How often does blizzard screw the pooch on banning people

[Killface1]

Just got banned for manipulating the in game economy via buying or selling gold. I haven't done that, and my gold levels haven't fluctuated all that much. Any human with half a brain cell could look at my gold fluctuations and decide that I'm not buying or selling gold, which means I can only assume that some bot picked up "suspicious" activity and automatically banned me. I don't mind blizzard trying to police its games and keep it from getting destroyed by gold farmers, but it definitely sucks to be booted mid raid, and I'm fairly confident I'm not going to get so much as an apology or restitution from days missed that I paid for, and I'm also fairly confident that its going to take awhile for them to get to my ticket, which means that my raid is pretty well screwed.

So my question is, is this normal behavior, and do I just need to assume I'm going to be treated like crap as a paying customer, or honest mistake and doesn't happen very frequently? Has this happened to anybody else? How long does it usually takes before blizzard notices they screwed up? They gave me a "24-48hrs" which is pretty unacceptable, and while I'd be sad to lose wow because its pretty fun, I don't really have any problems canceling my sub if this is pretty normal and its going to take 48 hours before they notice. Anybody have any experience with this?

[RoKPaNda]

According to people who do dumb things and get banned? Every single ban ever.

In reality? Not that often. Yes it sucks for you, but if you did nothing wrong it will get fixed. It usually doesn't take all that long either.

[Chirri]

I know someone who was running BGs in the morning, got a 72 hour "ban" around 1 or 2pm with guild raid hours around 5:30. He submitted a ticket about it, and had his account available again within a couple of hours. Their auto-detect software gave his account a false positive and a relatively short check by a human being made it evident there'd been no wrongdoing.

[jcf190]

What did the customer service rep. say when you called them?

[Killface1]

couldn't find a number, and everything just directed me towards filing a ticket, so thats what I did. If their channels want me to file a ticket, I'll do it. I mentioned that waiting was unacceptable to me, and that if they didn't meet me on my end (e.g. fixing this immediately) I wasn't going to meet them on their end of the "paying them" part. will see what happens.

[Whidbey]

Well guy it sounds like yous actually just screwed the pooch. You don't ASK for something like being un-suspended or un-banned, by being snotty and giving customer service demands. sheesh.. good luck with that attitude.

[cFortyfive]

It's certainly not "normal" but it does happen every once in a while.

[shoc]

It gets posted here pretty often (the being banned for manipulation of the economy) and I think every time I've seen it pop up, it's been resolved before it becomes much of an issue. Most likely your gold moving patterns matched those of some gold sellers/gold launderers or something and you got auto banned. Even if their auto ban system has 99.99% accuracy, 0.01 of 7 million subscribers is still 700 people.

But yeah, Blizzard isn't usually known for it's dumb, senseless bans, that would be Elder Scrolls Online. I was wrongfully banned and unbanned 4 times in the 2 weeks that I played, talk about crazyness.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

It gets posted here pretty often (the being banned for manipulation of the economy) and I think every time I've seen it pop up, it's been resolved before it becomes much of an issue. Most likely your gold moving patterns matched those of some gold sellers/gold launderers or something and you got auto banned. Even if their auto ban system has 99.99% accuracy, 0.01 of 7 million subscribers is still 700 people.

But yeah, Blizzard isn't usually known for it's dumb, senseless bans, that would be Elder Scrolls Online. I was wrongfully banned and unbanned 4 times in the 2 weeks that I played, talk about crazyness.

Lol..what did you get banned for in ESO? Killing an Elf?

[fleamarket]

Just got banned for manipulating the in game economy via buying or selling gold. I haven't done that, and my gold levels haven't fluctuated all that much. Any human with half a brain cell could look at my gold fluctuations and decide that I'm not buying or selling gold, which means I can only assume that some bot picked up "suspicious" activity and automatically banned me. I don't mind blizzard trying to police its games and keep it from getting destroyed by gold farmers, but it definitely sucks to be booted mid raid, and I'm fairly confident I'm not going to get so much as an apology or restitution from days missed that I paid for, and I'm also fairly confident that its going to take awhile for them to get to my ticket, which means that my raid is pretty well screwed.

So my question is, is this normal behavior, and do I just need to assume I'm going to be treated like crap as a paying customer, or honest mistake and doesn't happen very frequently? Has this happened to anybody else? How long does it usually takes before blizzard notices they screwed up? They gave me a "24-48hrs" which is pretty unacceptable, and while I'd be sad to lose wow because its pretty fun, I don't really have any problems canceling my sub if this is pretty normal and its going to take 48 hours before they notice. Anybody have any experience with this?

I was recently banned for "Manipulating the in game economy for buying/selling gold". The only problem is, that I only had like 2g on my account when it happened. I called blizz cust support, and they told me that it was because my IP was changing every hour or so. (I'm in China so I can't play without a VPN or tunneling service). They quickly apologized and unbanned my account.

[Locruid]

If Blizz THINKS you buy gold it's an automatic ban....

But people can use the N word, make sexual and racial remarks coupled with harassment all day and not get touched for months.

[Tya]

WoW is completely infested with bots.

I've been in battlegrounds where 70% of the players are bots. And no, I'm not just assuming this because they're bad. I'm talking EotS where 12 players are basically stood on top of each-other, moving to the exact same pixel and then continuing on to their next bot waypoint. It's not even rare.

Blizzard does not care in the slightest about botting.

[Killface1]

Well guy it sounds like yous actually just screwed the pooch. You don't ASK for something like being un-suspended or un-banned, by being snotty and giving customer service demands. sheesh.. good luck with that attitude.

I'm snotty because I pay them money to provide me a service, and then I tell them to fix it when they accidentally stop providing it via calling me a cheater? I just want to make sure I have that right.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

WoW is completely infested with bots.

I've been in battlegrounds where 70% of the players are bots. And no, I'm not just assuming this because they're bad. I'm talking EotS where 12 players are basically stood on top of each-other, moving to the exact same pixel and then continuing on to their next bot waypoint. It's not even rare.

Blizzard does not care in the slightest about botting.

They actually do but you can continue to believe in that if you wish.

[Killface1]

Anyway, sounds like its pretty uncommon and an honest mistake, so I'll chalk it up to that and not be >:O, but I'm still going to cancel my sub if they don't fix it within my time demands.

[Gimlix]

Lol..what did you get banned for in ESO? Killing an Elf?

Playing it Kappa

[The Kao]

I recently got a 72 hours ban after completing Insane in the Membrane within a week, it said for cheating, I protested and was found not guilty, the ban was removed after 16 hours and I got 2 days of game time refunded. They didn't even tell me what exactly the problem was, but my best guess is that some people took offense in me killing their quest guys (even though I let them all through, weird kids), I probably got reported a bunch of times and then banned automatically based on a high frequency of reports.

Yes that happens but I'm not really angry with them, mistakes happen all the time, especially when (or if) automated systems are handling the most "obvious" cases. That doesn't mean that everyone you see acting strange is automatically a bot, just saying. Some people just want to see bots everywhere.

[Sithalos]

They actually do but you can continue to believe in that if you wish.

Any proof of that? Or are you just White-Knighting for no reason?

[cFortyfive]

Any proof of that? Or are you just White-Knighting for no reason?

Probably something something dem banwaves and lawsuits. Still with just a tiny amount of effort and money a lot more could be done.

[Lubricious]

Ah the eternal debate. On one side you have people saying Blizzard doesn't care about bots. Then on the other hand, you have people claiming that Blizzard's anti-bot activity was aggressive enough to pick up a human by mistake.

This is a game with millions of players. I don't think it's beyond reason that occasionally someone slips up and clicks the banhammer on someone that isn't supposed to get it.
Then again, I've also seen a lot of people who obstinately insisted their crap behavior wasn't bannable right up until they got banned, and then made a huge stink about getting banned.
I don't know which the OP falls under, but to be honest a non-crap attitude and a customer service ticket should clear things up quickly so it doesn't really seem all that important in the grand scheme of wow things.