I got silenced for 1 week after selling tank services. BC anniverary - posted in LFG tool i was for hire, and i got mass reported. No warning, no one day ban, silenced for a week.
What is the official policy on tank services?
I’ve heard people say I can use the trade chat, or strictly the services chat(which is completely dead).
Also… A week silence? Seriously?
I have no history of account discipline… in 20+ years of its existence. I understand that I needed some penalty, I think a day would have been more than enough to send the message…
That’s still way to harsh imo. I was ignorant of the rules thats correct, a warning or a small correction would have been enough, some leeway should be given to accounts with 0 disciplinary action imo. This stifled me quite a bit in a critical point.
Well, that’s the point they want to get across; you’d notice and take a sec to think twice about something. They don’t wnat folks to be ‘fine’ with an account action as they see it. If they want folks to change, it’d need to be harsh in the person’s eyes.
That using LFG to sell services is prohibited, I’m afraid. You must keep that solely to Trade or Trade Services, the latter taking priority if it exists in your flavor of WoW.
They tried shorter silences in the past, it ultimately didn’t work as an adequate deterrent. So they went back to one-week for a first offense, two weeks will be a second offense, if I recall.
e. note to self, refresh the thread before posting.
So first you don’t need to be mass reported and you were likely only reported by 1 or 2 people at the most. If you violate the rules by selling services in LFG on the TBC. servers, someone will likely report you, and you will be given the appropriate penalty. People in the LFG or trade channel have nothing better to do often, and if you’re doing things like selling tank services which will aggravate a good portion of the server, expect to get reported.
You are only allowed to post “services” in the services channel on the TBC servers. Posting in the LFG, Trade, or even as a note in the LFG tool is against the rules, and is actioned if you are reported.
Take this week silence as your warning, not knowing the rules is not an excuse. Penalties compound, the next penalty will be a suspension., and they will ramp up in time from there.
I am not trying to get down on you, and maybe what I said came over as overly harsh, however you weren’t mass reported, and this is the standard penalty they give anyone reported for this violation. As for the penalty, while I guess you could say a silence is harsh, its a good step better then the likely 14 day suspension which I think is the next penalty tier. Blizzard wants penalties to actually be meaningful.
Really the main thing to take away from this, is that on the TBC servers, any thing that counts as a service shouldn’t be in any channel other than the services channel, and this includes selling tank services. People in general are simply fed up with advertisements.
Unfortunately the gold sellers/boosters often get around these issues by using throw away accounts, or leveraging accounts they are getting paid to boost, and yes often those accounts will get banned permanently, but they simply make new ones.
Going forward now you know posting that in LFG is not allowed and seems others did not like it there! If you want to avoid a suspension I would not do that again.
The alternative is suspension for a week or longer. The silence is a first warning, and it’s pretty generous at that. You can still play in the meantime, and now you know where you can and can’t advertise your tanking services in the future.
If people got to choose their own punishments, why would they bother at all? It has to be harsh. That is the point. Does it suck? Of course it does. But lesson learned and you’ll not do it again, will you?
It’s not a flex on you or anything of the sort. It is a corrective measure. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse, but the irritation and “pain” of trying to play the game while silenced will ideally do what it is meant to do.
I’m sorry you had to find out that way, but in a perfect world - folks would research and read the rules of what are in place to prevent your predicament. Good luck to you going from here.
