TL;DR - Please consider reducing the ban lengths of my guildies.
Long time listener, first time caller.
I am the operator of a small guild that has worked very hard to recruit and gear up members in order to tackle phase 2 content. So imagine my horror when two days out from our first raid in the new content, I find out that some of my top members have been suspended for exploits.
My guild is now in jeopardy as a result of missing these key members. TBC is a small operation to start with and building to PvE content takes time - we’ve been actively recruiting for three months and only started 25 man content at the midway point in August. In a little under 24 hours, Blizzard has punished everyone in our guild for an exploit that should’ve been caught in the PTR.
Whilst I can appreciate that, yes, there is an individual responsibility on the player to not abuse gaps in the system, the lengths of some of the bans have been both inconsistent and arbitrary. One of my members was suspended for three days, another a month, another two - each one realising at different times that they had discovered an exploit, but also realising too late to do the right thing.
My guild members can appreciate that they did the wrong thing - and they’re certainly willing to accept a ban of some length or a rollback of their character. But I am frustrated at both the inconsistency and lack of awareness regarding these decisions. This isn’t retail, there’s a real risk of those suspended for an unfair length of time not coming back. That hurts me, hurts my guild and ultimately, in some small way, hurts Blizzard’s bottom line.
As I said above, I would appreciate if the bans could be reduced, or even better, rolled back. None of my members went out to deliberately game the system or print money, they’re just normal folk who want to play TBC.
I would appreciate if this was the last time I had to make a whiny post on Blizzard forums asking for clemency.