Can we get a public response from Blizzard on what is going on here?
In the XP Off discords, on reddit, in wow forums… lots of people are posting about being permanently banned without warning for running low level XP off characters through timewalking dungeons.
I have not queued ANY xp off timewalking at all this week out of fear of being banned.
Is it suddenly against the rules to turn off XP and run timewalking with geared characters of any level?
Can those of us not banned get some assurance we can actually continue to run timewalking with XP off as we did throughout the Anniversary event?
Blizzard won’t tell you why other people got actioned.
No. Blizzard enables players to lock their level with the experience eliminators, they wouldn’t do this if the very act of playing those characters was inherently a rule violation. The two main things I can think of that would actually get someone in hot water is inappropriate advertisements (services must be advertised in the services channel, not cross realm, etc.), and I have heard that people found a way to avoid the party-wide experience debuff that occurs when forming a manual party. If you aren’t doing those things, or using inappropriate communication, I fully expect you to be fine.
They have support articles on the service which are rather-recent. It’s not an accident that players can disable experience gain.
Edit: If you are running with your own character and multiboxxing, you also cannot do any form of streamlining. Each WoW client should be switched to and made active before issuing any commands, no input broadcasting, etc. That could also be a mistake people make while doing timewalking with a low-level to boost their other characters.
There is a post about this in the WoW Coomunity Council forum:
You won’t get an answer as to exactly why Blizz hammered a group, unless they decide to make a Blue about this specific issue. Hard to say one way or another if they will for this issue.
Perhaps, when playing, the best litmus test: is this reasonable game play I am doing? Part of that consideration is, how was this designed to be played? Too far outside the box carries risk.
Also, General is probably a better place for a discussion on this.
Blizzard is never going to reveal on what actions they would take on another player, nor will explain the reason why. Now, take in with a grain of salt on what players would say anywhere within the forums, reddit, or even on discords. Because it could exactly be something else as to what got there game account closed or suspended than what they are claiming.
If players are feeling that they’re actions are a mistake, they can submit an appeal, but Blizzard is never going to reveal on what action is going to be taken against another player, or why. And they will not show the logs also for multiple reasons.
The age of the account does not mean less risk from any action taken if caught breaching any of Blizzard’s policies.
Turning the experience off and running a dungeon is not in breach of any policies. As I just said, you don’t really know the full story, so take everything people have said with a grain of salt.
Yes, so long as you advertise appropriately, and everyone is playing their own character. It’s an unsupported transaction, but it isn’t against the rules to pay in-game for an in-game service.
Ah, ok. Didn’t think it was that much, don’t know where I got 906 from.
Anyways, either way, doesn’t matter what amount of mount a person may have, doesn’t matter how long a person has been playing, it doesn’t prevent any risk of any actions made if caught breaching the policies. Also, just to pull this up
There is no automated report feature, and all actions are made by actual humans. Sometimes, it doesn’t even take a report, though this is if the Warden has detected something on the person’s computer. But nothing is automated, and all account actions are done by actual humans.
Now, grouping with someone in such a way that they don’t get the secondary XP off debuff (where manually grouping with someone with locked XP reduces your XP gain by 95%) will probably land you both in hot water.
Yes. But if you do it as an organized group as some of these people are then that is considered a boosting community. Boosting communities have been banned by Blizzard, boosting is not banned however. Still allowed to boost people even using your twinks, just cannot do it as part of an organized group like many have been doing. That is why some have been banned and others have not been.
The inherent problem with this is that as a level 10 or 11, you’re going to need to be xp off or you’re going to level up and stop being able to dump on timewalking dungeons. If you’re xp off and manually group with other people, they will not be able to gain xp, which means you won’t be able to boost them. So if you’re selling boosts for gold and then doing it on a level 11 xp off character, then you’re likely bypassing the xp off system which would be seen as exploiting.
You can actually move it yourself by editing your original post and choosing a different forum for it.
If there were to be an announcement, it wouldn’t come from CS, it would come from the community team.
Personally, I’d recommend a new thread without the conspiracy theories of “automated account actions” as those will likely lead to this thread being outright removed anyway. You’re welcome to believe any streamer you want (and they appreciate your clicks for money), but I’ll stick by what we’ve been told by Blizzard employees.
During a ban-wave, yes, there’s some automation to it but it’s based on criteria that has been developed by human employees. This can, albeit rarely, lead to innocent people getting caught up in account actions. That’s why there is an appeals process.
We’ve also seen Blizz un-ban accounts (again via a system) to correct the criteria and remove actions from accounts that might have been caught up in the original actions.
That said, it really does sound like people were exploiting (in my own opinion) and that those who were, likely knew what they were doing was wrong.
Last thing I’ll add is that discussing account actions is against the forum rules themselves. So while you’re asking for information about account actions in general, getting into specific cases actually crosses the line and leads to things like name calling and trolling. I’d highly recommend against that.
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend any thread. If anyone does get action taken against their account, best thing they can do is just appeal to see if Blizzard did make an error on their end.
EDIT: Ofcourse, the person can come to Customer Support to get help, but I wouldn’t advise in creating any thread in relation to account actions.
Its a shame this thread became so hostile, as I believe something is truly amiss here.
I created a lvl 11 warrior for twinking over the weekend, ran timewalking and was banned on tuesday - this was my main account that I had only recently bought a 12 month sub on, why would I be so insane as to do something ridiculously nefarious, but alas I was told there was substantial evidence of cheating.
Only thing I can think of that is at least within recent months is launching Final Fantasy XIV while WoW was running and buying a new mmo mouse Redragon.
Its heartbreaking they chose to keep it permanent, I would have taken a 6 months, but being left in the dark and not being able to talk out what might have happened with a person is absolutely soul crushing.
Nobody here is being hostile. It is just circular arguments and disagreements.
That’s the thing, we don’t know what really happened. We don’t have access to the logs to say what really happened. And if there was something in relation to level 11 twinks in Timewalking dungeons, there also would’ve been some sort of announcement in relation to it, with Blizzard confirming it would’ve been an exploit, as we’ve seen countless over times on other stuff.
But we can’t confirm on what really happened, what the logs say, or the true purpose of the account action. Only thing that can be done, is just continue appealing until told stop.
Well, then nothing more here can be done. I’m sorry that this has happened to you, I wish I did have more information to really say what happened. But the aim of the forums isn’t to really speculate on why someone has been actioned.
Thing is, only the game license would be closed too, I assume, and not the entire BNet account, and you can have upto 8 game licenses on the 1 BNet account as well.
I’ve had a level 10 Priest last night, a variant on the now classic 11 Fury Warrior and replacing Whirlwind with Holy Nova. They had XP disabled. I didn’t report them or anything because, like many here, I’m uncertain of what the stance is in regards to this.
‘Twinking’ out a character has never been actioned. In fact it seems officially supported with the XP disabling function being an actual NPC. Twinking has been a thing since the very beginnings of WoW (What was it, level 19 Rogue, double Falchions with Fiery Weapon, Arena Master trinket, etc.) and it would be a sudden snap to see it stopped with a heavy hand.
I’m of the opinion that it is for some other underlying reason. I won’t go in depth about said opinion because this isn’t really the place, but I am almost absolutely certain it is not due to twinking in and of itself.
Perhaps a CSR can provide more information, but anything anyone else says here, aside from the derailment that I think has been very accurately covered by others, is pure speculation.