.
Other things are based on the Anti-cheat Warden software detecting something on the computer or as part of gameplay. That works a lot like antivirus software looking for known definitions and cheating/exploit patterns.
There are rare times where someone has multiple infractions and while they may remove one, they uphold another. Maybe a Blue can tell you if that is the case for you, or if they just used an incorrect template resulting in confusion.
Regardless, the GMs are not allowed to explain the details of bans generally speaking. Hopefully a Blue can give some general guidance.
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Just to touch on this, you don’t have to be doing specifically max level group content to sabotage gameplay. As an example of what I mean (that probably doesn’t apply to your situation but it’s just an example) if you griefed people on hardcore realms to get them killed during the leveling process, THAT is against the rules even though it’s none of the things you mentioned.
Another example might be consistently sabotaging your team in low level battlegrounds, or having inappropriate text in your RP addon profile.
Like already mentioned it’s also possible they either used the wrong reason, or whatever you did is still covered under that reason. It might also be a false positive as mistakes do happen, in which case you should appeal it.
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I hardly did group content at all, the only things I can remember are 5 timewalking dungeons for the buff and the nightfall event. I did nothing that comes close to griefing. I simply didn’t do anything that is even in the same universe as the type of behavior that would merit a 6 month ban for griefing.
Simply put, talking about it on the forums won’t change what the GMs/appeal team see in their logs. You can appeal until they say to stop, but that won’t happen from posing here.
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none Of the messages are AI. Templates, yes, to ensure continuity between GMs, but Blizz does not use AI for account actions.
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You might want to read the whole thread and not just focus on trolling the green text 
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If you have any feedback about the game, please use the other forums. If you have Feedback for GM’s, please use the survey at the end of each ticket.
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They listen to the needs of customers quite well in this case. Player does not want cheating in game. They want people botting, exploiting, hacking, cheating banned by the Hacks team who handle Anti-Cheat. They want the toxicity toned down by the GM team who handle chat reports. They want AFK people in PvP groups penalized for not participating.
Players got just that - but the people who get caught don’t like that one little bit.
The OP DID seek information here, and was given that information by Blizzard in their last thread. The point of this forum is to serve as an Information Desk - and green text, blue text, or any text explaining the current policies is not “towing the line”. It is flat otu explaining how things work - the point of the forums. This is between the OP and Blizzard GMs.
Deciding to troll/pick fights won’t change that.
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