My account was hit with a permanent ban Saturday evening. The email I received said that I was using unauthorized cheat programs, hacking/botting. I have never done anything of the sort. I have had this account since highschool and play all the time. I need help, I just want my account back. I don’t want to lose over a decade worth of progress for nothing.
I put a ticket in, in hopes of a hasty fix. I’ve tried tweeting @BlizzardCS to try to get someone to look into it. I have had no luck anywhere.
I don’t know what else to do, so now I’m here, hoping someone can help me get things back to how they were.
To be frank, all you can do is wait. The blues here, nor anyone manning the twitter account, have no power over the appeals them. More so when said appeals team don’t talk about cases as they’ll just review the logs.
After scanning a few other topics, I see that’s the case. It’s just so frustrating to be banned, and for something I didnt even do.
I’m just trying to gain some traction in one way or another. I saw a thread from 7 days ago by someone named Hackbot having the exact same issue I’m having, and his ban was overturned.
And posting here had nothing to do with that, to be blunt. I understand how you feel but point at other threads won’t have any affect on your own appeal(s). All you can do is wait.
This has been sent up for further review - but you may very well receive upholds from those tickets if the answer isn’t back by the time they come up in queue.
If this gets overturned from the in-depth review, they’ll email you to let you know.
Yeah, I get it. It just seemed like getting some traffic on these got results. I’m trying to be patient, but after close to 36 hours without a response, I just feel doomed.
I’m not trying to cite an argument, but you’d be incorrect in assuming. Blizzard does not give a play-by-play of the process; you simply file an appeal ticket, and it goes from there.
This has been sent up for further review - but you may very well receive upholds from those tickets if the answer isn’t back by the time they come up in queue.
Can you clarify what you mean here? I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand.
Except there have been plenty of them. Folks have been reporting back near daily about things being overturned - without any “help” from your discord. Not only are you perpetuating falsehoods, you are advertising for a third-party platform. Not very smart on the most heavily moderated forum there is.
The process may be clunky and not ideal for either side of the equation - but the process does work. Perhaps not as quickly or as resolutely as it should be, but it does work.
As far as I know it’s not against TOS to post about discord servers from a legit addon. If it is, I have no issues removing it. I wasn’t trying to spread false info. I was just telling of my and many others experiences.
Also trying to advise someone of “workarounds” is equally as troubling. There are no such things. What might have worked for you or anyone else isn’t guaranteed to work for someone else. Thankfully, live chat is still unavailable for people to force themselves into a path that isn’t meant for appeals.
Folks have to appeal through tickets. Only one ticket is needed. Spamming multiple categories does nothing but perhaps put that person closer to staff harassment where absolutely no more tickets will be entertained.
Unfortunately, when tickets are escalated up, as can be the case with alleged hacks/cheats/botting activities, players are not alerted of this. That is a Blizzard issue that should be addressed, but still has no bearing on trying to shill for a process that you’re trying to put forward. Our SFAs here are usually happy to relay that info along to a player if someone posts here to inquire about their ticket.
Same thing happened to me March 19 2024. Just got the message during the Tuesday Maintenance. My heart sank, I only use curseforge apps. NEVER have cheated. I don’t understand…Sucks to lose 2 years of characters and achievements for nothing. I guess i just wait and hope.
Also please breathe Mcbee. I know it is really really stressful and upsetting. The only thing you can do right now is appeal and hope that there was an error made.
A bit of background about Suspensions and Bans in general:
They (the Hacks team) do investigate cheating software, botting software, automation techniques and scripts thoroughly. That is why it takes weeks, or months, before they do a “ban wave”. As they gather data they put together detection methods and criteria that they can run. That detects accounts that meet the criteria for that specific cheat they are looking for. Then they double check to make sure they really are accurately detecting the cheat they are after, and not something else. If it passes that check they may wield the ban hammer on all detected and flagged as using it.
Sounds great, but there have been times that the detection criteria has a mistake in it. That it picks up something else and mistakes it for the cheat. Just like a false positive with antivirus software. That usually gets figured out after 24-48 hours after a ban wave. IF that happens they usually do a mass - unban for those who had the false positive, but retain the ban on those who were accurately detected.
If that is all the Hacks team, what do GMs do? They take appeals as they get filed, review the account to see that it is flagged with a positive detection mark, and uphold it if that is the case. They can’t see what the Hacks team is up to, and early on in a ban wave they won’t know there is an error. The GMs can only go off what the flags on the account are. First appeal is almost always denied using a templated email approved by the powers above. Further appeals may also be denied if GMs are not told otherwise. In SOME cases they can escalate an appeal for a Specialist to review and see if there is something odd going on. That results in closed tickets and a long wait for an answer from the Specialist team.
You can appeal until they tell you that any more appeals will be considered GM harassment. Be polite, and don’t open more than one ticket at once.
What happens to the people who are falsely flagged, then appeal, and the appeal is upheld (which Mirasol says almost always happens), and that player then says, “Oh well… I guess I’m screwed and my WoW days are over.” And they quit. Is that good for the game or bad for the game? Honestly, how would they even know to keep appealing and appealing and appealing over and over and over again until finally someone escalates it to someone who can actually clear them?
IF they choose not to appeal for whatever reason - that’s the players choice. Some players a looking for an excuse to leave. Others who understand they have vested money and time into their accounts will generally fight harder.
Generally, if they feel they are truly innocent that will find their way to the forum, or guild members might tell them to keep appealing etc.
