With that said, it is important to keep in mind that a Battleground is a team event. You aren’t there solo, so to a degree, it is often necessary to work with your team. If you are going off by yourself to defend a lone tower, without the support of your team, and you never really encounter anyone else to defend against, well, that really isn’t participating.
So that’s why we keep losing towers! Because Blizzard will suspend you for trying to defend one by yourself. I can’t say I blame my teammates for immediately leaving a tower after capping if Blizz will do this to anyone who waits around.
I’m grateful I saw this post too. I’ve been playing a lot of BGs while I wait for Wrath, and I wouldn’t want to get suspended by Blizzard for defending any Alterac Valley mechanics.
Thank you, blue post, for clearing up how we’re not supposed to play AV!
Blizzard really showing their true colors here with having NO CLUE HOW THE GAME WORKS AT ALL. These people are being paid to work on the game and DON’T UNDERSTAND IT ONE BIT! It’s honestly pathetic and embarrassing! What next? Better not cap flags in warsong since the other 9 members of your team are fighting mid, quit being so selfish and join their “Group effort!” While you’re at it, don’t bother capping a base in AB, you better join your team fighting on the roads or else you’ll get banned, HAH!
It’s some low-level CM getting paid minimum wage who’s never played the game, and is sent probably a half-page email saying what to do in general for damage control, at best.
They designed a thing to auto-detect players who “aren’t contributing” to BGs in order to ban them. And precisely because they don’t know how those BGs are played, the auto-ban is terrible at its job.
so just assemble into a big ball of death and go kill the stupid guy at the end of the AV. you’re not supposed to “defend” anything; we all know “defending” is just an excuse to do nothing 90% of the time anyway. welcome to AV. this is the PvP you deserve
When lots of players report a player AFK in Alterac Valley, the only automatic behavior is the application of a debuff that prevents you from gaining honor until you engage in PvP combat
If no one comes to attack what is being defending and you get flagged as AFK you get a no honor debuff?
This has been the case for a very, very long time. Tone deaf company that’s been hemorrhaging subs since mid-Cata. Fast forward to today and they can’t even re-release their best expansion without trying to put all kinds of changes in. Nothing new, Blizzard has sucked for a while now.
To be fair, that statement was made by a Customer Support guy; he is not in charge of reviewing AV data and deciding who gets suspended. I don’t even think he would be in charge of reviewing your ticket.
He just posts on the forums, mostly responding to common support issues, and sometimes shares his wrong opinions.
I believe the post you’re referring to is quite old, and is more referring to people completely ignoring their team, and wasn’t specific to AV. But please point me to the post if I am incorrect.
There is a blue post as of yesterday admitting, in their own words, they had a bug that caused unwarranted bans.
Yesterday’ss mea culpa is weak tea. When you screw up in business the customer doesn’t care about the difficulties that caused the problem to happen. They just know that you failed to deliver on your end of the bargain. This statement that they’re upholding some of the bans is bonkers. You screwed up. Reverse EVERY ban. And start from scratch. Or better yet, STOP banning people when you can solve the problem and still leave the paying customer with access to the service you’ve sold them. How hard is it to just remove their ability to queue into a BG for a time. Banning people is a archaic outmoded way to approach people who are playing the game in an unintended fashion. If they’re not actively cheating then take a hike. Find a solution. But if you’re going to ban people, refund them for the time that they paid for, that you have decided not to provide.
Lots of customers do care, there is no blanket statement that applies to all customers of any company anywhere in the world really.
Explaining the issue fosters good will between the company and the customers, so I just disagree with you completely here.
They clearly said some of them were extremely egregious and were upheld.
They did give something to players that were incorrectly banned afaik.
What do other games do when people break their rules? Like LOL etc? I don’t really play those just curious, you seem to know what more current methods are.
Basically all games ban for this type of behavior, some temporary and some not, at least to my knowledge (which I’m not saying I’m all knowing at all).
I’m not saying that a ban shouldn’t be part of the tool kit they use to help craft a more healthy community. But it’s like the real world equivalent of prison time. It certainly has it’s place, but it has been shown to be ineffective time and time again at reforming behavior. So what’s the advantage to banning someone? you get a very temporary and very minimal decrease in the unwanted behavior. You’ve stopped this one person from committing the bad behavior for a time. But you haven’t caught most of the people who exhibit this behavior, and you haven’t effectively deterred the behavior in the future.
I do not claim to have the answers. But I also do not work for, nor have any responsibility to provide good solutions. Blizzard is the company selling us a service and they have the responsibility to respect their customers and provide the service for which those customers pay. If the problem is the behavior, then make the behavior unavailable.
If the problem is people using the report feature to falsely flag others when they’re sore about losing…then remove the automated nonsense that kicks people out. Or at least don’t give them deserter for a first or second offense. And certainly do no ban the account for repeated offenses of such a trivial concept as walking away from a video game. I get that it inconveniences those of us who are trying to have a good match, but a simpler solution would be to give them a permanent or semi permanent restriction that won’t allow them to queue for BG’s. How is that not a better solution? This isn’t LOL. We pay for it, and there are other things to do besides PVP.
If the behavior we’re trying to avoid is gold buying…remove the gold. Apply a negative balance if the gold was already spent. What further is gained by banning the account? Why do they sell tokens in retail if gold buying is a ban-able offense in classic? Why should a player lose access to their retail account if they bought gold in classic? I know RMT is a really touchy topic, and I’m against it. Not because I have a problem with people choosing an alternative to mindlessly grinding mobs or dailies, but because I think it supports an unhealthy work environment for the people who do the farming. But there is a certain level of cognitive dissonance in banning people in classic for something blizzard openly sells in retail. Again, it’s on them to find a solution that doesn’t amount to taking someone’s money and then not providing the service paid for.
The only behaviors that should warrant a ban are behaviors that can’t be deterred or minimized through any other means. And only when those behaviors are directly harmful to other members of the community. Leaving a loop hole in game and then punishing a paying customer for using this loop hole is moral equivalent of spanking your 2 year old for eating the cookies you left on the counter while leaving them unsupervised. You can’t blame human nature for your inability to anticipate points of failure. You just adapt to them as they are discovered.
Regarding speaking on behalf of all customers, you are absolutely right. I don’t speak for anyone other than myself. I think the point I was ineptly trying to get across, is that the customer generally is less concerned with anything as much as they are concerned with how you’re going to make it right. If you start an apology with “we screwed up, and here’s how we’re gonna make it right…” then you’re on a great path. When you’re apology is more along the lines of “we screwed up, but some of this was legitimate…” You’ve already shot your apology in the foot. Just own it. We all make mistakes, and that’s ok. It’s ok for blizzard to screw up. As long as you aim to better that’s often all it takes for people to give you the benefit of the doubt.
