There was a time when the chat infractions weren’t structured in their current form and had leeway but the punishments didn’t deter repeat infractions so they went to a structured approach for offense from my knowledge around the time of BfA.
Assuming the severity of the infraction doesn’t cause them to skip past to a stronger punishment, First time offense is a silence for 7 days. Second is a suspension for 7 days, then suspension for 14 days, then for a month, then so on until you get up to a 6 month suspension. Repeat infractions can then further lead to a closing of your WoW license (if your license is closed but not your account you can create a new license and retail mounts/transmogs/etc as infractions are license wide Account closers are EXTREMELY rare).
The rule added in patch 9.2.7 was because they added a chat solely for selling services (dungeon boosts, raid boosts, etc) and as such for retail (and classic where they now have a services channel) require them to be listed their and not other chats.
Players asked for a separate channel for services because trade chat and general chat were so flooded with boosts it was unusable.
Miscellaneous but important points to add:
Reopening closed threads on the forum can lead to forum actions preventing you from using the forums.
When it comes to wanting to change rules/ToS the general forum is generally the place to do so, however as Vrakthris pointed out the In-Game Suggestions is the better place for this. With that said however, players advocated for the services channel and that will likely not change. Furthermore the 1st time offense for chat infractions will also not change from 7 day silence as lesser durations were very ineffective at deterring future infractions.
You cant rules lawyer your way out of this. You do not own your account, all you own is a license to play the game which can be revoked at any time.
My recommendation for you because you are frustrated is to go to bed and/or take your frustration out in another way and to not continue opening threads on this issue or you will be at risk to lose your forum privileges.
There are a million laws that vary from place to place about what you can and can’t do in public. They couldn’t possibly post them everywhere. If you go to a new place and you see that absolutely no one is wearing shoes anywhere, it’s worth looking into to see if there’s a reason for that.
If you join a channel and absolutely no one is advertising boosting services in General and Trade, it’s not likely that you’ve found some secret trick that no one thought of before. It’s a good idea to find out why that is. A simple question will usually get an answer if you don’t know where to look.
Still, even if there was no way at all to possibly know that you weren’t allowed to do what you were doing, the thing to keep in mind is that the chat suspension is the warning. You didn’t lose your account, you didn’t lose the ability to play the game at all, even temporarily.
Now you know not to do it again, and knowing, as they say, is half the battle. Take your very minor tap on the wrist and the awareness of the rules that came with it going forward.
You’ve gotten over 100 responses in your two threads. You understand just fine.
You are trying to wiggle your way out of the account action, as we see here:
It doesn’t matter who believes what, who thinks something should happen, who convinces who. The only thing that matters is Blizzard has made rules that the players have to follow, you didn’t follow the rules, and there are consequences because you didn’t follow the rules.
It doesn’t matter who may or may not agree with you; this isn’t a democracy. It doesn’t matter if you agree with it or not; punishments are not effective when the player finds them “acceptable”. It doesn’t matter what reasons/excuses/whines/arguments you spout in your appeal; Blizzard does not debate these things.
You broke the rules. You are allowed to appeal, multiple times in fact. Anything else is just trolling for arguments.
All I see a person trying to lawyer himself/herself out of a suspension, that never ends well on this forum. Ignorance of rules or law is not a defence even in a court of law.
Customer Support is not the place for “spreading awareness” about topics. Why do you feel there is a need for “spreading awareness” if you also feel players don’t read the website?
To be fair, it’s not in the EULA. The EULA is an all-encompassing Blizzard document, it doesn’t relate specifically to any particular game. As such, there is no specific mention of the Trade Services channel (nor does there need to be). It’s absence from that document is irrelevant, though.
Which is why I can understand the OP’s frustration of the rules being “all over the place” and not in one place. But, I do advise the OP (and others) to go to the GD Forums and/or the in-game Suggestions Box and try to suggest it to be so (which is their main point, of this thread was just posted in the wrong section of the forums).
Though, I did find this thread: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/support-contact-channels/5491
With a link to the Blizz articles: https://us.battle.net/support/en/help
And just select the game in question and type in what you want to know about.
That being said, I agree because the EULA encompasses ALL the games, like the “in-game CoC”: https://us.battle.net/support/en/help/article/42673
This is something the OP doesn’t seem to understand and think because certain servers have special rules like RP servers naming policy and/or GDKP being available on some servers and others aren’t, that means these servers abide by a different set of rules, when they don’t.
It’s ALL the rules + extra rules for certain servers/type of Blizzard Games.
So far, nobody has provided a compelling argument as to why my ban shouldn’t be lifted.
You broke the rules. When you break rules, you deserve punishment. Your punishment was the ban. Not knowing the rules is on you. They are available to one and all.
More importantly, why does such a trivial rule carry such a harsh consequence for a first-time offender?
Because people were doing it over and over and over until they hit the ban point. Then they’d do it again on a different account. People in this game have shown repeatedly they will push and push against the rules until it becomes unreasonable.
If the goal is to ensure players follow the rules, wouldn’t it make more sense to issue a warning or in-game notice before enforcing such a severe penalty?
See my 2nd comment. People who break the rules don’t care about warnings and notices.
When we went to Belize for the first time, I looked up some local laws and customs, to make sure we weren’t going to be going against them.
Same in game. If I’m playing a game, and I want to do something I hadn’t done before, I look up information about it.
Take your slap on the hand; know there’s a right way to advertise (right channel; don’t do it more than 1x every 5-10 minutes; make sure it’s on the character that is going to do the boost; and no RMT) ; and do better next time.
It’s not a ban, it’s not even a suspension. It’s a silence. That IS your warning. Repeat the behavior, the next will be a suspension - that means you can’t play for X amount of time. Repeat further, the suspensions get longer till eventually it IS a ban - which means you can’t play on that license at all.
You’ve repeated that a lot. There are no trivial rules. Being dismissive isn’t going to help your case.
There is that word, again. If reported, it will be actioned accordingly. Given your obstinance and combativeness in accepting the very good advice you’ve been given here by your fellow players - I wonder why your realm mates might take the opportunity to report rule breaking. Truly a puzzlement.
Now, I’ve tidied up this thread because all your posts are going over the exact same territory.
You were Silenced - not suspended, not banned.
That is your warning.
As has also been pointed out, reposting a closed thread - especially one that has had a Blue answer about account actions is a very, very bad idea. Looks like you still have an appeal open.
I know you aren’t happy, but those are the rules. I’d suggest you take the recommendations you’ve been given to heart and be just a tad more accepting and grateful to your fellow players trying to help you.