I was leveling with my girlfriend in Maraudon when we were randomly banned. We received an e-mail stating that our account was closed due to hacking/exploits. The only reason I can think of is Blizzard’s automated bot detection triggered our accounts for some reason. Maybe there was another member in our party that was botting, not sure. I have never botted/exploited the game, or any game, so there is no risk of any kind of PC contamination.
Upon receiving our bans, we immediately submitted appeals. Her ticket was met with a friendly GM, Game Master Kihibacy, that immediately escalated her ticket to their Specialist Team, mine, not so lucky. I have submitted upwards of 7 appeals now begging for my ban appeal to be escalated to the Specialist Team as well, only to be met with GM auto replies stating that the appeal has been reviewed and will not be overturned.
I have 13 years invested into this account and countless memories with friends and family. That being said, I would never risk jeopardizing it. To have my account wrongly banned during the holidays with absolutely no GM support to help investigate the issue, it feels like I’ve been robbed of all my joy in my off time and the Game Masters that are supposed to help set things right are doing nothing.
My girlfriend and I use World of Warcraft to spend our time together while I’m away for work. This happening after taking time off for the holidays to play together just makes it that much worse for us.
I don’t know what else to do now, some community members told me to make a post here to try and get help. Hoping to gain some friendly insight or welcomed assistance from a GM, thanks.
No gms here all u can do is keep apealign they tell u to stop telling them to escalate is basicly pulling a karren they go by logs and when can and cant be proved nothing u say or do will mater nor posting here will help.
This suggests to me that her ticket wasn’t submitted via the appeals ticket and may have been escalated to a team that bears no relevance to the hacks team, but it’s purely speculation. I’ve yet to see an appeals ticket with a successful overturn have a game master’s signature like that.
But unfortunately nothing will come of posting on the forums here, there are neither game masters nor the hacks team to connect with. That can only be done by submitting appeals tickets.
I found a reddit post that had some successful overturns with a human GM response. I’ll just keep appealing until I’m unable to. Invested 12 years into this account. I can’t just let it go when I’ve never violated ToS T_T
This would be done to the decision of the hacks team. Sadly, only way to get it sorted out is by submitting an appeal. Now, sometimes, during banwaves, innocent players do get caught in the crossfire of the banwaves, though this is quite rare that people do. But we can’t tell that here, and only way to know is by submitting an appeal. As Vrakthris would say:
There is no automated bot detection that triggers accounts actions. The Warden sends logs to Blizzard. Those logs are manually reviewed by Blizzard, where then the team responsible will take appropiate action if those logs do say something. We can’t exactly tell you what it really is, or what the logs actually say, and neither is Blizzard due to actual botters who want to find a way round Blizzard’s Warden.
There is no GM’s on the forums. The Blizzard Blues that do frequent these forums are Support Forum Agents, and they have no involvement with the appeal process.
Reddit is a bad source for a lot of things. It is one of those places where people are bad at spreading mis/disinformation in-regards to Blizzard and the policies.
All tickets reviewed are all human responses. Blizzard just uses templates.
Now, the chances that it is something else in regards to the game license closure and not being one of those caught in the recent banwave, you’ll need to look through on your computer. Because there is a lot that could’ve triggered for the Warden to send logs to the hack team for action to be taken too.
It may be another program related for work or another game.
Could be using outside maro’s tied to a mouse or keyboard.
Someone could’ve used your computer and installed something for a different game even…
Like, these are just some examples, out of a whole lot. But we can’t tell you what it is, and this is not something Blizzard would share also for reasons mentioned. But as mentioned, only thing you can do, is appeal, and see if Blizzard did make an error on their end.
Please note: You can keep submitting appeals until Blizzard says to stop. If you refuse to stop after being told to stop, further account action can be taken on the entire Battle.net account.
Well this was heart breaking to read. I wouldn’t be going through this much trouble if I had knowingly done something wrong. 12 years gone for a reason unknown to me
I’m on my alt account fearing I’m just going to get banned on that one too. Guess I’ll just quit all together if I do
Sometimes Blizzard actually can make mistakes. That is the point of the appeal process.
Relevant post:
So I would not go ahead and start accusing someone of using cheats or exploits, especially when you don’t have access to any of the data to really confirm.
Well. Just to cover the bases, a lot of the times things are escalated and the player never is informed of it. I cannot even begin to remember how many times someone has posted here, just as you have, for it to only be revealed that someone’s case was escalated and the player completely unaware. There is a disconnect in communications, especially when they lean so heavily on their templates.
Then too - when a case is escalated, the originating ticket is closed out like it would be any other time. There isn’t any separate ticket number given, and it’s closed out because technically this tier of assistance has run it’s course.
So as has been said, keep at it. The system isn’t perfect, but it does work, even if it takes longer than either party would like.
Sorry for the late reply, don’t want to see you quit the game. As said, Blizzard can make mistakes too. Just appeal, and keep on appealing until they say stop.
We don’t have access to any of the logs to really say what is going on, and don’t want to see you give up because of a possible error made on Blizzard’s end.
Does this mean “we each got an email that our respective accounts were banned,” or are you saying that you are sharing a single account? I think from other things you said that it’s the first one. But if it’s the second one, that is not allowed and could be the cause of the problem.
It’s odd that your girlfriend’s case would be escalated and yours would not. Was her account action overturned as a result of the escalation? Or is it still in review?
Sometimes people have work related software on their computers that can trigger the detection program. That’s something you might want to examine.
Well, sometimes the moderators can look into these cases and at least offer a status update or even a little insight into where the review is. A moderator’s inquiry is not going to impact the result, but a little information can be helpful to the customer.
FTFY.
Juliarose, please keep up the appeals. I hope it works out and you get a successful result. Good luck!!
I’m bookmarking this as it would be illegal not to.
While technically it is not required for them, sometimes the CS agents may look at player actions and provide minor insight into the situation for people who genuinely have questions, though game masters who actually investigate and action accounts won’t tell you exactly why you were suspended/banned, and that is intentional to prevent abusers from using the information to circumvent detection in the future. I know this must be frustrating, but go through the proper channels available to you.
Also, as a mod is likely to close this, I would like to say good morning to whoever locks the thread
Also, noone has pointed out that it doesn’t matter what you were doing when the ban hit. These types of investigations take time, and it could’ve been for actions that took place weeks or even months ago. There is a delay before banwaves for a reason. I’ve had to post this like 6 times recently. From a former Blizzard employee who worked on the Hacks team.