That’s not true, there is a time limit on how often you can send your messages in trade chat. I believe most advertisers in communities were told once per minute?
Spamming would be something greater than whatever that value is which I do not believe most people were doing.
I believe you are referring to a ‘squelch’ which is the only automated system. After that the penalty is reviewed by an actual REAL PERSON (GM), and if there is no violation, the squelch is overturned. If there is evidence of a violation then the account will be sanctioned with the appropriate penalty, usually a silence, that doubles in length for each violation thereafter.
A ban and a silence are not the same thing. With a silence you can still play the game. But I’m not going to argue semantics. The point is you don’t get ‘automatically banned’ just because you are reported for something.
Path of least resistence. Players will still buy carries. Players will still buy aotc/ksm/20’s. Players will find a guild/group of players within their own server that they can goto for any of their needs. What they wont be able to do is sit on a discord to find a group, pay gold on their server to a ‘bank’ that then pays members on another server from another ‘bank’ to complete the carry, causing damage to server economies, has a third party earning hundreds of millions of gold to pay people to spam advertising to the detriment of the game. When accounts are created using gold for the sole purpose of advertising and paid for with gold earnt from advertising you create a problem - you no longer care if that account gets banned becasue you can just create another, causing you to make decisions with zero regard to the consequences of them.
Another note. You dont care if a boosting community is involved in anyform of RMT at higher levels because you only pay or get paid in gold - ignorance is bliss right.
Once Ybara gets squelched they’ll do…something. Just give it a week.
So you fundamentally don’t understand the system I guess. They “silence” you after X number of reports in Y amount of time. It doesn’t matter if you were saying “I LOVE WORLD OF WARCRAFT” or not as the reported message.
It can then be reviewed by a GM and overturned or upheld and potentially even turned into a full (unable to login to WoW at all) ban.
You can still be spamming even without reaching the limit.
If that were true, why would they even let you report spam anyway?
It sounds like you fundamentally don’t understand the system. I do appreciate you referencing an Asmongold video though… one that has been debunked several times now.
What exactly can you do while silenced in game? You can’t whisper anyone and you can’t use LFG.
It’s effectively a ban that lets you log into your account and raid with your guild but that’s about it.
From my experience in reading the CS forum, an account will only receive an actual ‘ban’ for extremely egregious violations (botting, extreme language, etc)…just spamming an advertisement for a carry is likely just going to get you silenced because many players seem to be sick of reading it in chat.
Everything you linked is referring to a BAN which is not automated. The silencing of an account is an automated process.
I refuse to differentiate a ban and a silence. They’re effectively the same thing that make playing the game almost impossible outside of guild raids and world quests.
The inability to use LFG is ultimately a ban for a good chunk of the population who isn’t into role playing in maldraxxus.
This is why I wanted to avoid semantics. You and I can agree to disagree on definitions of the word ‘ban’ and that’s ok. I’m just trying to help with understanding how the system works.
Wrong again. You must have missed this link.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
This. A silence is NOT AUTOMATED. Please stop.
No - there is no set time limit. Blizzard has gone over this quite a bit on the Customer Support forums in the past.
Spamming is determined by what your community feels is appropriate. Just because the system LETS you post once a minute does not mean you SHOULD do that.
The Blues have explained many times that if your server thinks your messages are frequent enough to constitute spam, the mods will uphold that.
Here is one quick example
No, it is not.
Squelch is automated and requires a lot of unique accounts to report a person. That was originally designed for gold seller spam, but works for other spam too. A GM will then review and decide what to do next - lift the squelch or apply a penalty.
Silence is an actual penalty applied by a GM. It is a black mark on the account and additional silences will double in duration each time you get one.
Suspension is removal from game totally for a set period of time. This can be done for chat violations too.
Ban means permanently closed. I realize people do tend to use ban and suspension interchangeably as common lingo.
In your case you got an email with your penalty because a GM applied it and sent you the email template. It was not automatic.
EDIT
Here is a Customer Support Forum Agent explaining it a bit as well.
Perhaps give this a read?
You can still play the game. You aren’t “banned”.
I’d love for a GM to share insight as to why nearly every person who has been advertising in trade chat this morning has received a warning and/or account silence when doing it for their guilds.
Either GMs are essentially bots just swiping right on tinder or it is automated. On the other hand they may also misunderstand the intent of the community ban which would be even more tragic.
While that article was pretty fantastic back in 2016, it is a news release and is out of date.
Since then the Silence system has changed to be a bit more limiting. Apparently it was not having the impact in curbing the behavior so Blizz restricted it a bit more.
Here is the current Support article on it with the limits.
Thank you, Ill update my post.
I do implore you to visit Mal’Ganis trade chat at the current time. Filled with instant spam the moment a stray person posts an advertisement about “GET HIM” and “MASS REPORT” lolo
So? Like I said earlier, bad judgement is not Blizzard’s problem. The advertisers should know better.