What Is Blizzard's Policy Re: Mass-Report Exploit Used As Threat?

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A guildie and I were farming the warlocks in SMV. Another player and I were running for the same mob and I bow-shot the mob to get the tag and killed it. Then the player whispers me “u don’t want to do that” followed by a second whisper of, “unleass u want to blocked account” {sic}.

It seems obvious that he is threatening me with a mass-report ban. Does Blizzard do anything about such threats? Have you announced anything about fixing the mass-report ban exploit? I I try to report a player in0game, the system does not appear to have a category for “threats.” How should it be reported?

You can check logs at about 8:45 ET on Jan 10, 2022 to confirm the above screenshot and behavior by the player.

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Well, the good news is that you can’t receive a ban from mass reports. I would simply put the other player on ignore and move on with your day. If they attempt to bypass the ignore, then you would want to report them for ongoing harassment.

You’ll want to remove the screenshot though as it includes the other player’s name.

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To expand on the correct info Perl already gave, here is a bit more about the in game reporting and penalty system. You can NOT get an automated Silence or Ban.

To deal with gold spammers there was an auto SQUELCH function put into the game long ago and it still exists. If enough reports are filed in a short time from unique Bnet accounts, it can result in a squelch until a GM can review it. Blizzard has never said how many reports it takes for that to happen. Nobody likes gold spammers, or spammers in general.

The actual punishments that are applied to accounts are not automated at all. Those are handled by a GM who reviews the logs attached to the report/s.

A Silence usually starts at 24 hours, but each time it is applied to the account it doubles. That removes a person from social functions and group abilities.

A Suspension can also be applied to remove a person from game for a while if the conduct is egregious enough or repeated enough.

A permanent Ban can also occur after enough infractions/bad enough conduct.

Those are all applied by a real person though, not an automated system. Asking guild mates or followers to “report so and so” can end up with a suspension for the people abusing the system.

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Put them on Ignore. As I’m sure you are aware, tagging a mob before someone else is never a violation.

I don’t think it’s very obvious, because I’m betting English is not their first language. But at any rate…

That’s a tough question. Whispering people, even whispering people a threat like this, is not explicitly against the rules. No offensive language, no spamming. However, I would think it treads dangerously close to Ongoing Harassment, if they keep it up.

First step is to place them on Ignore. If they continue to whisper you on other accounts, then place those accounts on Ignore, and open a ticket to succinctly explain the situation.

There’s no such exploit. Anyone is as free to report another player as you are to tag a mob. They would need to enlist a bunch of friends to reach the threshold of a squelch, but they could all be actioned for Abusing the Report Feature if you did nothing wrong.

As I said above, “threats”, in and of themselves, are not exactly actionable, unless they fall into another restricted category. Ongoing Harassment is one, and it needs an actual ticket opened (and needs to be ongoing, meaning you utilized the ignore feature first). If there is any foul language, or threats of violence/death/etc, then right-click report for Language.

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Thank you Perl, Mirasol, and Melaesia. I don’t really have anything further to add, I think you all have covered this very well.

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Thanks all for the replies, especially the Blues!

Search the web for “warcraft mass report ban” and check out the number of stories of people getting banned via a mass report. There are people selling mass report services now, so you can pay to have someone go through this Hell.

While I appreciate the Blue posts, above, I think they are citing policy from Blizzard. Blizzard is a bit disingenuous to have a policy that says that a GM reviews logs before players are banned because there has been a well-documented exodus of Blizzard staff and all of the stories you see (and actual tickets submitted) indicate that this manual review has turned into a rubber stamp process as they do not have the time/interest in performing thorough reviews.

Also, there are many Blue posts such the follow in which the acknowledge that report abuse is a real issue that they have to deal with:

Again, I appreciate all the feedback. Now, back to some more WoW fun!

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There are a lot of things you can google that will return results. This doesn’t make them correct. We often see players claim they were ‘mass reported’ in a Battleground resulting in a PVP Non-Participation suspension. In reality, PVP Non-Participation suspensions are the result of manual reviews of multiple BGs worth of information. This is a case where just because they said it was a mass report doesn’t make it true.

We also see cases where users claim they were mass reported for 1 activity, when the suspension they received is for something completely different.

Sometimes users ARE mass reported, and that’s because they have extremely poor behavior that others playing with or around them do not tolerate. If you are violating chat rules, for example, and you are “mass reported” it just means a lot of people saw your chat and reported it. The chat was reviewed, and the penalty applied to the account. That’s how the system is inteded to work.

On the topic of “automation”: We’ve held GDC talks, and BlizzCon panels, there’s even a Heroes of the Storm post (linking to an article here because the post was on the old forums). We use machine learning across our games social channels to identify chat violations in player reports (someone still has to right-click and report it) allowing them to be actioned more quickly.

Admittedly, when it comes to cheating/abuse of game systems - we do not disclose the specific details of what we detect, or when it was detected. This results in a lot of speculation and misinformation about account penalties. This is, somewhat, by design. We do not want folks to learn how to avoid being caught - which cheat developers will frequently attempt to do.

If you’ve come into the conversation with an already established perception that Blizzard is lying to you about something, then I don’t know what to tell you. I hope we can demonstrate through information and actions that it’s not quite as clear cut as some players who have been suspended for inappropriate behavior would have you believe.

Again, this is a perception issue. Game Masters, as I mentioned above, generally do not share the specifics regarding data that leads to bans/suspensions. So for consistency and efficiency, they do use templates. This doesn’t mean that the issue isn’t reviewed, it means that the Game Master doesn’t need to rewrite the same response multiple times a day.

When I was a Game Master, I had a library of ticket responses to save me time. If you talked to the 20 people I helped in 1 day with Item Restorations, and they all compared their replies then they might think it was automated. Account penatly appeals are one of the more visible topics which allows the responses to be compared like this and where you can see the use of templates very clearly. But again, this does not indicate automation.

The post you linked from Orlyia is 2 years old and is about a specific incident. Our processes are constantly changing and improving if/when we find situations that would allow for abuse.

If we were to offer a generalized blanket response to the hypothetical question you propose in your title, it would be ‘abuse of any game systems is not permitted’ but saying you’re going to abuse something is not the same as actually abusing/being able to abuse something.

And this bit is for anyone who may find this thread as the result of a search later on:
If you believe you have received a penalty incorrectly, you can use the established appeals process to have it reviewed.

Enjoy! I hope the loot tables favor you :slight_smile:

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All of those stories are a lot of bullhocky. Every time when one of them comes here to complain, they are shown they deserved it by the Blue.

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