I get the feeling that there's more to the OP's story than he claims.
I get the feeling that there's more to the OP's story than he claims.
2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"
Assuming you're telling the 100% truth, then Blizzard make a mistake. It happens. Call them up and get it sorted out. I'd much rather they be a little over-zealous with their banning, occasionally hitting the wrong people but then can easily rectify the mistake with a phone call, rather than never ban anyone out of fear of banning the wrong person, so bots become even more rampant.
But honestly, 9 times out of 10 with these types of stories the OP isn't telling the whole truth, so y'know. Whatever. Either way, OP, go call Blizzard instead of making sensationalist posts on these forums. That doesn't help anyone.
I already called blizzard and got my account restored but they said if it happens again the outcome will not be the same. So now I feel afraid to farm for fear of being perma banned this time. They have software that can detect if you use bots i'm pretty sure. All they had to do was to whisper me and see if I was there. That is what upsets me. A simple easy way to check if someone is botting wasn't even used. Instead they had to do all this work to investigate and restore account acess and answer ticket. All it takes is a whisper and gg it's done. They ban first and ask questions later. They need a new operating procedure for suspected botters. I'm about 99% sure that I was reported by a fellow player because there were alot of people farming in that area that night. Sucks that they just ban people cause someone reported them cause they got mad.
Last edited by Agnar; 2013-02-17 at 09:58 AM.
Happens all the time, while i was still playing a friend of mine who ran a guild and did the guilds auctioning on an alt got a 3 day account ban for depositing approx. 120k gold from having sold that raid weeks BOEs into the guild bank. It sucked for the whole guild since he was the main tank and they lost 3 days out of the weekly 4 days of raiding. By the time he got in touch with anyone to sort it out 2 days had already passed and nothing could be reversed before the 3 days were up anyway.
If they're now banning for farming then i'm glad i quit long ago because i spent hours a week farming.
Simply wrong statement. You or someone else did something suspicious. This was definitely not farming by playing yourself. Farming does not mean sit in front of the computer and let your botting program do your work. If you do not want to have to deal with this again, be true to yourself and think yourself, what actions were suspicious and i guess the support told you already why that happened.
There were posters on this forum who said they login from multiple locations and they got flagged because they were suspected of being hacked. After several incidents one person got this sort of automatic ban because of different locations changed on his account. Another one told us he farmed with friends, the amount of mats was suspicious, but they too could sort it out. The mailing of massive amounts of items, for no fee and to another account sure is actually suspicious...
Trying to abuse Milling or sth like that, which was bugged and could be exploited at times, could also be a reason for a suspension. The actual action you did was most likely something a few days before the ban, because most of the time they are not that fast.
If they said, the next time will not be as easy, they let you go with a warning. They should also have told you what this action was you should not do again.
Also: Answers to whispers are not at all a way to recognize a real person is playing the game. Either he idles his thumbs in front of the computer watching a movie, or the botting program is able to give responses out of a catalogue of answers... Should blizzard support do a Turing Test for every incident and change the test everytime so the next version of the bot is not able to pass it?
More and more often I have heard and seen (first hand with real life acquaintances) where people are getting the instant ban response without any kind of GM interaction and getting it restored is becoming difficult for some people. It seems as though once you have been flagged for ... whatever... once you are forever marked to blizz and get the insta suspensions for little or no reason at all.
Example helped a friend get some embersilk, sent him a few stack of embersilk and some enchanting mats from greens i had gotten and DE'd send them to him. He makes stuff for tailoring DE's it and makes enchanting stuff to level that as well, and then sold excess materials on the AH. He was banned a day or so later and blizz refused for a week to reinstate his account but were unwilling to tell him what exactly he was being banned for. The only explanation he could get was 'exploiting the game is punishable by permanent banning of the account in question'. It was not even a hugely significant amount of anything, and yes you can say perhaps i was missing out on something but when he plays on his laptop on the couch next to me I'm pretty sure he is not generally abusing the game.
Friends in another guild have mentioned very similar things happening for seemingly unrelated offenses as though blizzards automatic scanning system sometimes decides you are a bad person and must be scrutinized heavily and as soon as something is slightly out of line you get suspended. I know some of this sounds a little hyperbolic but it is happening, and blizzard tends to believe in guilty until proven innocent. Either that or you just have to keep trying till you aren't getting a jackass GM with god knows what lodged in his colon.
Just contact Blizz about it. I had a similar situation a few years back.
Either you were botting and for some reason you think lying to us here would help for whatever reason or your account was incorrectly flagged and it will be unbanned once you call up.
Either way nothing to see here.
A lot of these suspensions or bans are handled automatically, not by an individual. Contact them, and they'll sort it out for you.
I've been wrongfully suspended ~5 times in the past, they have some filters that automatically triggers a suspension when certain criteria have been met. I always got the bans removed after HUMAN investigations. My suspensions were usually due to me making TONS of gold on the AH in a short period of time, and once it was for sending 1000g to a guildie with a "Thanks for last night" in the topic.
Guess they change their filters all the time.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake
What i do not get is why blizzard just does not just dc's people who are expected of botting.
I dont think bots can log on again on their own. That way if people are really farming for a long time, all they will have to do is log on again after an hour or two. But bots cant login again, so will be limited for like an hour or 2 of botting. Making it allot les profitable for botters in general wich will lead to les bots in i think.
Like always when people blame Blizzard, there is more to the story than people tell at first...
Move along, people. Nothing new to see here.
---------- Post added 2013-02-17 at 12:41 PM ----------
Seriously?
I mean, here is a piece of software that moves a character trough the game world. It attacks mobs as they come using a variety of spells and abilities. The character will skin it, if available, or mine/herb any nodes on it's path. It will even react to enemy faction players and use PvP abilities when needed. It can be programmed to automatically reply to incoming whispers, invites or emotes...
And you think a bot program is unable to log in on it's own?
Is he telling us all the truth?
Doubt it. He left out to many details. I suspect he was using a rail system and was actively monitoring it so he could reply to players and pretend he was not botting.
Blizz system in place can detect patterns like rails and they will watch botters for a few weeks or more to see patterns. He got caught.
Of course they can, also this would do NOTHING whatsoever to discourage people from botting. Even if it would keep them from farming for a few hours they'd be right back and at it again shortly after. Bans and permanent bans at that are the only solution to botting that is going to work and instill enough fear in normal players not to bot.
In all honesty people saying there is no need to ban bots are highyl suspicious to me.
Yeah, fact is most people who claim there are few or no bots at all or that they hardly matter alongside all of these "I got banned for being innocent" actually did something to get banned. Either it was abusing some bug, using an bot or some other stuff they weren't supposed to be. I've been hardcore farming for times since TBC and not once have I even so much as being whispered by a GM.
haha i know poeple botting 20/7 since years they never got banned .
so this kind of post makes me laugh that poeple try to tell us here they got banned after a few hours of farming.. :<
Belive me i would be happy if this story was true but there is more to that then your telling or then we know
Sort of related but... I really dont like the new Report Player system.
How do you know when you right click their name, they actually do something about it.