Yep, that’s what they tend to do with exploits.
No, for using an exploit. Like you explained.
9 Likes
Yes. Bypassing systems and such is ban worthy, whether you agree with the system or not. Whether you think it harms someone or not.
5 Likes
A glitch discovered, a loophole wide,
Advantage gained, with greedy stride.
The banhammer falls, a swift decree,
Exploits embraced, then liberty flees.
Enjoy your ban!
10 Likes
Yeah, I’m sure that same no-tolerance applies to RWF guilds too, right?
7 Likes
Sure? Just like it did to mass-leavers in M+ that randomly out of the blue became a problem after M+ existing since Legion?
2 Likes
Everyone knows if your a semi big or big streamer or in a rwf level guild you get special preferences. Just look at the plunderstorm winner for the event.
12 Likes
Does blizz even hand out perma bans anymore? I was under the impression that they stopped doing that years ago. Instead they just hand out increasingly long suspensions. But I guess it amounts to the same thing if you get hit with a 5 year suspension.
1 Like
I really wish I could understand the passion people have for the integrity of timewalking… people as a whole were a lot less upset with world first raiders openly exploiting in the race to first.
4 Likes
Gingi got 7 day ban for exploiting Severed rep on last RWF.
2 Likes
Yeah, because odds are, RL money is involved somewhere.
4 Likes
Yes. They do. They will sometimes try a 6 month suspension for some Hacks/Cheating offenses, in hopes it gets people to care about the account and stop what they were doing. However, depending on the offense it is a Perma ban - even for a first offense. Always has been. Their “trial” for shorter penalties seems to be pretty much over.
They also perma ban for Social infractions if they are bad enough, or the person has enough of them. They now start with a week Silence, then a week Suspension, then two weeks Suspension, on up - and they do close accounts for Social infractions too.
We shall have to see if they release a public statement on this, but Blizzard takes a dim view of intentional exploits and/or RMT activities. I don’t know what this ban wave was for, but it has to be one of those because it was not for just having a Twink.
15 Likes
And that’s the issue, based on reports, some people were just playing their “twink”, no exploits, no RMT activities, etc. (of course take it with a grain of salt, people tend to forget a lot of things when they are pleading a ban case). But with no official statement, it’s hard to determine what the cause was. Some people thought it was X, but others doing X weren’t banned, repeat with Y, Z, etc. and it leaves everyone scratching their heads going “what were we really banned for.”
Just like some clarification on what is allowed, what isn’t.
8 Likes
I agree that this is no where near as bad as other exploits, but i still don’t understand how anyone playing since vanilla still needs to level new toons. I understand leveling maybe 20 toons from 70 to 80, so that could be it.
2 Likes
I have 100’s of toons between 70 and 80. Being an altoholic is kind of an addiction.
3 Likes
Allowed:
- Having an XP off Twink and doing game content with it.
- Queueing using only the dungeon finder for Timewalking and getting placed with whomever it puts you with.
Not allowed:
- Exploiting the game to get around the lower XP requirements for grouping with an XP off char. If Blizzard intentionally tries to stop a certain behavior then getting around it tends to not go over well.
- Using macros, drop group, or any intentional methods to get grouped with a specific XP off person. See point one - that is exploiting to get around an intentional restriction.
- Real money trading of services/goods
- Account pilots/sharing where someone else runs the char
- Any form of automation including macros that can’t be done using the in-game macro features.
Unless they release a statement about the overall ban wave, all we players can do here is speculate.
There is also the possibility that the Warden software swept up some false positives in the process. Rare, but it happens. Just like antivirus software having definitions that can sometimes flag legit software. The Hacks team is responsible for that, and will check to see if the detection criteria they used was as accurate as they expected - or if it grabbed some unexpected false positives. To resolve that they usually update the software, run it again, and batch unban the false positives.
24 Likes
Thats the thing, some players got GM responses saying that they shouldnt have been doing this to begin with. That they shouldve turned on XP gain and then queue into Timewalking, whereas other players who did use the macro got their accounts unbanned.
6 Likes
These are all good, and I agree with them. But this whole level 11 twink timewalking thing is a odd issue.
- It’s okay for a twink (xp off) to queue and get grouped with 4 randoms and there be no penalty to the other 4 random players.
- It’s NOT okay for a twink (xp off) to queue and get grouped with friends (one of the ways of doing this simply used the group finder, no macro’s, no funny business, just the standard group finder. This method is very similar to how the BG groups get into the same BG (which I don’t believe anyone has gotten a ban for))
- It’s okay for a twink (level 20 or 70 on an account where they are locked from advancing by the game (not by disabling XP), hence they are at max level according to the game) to group with friends and run timewalking.
- It’s okay for a highly geared 80 to group with friends and run timewalking.
I know why they implemented the experience eliminated debuff back in BFA, and the adjustment they made for PvP (if your XP is off, you will only play other players with XP off in PvP).
The issue is since the anniversary, twinks came out of the woodwork due to the changes to timewalking (lowering minimum lvl from 30 to 10). I think a better solution to this than permabans (assuming again that it was even remotely related to twinking), is another tweak to the entire XP off situation. Make a similar change to it for PvE like they did for PvP.
That’s what I mean when I say I want clarification. Why is the first item in my list even allowed at all if the second isn’t allowed?
If it was about boosting, how was Brackenhide Hollow NEVER nerfed the entire DF expansion (which was a much faster way to level than TW is).
And sadly, your last point is most likely what will happen. We will never know. I’ll never XP lock a toon again until I am 100% sure.
3 Likes
I agree with this.
They knew what they did wrong but lack of communication is a problem.
3 Likes
I don’t think it’s for twinking; I’m still here, lol. Just to clarify, I only farm Timewalking dungeons alone. I rarely join with a friend, and I stopped a long time ago when we realized he was getting that debuff. We thought it wasn’t worth it, so we never tried again.
5 Likes
It has been an extremely hot minute since I leveled characters through dungeons as a means to leveling but if I were, I’d be royally peeved if I got matched with someone who gut my XP by 95% when it was my explicit purpose for being in the dungeon in the first place.
So the rule needs to be have queued up with someone as a group who was XP locked which then applies to you (and a warning should be given when queuing up) and not randos. This would apply to queuing up with randoms for additional runs too. If you get a rando twink and want to run another dungeon THEN you should get warned and allowed to opt out of that.
If XP locked twinks are doing exploity things to get out of “their queue” and into the general populace…then good riddance I say. Penalty volcano should apply though but absolutely deserve their spanking.
4 Likes