Dang, I want to level a paladin for gold-farming but now i don’t know.
I’m done with this game if I catch one of these bans.
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I do the exact same run. No problems here so far but I’m staying clear until we know more.
Of course the person posting on a retail toon and wearing store bought cosmetics is the one blindly defending Blizzard’s actions here and just assuming the other person is cheating LOL
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Thank god that figurine has never dropped for me, otherwise i could have been caught up ion this too.
I also start UD side. Most of us follow this video, however I was not banned. We pull the entire room by the chapel, go through the gate, pull everything near the fountain, go left, pull everything in front of the cage and kill just in front of the cage. We drink, loot, go through the cage → then we head to main entrance. We pull the pack near the main entrance, head back the way we came, go towards where Fras Siabi was, pull the pack in the corner, then grab everything in front of the rat cage, and return to the cage from pull 1 and kill there.
On pull 3, I go through and clear the rat cage, drink up, then I dodge all the mobs and head inside the Live side chapel. I go into the first hallway, grab the mobs there, and then I run out with rocket boots, grabbing all the undead on my way to Unforgiven. I walk through Unforgiven, grabbing all the patrols and ghouls, and head into the cage from pull 1 once again. On this pack I fel iron bomb and use force reactive disk with shield block enchant. When the humans begin running, I drop a consecrate in the center. I also use my blood elf racial to silence them.
I mostly just consecrate and holy shield on CD, pop dabiri’s/icon first, then figurine when I hit 3k hp. I keep up seal of light and judgment of light on the patchwerk horrors.
I usually use rocket boots xtreme lite on pull 1 or 2 to make things smoother and a lot of other people do too. I use a normal SP shield and Force Reactive Disk on pull 3. I use Icon + Figurine and on pull 3 i switch Icon to Dabiri’s Enigma to survive longer. I also use Fel Iron Bombs, sometimes I use holy water instead to build vengeace stacks quickly, and I use major mana potions. I also use all the rank 4 scrolls I loot on myself.
I have 2 looting addons (FasterLoot + Leatrix Plus), and I bind interact to ctrl+scroll wheel to loot faster. I also keep NovaInstanceTracker running.
Most people that I know do this the exact same way as me.
I know some people also use Parachute cape to get past one of the packs in the hallway inside Live chapel in order to get past one of the packs of mobs there. Maybe that’s considered an exploit, not sure, but to me it just seems like clever use of game mechanics, and only SOME of the people who were banned did this. That’s for the 230+ mob pulls.
I’m not defending anything, just pointing out that there have been plenty of cases of people acting outraged and innocent when they have been purposely exploiting.
Obviously Blizzard make mistakes and have done so in the past, but this is obviously a ban wave targeting something specific and I dare say relatively few people have been caught up when they shouldn’t have been, but the majority haven’t.
I mean, there’s zero evidence (other than their word, lol) that the ban was unjustified either.
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You are sort of just making assumptions here, when you don’t really know anything about the situation. This isn’t a small amount of players being caught up in this. It’s a pretty substantial amount of players.
Why do you assume guilty until proven innocent?
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Yes, it’s a ban wave.
Because outside of some unfortunates who get incorrectly banned, most of the time it’s correct.
And when it hasn’t been because of an error or misclassification of software, they come out and say so and fix it.
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Know a few people that were banned for boosting SM. Thing that gets you banned is the !follow weakaura. If other people use it its all good. If you use it to boost your own characters, its classed as multiboxing.
LOL get a load of this guy
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This is a lie. Nobody is being banned for this. They are being banned for exploiting the game’s mechanics.
Of course it is. Whether or not these reports are true will always be up for Blizzard to determine.
“He’s a gud boy! Dindu nuffin! Why’d he get banned?!”
Exploitation of the game’s mechanics is against the EULA.
https://www.mvorganizing.org/what-is-reductive-reasoning/
Blizzard has a team of people who handles these reports. They do not use an automated system. Because players and bots regularly exploit the game’s mechanics and are reported for doing this on a regular basis, it’s no wonder Blizzard regularly takes action.
“They seriously dindu nuffin, officer! They’re gud boys!”
Good. This means not only is the ban system is working, but the appeals system is also working. Maybe these people out to thank Blizzard for giving them the opportunity to appeal while also banning cheaters.
Cheaters should never prosper. Just look at how many folks continually talk about bots on this forum and complain that Blizzard never does anything. Then when Blizzard does something, all the cheaters come out and complain because they got caught.
The only issue you’re raising awareness for is that people are cheating and exploiting the game’s mechanics. Moreover, that Blizzard is taking action against those people. And that is a good thing.
There’s any variety of ways Blizzard conducts disciplinary action.
The ban tells me one simple thing: a lot of people were performing actions that directly violated the EULA. They were hacking the game somehow or regularly and knowingly exploiting the game’s mechanics. These people should be banned.
And if any of the bans were false, they ought to use the appeals process.
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I agree mate, took awhile to read that though.
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You obviously have no idea anything about this situation, and are just making assumptions that a very LARGE number of paladins are all exploiting the game in some way. If you aren’t going to contribute to the discussion, please leave.
Your first assumption is that I am just lying. I wasn’t even personally banned. Why would I write up this post unless I genuinely believed that innocent people were being banned?
We have confirmation that these are wrongful bans because a handful of people have already been unbanned through the appeals process. However, more people are still being banned as of today.
The fact that you just assume every single person ever banned is a cheater and that Blizzard could never make a mistake is mind-boggling. This happened before, and unbans were issued after a few weeks. It happens all the time. You know nothing about the situation, you just came here to say “haha get rekt cheater!” with no actual contribution to the discussion.
You say the ban system should work this way, but do you really think it’s okay for a ban system to have an inordinate number of false positives and wrongful bans that cost players game-time and forces them into an appeals process that takes weeks to get resolved? Is that really what a successful system looks like to you? You think it’s okay as long as some botters get banned as well, and the innocent players can deal with it?
Obviously legitimate farmers/boosters are being flagged and caught up in the ban wave somehow, and I’d love to get to the bottom of it so we can avoid legitimate players from being banned in the future. If it happened to you, you would also be upset. But because it didn’t happen to you, you are sitting back going “haha get rekt” because you have no empathy for anyone else.
You know people keep saying that Blizzard handles these reports manually, however, the fact that many of these players are getting unbanned after a manual review shows that either
- the initial investigations into these reports is very flawed, or
- there is no initial investigation and these are bans from an automatic system
I tend to believe that Blizzard would not permanently close someone’s account without a manual review, however due to the unbans, I’m forced to believe one of the two things above - if there is a manual review, it’s not doing enough to prevent false positives.
It blows my mind that you think people should THANK Blizzard for closing their account just because a couple of cheaters got caught as well.
You are being so incredibly cringe right now.
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Maybe it has something to do with the amount they’re farming/boosting. If they are running 8, 10 or 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week I could definitely see the automated system lumping them in with bots.
There shouldn’t be an automated system handing out perma bans. I could understand a month or maybe 3 months but permas with account closures on a first strike offense?
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Yes I’m also curious, I do believe some sort of automated system is flagging the paladins in some way, but I’m not sure we will ever find out how or why. Blizzard of course will never share that information as it would be very valuable to botters. I also do not know if there is some sort of manual review that happens before these players get banned. You’d figure that with permanent account closures, some sort of manual review is taking place. People suggest that there is, however that seems very suspicious in this case. If these bans are the result of manual reviews, then I genuinely believe that there is something wrong with the process, as we can see from the people getting unbanned - the system is producing false positives, now more than ever.
I just hope that Blizzard notices this issue and looks into it, and tries to speed up the appeals process for the vast majority of innocent players who were banned in this wave. Last time this happened, it took weeks, and at that rate, your guild will replace you, people will unsub, etc. Hopefully in the future the system can be more precise in who it bans.
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Ok? Murder suspects pretend to be innocent in court all the time, should we assume every defendant in a murder trial is guilty until proven innocent?
Yeah, most people aren’t paladins and most paladins don’t do strat boosts. “Oh my god only a small minority of people do this thing, that means they did something wrong!”
The OP links to a top post on r/classicwow talking about other people having the same issue. Multiple threads and posts across the classic wow space are popping up about this.
That’s a level of momentum that’s not impossible to be borne from fraud but definitely more convincing than random forum posters speculating about how everyone involved in the strat boosting is already guilty.
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My contribution to this discussion is to remain entirely skeptical to reductive reasoning.
Could be any number of reasons. You might be posting from an alternate account because you had one of your accounts banned. You might have come across a Reddit post and gotten angry and you wrote this up on an emotional high.
But the reason I believe you’re lying is because the very first sentence shows me you’re assuming Blizzard is just knowingly banning people for simply playing the game. You ask me to assume you’re genuine while you simultaneously don’t offer that same courtesy to the people running the game you play.
That’s just hypocritical.
Good. These people should be thankful Blizzard even gives them an appeals process since an appeals process is time-consuming in and of itself.
Good. Hopefully this will give people and incentive not to cheat in the future.
Oh, please, you’ve just got through assuming the exact opposite.
Blizzard does do wrongful bans which is why they have an appeals process. I mentioned this. If players have been wrongfully banned, they should use this.
Correct. Make a point.
Sorry, but before you start assuming all these things, I want you to give me the numbers to look over and make determinations from there. So, do you have a list of how many people were wrongfully banned? Also, I want a list of the rightful bans to compare.
After I see those, I’ll be able to verify whether or not anything you say here has any weight.
Thanks!
I have an idea! Check this out:
Yup, I would be upset. Fortunately, I don’t cheat or engage in any actions that would ever be confused with cheating.
Sorry, didn’t realize that calling cheaters cheaters while assuming Blizzard is in the right meant I had no empathy.
Wait, are you saying human beings make mistakes?!
I guess we’re lucky there’s an appeals process, then, right?
I have a great idea!
Maybe people should stop cheating or exploiting the game.
Novel idea, right?
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No, I don’t think Blizzard is knowingly doing this. I didn’t say that. I believe some sort of automated system is flagging paladins for some reason, or the manual review isn’t doing enough to prevent false positives. Here you are making assumptions again.
How does banning an innocent player give cheaters an incentive not to cheat?
Of course a non-zero number of these paladins that were banned were cheaters. There is no doubt about that. I never said every single one of them was clean. What I did say, was that a significant enough number are most certainly legitimate, and I am hoping that Blizzard can speed up the process for them, as it can take weeks to get through the appeals system. And if you do get unbanned, you might just end up getting banned again for another false positive.
I did make a point. My point is that false bans happen all the time. You seem to believe that Blizzard doesn’t make mistakes, or that if someone gets banned, they must have done something wrong, or they wouldn’t have been banned.
2 months ago when this happened - 3 people posted into the discord about being banned, and all 3 were manually unbanned. A reddit post also popped up, which was then edited to say an unban was issued weeks later.
Since wednesday - I’ve counted 31 reports of bans in the discord, more every day. Three people have reported being unbanned, and four have reported having their tickets escalated.
You know exactly how insufferable you are being right now, and I’m honestly convinced by this point that this is just a bad faith attempt on your part to troll.
If you are just going to sit here and call us cheaters, then I’m not going to continue to engage with you in this discussion, as I’m trying to actually resolve the issue at stake here. Nothing I do or say would convince you of that, so I won’t waste my breath trying. Blizzard can look into these bans and see the truth for themself, and hopefully in the future prevent it from happening in the first place. We pay money for a product, and sitting in an appeals process for weeks, unable to use that product when no crime was committed, is frankly just not acceptable, despite if some cheaters were caught.
I don’t think you even took much time to read or comprehend my initial post, the video I shared shows the farm route that we use for Stratholme and no such exploits are required or used in order to do it. But you continue to say that exploiting is against the EULA and assume that everyone is exploiting. In fact you’d have to be stupid to bot Stratholme as a 70 paladin, as it’s braindead easy gold that is mostly AFK.
I applaud Blizzard’s efforts at curbing botters, they ruin the game for everyone and crash the server economies. My only wish is that Blizzard be more precise in who they ban, as it only seems to be getting worse in picking up false positives - as confirmed by the unbans.
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