Punished for reporting a cheater

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

Hello,

This topic has long been discussed before but I wanted to share my experience on my recent suspension. I do not expect Blizzard to resolve my suspension. My suspension was 72 hours long and involved me using the right-click report option in game. I do not agree with Blizzard’s handling of the situation and stand by my actions.

What happened?

A player who myself and many others on the server noticed quickly was playing from reset to reset and not logging off the game. Some of these players’ sessions were over 48 hours long before logging off. The player would logoff for 2 minutes and begin another 48 hour session without any sleep. This went on for weeks and I started to use the right-click report option in game to put him under review.

Suspended for 3 days.

I had reported the player early in the day and around 4 hours had passed. I was in Arathi Highlands farming tidal charm when my client disconnected me from the game thus revealing I have been suspended for 72 hours.

Pleading my case.

Trying to submit an appeal through the appeal system would immediately turn over my appeal to the resolved status before the page loaded. I was never given an option to speak with a representative. Thinking this was an error I made a ticket and very quickly that was also resolved and I was given an automated response with regards to my recent suspension.

The player in question is now banned.

After the 72 hour suspension, I log back in to find a letter in my mailbox claiming I am a Defender of Azeroth… Thanking me for reporting someone for cheating or exploiting in the game. My recent report led to actions against one or more player and accounts. Stay the course and thank you again for helping us make Azeroth a better place.

Suspension recap.

I believe I was wrongfully suspended and forced to believe I did something wrong. Accepting this punishment, regardless of the duration, made me feel worse knowing the only player I have used the right-click report option for was also punished after me.
If Blizzard investigated the player in question this could have all been resolved.

Moving forward.

I will not be reporting any other player in game and refuse to participate Blizzard’s in game right-click report. Botting, Account Sharing, Cheating, Gold Buying, other malicious services are happening on a daily basis and the players who have never been sanctioned before are caught in the crossfire.

Blizzard’s in game right-click report system needs reworked, or taken out of the game completely. If this is how someone who has never been punished before is treated imagine an account with previous suspensions. There is no real way to contact Blizzard and plead your case. If you use the right-click report in game you will be banned too.

I do not expect this post to gain traction. It seems the company has been performing worse and treating the players as ‘unit sales’ of lately. I hope things do improve here at Blizzard. It is sad to see my favorite game go this direction.

Maybe it is time to finally give up and move on from Blizzard.

Edited 1/13/22:

Here are the broken imgur links to both responses:

i.imgur(dot)com/ gaWkcNh.png
i.imgur(dot)com/ JDcGgLZ.png

When i try to post the actual link the forum blocks it.

Forum Moderator Note: We do not allow discussion of Disciplinary Actions on the forums.
17 Likes
2

I might have missed it

But what was the actual terminology blizzard used in the email regarding your ban?

3

Yes,

The email I received stated:

Violation: Disruptive Gameplay

Your fellow players reported you for a gameplay offense that is in violation of the Blizzard EULA and/or Code of Conduct.

After my 3 appeals instantly turned over to resolved I made a ticket asking for context on the suspension.

The response was:

After reviewing the action on this account, we found that the account was in violation of the Terms of Use. ( blizzard TOS link ) Based on the evidence, we will be upholding the action on this account. As we have reviewed this action in detail, we consider this situation closed. Future contacts about this penalty may go unanswered, for additional information, please reference the email that was sent to the registered email on the account.

Keep in mind that abusing the right click report system is against the terms of use. This suspension will be active through the following date:

Reminder, after the suspension I was notified via in-game mailbox that the player was suspended.

2 Likes
4

I as well have seen the same situation multiple times even just since the start of SoM. Even having guilds blatantly mass right click reporting people even on stream at times just because they had a disagreement with the person resulting in permanent suspensions. My friend experienced this and it took 6 tickets before reaching a human, each attempt including video evidence from the reporters stream of them openly confessing to making fake reports, and only on the 6th attempt did they go “oh haha, oopsie, we looked now and you’re unbanned”.

Its very clear that there’s absolutely ZERO human moderation that’s actively involved in classic SoM, as anyone spending even a few hours on the server could investigate and understand the state of the game, and what people are doing.

1 Like
5

Most likely OP was suspended for abusing the report system by coordinating with other players to submit many reports against a targeted player within a short period of time. (And conveniently left this out of the story.)

Because it’s obviously impossible to have humans monitoring all aspects of the game and social interaction at all times, there are safeguards in place where if a character gets a large number of reports in a short period of time they’ll be disconnected until a human can review the case.

Knowing this, groups of players can abuse it by coordinating (via Discord, etc.) and “report bombing” a targeted player, knocking them offline whether they were doing something wrong or not. To, say, make them lose a key arena match or miss out on honor grinding, etc.

This is clearly an abuse of not just in game mechanics but the actual customer service pipeline itself outside of the game and very clearly something Blizzard can’t and shouldn’t allow. If this is what happened, OP is clearly a cheater here regardless of which they think the player in question was up to.

In short, nice sob story but you got what you deserved.

8 Likes
6

I too had reported the same player about four hours before getting banned and only ever reported him for botting/account sharing. I recieved a 72 hour ban which cheated me out of 100+hrs of pvp towards rank 12, plus set me back around 36hrs in to the next week, which will likely add 1-2 weeks to my PVP grind.

I had to put in 3-4 unban requests before it would even give me the option to appeal specifically to world of warcraft. After getting one appeal through, stating that I had been reporting a cheater and was banned for doing so. I got one GM response saying that they were looking in to things, then a second response that was automated saying that my ban was sustained. After the cheater was banned, I put in a second appeal only to be THREATENED WITH MORE BAN TIME if I continued to appeal.

It seems pretty clear here that the entire take is snitches get stitches. I did nothing wrong, I only asked for Blizzard to look at the data further, with a person. They refused and continued to threaten the hours I have put in towards my grind.

I also emailed 1000+ email reports about the player in question, 100 a day for a portion of time starting up to a month ago and it only took until now to do anything.

Why do I pay 15/month for a game this old if a real person cannot even LOOK THROUGH the moderation bot and take appeal legitimately?

Zero respect for what somebody is doing, zero respect.

4 Likes
7

If you read what he said, blizzard investigated the issue and found that the player he reported WAS actually breaking the rules. Report Bombing = FALSE reports. Reporting someone who is ACTUALLY cheating is not report bombing.

“Got what he deserved”? Get real.

5 Likes
8

This is true.

I was encouraged by other players in my community to report the player in question.

However, those same players did not receive a suspension and have not received an email from blizzard stating they have been suspended.

I believe my argument calling for a rework on the right-click report system is still valid.

The player in question has now been suspended and does not seem to have logged in since the same day we were both suspended. I can say our suspensions went out same day because the in-game mail i received had a duration of 363/365 days left before expiring.

9

An individual submitting a report against a player they believe to be cheating, then allowing the system to flow as it’s supposed to and a verdict to be made - totally fine. No one ever has or will be banned for this.

A group of players coordinating to exploit a failsafe in the system to forcibly and instantly knock a player offline before the situation can be investigated, regardless of whether that player did anything wrong. Those players are cheating.

Not sure how you can’t see a massive difference between those scenarios.

2 Likes
10

Not sure how you can’t see the difference between exploiting and using the report system to rightfully report someone either. But I guess when you’re defending cheaters as you are now, every report is a FaLsE rEpOrT to you.

1 Like
11

I was never a part of a coordinated report. I only reported the player when I saw the ingame cheating activity. The player was a rogue who stealths near bg nodes and does nothing. The activity is fairly obvious and blatant.

12

was talking to the guy who replied to me and I replied back to, not you. I must’ve missed the reply button when I responded. :slight_smile:

13

I believe my argument calling for a rework on the right-click report system is still valid.

I had reported the player maybe once or twice, each week, for approximately three weeks.

This began because I noticed he would not logoff for days.

I had never contacted the player in question and thought letting the right-click report system play out was the best solution.

1 Like
14

No, my point is that it doesn’t matter whether, in the end, the targeted player was cheating or not.

OP didn’t report a cheater and then allow the system to run its course.

He coordinated with other players to completely bypass the system and force the player to be knocked offline before anything could be investigated. We don’t need to know whether or not the targeted player was actually cheating to know already that the report bomb is itself, cheating. If it turns out the targeted player was also cheating, then they were all cheating.

If you believe the normal CS pipeline is ineffective at catching cheaters you’re welcome to make a separate thread complaining about that. But it’s not justification for people to exploit the game and knock other players offline because they suspect them of cheating.

I’ve known plenty of friends and guildmates who have put in long hours of total legit play, for things like the honor grind and other goals. They had the experience of being constantly harassed and accused by others of afking/botting/etc and would get reported, or spammed with bizarre questions in tells to “afk check” them. Usually it was from other jealous/competitive players that didn’t care whether or not they were actually cheating and just wanted them to get a critical mass of reports to force them offline.

My point isn’t that there aren’t actual cheaters out there (there are), but that there are plenty of false reports (both intentional and unintentional), and plenty of instances where someone is “sure” that another player is cheating but they aren’t. That’s why the customer service system exists, so that these things can actually be investigated by [a human or system] that has the necessary information to make a call.

There does not need to be recourse for players to forcibly bypass that system instantaneously no matter how frustrated they are or how “sure” they are that someone is doing something wrong.

1 Like
15

And that right there is why you are arguing in bad faith.

And you can justify your toxicity to yourself how you must, just don’t be upset if I don’t care to read it.

2 Likes
16

This is disgustingly believable. Sorry to here this happen to you. Old Blizzard is long gone.

4 Likes
17

Also, this IS what this thread is about. The system needs to be reworked because (clearly) it is not effective. Sorry if you’re lost.

18

I think your points are valid.

But if players are maliciously using the right-click report system and ‘knocking’ players offline then why has Blizzard allowed it to stay in the game??

Is this feature working as intended or should it be reworked.

4 Likes
19

Miss the old Blizzard. A real GM would’ve had it sorted in 30 minutes back in the day with no confusion. Sad to see.

4 Likes
20

The system needs to get reworked.