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Posts with tag banned

Blizzard explains hunter suspension

WoW Insider recently reported that Megatf, the highest ranked Arena Hunter and hunter community personality, was banned from the forums. Initially thought to be a permanent ban from playing World of Warcraft, Drysc explained that Megatf had violated the Forum Code of Conduct and was temporarily banned from the forums, with no impact on his ability to access WoW. The violation was also not because Megatf has posted keyloggers or gold selling sites, as earlier reported, only that the ban was erroneously categorized elsewhere. An unfortunate side effect of the ban was the subsequent deletion of all threads created by Megatf, some of which also happened to be stickied guides that the hunter community held in high regard. Drysc also explained that the deletion was part of the suspension and could not be undone, so those useful hunter guides were gone forever unless they were archived.

Timbal explains Blizzard's actions in detail and in a rare display of verbosity, proceeds to rationalize the process by which Blizzard's moderators deal with errant threads and posters. He apologizes on behalf of the company for deleting the valuable threads but also cautions players against unwarranted and ill-worded protests against "perceived class balance issues" that might be in violation of the forum rules. He also explains that the scarcity of blue, or Blizzard, responses from the forums do not necessarily indicate that players are not being heard although it often feels that way for many. This only reinforces the fact that Blizzard is extremely vigilant about forum violations and spares no one from reprimand. As always, Blizzard encourages feedback as long as it is done in a constructive manner.

PTR Notes: No cyborz in the Deeprun Tram

What did Skazarund do to get banned from the PTR? All he did wrong was cyborz, man. Cyborz, if you didn't know, is a little bit of the digital hanky-panky. The Internet in-and-out, if you will. The networked nookie, know what I mean?

All joking aside, apparently that's true-- Timbal says the test realms are for "testing new game content and functionality, not your abilities to write romance novels." Now, I'm not a huge fan of cybersex or anything (the real thing seems much more fun), but there are people out there that do it, and as long as they don't hurt anyone, I'm fine with leaving them alone. Does Blizzard really feel the need to ban anyone who gets it on on the PTR? Is it somehow more wrong there than on the live servers?

Skaz may have been obscene in some way, and if so, then yeah-- he broke the terms of service, and a ban is in order. But if he's just gettin' it on, RP-style, baby, is that really being "disruptive or counterproductive to testing"?

CNET talks to Blizzard about banned players

I've tended to stay away from reporting about players angry at being banned, for reasons I'll get into in a second. But we periodically receive notices from players who think they've been unfairly banned, and there's lots of forum complaining on the same subject. The complaints have been loud enough, it seems, for CNET to take a look at the allegations, and get a nice quote from Blizzard about it.

Most of the angry players (if you are one, feel free to leave a comment below with your own story) say they try to log into their account one day and are simply banned for no reason at all. Some of them say they've even had their accounts hacked, and are then finding them banned afterwards. Most of them, in my experience, sound just like Zak, a 14-year-old interviewed in the article. He says he was banned because "I was leveling excessively and very fast, which is what power levelers do." One day he had an email in his inbox that said he was kicked out of WoW.

CNET then does what all of these players haven't seemingly been able to do, which is get a response from Blizzard about the whole thing. "We conduct a very thorough investigation before the actual ban takes place," says the Blizz spokesman. He says all bans are carried out only once Blizzard has decidedly determined that there has been action that goes against the Terms of Service and/or the End User License Agreement (that's the long text which pops up after you install every patch).

And the reason I don't have a lot of pity for the people who say they're unfairly banned is that I, for one, tend to believe him.

Continue reading CNET talks to Blizzard about banned players

All they're asking for is your blood.

Donate bloodI'm not sure whether we should file this under "I'm glad Blizzard doesn't do this" or "I wish Blizzard would do this!" but Chinese gaming company Moliyo (who run the MMO Cabal Online) is offering banned players an interesting method by which to reactivate their accounts. What do you have to do? Simple! Donate blood, and they'll unlock your banned account within three days. And if you're an active player, you can receive a special game account for participating.

This is, to my knowledge, a completely unique way of going about reinstating banned players -- while supporting a good cause. And asking players to donate blood is no more time-consuming than Blizzard's usual procedure for restoring stolen accounts, which requires notarized documentation proving your identity. (And will still likely take several weeks for Blizzard to investigate and restore any missing property, which doesn't always happen.) Perhaps Moliyo's way is easier in the long run -- though, being a needle-phobic, I'll stick to the usual customer service queues.

Blizzard takes banned player's suicide threat seriously

ClassifiedPeon (who has an awesome name) posts on her LJ about hearing a story on the radio about a kid who got banned from WoW, and then decided to try and bribe his way back into the game. At first, he pleaded Blizz to let him back in, and even offered them money ($3,000 via Paypal, supposedly, though how a kid like this gets money like that who knows). Blue, of course, declined the offer, which is when he sent them an email threatening to end his life if they didn't let him back into the game.

And that's when Blizzard got serious. According to the original messageboard where the story was posted, not only did they send the kid an email with phone numbers for depression crisis centers, but a few hours later, the cops reportedly showed up at his door. Blizzard had apparently identified the kid from his IP address, and called the cops on his suicide threat. The story's been posted on Fark.com as well (and Digg also got their say), and the (hilarious) consensus there is that Blizzard did exactly the right thing in calling this little punk out on the stupid stuff he said. If the kid is really suicidal, he does need more help than Blizzard can offer him, and if he was just trying to lie his way back into his account (which is more than likely considering the kid was not only outright cheating, he was also supposedly using a "stolen serial"), he deserves to have the cops show up at his door.

Unfortunately, apart from the messageboard post I can't find any actual news source on the story, so for all we know the whole thing is made up by the guy who posted it (and who posted it last January, you'll note). But it's an interesting tale, and it supports my thoughts from the other day: while there are probably some false positives floating around Blizzard's ban list, most of the people they give the heave-ho probably deserve it.

Bans coming in for Linux players

Cedega is a handy piece of software that many use to run World of Warcraft on their Linux machines. And it's apparently been working well for everyone -- until yesterday, when numerous Cedega users began to report being banned from World of Warcraft with the following generic message in their mailbox:

This account has been found to have employed third party software designed to automate many aspects of the World of Warcraft game play experience. Such software runs contrary to the essence of World of Warcraft and provides an advantage over other players. In addition, use of this software can lead to exploitation and destabilization of the World of Warcraft server economy. As such, this account has been closed and will not be reopened under any circumstances.

While ominous, it sounds to be a case of a problem with Blizzard's automated anti-hacking scans. TransGaming (makers of Cedega) is currently working with Blizzard's engineering team to resolve the issue -- and has been told that it wasn't Blizzard's intention to ban Cedega players. If you're a Cedega player who has suddenly been banned, Transgaming is offering to help reinstate your account -- let them know you've been banned and give them your account name, either via this support thread or e-mail to their support team.

[Thanks to Pat and Druid dude. Cedega links via Slashdot.]

59,000 More Accounts Closed

In their continued effort to rid Azeroth of hackers and gold farmers, Eyonix announced this evening that 59,000 accounts were closed during the month of June for terms of use violations. Have you seen anyone behaving suspiciously on your server? An account that's being controlled by a bot isn't too difficult to spot if you spend a bit of time paying attention - and Blizzard investigates all reports. So if you suspect such behavior, report it to a GM, and help the community be rid of the annoyance of hackers and bot farmers.


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