But they do. They have all of the logs, all of them. Anything that was said in the game in any channel, going back months. It doesn’t take that long to review a back and forth between people.
What context? What are these arguments that you think that you could present that would make a report that got an action against your account “okay”?
Wait, okay, let’s go through all the possibilities:
- “It wasn’t me, someone else was using my account!” - No one else should be using your account unless they’re your minor child, and even then you’re responsible for what they do when they’re on it.
- “Other people said worse things first/say worse all the time!” - Hopefully they were also reported then. But other people breaking the rules doesn’t make it okay for you to break the rules.
- “What I said wasn’t even that bad!” - The GMs disagreed, and they are trying to help you learn where the boundaries are between acceptable and unacceptable behavior in the game by applying an action to your account.
- “I don’t agree that GMs who don’t share my values get to make a call on what is acceptable!” - Yeah, well, someone needs to make a call. If you appeal, a different GM will look at it with a fresh pair of eyes, but if your boundaries are different than the boundaries on every other GM according to the guidelines that they’re given to apply then you’re just going to have to accept that Blizzard’s boundaries are what flies in the game.
- “I learned my lesson and I won’t do it again!” - Okay. That’s a good plan, after you get control of your account back after the punishment that you earned.
- “These people were harassing me and provoked me into breaking the TOS!” - If someone is harassing, insulting or demeaning you, the correct course of action is to not respond to them, put them on ignore and report them. If they circumvent the ignore to keep at it, report them for circumventing the ignore and ignore THAT account too. Responding makes it an ongoing conversation that you’re just as much a willing participant in as they are. No amount of bad behavior on the part of other players makes it “okay” for you to break the TOS also. At best, all it will do is get both of you an account action.
- “I was just defending myself!” If you have a burning need to ‘defend yourself’ somehow and willingly choose not to follow the steps above, there are plenty of ways to do that without also breaking the TOS yourself. “Okay man, that’s just like, your opinion” or “You guys make my dance sad” are favorites of mine. As soon as you start throwing around bad language, attacking people or harassing them ‘back’, you’re just as eligible for a ding against your account. Even if they said something terrible to you in the past. Even if they follow you around and throw insults at you. If they’re doing that, use the tools available to you and ignore and report them.
I think that covers the expected bases, but I’m curious if you think you’ve got some other trump card that you’re itching to pull out. I guarantee that there’s not, even if you were given the opportunity to waste a ton of a GM’s time as you try and Rules Lawyer or Facts and Circumstances debate them.