Should all WoW cheaters be perma banned?

[Jahaga]

Diablo and Overwatch players can also come back and give Blizzard more money by buying a new game.

WoW has a monthly subscription fee on top of buying the game. More. Money.

[purebalance]

Probably they start a fresh account orrrr... yeah, dunno!

The account is tied to your game that you bought.

[Yamzi]

Ban the credit card used too.

Prepaid card?

[Foj]

Wouldn't bother me if cheaters were banned from every battle.net anything, as long as the "detect cheater" process was pretty reliable.

PS: If you let your brother use your 11 year old WoW with your Black Qiraji mount on it and he runs HonorAFKer and you get permabanned that's +1 Blizzard. Well actually +1000 Blizzard at least. That's a fuckin' message.

[MoanaLisa]

A permanent ban for cheating would be fine. Not too harsh at all.

[Hotmail]

Wouldn't bother me if cheaters were banned from every battle.net anything, as long as the "detect cheater" process was pretty reliable.

Blizzard should invest more in Warden and after that they can ban for whatever amount of time they want, as long as the banwaves happen every 2-3 months.

[Deleted]

I think it's really easy to say yeah, they should all be perma-banned, but... Well, there's a ton of stories out there about kids who fucked up and cheated, got banned for however long and came back after learning their lesson to play legit. I believe in second chances, so yeah.

[Alvito]

They buy to play games seem to take a different approach then the subscription based one... odd. Depending on what you do I think they should lock your account for good. Sometimes they do that, often they don't. Every so often they give different reasons why they respond the way they do.

[Flatspriest]

Personally, I agree with the way Blizzard is already doing it with WoW as to try and see if the cheaters can be redeemed. They used to perma-ban cheaters and about a year ago went to the model they have now and it is hopefully working.

[huehuehue]

Prepaid card?

sure, but its all about making them take extra steps to deter some of the cheaters

[styil]

Why is that strange? WoW is subscription based, so that means they come back and give Blizzard more money.

WoW has a monthly subscription fee on top of buying the game. More. Money.

Your original argument was that WoW's 6/18 month suspensions weren't strange because WoW is sub based, and people will return and give Blizzard more money. The problem there is that there will be no revenue for Blizzard for 6/18 months as they wait to "return".

My argument was that with permanent bans, people will not wait 6/18 months for their suspension to be lifted and just buy a new game straight away and give Blizzard even more money straight away.

[Aurabolt]

EQ2 implemented this prison server where instead of banning people they send the cheaters to that server and forever after your account only has access to that server. Wonder how well that could work in WoW?

An interesting idea. I think a Prison Server would work for repeat offenders. It would come in two levels: A B-Net accountwide Suspended Debuff and then getting thrown into the Prison world.

The debuff effects ALL chars on the account for a set number of days. They lose all communication privilages unless it's Blizz directly. They can't gain EXP, Rep or money. Their stats are scaled down to 25% strength as well based on their gear, level and spec. They also can't enter arenas, dungeons, BGs or Raids. They are also attackable by members of their own faction FFA style anywhere. Difference is guards will try to kill them if they attack another player. In this way they still can technically play their account but it is severely limited in terms of what they can do. LOL.

If they get busted while suspended, they get sent to a Prison World. It has all of the above plus all NPCs are hostile to them and are buffed to Raid-level if they're dumb enough to aggro someone. If by some miracle a Raid team manages to kill say, a superbuffed Murloc, everyone who participated will have their stats slightly restored. This will go on until the account has most locked functions restored. They will then be put in a que to be on Probation Status. This basically means NPCs won't be trying to kill them on sight anymore. LOL.

If only Blizzard was open to doing something this sadistic XD

[Servasus]

I had a Runescape account, which had like 18 level 99s on it (Don't judge me.) perma banned by Jagex because I quit for a year, and during that time I was hacked and someone used my account to bot. This was years before Jagex released the authenticator for Runescape. I decided to play the game again and was shocked to see my account banned. Since Jagex has no customer service number, you can only appeal your ban through a form on their site. They basically replied "You were the one stupid enough to get yourself hacked. The perma ban stays."

I thought this was pretty bullshit. 12 months of inactivity on an account that wasn't even authenticator capable, and apparently it's my fault and oh well better luck next time. Hundreds of hours lost. Is that fair? No. Not at all. Had authenticators been a thing and I just had been lazy and not activated it. Sure. But that wasn't the case.

If my WoW account had been hacked and used to bot or hack, Blizzard would give me my stuff back and tell me to re-secure my account so long as I had proof I wasn't the one doing the botting or hacking, which would be relatively easy to prove.

My point with all this is that, as long as Blizzard continues to ACTUALLY investigate accounts, and doesn't just perma-ban every account with absolutely no appeal, then I'd be fine with it. If you're the one doing the stuff on the account that violates the ToS, then you should be banned permanently. It's not cool. But if you're hacked somehow, and it's clear to see someone accessed your account from a remote location and/or IP, especially during long breaks of inactivity, Blizzard should continue to be intelligent and release bans on the accounts they investigate and find suspect to hacking. Maybe even force you to activate the authenticator before you're allowed to log in again. Boom. Problem solved. If you get hacked AFTER the authenticator is active, then you were probably the one botting and then can just be perma banned again.

TL;DR: Yes, perma bans are good for those that are actually violating the TOS, but if a person gets hacked and their account is used to violate TOS, the account should be re-secured and released to the proper owner.

[DownToFarm]

I was permabanned from wow on first and only offence. I may be biased but I dont think perma-bans are the way to go ever. People grow up. Its been 6 years since I was banned. People have gone to and been released from jail in the same time period for things far worse than botting in a video game.

[Jahaga]

Your original argument was that WoW's 6/18 month suspensions weren't strange because WoW is sub based, and people will return and give Blizzard more money. The problem there is that there will be no revenue for Blizzard for 6/18 months as they wait to "return".

My argument was that with permanent bans, people will not wait 6/18 months for their suspension to be lifted and just buy a new game straight away and give Blizzard even more money straight away.

Yeah, I got that. You assume banned players are willing to lose their progress by buying a new copy and making a new account. They're more likely to return after the ban period.

[Servasus]

I was permabanned from wow on first and only offence. I may be biased but I dont think perma-bans are the way to go ever. People grow up. Its been 6 years since I was banned. People have gone to and been released from jail in the same time period for things far worse than botting in a video game.

Yeah, except that prison is kind of a much bigger deal than being perma banned, and a lot of the people who get sent to prison hopefully learn their lesson and don't repeat their crime.

But getting banned from a video game? Really? Most people will just buy a new account and start over if they REALLY want to play. If they don't, they probably didn't care about the game that much anyway, and would most likely not really learn their lesson from the perma ban in the first place.

The perma ban is not there to punish the botter or hacker. It's there to make the game more fair and better all around for those of us who play legitimately.

[Deleted]

Do permabans prevent them from buying another account and starting fresh?

Obviously not.

[tangers58]

Nope, WoW's hack detection is very flawed. People are banned all the time for shit they didn't do, I was once for "running a banned third party program" when all I had been doing that week was grinding archeology achievements O.o

[Fang7986]

Obviously not.

Blizz has said the reason they do 6months bans is because from the info they have people are more likely to start a new acct and cheat again with perma bans but with 6months bans people are more likely to wait it out and use the acct again and be less likely to cheat again

[ReleaseDay]

Depends on the cheat. Generally I think permabans are too harsh. They should however revoke all achievements, levels, gold, pets, mounts, gear, titles etc obtained via cheats/bots/other illegal acts. They can revoke these, and perhaps even add penalties to the account, such as debuffs and what not. But permbans should only be handed out in the most extreme cases.