One of my friend account hit with closure for using unauthorized third-party program hack/cheat reason, yes he did twink leveling for his 2nd account and his friends full for 5 men party. Non of them were siting still at the entrance and just doing like regular run but with faster clearing due to twink.
The following is speculation, although it matches the described patterns of behavior and outcomes thus far.
FWIW, as far as I can tell from discussions, the bannable activity comes down to exploiting to evade a very specific restriction.
A twink can randomly group and no one is affected by an XP reduction, which is why leveling in a truly random Timewalking RFD run (not as the XP-off twink) is an extremely efficient way to level. But it’s random.
If an XP-off groups with another character before queuing, the group takes a big XP reduction, because Blizzard appears to have chosen to prevent coordinated twink carries for boosting. So arranging a boost and then grouping with the carrying twink doesn’t work as a boost method.
The bannable activity is using a combination of macros and odd activities (logging in and out, making and breaking groups, etc.) in order to glitch group formation so that the pre-formed group is inappropriately freed from the XP reduction, allowing full-fat boosts with coordinated groups using XP-off twink carries, in violation of Blizzard’s restrictions.
Exploiting a bug to evade an intentionally implemented restriction will always be bannable.
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This seems like a very very solid guess and if it is the case, would certainly be something they penalize for.
Same goes for anyone selling runs for real money.
What we DO know is that it is no “just” for making or using an XP off twink. That is fine.
I also see that part of the argument in this thread is that people don’t realize the Hacks team handles anti-cheat, and the GMs handle Social infractions (chat, names). Two different teams. There is no “squelch” function for cheating reports.
Blizzard would not be dumb enough to allow random reports to actually CLOSE accounts - that is not how the anti cheat system at Blizzard works. That would cost them millions in subs and be totally illogical. Warden is doing Warden anti cheat software things and false positives can happen.
We shall have to see how this all works out if they make any formal statements.
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Where does it say that? I looked over the forum and it doesn’t say anything about this being a “player-to-player help desk”.
The Customer Support forum cultivates a beneficial relationship between our support departments and player community by providing a friendly environment where players can exchange information, access self-help resources, discuss in-game issues, and receive meaningful guidance through personal and fun interactions with Blizzard representatives.
People who post in CS should expect a CS reply.
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It’s helpful to receive a reply from employees but it isn’t guaranteed.
And the welcome board also states that if you want to contact Customer Support directly, you need to use the support website avenue
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There’s an XP gain debuff for queueing with someone who has XP turned off. If you queue INTO that play however, you get normal XP.
The issue here lies with shenanigans conducted that mitigate said debuff. That’s very likely the source of the bans.
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No, because the Customer Support forums are not the avenue to reach Game Masters or developers. Support Forum Agents do not handle investigations for in-game account actions, handle QA, or develop the game.
My question is how they know they were banned specifically for this reason. Did a Game Master specifically explain in a ticket and/or email that an account was permabanned just for running TW dungeons with experience turned off? Because it seems absurd that someone would be reported or flagged by the system, investigated, and then have their account closed because they utilized two in-game features in exactly the way they were intended to be used.
The only explanation I can think of is what other people stated, which is that someone ran a low-level character with exp turned off, partied up with people to speed them through dungeons, whilst using some exploitative method to avoid the exp debuff that applies to party members grouped up with an exp-off player.
But the thing is, many people that get actioned come to the forums claiming that they were punished “without warning” or “for no reason” or just for “playing the game a certain way”, only for an SFA to respond with the real reasons they were punished. I’m certain we’ll hear back about this when the SFAs get into the office today.
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Yep…I’m not familiar with the process myself but that sounds very much like an exploit.
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I know a few twinks who got banned that did not use the macro.
This wave feels very random.
However to all the extremists out there saying people who ‘exploit’ deserves an instant permaban…
Most of what twinks do are is in the grey area, known as clever use of ingame mechanics. Aside from the already heavily mentioned queueing tricks that does NOT involve the macro, many twinks park themselves in tw instances (clear an instance after queuing then alt f4 at the end for dungeon to reset) to be able to repeatedly farm BIS gear from certain bosses but this is not talked about because most people who don’t twink obviously don’t see this. I honestly don’t know if this is considered an ‘exploit’ as it is clever use of game mechanics (ppl do this in classic all the time to avoid running back to entrance) but I know a few ppl who believe themselves to have gotten banned for doing this.
However this is no different than what many 80s are doing to…say…farm mounts. For example you can kill alysrazor in the firelands then fly over to ragnerous using the wings without clearing the whole raid. Demon hunters can skip to yogg directly without clearing ulduar. The list goes on. I’m sure there are many similar exploits/clever use of ingame mechanic in other similar content i’m not familiar with. Many mount farmers do this on a weekly basis. This is technically also a gray area between exploit and ‘clever use of in game mechanics’.
Lots of people’s opinion will change when they one day wake up on the wrong side of what blizzard considers an exploit and what simply considered clever use of in game mechanics. If blizzard is unhappy with what twinks are doing, throw out a warning or a few day ban if they’re feeling extra mean but a uncommunicated perma ban is going way too far.
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If you want to give your thoughts on something, you’d want to do that in general. The CS forum isn’t for personal debate on what is or isn’t something.
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Or, they say they didn’t. There’s no way to know from the outside what they did or didn’t do unless you were sitting next to them 24/7 watching their screen.
Or maybe they’ll re-review the data and realize that the numbers they were basing their bans off of was incorrect and some people will have their bans overturned or lessened, it has happened before.
If people think they were banned in error, it’s important that they submit appeals. Blizzard will re-review their specific data with a fresh set of eyes.
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Obviously there is no way to know for certain. Perhaps they did use the macro previously and is only getting punished now. However these people are 1st generation twinks who only play their 11s/20s/30s for fun and have 0 reason to boost ppl. The only ‘crime’ they’ve committed is farming tw gear by resetting instances and that’s in the grey zone. The sheer volume of this ban wave is also a first and the fact that there were also level 70 twinks (70 twinks are more powerful than level 11 twinks in dungeons and can directly qeueue with people without applying xp debuff so no need for macro at all) raises some eye brows.
Furthermore, one of my friends DID use the macro but he received a perma ban 3 weeks ago before the ban wave so I find it odd they’re doing a wave now instead of just banning individually.
Of the roughly 10ish ppl that was banned so far that I know, only a few have managed to overturn their unban but it was after spamming tickets until they got a real gm (one that began with ‘hello _____ gamemaster here, etc etc’). The only thing I can do for them is to pray and wait.
Again, you don’t know that for sure.
Only one ticket at a time is needed. Opening a bunch won’t get them any faster or more favorable results. They should appeal until they’re told to stop and each appeal will have another (real human) GM look at the data.
Spinning out stories about their theoretical activities and the theoretical methodology behind the bans doesn’t help anyone.
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