I’ve been a loyal player since the original Burning Crusade, and in all my years with this game, I have never had a single ban, suspension, or silence action taken against me—until now.
To say I’m frustrated is an understatement. WoW Classic has become increasingly overrun with bots and gold sellers, blatantly breaking the rules and ruining the in-game economy and competitive experience. Yet despite their constant presence, it feels like Blizzard takes little to no action against these accounts. Meanwhile, legitimate players like myself, who are deeply invested in the game and its community, are being wrongly punished by what seems to be an unchecked, automated mass-reporting system.
The reason for my suspension? A few players in Alterac Valley decided they didn’t like that I chose to actually participate in PvP rather than follow the so-called “AV meta” of AFKing or mindlessly zerging objectives. Apparently, this deviation from groupthink was enough for them to mass-report me. And somehow, that triggers a suspension—without any manual review or logic to determine if I’ve actually broken any rules.
I’m currently in the middle of a grueling R14 grind, one that demands extraordinary time, energy, and commitment. To be pulled out of it like this—after sacrificing countless hours—is beyond disheartening. It’s infuriating. You have players abusing your reporting system simply because they disagree with someone’s playstyle, and yet this flawed system punishes the innocent while the actual offenders (bots, gold sellers, and AFKers) remain untouched.
This suspension is undeserved, and I respectfully request that my account be reviewed thoroughly by a real person—not just passed through another automated process. I want this action overturned and my ability to play restored as soon as possible. More importantly, I urge Blizzard to take a serious look at the growing abuse of the mass reporting system and the lack of safeguards in place to protect fair, rule-abiding players.
Long story short: Mass report won’t give folks account actions, regardless of what story you’ve spend for the forums to read. Using templates isn’t AI, regardless of what you believe of what reddit say. Each appeal is handled by a person, they’re not going to talk to you about it. It’s a black/white thing - either you did something against the rules or you didn’t. Simple as that.
Good news, then. Every account action, including appeals, are handled by a real, live human being. If it were an automated process, it wouldn’t take days for an appeal to be processed.
Account actions almost never happen because of something you’re currently doing. They take some time to investigate. Not even if every player online this instant reports your account.
If you believe your account action is unwarranted, file an appeal. You can continue to appeal until they tell you no more appeals will be considered.
Account actions are not automatic. The only thing mass reports can do is cause a squelch which is a temporary silence until a GM can look at it. Which they can either remove it if it’s unfounded or take action accordingly.
All account actions are done by a real person, all reviews are looked over by a different person than the one prior.
When dealing with account actions per Blizzard policy they use templates. The only time they don’t use templates is when it isn’t an account action (like a ticket I had recently a few months back with an in game issue).
Bots, Gold sellers, and AFKers are constantly being actioned against. Just recently (as you can see in 2 locked threads on the CS forum today) a AFK/Non-participation suspension was given out.
I have a feeling one of our SFA Blues will chime in and say it was for AFK/Non-participation. (I was right)
We know what you did in those games, and more importantly in these cases we know what you didn’t do.
And the bar is quite high on nonparticipation to be actionable.
You managed to clear that bar by a good margin.
Do we pay attention to reports, yes. What does that do? It gets attention on the aforementioned figures. If those didn’t substantiate the claims, you’d have never heard a peep from us.
This is irrelevant, except to illustrate that you’ve been in this game for decades and should know the rules.
This is extremely irrelevant to your situation. That others may be breaking rules does not mean you can break the rules.
Not even close to being truthful. But onto your issue:
This is quite the spin. So you weren’t helping the group and decided to go off and do your own thing, which generally involves you “defending” a point which no one is going to attack, so you can do nothing and soak in all the honor.
Yes, when you’re in a group PvP setting, “groupthink deviation” leads to your team being weaker and runs contrary to the group’s objectives. If you encounter a group that’s playing the BG different than you want, then you have two options:
Suck it up and play with your team, or
Leave the BG so they can find a replacement
All suspensions are done manually by an employee.
All appeals are reviewed by a real person, just like all initial actions are done by a real person.
There is no abuse of the reporting system. This is simply the way actioned players try to justify how much they were “wronged”. They only thing that a group of players can effect is a temporary, 24-hour squelch until a Blizzard employee reviews the conversation.
But that is for one specific chat violation, not PvP non-participation. Either play the BG with your team, or leave if their goals don’t line up with yours.
No, they have never been proven to do anything like you are claiming. The prevailing “proof” is simply proof that there’s a squelch system in place, and then the streamer in question was suspended AFTER MANUAL REVIEW BY A BLIZZARD EMPLOYEE for gaming the report system to cause the squelch.
This is delusional. Bots will never report anyone, because that would simply alert Blizzard to their presence, and get them flagged for the next ban wave.
Your whole assertion here would be like a bank robber calling the police to report that someone is filming them robbing the bank. That is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard someone say on the internet, and it’s not particularly close.
Well, you’re correct. You didn’t do anything. The problem is, you were supposed to be doing something.
That’s why you got actioned.
Yes, it “is serious problem” that players will not participate in BG matches. I agree with you, and I’m glad to see Blizzard trying to correct it.
That 100% does not happen. Ever. Blizzard’s Anti-cheat programs do NOT use reports as the basis of an account action. Reports are used by the Hacks team to investigate botting methods, cheating methods, etc. Once that investigation is done they add the detection criteria to the Anti-Cheat software/detection methods. A person is only penalized for Anti-Cheat if Blizzard’s software flags the account themselves.
I don’t know why you believe the lie that bots can get you penalized, but it 100% untrue.
The ONLY automated penalty in the game right now is a Squelch for chat infractions pending GM review. That takes many unique reports in in a short time and was originally put in for spammers/gold sellers.
The “bots got me auto penalized for cheating” is an outright bizarre claim. It is not even possible with the way the Anti-Cheat system works. Reports don’t impact the Anti-Cheat software. Only the Hacks team can update that after investigation.
This conversation is people correcting your misinformed and incorrect statements like this one.
While these ARE two separate things - bots reporting and resulting in automated bans, and players reporting and resulting in automated bans - NEITHER is true.
That is why you are being informed of how the system actually works. IF you don’t want that to happen, don’t make statements that are incorrect. The purpose of this forum is to provide accurate information and that means correcting things where needed.
are you going to edit your original post to reflect the truth because idk but
this no longer seems accurate
The reason for my suspension? A few players in Alterac Valley decided they didn’t like that I chose to actually participate in PvP rather than follow the so-called “AV meta” of AFKing or mindlessly zerging objectives. Apparently, this deviation from groupthink was enough for them to mass-report me. And somehow, that triggers a suspension—without any manual review or logic to determine if I’ve actually broken any rules.
I’m currently in the middle of a grueling R14 grind, one that demands extraordinary time, energy, and commitment. To be pulled out of it like this—after sacrificing countless hours—is beyond disheartening. It’s infuriating. You have players abusing your reporting system simply because they disagree with someone’s playstyle, and yet this flawed system punishes the innocent while the actual offenders (bots, gold sellers, and AFKers) remain untouched.
This suspension is undeserved, and I respectfully request that my account be reviewed thoroughly by a real person—not just passed through another automated process. I want this action overturned and my ability to play restored as soon as possible.
We do, in fact, know what is true. The data shows you were not participating in BG games, enough so that you were over the limits of what is acceptable. Pretty cut and dry from the game logs.
It is not about what we think, or our “opinions”. It is about the facts of the data and game logs.
Blizzard thinks I’m in the wrong so I’m in the wrong apparently. I got a human response and that’s what I wanted. These ai formatted messages are ridiculous. I got a reply so it’s simply what it is now. I mean you can continue if you’d like just know I won’t be reading them lol.