I hadn’t played WoW in years, a week after I resubbed I got perma-banned for " Exploitative Activity: Unauthorized Cheat Programs (Hacks)." This account had no previous offenses, and obviously I wasn’t cheating. Appeal denied. I’m just… deeply confused and sad, and I’m considering continuing to play on another account, but if I have literally no clue why I was banned I could just be banned again for the same thing.
Do you get perma-banned for using the addon QuickQuest? Grasping for straws this is the only thing even in the same universe as “cheats,” but it’s an addon with a million downloads that gets used by content creators.
The email snarkily says to “Please do think twice to prevent this from happening again in the future,” but to the best of my knowledge I didn’t do anything… what can trigger these bans? I was literally just leveling and doing world quests…
Edit- Someone said you can be banned for things that are installed on your computer but not running, is that true? If so that’s absolutely absurd but might be the only explanation. I have AHK installed to do something in PoE that’s completely allowed in that game, but it was never running while I played WoW, 100% of my inputs were manual.
Edit2- Is it true that a change was made a week ago that means you only have one chance at an appeal, so if an appeal is denied the account is donezo permanently with no recourse?
Edit3- Can using a VPN do this?
Edit4- Unbanned. Shout out to the haters who spent this entire thread insulting me, then mass reporting my posts.
If it’s installed from a reputable source, like CurseForge, no. Blizzard would break the addon first.
If it requires running an .exe installer to install, it’d be questionable.
You’re not going to be told what was detected, but one common scenario is that the player uses their computer for work from home purposes too - and has software running that can automate things - like Autohotkey.
Bingo!
Warden, Blizzard’s anti-cheat software has probably detected it. It doesn’t need to be used for WoW, but simply in memory.
It’s very easy to say “Oh no I was never using it for WoW”, but Blizzard’s stance is one that is very hard line particularly when it comes to automation.
If it’s installed, it’ll probably catch you out. You have software installed that could be, and has (maybe not by you as you claim) been used to automate things in the game.
Sorry but that sounds rather contradictory, and, sincerely, ignorance is an excuse tactic that is commonly tried to no avail - regardless what bot sites and forums claim.
Posting here isn’t going to help you.
All you can do is keep appealing until you’re told no more appeals.
It would be unlikely they’d downgrade the account action. An appeal isn’t to plead your case, after all - It’s easy to claim ignorance after getting caught.
It just sets a new set of eyes from the hacks team over the evidence Warden has flagged. They can tell if automation is used in-game too.
Continue appealing until they tell you to stop. The answer you were seeking may in fact be the AHK, we can’t know for sure, and Blizzard doesn’t reveal that information.
If you keep it up, then yes, having a forum suspension is bound to happen. I’ve gave you some friendly advice in your thread already on this sort of thing:
I dunno if it helps, sadly, this isn’t my place to say. If nothing else can be done, you can open up a new game license on your Battle.net account and play from that license. And since you’ve uninstalled and removed Auto Hot Key, should prevent that license from being closed as well.
Just go through your processes in the Task Manager and make sure there is nothing else related open or running as well.
Probably won’t work as that ticket goes to the GM’s who don’t handle appeals, so the ticket is going to the wrong area. More than likely you’ll get a reply the points to the terms of use and not the response you’re after.
Usually, you should be able to keep appealing until such point as you’re instructed to stop appealing by Blizzard.
I’d wait until a CS forum SFA (Blizzard Moderator) gets on duty. They might be able to shed a bit of light on any reason why you’ve been unable to submit another appeal ticket.
If it was a wow licence levelaction, yes you could create a new wow account under the current battle.net account (I think from memory you can have up to 8 wow licences on single battle.net account.
If it was a battle.net account level action (pretty much the highest penalty - a nuked from orbit, as you pointed out), you’d need to create a new battle.net account and then add a wow licence to it.
Essentially, even with the account action, you’re still welcome to play.
This could be something new policy-wise, or might actually be a problem/bug that’s popped up. Pretty brutal expiry time though, ouch.
Previously, even if upheld, you certainly could appeal again, and again.
Hmm out of curiosity - did they mention in the appeal response that it’s been escalated?
The “Appeal in progress” caught my eye and thought hmm wonder if it’s an escalation. If it is, it’s certainly something you want as it’s a much more indepth investigation.
EDIT: Clarification this comment was not addressed to the actual OP, but to the individual who is trying to co-opt this thread, instead of staying in their own thread.
People often think claiming innocent will somehow change evidence against them. You can see it all the time on the board here, and very rarely are most truly innocent. They often don’t see what they were doing which we see mostly on behavioral or chat type penalties, or with these penalties they feel they have somehow managed to disguise that they are hacks/cheats, or are part of a greater botting networks and get outraged when they are caught. Now that doesn’t mean you are guilty or innocent, as none of us know the actual facts in question other than Blizzard. While there are false positives, which is why there is the appeal process, the odds of that in most cases are low.
There really isn’t much anyone will be able to tell you here, and you simply have to have patience on the appeal, though it sounds like it was found against you and that they wouldn’t listen to more appeals. As for the blues here, they will only be able to advise if your review is still in progress, or what the state of it is, they can’t escalate it, influence it, or in this case even tell you much about it, unlike say a chat penatly, or for someone who purchased gold.
Now for the other account closure, that was likely a mistake by the Hacks team where the actual mistake was to prematurely uploaded a list of accounts to get shut down, which is why it was reversed. However that wasn’t necessarily a “false closure” in the sense that it was unwarranted, it was just premature in many cases. Its likely they hadn’t finished all their investigations, and still had to review and identify which accounts on the list would be actioned, which is why a number of those accounts were later hit with an account actions.
The Support UI changed in the last week or two so is very new to all of us here too. They now have a page that tells you what actions you have against your account, and which you can appeal. It seems that appeals are more limited now than they were - but I have not seen an explanation on that or any clarification from Blizzard. It means we can’t really explain how the back end works now, unlike with the old system.
For the record, I also thought AHK needed to be in active memory for it to be flagged by Warden. Having it installed but not running should not have done it… it is a legit program for other functions. Blizzard is not going to clarify on that though. Because there is no clarification, people here tend to just advise folks to avoid it all together.
They do use form letters instead of typing the same thing thousands of time. Usually they are a variety of upheld, overturned with an apology, escalated to Hacks for further investigation, and sometimes penalty reduced. With the changes to the Support site and appeal process I don’t think anyone currently really knows what options there are.
I am sorry, but nobody is going to be able to confirm or deny that for you here. Also, while it is helpful to get insight from past staff, keep in mind they are past staff - they don’t have current insight into the anti-cheat detection changes.
Anti-cheat gets updated all the time just like antivirus software does. As the cheaters try new things, the anti-cheat folks try to combat it. Past examples are insightful, but can’t be taken as current “truth”.
We really don’t know exactly how the current Blizzard anti-cheat software works. Those who do, won’t be sharing.
That’s not what this forum is for - as Mirasol said, they changed how the appeal is now, they only goes off their internal logs. They don’t take a person word on something, they only go off their logs. You can appeal until they tell you to stop.
EDIT: Clarification this comment was not addressed to the actual OP, but to the individual who is trying to co-opt this thread, instead of staying in their own thread.
What I am saying is people will often claim they are innocent when they are not, this happens all the time, both here on the forums and even in real life. So no someone saying they are innocent, has zero meaning. Often times those who are guilty will often be the ones screaming they are innocent and ranting about the corrupt system the loudest.
Personally I don’t know if the individual is innocent or not, as that comment wasn’t about that. It was addressing the idea that they had to be innocent because they were saying they were and why would they spend the time otherwise. Proclaiming innocent and yelling loudly didn’t mean anything. In fact based on the several threads the individual made, and their own comments it’s not that surprising to me, that the account was actioned.
As for YouTube videos they are proof of nothing, they are often sourced drama, mostly designed to get people to click on them to make money for the creators, and are often a source of conspiracy theories that have no relation to reality.
Any content creator who post anything to YouTube, whether main or second channel, actually post it just for attention or views. They don’t fully show the real process, and they don’t get special treatment. Now, if there action was overturned, then it meant Blizzard made an error on their end, which yes, can happen, though does not happen all the time, and is quite rare.
The entire process is investigated, including the appeals. You’ve admitted to even have something on your computer, which means that the logs does not lie. Yes, Blizzard has upheld the decision, I highly doubt they would overturn the action, but it is possible they could modify. But it is also possible they wouldn’t.
I would probably recommend just opening up a new License on your Battle.net account, play on that license.
Ah yes sorry, missed that the other user was spamming across your thread and decided to take over your thread in addition to his. Thats really is quite annoying when people do that as it really muddies the water making it hard to give people advice or comment accurately to the OP. I will go back and put a note on my comment that it wasn’t specifically aimed at you but the person trying to take over your thread.
That said, do not believe the streamers and their conspiracy theories, most of them choose to spread misinformation because it suits their agenda, and honestly no matter if they did actually get actioned and if it was overturned or not, that won’t have any impact on your account action. They also wont know what actually triggered their action any more than you do, while they can assume, they like you wont get any information other than the template responses that Blizzard gives.