Banned (seemingly perma), innocent, whatdo?

[Deleted]

Hello MMO-Champ!
When I tried to log in today I got the following message (exact quote)

"Battle.net Error #202

This World of Warcraft account has been closed and is no longer available for use. Please go to 'snip' for further information."

I also received a mail saying that it was closed because "one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for "real-world" currency." which I have never done and would never do. Either Blizzard is making a mistake or I got hacked and the hackers did something.

The mail also said that even if the owner himself did not commit the violation of the EULA he could still be held responsible.

So my question is; what do I do? Is my account lost for ever? Any ways to get it unbanned?

Thank you!

[Deleted]

Call them.

[Nyfaria]

only thing you can so is petition and hope you are good at playing lawyer.

[Deleted]

Contact Blizzard, phone or skype i would recommend.

[shadofall]

the email you recieved should have the instructions for appealing. follow them.

[Cirque]

As others said, call them. It should be resolved more smoothly than the mail lets you think - Blizzard has no benefit from banning people other than keeping the game clean, likely they'll be glad to help you.

[Deleted]

Can't seem to find any number to them, EU side. Any help on that one?

[GKLeatherCraft]

Can't seem to find any number to them, EU side. Any help on that one?

0800 0288246 is their phone support number the site gives me
They also say if you have Skype, Add "+44 800 0288246" and you can call them for free on that number, As others have said it should be fine, If you actually are innocent then you should be up and running within no time

[pld]

Happens more often than one would hope. I got my friend to try out WoW, but he got bored and quit a few months later. A month or so after he quit, he got an email saying that the account was banned for similar reasons as OP. He had no intention of coming back to the game, but felt uncomfortable knowing that someone hacked his account and called Blizzard to fix it. Took him a few hours on the phone but eventually got everything smoothed out.

Not sure if you use it already or not, but when you get your account back, I would strongly suggest using the Authenticator. Makes your account much more difficult to hack.

[Deleted]

Currently waiting on the phone for someone to be available, just want to say thank you to all of you who helped out.
Hopefully I'll get it back and if I do I'll definately get myself an Authenticator as paulleedot said, this is indeed not the first time I get hacked.

[Asmekiel]

Scan your PC for possible viruses and malware, just in case it's infected with something. Not much use in getting back your account when it's going to be stolen again

[Taurenburger]

Guess you could call them to get your account back. That or you can quit.

[-Superman-]

Call them.

Pretty much this. You can open a ticket in the meantime, but your best bet is still to call them and let them know your account may have been compromised. If you are telling the truth, you have nothing to worry about. They are there to help and investigate the issue.

[judgementofantonidas]

follow the instructions posted on the message you recieved. best of luck

[Deleted]

You were hacked, they locked the account to help you.

[Stede]

Call them.

I've been told that calling them no longer works - they no longer discuss account actions over the phone (or maybe that's just what they tell some folks). Wouldn't hurt to try, I guess, but probably won't help.

Blizzard has a long history of banning folks that didn't need to be banned. It typically happens when enough people report you for doing bad stuff. The logic is that you're becoming a pain in the ass for them to deal with and there's 9 million more folks just like you, so you get das boot.

[Deleted]

Make sure your account did not get comprmised,call them like said,if worse comes,beg on the forums!(wow forums not mmo champion!)

[Clampz]

Scan your PC for possible viruses and malware, just in case it's infected with something. Not much use in getting back your account when it's going to be stolen again

This is good advice. Check for keyloggers, etc. Best bet would be to go grab autoruns and ProcessExplorer from here and run them both, looking for suspicious entries. Make sure to scan as an admin though, and use the options to hide verified microsoft entries to keep from getting bogged down. Then go through the scan and look for anything that isn't signed and check it out. If you don't know what an entry is, right click and click "Look Online" for more info.

Once you've done that, run an MBAM scan and remove everything it finds. Everything. Yes, even the cute little mouse pointers you downloaded from zomgitsatrap.com. Ensure you have an up-to-date AV solution installed, such as Microsoft Security Essentials, or AVG 2013 Free Edition. (Please don't turn this into an OMG THIS AV IS BETTER thread.)

That should pretty much catch everything. only AFTER you do all of this, should you recover your account or attempt to log in to the game. Also, telling Blizzard you've taken these steps should look good on your part.

[Deleted]

I got my account back by calling them, took less than 5 minutes. I scanned my PC and got the Mobile Authenticator.
My account was unlocked, however it was instantly disabled by a GM because they thought the ones who compromised it had access to my email and security answer, which they don't, it was just be trying to get my account back while being locked (could still access battle.net) through various ways. So at the moment I'm just waiting for them to respond to my ticket so they can enable it again and hopefully now that I have an authenticator this will never happen again.

So thanks to everybody who took the time to comment and help me out with various tips, leaving this thread from now on!
Again, thanks to all of you and see you later!

[Unholyground]

If someone tries to repeatedly log into unauthenticated account (Brute Force Attack) it will auto lock now.