I’ve been a loyal player of World of Warcraft for years, dedicating countless hours and passion to this game. However, my accounts (WOW3, WOW4, and WOW6, BattleTag: GarrettLiu#1155) were recently banned without any valid reason.
I want to make it absolutely clear:
I have never used third-party programs or cheats.
I have strictly followed Blizzard’s Terms of Service.
Blizzard claims to care about its players, yet they rely on AI systems to impose bans, resulting in mistakes that severely impact loyal fans like me. Despite my appeals, their response has been dismissive and has failed to address the core issue.
I urge Blizzard to:
Conduct a manual review of my accounts.
Provide clear evidence of any wrongdoing—or reverse this unjust ban.
This experience has been incredibly frustrating and disappointing. If Blizzard cannot resolve this matter fairly, I will continue to raise awareness on forums and social platforms to let others know how they are treating their loyal players.
If you’ve faced similar issues or care about fair treatment in gaming, please share this post and help spread the word. We deserve transparency and fairness from the companies we’ve supported for years.
If your appeals have been upheld a GM has gone over the evidence. They are not required to show you evidence as that would potentially result in tipping off cheaters and/or armchair lawyering.
This is literally the same thing other software companies do. Some are even worse and do not point at which part of the Terms you’ve broken but just the Terms in general and don’t allow appeals.
If anything, you’re at the wrong place to advocate for a general change - as that is a matter of lawmakers. Though there is slowly getting a shift at the European continent regarding player rights, there’s no such thing at the American side yet.
Actions are applied by a human being who put human eyes on a report and made a human decision to apply an action. There’s no AI involved.
You can appeal, which is also looked at a human being, but bear in mind an appeal, much like this forum, is not a soapbox to plead your case: They only look at the data they have, and there’s no judge or jury to sway.
A CSR may poke in and provide further details, but you aren’t going to get the exact reason why, mostly because people start looking for ways to circumvent rules if provided what, exactly, caused the action.
What you choose to do with your time is completely on you, but that’s not really going to change what happened to your account.
A few things here. First, they don’t use AI systems. They don’t have AI answer tickets, they don’t have it giving out account actions, and they don’t have AI appeals. All appeals are reviewed manually, by a GM, member of the Hacks team, or a specialist, as applicable.
You should have received a reason as to why you were banned in your email. From there, that is what you are appealing, that you did not, in fact, violate the rule. A member of the appropriate team will review their logs, not your personal message but the available data that they have, and choose to either uphold the action, overturn it, or uphold and modify the penalty given to your account.
These forums aren’t a bypass to the appeal system, your only option is to continue appeals until such a time that they inform you they will no longer be reviewed.
Lastly, Blizzard upholding an action is not failing to address the core issue, it’s an answer you dislike. They don’t have to provide any evidence to you, they in fact will not do so in most cases as hacking/cheating detection methods would be worth a large amount of money to those who make botting programs. All that this attempt to garner an audience will do is get yourself in trouble on the forums as well.
If you did nothing, look for what the sanction reason was for. Appeal that. Make sure you don’t have programs running that can be used for automation (autohotkey is one, Windows software has options to control inactive windows on your computer, that’s another that can run afoul multiboxxing rules). Any tools for automation that warden detects while in-game, even if you aren’t actively using it or intending to, is enough to get in trouble for cheating/hacking.
Appeals can only be done through the ticket system.
As others have already mentioned, everything is handled by a human, but we do use templates for answers. There are basically 3 in most cases. Uphold, overturn or modify a sanction.