I was suspended for 10 days due to a Mass Report attack from a guild of malicious players who decided to get me banned. I said nothing wrong, and have put in a ticket about it trying to appeal my ban. I’ve gathered all the screenshots of every message between me and the malicious player and I have said absolutely nothing that can warrant an Account Suspension, but was told in my email about the ban, “after a thorough investigation” a decision was made to go through with the ban.
I’ve put a ticket in and received a generic automated response from the “Game Master Team” which I don’t believe. Basically just copy pasting some lines from the WoW Terms of Use article and providing a link to it as well. I tried to combat this with another reply to the first ticket but have been met with radio silence, even though the first response to my ticket was done within 4 hours. It’s been over 17 hours with no reply, and it feels like by the time I either get a reply, or my case is reviewed the ban will be halfway over and I’d have missed precious time before the new SoD phase and Season 4 of DF. Which could have been easily avoided if I had a person looking at my tickets instead of an Automated System.
Apparently, I was told that Blizzard doesn’t have people oversee all reports and just has an automated system that bans people when they hit a certain threshold of reports, which means people can plan mass reports in a short period of time to flag the system that I need to be suspended, which is abusing the system and is what happened in my case…
I sent in 1 more ticket seperate to the first one basically repeating what I said in the first one and explaining the situation to them, about 5 hours ago with no reply (which is fine). But I’m just worried because the first ticket is marked as “Answered”, but I pressed the “Still have a problem” button and replied back to it - and have been met with radio silence.
If there are any Game Masters or Customer Support reading this, please reply with some insight. I don’t know what else to do! The suspension is unfair and my case needs to be reviewed by somebody.
This is the issue the understanding of it - folks telling you what they’ve heard via this game telephone doesn’t mean it’s true. Blizzard use templates for their replies to keep information the same and sorted.
Ticket times is about a day or two now, it’d be a while before they get to your ticket. Would still need to wait on it to be seen.
The forums isn’t a bypass on the ticket system - the blues here have no impact on the appeals team and the most what they can do is just read the reply the appeals theme sent.
Every single time I see this, I get a little excited to see a Blue chime in that not only is that not a thing, but that it was generally a single (possibly a couple) report that generated a review from a GM and that there were absolutely rules broken.
EVERY TIME.
“Mass reporting” leading to an “automated” ban is NOT a thing. It’s an excuse generally used here by people who want to push blame for their own actions onto other people.
You’ve received a review by a person already who looked at the data and upheld the account action. You’ve already opened another ticket to have another person look at it and that’s the right thing to do if you truly feel you did not break any rules.
My guess, and it’s a shot in the dark here, is that you used inappropriate language.
Here, if you don’t believe me I’ll post screenshots of the conversation between me and him. I’m not sure it it’s allowed though so let me know and I’ll post em up
Okay well, seeing as I can’t post the screenshots I’ll just recap a bit of what happened. Me and this other player were running our own groups for stockades in classic and he tried to undercut me, so I politely whispered him asking why. He responded with ableist slurs and get upset very quickly. When I said I was going to report him, he said “ohh you want to report? Okie I get guild discord on you enjoy your 1 week.” Believe me or not, but I swear I didn’t not say a single slur, swear, derogatory, word, or anything in between.
Now based on this - hypothetically - if this was a situation that happened (which it did), how am I in the wrong here? What warrants me being suspended for 10 days? How does that even make sense being “reviewed and investigated” and STILL going through with the ban? I provided screenshots of EVERY word I exchanged with this player. Unblurred, unedited, plain as day to see the disgusting things he was saying. But I get the ban? Honestly, I would like some insight as to how this happened…
Edit: I know some might not believe me, whatever right. But I do appreciate the replies and I’m sorry if I sound like I’m upset, I am since I feel like I was unfairly suspended
That’s not something to debate here. This isn’t an appeal. I don’t know how someone can “undercut” a stockades run. People can run those for free. How does it get more free?
You’ll want to wait on your ticket. Your suspension was upheld once and might be again depending on the logs and not on “hypotheticals”. No screenshots are necessary.
If you got suspended for 10 days, means this isn’t your first rodeo.
Why did you inform him?
You gotta remember it’s not only what you say, it’s how you say it. You can insult someone without using swears quite easily, and still cop a suspension.
Your thread is kind of moot anyways, you have to wait for your appeal, and discussing the particulars on the forums is not allowed.
Thank you for the replies, has been helpful. I was reading this forum page about Mass Reporting and how it can get people banned and it seems lots of people know it exists and is a problem in the community. I also want to add that this player did actually say he was going to get his guild discord to log on and mass report me to get me banned for a week, so I can’t help but thing that this is what happened?
A post from Vorsol on that forum page said this:
“also note even if someone does this all reports are reviewed by a human. Unless you violated some rule nothing will happen and you would not even know about it. Only thing that can happen other wise is a squelch. Squelch is automatic with enough people reporting someone.”
Now reading that, it seems (at least to me) that I’ve been “Squelched”? It seems plausible seeing as this character is in one of the largest guilds on the server on Shadowstrike(AU) Season of Discovery - indo mie - is the name. I know that isn’t particularly relevant but to people who also play on that server, they will know what I’m talking about.
Thankfully, it doesn’t exist. It’s a bunch of players who came up with an excuse for getting into trouble to make it sound like it wasn’t their fault and that the account action was due to some sort of non-existent abuse.
If you were squelched, you can still log in and play. A squelch only prevents in-game chat for the most part. If you cannot log in, then you received a suspension and that can only be done by a human.
If you really didn’t break any rules, didn’t use inappropriate language, threats, hostile/toxic comments, then a GM may still be able to see that and reverse the account action.
Sorry I’m not one to post on forums often, this is my first time opening my own thread ;_;
I will say though, that I’m allowed to outline a brief recount of the incident as long as I don’t disclose specific details about Blizzard Support or Game Master responses.
Please let me know otherwise, thank you for the response!
Also @Perl, its Not letting me send a reply since I can’t do 2 messages in a row apparently
Sometimes it takes a little bit for a GM to get to a report. So it’s possible it’s not what you said to the person who claimed they would report you, but something you said earlier to someone else in an unrelated conversation.
PS. You don’t need to send screenshots to Blizzard. They have all the logs already, and even if they didn’t, they don’t use screenshots as proof of anything.
That does sound about right now that you mention it.
But going by that logic, does that mean I can be suspended for saying something to a friend or guild member who is okay with it and doesn’t report that certain comment, or something I said a week, 2 weeks, a month ago that didn’t get reported by the player whom I said it to?
So basically, this player reports me even though I said nothing deemed inappropriate for WoW, and then the GM or whoever handles the report sees it and searches all my chat logs for the first thing that is actionable by suspension even though it would have been X amount of time ago? Because that seems unlikely, and a little silly to me.
Edit: I do know that Blizzard can view chat logs of players, and that they will refer to them during a report to decide a verdict. But I provided the screenshots of the conversation because I thought it would be helpful for proving my innocence. Also I requested to know what exactly was said to warrant a suspension but I obviously haven’t gotten a reply, and don’t know if they even share those kinds of details with the player. I know in other games like League of Legends and Valorant they send emails including your chat logs and underline what you said wrong.
No, GMs don’t go looking for issues to action someone - they’d look around the time it was reported - like, say, ten minutes before and after that point to see how far a chat been going on to see how deep that rabbit hole goes. They’re not going to go six months back for one use of something to action someone.
If you really did not use profanity, masked profanity, slurs, hateful speech, insults, etc - another option under the language infractions is spam. If you are spammy with your advertising, or advertising in the wrong channel, that can get reported and result in an account action. Just suggesting something else as an option because you asked what they penalize for.
Guild chat and private groups are considered “at will”. As in, you joined it on purpose and can leave at will. Even if reported, it has to be really bad to get in trouble in those private groups. They don’t go looking for infractions. They depend on players reporting the chat lines before they review something. Your friends in your private group are unlikely to report you.
Can they see past infractions on the account? Yes, if they resulted in an account action. They know how many times an account has been penalized in the past and take that into account when issuing penalties. It gets longer the more infractions on the account.
That isn’t entirely true. It looks like you were hit for a number of reasons. First, while your advertisements for Stockade boosts aren’t against policy, you were advertising it in multiple channels at the same time, repeating the message multiple times within a short period of time, which would be a bit spammy.
I also show you using inappropriate language towards another.
So going forward, maybe stick to a single channel when advertising your boosts for gold and spread out the message a bit more and of course, don’t use inappropriate language, especially towards another player.
If you believe someone else is violating policy, please be sure to report them so that our staff can look into it. I’d also recommend using the ignore option. If someone is circumventing that to continue to contact you, please submit a ticket using the Ongoing Harassment category.
