Should all WoW cheaters be perma banned?

[moremana]

Playing Devil's Advocate a bit now but that's like saying all crime should be lifesentence no matter whether it was a minor theft or a mass murder.

It should, if you do something wrong you know its wrong .... get it.

[Deleted]

Yeah, al cheaters in Rated PvP.

[Deleted]

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

Do you realize you can buy prepaid cards for less on key sites right? I never payed my sub directly to blizzard when I was playing.

[Cæli]

Here starts the excuses. Was waiting for this. I have been playing for 8 plus years some of my friends and guildies even more. Guess what I never ever had that problem or have heard of it. Don't cheat and one doesn't get banned. If a program is questionable guess what don't use it. Pretty simple.

Me too. 1x8 years is nothing out of millions. Of course we're not banned. But anything can happen. You can get banned without doing something bad. Even if you're unlucky enough for having a hacker figuring your email, password and authentication key, you could get banned for sharing your account (even if you got hacked). Now chances for it to happen are almost impossible but this is just an example of how unfair the system is. Got incredibly unlucky ? too bad for you. It's not acceptable.

[Deleted]

Cheaters should be perma banned on first offence. Its not hard to understand, everyone knows cheating is bad so don't cheat.

[Deleted]

I thought blizzard had already stated that they will not permanently ban cheaters because they believe in short term bans.

[Deleted]

Yes. Cheaters should generally receive a perma ban.

[Zigrifid]

Perma ban is the way to go , but consider this , if they perma ban every cheater the game will lose 80% if not more of the "gladiator" rate playerbase
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ__IBSFu1E watch this video you will understand what im saying.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Should be IP banned, permanently.

[XorMalice]

No.

For repeat offenders, sure. But they already do that.
For certain really ludicrous cheats, sure. But they already do that.

There's three main arguments against it.
1- You might be a cheater in 2016 but not in 2017. I don't personally find this argument compelling: cheating should merit a harsh punishment. It is compelling from a subscription standpoint, however, and Blizzard probably considers it to some degree.
2- Accidental cheat identification. When WoW was still fairly new, and then again a couple years later, WoW hack banwaves went out to... Linux players. Warden was smart enough to figure out something was strange and it couldn't see what was going on, but not smart enough to realize it was running on WINE. Players running development tools have sometimes been flagged falsely as well. These are non-cheating players, and these bans were reversed, but this was definitely an annoyance.
3- Revenge cheating. Your girlfriend is angry at you, and runs a hack to try to get you permabanned. You almost can't defend against this without refusing to share your login, in which case, what are you hiding? Etc. This one really resonates with me, but it usually gets mocked in these discussions with absolutist opinions ("never share your login with anyone!", "what's wrong with anyone's relationship who has had this problem?", "everyone should cease being in a relationship with unstable people immediately forever!"). More reasonably, it also creates a second issue- if this is an affirmative defense, every cheater would use it.

Blizzard's ban-waves are too infrequent to be as discouraging as they should be, but simply closing accounts a whole bunch more would create a lot of problems, and not solve many. The current method of increasing ban length eventually yielding a perma-ban virtually guarantees that everyone with a perma-ban, or even a third ban, is at least guilty of SOMETHING, and more than once. Case 1 resolves itself as the player learns their lesson, Case 2 never escalates because the issue gets resolved during the accidental temp ban, and Case 3 resolves as that is very unlikely to happen repeatedly.

[Hypasonic]

Yes, I honestly don't understand why people feel the need to cheat on a game, it's just sad. Don't have the time to farm w/e it is you need? Play another game.

[La]

If you cheat you should be banned for good. People who cheat in video games are generally shitty people who don't deserve a second chance and will probably find some other way to get their kicks at the expense of another persons enjoyment.

[TheVaryag]

Should all WoW cheaters be perma banned on their first offence? Most cheaters in WoW are given temporary suspensions with varying lengths before a permanent ban is even considered. Is it time that Blizzard took a zero tolerance policy for cheating in WoW too?

Overwatch is introducing a zero tolerance policy for cheaters. Diablo 3 cheaters have recently been permenantly banned too. So it seems like there is a shift towards a zero tolerance policy within Blizzard. While it may deter some people from cheating, players are not given a chance to change their behavior and show that they have learned from their mistakes. Lore explains that here:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...6375?page=2#24
However this stance seems to be conflicting with the company's current philosophy on cheating: the Overwatch and Diablo devs seem to believe that perma bans are the way to go, but not the WoW devs.

With Overwatch and Diablo 3 now permanently banning first time cheaters, is it time that WoW followed suit and began permanently banning cheaters on their first offence? Or is a permanent ban right off the bat too harsh of a penalty for WoW? Would it simply not work in WoW as Lore suggests?

Big no.

Me and friends, and others many others were unable to KEEP PLAYING WoW or other blizzard games, because of false positives from Blizzard. Many people get and will get Innocently banned, false positives as I said and will be unable to defend It. That shouldn't happen, Instant ban with no appeal no nothing Is BAD for customer support.

Why would you want worse customer treatment, do you want them to treat us ALL worse?

They should give people second chances, minimum second chances. Especially because me, and others are unable to play WoW now that we've loved for 10 years because Blizzard stubbornly believed we broke the rules of the game and keeps us banned, doesn't allow us to make a stance, talk to them or do anything else, they are donkeys. They are right, we are wrong. "You are banned, don't talk to us anymore, bye"...

That Is not how you treat your customers, that Is not how they treated their customers 6+ years ago.

[Deleted]

It should, if you do something wrong you know its wrong .... get it.

Life isn't black & white unfortunately. I don't think stealing food when you're in poverty and need to feed your family is necessarily "wrong" when you have no other choice left (better to let kids starve?) or same as murdering someone just because.

Same with supposed "cheating". If someone has his account hacked for whatever reason and there is some botting/goldselling etc going on his account I don't think such account should get perma ban just because someone lost temporarily control of his account.

That's why IRL works "case by case" and not just generalizing everything.

[Chemii]

I got banned for six months for using honour buddy to level up some alts. I accepted the ban for what it was and haven't used the program since, I don't even have it installed. That said all I did was buy a new licence on the same battle net account. I didn't lose anything but my characters and with the level boost (it cost me a bit) I was back raiding within a week.

The one thing I will say is if you ban everyone permanently for "cheating", then why don't we execute everyone for criminal offences? Oh that's right because its fucking dumb to generalise.

Stealing a chocolate bar from a shop isn't exactly murder is it.

[Mhyroth]

Let's give everyone who does anything wrong in life permanent punishment. Maybe, just maybe we're all hypocrits who don't do anything wrong right ?
It all depends on how bad the cheating/breaking the rules is, just as with life.
Some Chinese goldfarming company with 100's of computers will be back, even if you ban them all. A "personal" guy who uses a cheat just for his 1 account without any intentions to make a profit is still a cheater but to lesser extend. Punishing everyone in the same manner, even though the gravity of the rule broken is different is just plain wrong.
I'm not here to defend cheaters, just saying that people are too easy to judge a cheater, when there's different variations/grades in cheating.
Just like the poster above me said "Stealing a chocolate bar from a shop isn't exactly murder is it."

PS: let's all give our driving licenses back to the government because we crossed that red light or got a speeding ticket shall we ? We broke the rules but the punishment is different on the severity of the rule broken.

Biased MMO-C readers are biased.

[Chemii]

Cheating with honor buddy at wow scale is a grave offense and you should be perma banned. 6 months to a guy like you is a slap in the wrist. You didn't learn your lesson you will 100% do it again in the future and you have the mentality of a cheater. I convey this from the fact that you make the false equation "stealing a chocolate bar isn't exactly murder".

Yes ofc and thats why stealing a choco bar is a minor offense and murder is a capital offense. In the scale of wow where people struggle to make some honor and get some gear your honor buddy boosting scheme offers you unfair advantage and ruins the game experience for everyone else. You effectively introduce bots into live gameplay.

Im sure you don't understand how despicable your behavior is else you wouldnt do it in the first place. But yes you should have met your end in wow and I still hope that one day we can get rid of players like you so we can finally see whos actually a HOTA (Hero of the Alliance) and whos just BOTA (Bot of the Alliance).

P.S. Nothing personal against you as a person but all in against such player mentality.

This is quite comical and only highlights how clueless you and many others are about botting, honestly.

It's simply coincidental that "Honor" is in the name of the program. In a sense bot programs do whatever you tell them to do. I never entered a battleground or arena and while questing out in the world, the bot was never once whispered or interacted with once, as it is capable of responding automatically, so players "think" its a person.

I'm not sure how you conclude that I negatively impacted anyone's playtime through some "boosting scheme", whatever that is when nothing I was involved in during the botting was competitive or used to give me an advantage over anyone, most of the time a bot is a lot slower than a normal person questing.

Again, stealing a chocolate bar is not the same offence as murder - both are against the law. You can get banned for wall jumping and I've lost count of how many people have been underneath Stormwind. Should we ban everyone permanently? Get a fucking grip.

[Amantino]

First time, no. 6 months is more than fine. I've known many who learned their lesson after getting banned and losing all their gold.
Second time? Permban them. Their whole battle.net account, so they lose access to other games as well.

Just like if you can permanently lose your drivers licence by driving while intoxicated several times.

[Smauldy]

All cheating that is proven should be perma banned. No second chances.

[Deleted]

Should all wow perma banned be cheaters?

Yes, they should.