Long story short, guild mates and I were PvPing in open world. Had a few bouts with another guild. Got the word that they were mass reporting a few of us due to the world PvP. 2 days later, perma banned. I’ve had this account since about 2019. I lead a guild of about 200 players. Can you really just mass report anyone to get them banned? My notice said. Offense: Exploitative Activity: Unauthorized Cheat Programs (Hacks)
I’m currently at a loss, just leveling another character so I can keep supporting my guild.
No, being report doesn’t entail an account action. The folks who hand out those actions would review their logs and apply any actions. If there wasn’t any rules being broken, you’d know you’re being looked into.
More to the point, this kind of action isn’t done within a day or two. They tend to look through the logs for a while to see a pattern before applying such.
That and PvPing isn’t what can get someone action. Blizzard doesn’t blind action folks. You can appeal until they said to stop.
Second verse, same as the first - a little bit louder and a little bit worse!
While mass reporting likely does happen - there has yet to be a confirmed case of this being behind a single sanction that anyone has brought here to CS and confirmed by the Blues - not Reddit.
All you can do is appeal. Nothing can or will be done here through the forums. They will never tell you the exact hows and whys of your reporting or any of that, but an appeal will give you a fresh pair of eyes looking over all of the data.
Just to set expectations - an appeal is not for you to plead your case. Your appeal will be answered with a templated response. This is not an AUTOMATED response. A real live person looked over the reports and/or a program/behavior flagged Warden. A real live person investigated the data given over from behind the screens - nothing documented via streaming or screenshots are used. A real live person saw behavior that indicated cheating/hacking/botting. A real live person pushed the sanction through and sent out the templated response. And the cycle begins again with a real live person working the appeals.
You’re assuming one thing is indicative of the other. These alleged “bad players” wouldn’t know if your sanction was turned over or upheld. Not with that quick turnaround. Cheating/botting/hacking takes time to investigate. Social sanctions are more cut and dry.
To be blunt on the matter, no, you’re stating what you’ve heard. Blizzard doesn’t automatically hand out account actions like op or a name change. More to the point of it GMs needing to take time to review what was reported, check account action history and if see if any rules was broken. If nothing show as rules as broken? Nothing would happen.
Yes, players will believe anything they are told sometimes. They will try to “mass report”.
What others are telling you is “mass reporting” doesn’t get anyone actioned. The most that could be done is a squelch, which means you can’t use chat channels until Blizzard investigates. This is only for spam reports, not Cheating or Name reports.
Does not matter then intent when someone reports you. Unless they see proof in the logs then nothing happens, NOTHING! You would not even know you got reported.
You’d be surprised what people do when they’re frustrated. The only reason it ‘worked’ is that a human looked at one of the reports and found signs of wrongdoing. One report is as strong as fifty.
Mass reporting in and of itself, despite the insistence of some who refuse to believe otherwise, does nothing except maybe cause a squelch pending an investigation.
You can also look at the many CSR posts emphasizing that mass reporting does not result in action taken. And the CSRs certainly know a lot more than any of us.
You’re welcome to believe whatever you want but there’s no proof mass reporting has done anything. One of the reports was looked at, an investigation was launched and a human GM deemed there was wrongdoing.
@OP: Your best course of action will be to file an appeal. Nothing can be done on this forum or any other forum for you in this regard. You can appeal as often as you want until a GM says they will no longer look at them.
IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY. If you was reported, and the GMs found you did nothing wrong, you wouldn’t even know you was reported. If you are being squelched for chat, a GM has to look at it no matter what.
If you said was true. I would have been perma-banned ingame and on the forums long ago.
This? This has nothing to do with player reports really. The anti cheat/botting category has to be confirmed on the back end by the Hacks team. Blizzard runs anti cheat programs at all times. It checks your computer memory related to the game, your game files, looks for signatures of known cheating programs, analyzes in-game behavior patterns, etc.
The MOST someone else can do in the cheating report category is bring a new bot type to the attention of Hacks. Who then researches its, figures out how to detect it, figures out how to break/block it if they can.
They run their anti cheat software and flag anyone using known cheats then ban in a ban wave.
Can they accidentally have a false flag? Yes. Just like antivirus software can have a false positive. It is not common though.
You getting reported had nothing to do with your ban for the hacking/botting category. Nothing at all.
Keep in mind having a program on your computer or should say having it active can make warden flag for investigation. Programs like autohotkey! If anyone else uses the computer, Do they have anything that could possibly give you issues?
I’m honestly not sure anymore with the automated system now-ah days. There seems to be way more automated actions vs real human customer service vs a few years ago. I think it’s the same reason payo was perma banned for “hacking” a few weeks ago. Clearly he’s not hacking nor botting but was banned for it. He’s a streamer so it was quickly overturned. It happened live and he made a few videos about it. But unfortunately not everyone is a streamer and voices can’t be heard etc.
Overall I’m really bummed but I’m more bummed about doing ashenvale everyday to get exalted again. At this point im only here for our community but post SoD I think i’ll be out for a long time.
Yes…definitely believe streamers. They’re known for their complete honesty at all times. They would never ever do or say things for views.
Thankfully, despite the nonsense and “proof” (which there’s nonse), the way the current system works does not automatically action people based on number of reports.
Here’s a great example of how we know this. Are there bots? Yes? But if people are reporting them, en mass, then they’d all be kicked offline right? No? They’re still in-game? Yes? Because mass reporting doesn’t actually force anyone offline with automated account actions.
I actually WISH in some cases that there was an automated or AI system. For example, when people come to the forums assuming that because A happened it had to have been because of B.
I hate to break it to you, but being a “streamer” has nothing to do with the appeals process. They treat everyone the same.
There’s not. People are shouting about it, because they get account actions and they want to latch onto any possible excuse to try and squirm out of it.
Now, hacking/botting/cheating is much more nebulous, and there are a number of reasons why it could’ve happened. Mistakes/false positives are certainly possible, but those would get corrected upon appeal. If many appeals are being upheld, then it’s time to drop the whole “I heard automation was used” schtick.
No one here cares. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but many people are getting sick of this excuse. Streamers will tell you anything you want to hear to get you to follow/sub/donate money. It’s why they whine and complain all the time: because it creates more drama and engagement and attention than someone who’s just content to play to game and enjoy it.
What happens to someone else rarely, if ever, would have any effect on your personal situation. They are separate situations, no matter what similarities you can find. Also, being a streamer doesn’t allow them anything extra when it comes to account actions. They are held to the same rules, and the same appeals process as everyone else.
If you want a good laugh Perl go to the Season of Discovery section on the Official forums and type DMF in the search bar and look how many times my name comes up for people to report me for botting/hacking/ect.
It’s kind of comical how many people think /follow and pet aggressive is botting.
Wind Serpents gotta eat Blizzard! Free them from the Pound!
Oh ya I have, I don’t pipe up often here. Just figured i’d post. Been playing since classic 2019. Have been running my guild. We’re pretty competitive, but still a dad guild. It’s what keeps me going!
But my main is purely gone, cata characters, wrath, all that jazz. Gone. So i’m going through the appeal process. And leveling a new character just in case I actually can’t get this reversed. That raid won’t tank itself etc lol.
