One of these topics again where I claim I don’t do bots, hacking, etc etc and always seem a bit suspicious but now it’s me!
I’ve opened an appeal to have Blizzard look at it but I’m just curious if anyone has had an appeal overturned?
Also, I’m also wondering if they will at least provide me further detail at what was identified? It kinda sucks receiving a generic email with no supporting evidence of what was identified. Hard to refute it other than say I don’t have any botting/hacking software when I have no clue what was actually detected.
You will receive no information on what triggered the ban. The best you can do is appeal, and again and again if need be, until you are informed that appeals will no longer be entertained.
Yes, people have had account actions overturned. That’s the whole point of even having an appeals process
And as Humanbeak mentioned, they will not provide further detail on account actions. This is to help prevent bot manufacturers etc. from figuring out how they’re being detected.
Over the years I have seen posts from players stating they had penalties lessened or overturned, but never having been in this position there is not much detail to give.
They generally do not relay evidence, as players who would like to cheat the system will try to use that to their advantage.
The appeal, which fortunately you have stated having placed, is key. Good luck.
No, in order to prevent those who use and create botting programs and other methods of exploitation from figuring out what exactly we may have found we do not provide additional details outside of what you have already received.
You wouldn’t have any evidence that we would be able to use in the appeal process, so the only refuting that is needed is to appeal. Your appeal will be looked into, including the original evidence found to see if the action will be upheld or overturned.
I guess what I was getting at was if the appeal process is a long shot or if they tend not to reverse outcomes. Seeing posts state that they have to do multiple appeal attempts before receiving a positive outcome doesn’t instill a lot of confidence. If they’re actually innocent why would it ever take more than one?
I understand why they might not want to share how they detected it. Just sucks being accused of something and being completely blind to the details of what they think I did wrong.
I’ll just be patient and hopefully the appeal process does the job. Thanks everyone for your replies.
The appeal process is in place because Blizzard knows that they’re not perfect. They are well aware that mistakes happen. Sometime it takes a few times to get things sorted out. Keep at it
Particularly with new situations, false positives are not always initially identified. As more cases are reviewed, a list of potential false positives for the situation is added as something to check for and factor into a subsequent appeal.
It’s complicated, Rezy. Is the original evidence that resulted in the penalty valid? Was an error made? Is what was found a false positive? Is there another reason why we detected that the account met the specific criteria that showed it violates our policy? Was the account compromised at the time? Some of that is easily identified, some can take a good deal longer to find and/or verify in these situations.
Take a false positive for example. Say after much research we find that a particular botting program leaves a specific “footprint” behind that we can detect. That footprint appears to be unique to just that method of exploitation. After some work to verify the original findings we run a detection for anyone who shows that footprint, along with usually looking at some other data. In doing so we find 5000 (entirely hypothetical numbers) accounts that have it. We take action on those accounts.
Now, in looking at the appeal data, which is accumulated over time as our teams look into the various appeals, it seems that some of the accounts that were penalized don’t look exactly like the others. This can mean that there was a false positive, that the “footprint” from this one program may also be similar to another program that may not be exploitative, but because it’s really really close it was detected as such.
In those situations we’d be able to go back through the data and sort those out from the original ones and overturn them. It takes time for that to happen, which is why it may take several days or weeks in that situation.
That is not to say that every appeal that takes multiple attempts, days or weeks, etc… before it is overturned is a false positive or that it ever would be. It is just one of many factors.
I really appreciate your response. It’s clear to me it’s much more complicated in nature than I had realized.
It’s also reassuring further data will be looked at to validate the detection. My worry was the appeal would look at the detection and say yep, it was detected, confirming what was already there, without additional data being available to be looked at.
If it’s helpful, I will report back my experience with the appeal when it’s all said and done for others who find themselves in this situation?
That could run awry of the forum rule about discussing account actions. They will say it does not result in productive discussion (usually doesn’t honestly) and results in the thread being locked because, well, people are people and will argue over it
They should be fine. While we’ve definitely seen some dumpster fire threads, we’ve also had those that are more informative like this one that people have returned to. It does help to give folks hope that their appeals aren’t in vain, and to see that the process works. Even if it is upheld we’ve had people return to state that much, just again, to show that it’s not the ‘automated’ system so many folks like to believe it is.
It’s only suggested that you appeal until you’re told the matter is closed and no further appeals will be reviewed. At that point, further appeals can be considered an offence (GM Harassment).
I’m sorry that you didn’t receive the outcome you were hoping for.
The amount of time, effort, and money I have invested into this game to at least be provided a satisfactory response of investigation into the issue is overwhelmingly disappointing. Particularly when I had high hopes given Vrakthris’ response in relation to the amount of effort that could potentially go into verify if penalty was valid (it’s possible I guess that they feel this still occurred but in no way was this assured to me in any manner from the response).
Quick edit - I do have one more question. I was contemplating buying Diablo 2R, and since I don’t know what caused the ban I’m at risk for getting banned for it as well. What can I do?
They use standardized responses typically when replying to appeals. They would not go into the sort of details that Vrak was able to provide which happen behind the scenes.
As to your question about Diablo 2R, the only advice I could provide is to make sure that you’re following the rules. I know you’re unsure of what triggered your account action (and as a fellow player, all I’d be able to do is speculate), but generally speaking, if you play within the rules, you shouldn’t ever have to worry about account actions of any kind.
I agree that should be the case, but given my perspective how could I possibly not worry?
At this stage of the discussion it starts to delve into me exclaiming my innocence which obviously isn’t useful for this forum.
The only thing I would like to end with is this process has not left with me with any confidence in the system. If I have been misleading in anyway, very happy for the CS team to point this out as they have rightfully done in other matters in this forum.
I do appreciate everyone’s input on the matter, even just discussing things will be useful for others in the future in handling expectations.
I understand your frustration. It’s one of those things where they can’t tell us what happened since they want to help protect their detection methods, yet at the same time it provides us no way to defend ourselves. With that said, the appeal system isn’t a means to defend ourselves as you’re already aware, so a sour taste can definitely be felt, especially when it means a temporary or permanent loss of an account that lots of time, money and energy was placed in.
I will say that seemingly harmless programs, such as keyboard/mouse macro software, could potentially be caught up in this. Ultimately the automation rule comes down to “1 keypress or click, 1 action” and if there’s any software that allows the circumvention of that, regardless if you’re using it at the time, there’s a potential risk to be caught up in this sort of thing.
Thank you, it’s nice sometimes just feeling that you’ve been heard and someone is acknowledge that a situation is difficult.
I would think intent should have to come into play at some stage if it is something on my computer, considering the length of ban. If I was going to get banned would’ve been good to get better rating in arena! (kidding of course) I’ll spend some time reviewing everything and hopefully I can figure out something.
