We have now experienced three full seasons of Arenas in World of Warcraft. The numbers are being crunched and we shall see the winners of end of season rewards shortly. Most of this season has been plagued, like others with dishonesty among some of the players. Blizzard took action a few weeks ago to combat win-trading and point selling with temporary account bans, personal rating requirements for match-ups, and penalties for queue dodging. It seems Blizzard is not quite done meeting out their punishment.

On an alt named Wtfkalgan, a player noted:
A team recently got reset to 1500 (questioning the judgment of the GM involved isn't the purpose of this thread). The email states, "Note: This also disqualifies the above player from any end of season rewards." Does this mean the player involved is completely ineligible for any end of season rewards, or just from the end of season rewards for the team that received the action?

Belfaire, a CM , clarified that this does exclude the character from receiving all end-of-season rewards. This may be an isolated incident, or it may be the beginning of another wide-spread crackdown on arena cheating. This may also include stripping honor from battleground afkers.

I can't wait to see how this plays out tomorrow and when rewards are handed out. I'm thinking it's going to be epic. Thanks for the tip, Feller.

Our weekly podcast goes back on the virtual airwaves tomorrow over on WoW Radio, and it's going to be a good one. I'm back from my vacation last week (thanks to John "BBB" Patricelli for hosting last week), and we've got a special guest on: Veronica Belmont, uber hip tech blogger, podcaster, and generally all around cool chick (you may remember her from her interviews with Leeroy Jenkins and The Guild) will be on to chat about the biggest stories in the past week of WoW with us. Of course, we'll be talking about the Wrath leaks, and since Veronica has been dealing with gadgets and tech journalism for quite a while, hopefully she'll help us provide some insight on that.

Turpster will be on as well, and we'll probably have one or two other familiar voices on from this site, too. Also, we'll chat about exactly who Karazhan is for, all those Glider bans that Blizzard laid down, Death & Taxes meeting its death, and what effect, if any, the Age of Conan launch had on our favorite game. And of course we'll be answering emails -- send yours to theshow@wowinsider.com -- and we'll be on IRC at irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel.

Should be a great time. See (or hear, as the case may be) us tomorrow afternoon live over on WoW Radio starting at 3:30pm EST!

We've gotten more tips on this than any other topic in recent memory: apparently many users of the popular WoW botting program Glider have been hit with the ban hammer, including some of our very own readers. You may recall Glider as the company with whom Blizzard is currently embroiled in a lawsuit (does the word "embroil" have any use other than lawsuits?). The Glider forums are abuzz with comments and complaints, to which I can only reply "QQ." Botting is clearly against the EULA, the spirit of the game, and the best interests of the other players. Yes, I would be sad if I got banned, but honestly, anyone who was botting had it coming.

There are various objections to be made to this stance. Most of the people who wrote in claim to have been botting in order to bypass the tedious leveling process. I agree that it can be boring to level 1–70 multiple times, even with the new, faster 20–60 process. However, that doesn't make it OK to cheat. Others claim that with fewer bots in the system, the supply of primals will be reduced and therefore the price will go up; I'm not much of a WoW economist, so I'll leave that to others. But to this blogger, banning botters can only be interpreted as a good thing: some cheaters got what they deserved. Whether you agree or disagree, please feel free to sound off in the comments. And if you are a botter yourself, and haven't gotten banned yet, I'd advise you to stop -- they're clearly getting serious about this.

We already know that Blizzard is tweaking arena rules to make it much tougher to artificially inflate your rating by win trading or buying high ranked teams in Season 4, but it looks like they're starting to take it one step further, by cracking down on people who indulge in it.

Reports are coming in from the official forums and from other spots around the web of people getting bans or suspensions (generally 72 hours in length) and having their Season 3 arena gear stripped. The bans are even permanent in some cases, such as that of Sinther of Stormscale, whose account was permanently banned when his friend used it to do some win-trading, with the win trading given as the specific reason for his banning. You can read many of these stories and reports in this forum thread.

On Monday, Blizzard banned several thousand accounts found using third party programs to fully automate killing and looting, aka botting. These programs are largely used by gold selling companies employing farmers to speed up the rate at which they can supply gold to the many buyers out there. But a columnist at the Lightspeed Ventures site has a different take: he proposes that gold sellers are actually the independent application developers that are integral to the success of any online venture.

No matter where you fall on the gold farmer debate ("they ruin the game" vs "they fill a need the developers refuse to acknowledge"), you have to stop and think about this particular premise. Lightspeed, a venture capital company that funds technology companies, asserts that any platform needs three critical elements to succeed.

Like most online games, Blizzard has the power to suspend or ban people from WOW, and they're not shy about using it. Half of the Customer Service Forum is full of people complaining about their banninations. Bannations? Bans. Of course, no one in the CSF has ever, ever done anything wrong with their account, and tend to go to ludicrous extremes to deny they've ever cursed, shared accounts, or gone AFK in the battlegrounds.

The simple 3-hour or 3-day suspension is probably the most common form of ban. So you swore at someone, discussed the uses of a [Huge Brown Sack] in trade channel, or threatened to sic your homophobic congressman dad on them -- you get three hours or days to think about what you did wrong, and probably plot some revenge. There's also the "temporary permanent ban," which is what Blizzard uses when someone's account is hacked. You're "permanently banned" until they can figure out who really owns the account and how it was accessed. Then the ban is usually reversed, and stolen items are restored. The latter has happened to a couple guildmates of mine, and most were just happy to get their stuff back.

The true permabans are usually reserved for the worst of the worst offenders -- although theoretically, any number of common activities (like account-sharing) can result in a permaban. Speedhacking, botting, gold farming, powerleveling, and of course removing walls in dungeons can get your account banned forever. Note: screaming, threatening, quoting the Bill of Rights, or being hideously rude to Blizzard will not get you your account back.

Have you ever been banned, suspended, or warned for your in-game behavior? Do you have any funny or sad banning stories from your realm? Do you think Blizzard is too tough or too lenient with their banhammer?

I always thought Blizzard was pretty easygoing about ingame player-driven events. I've myself participated in quite a few naked races around Azeroth, players continually line up and run raids on the major cities, and Blizzard even sorta condones twinking in the lower level BGs. That's why I was so surprised to see their attitude on this one.

Myxilydian on Burning Blade-H is a Warrior who, like many, is concerned about changes to his class in the Burning Crusade. So, in a more creative form of whining about nerfs, he's posted in the Forums organizing a "Gnome March"-- he's asking Warriors unhappy with their class changes to create a level 1 Gnome warrior on Thunderlord, and at 4pm tomorrow (12/6), march from Ironforge to the gates of Stormwind in solidarity (he's inviting Shammies, too-- he says they should make a Dwarf Paladin for the march). I think it's a great idea, and a funny, creative way to voice his concerns.

Blizzard disagrees, however. Drokthul has closed the thread and posted that "anyone caught participating in this event or any event with the sole purpose of disrupting the game play for others will be punished." Wow. If you ask me, that's extremely harsh for a group of players planning to create 1st level Gnomes and run around together for a while. Guilds do that all the time-- is Blue planning on banning all of them too? Already, Myx (I believe it's Myx-- might be another Warrior supporting the cause) has been banned from the forums.

Now, comments in the Forum thread indicate that Myx may have posted this a few (100?) times before, and maybe in the wrong forums. I'm not going to defend that kind of behavior-- the Forums are crazy enough without spamming, even of stuff like this. But I don't think a level 1 Gnome ingame raid is the kind of play that "disrupts" anything-- it's a creative form of expression within the community (especially when the stated goal is not play disruption). And Blizzard is way wrong, in my (usually) humble opinion, to squelch it so draconically. As I said, usually they've landed on the side of player-driven events. Why they've changed their tune on this one, I'm not sure, but it's definitely not a change I agree with.

Update: A commenter rightfully points out that I jumped the gun on saying "ban"-- Blue says "punish" not ban, and there are other punishments besides banning. Still, I think it's wrong to "punish" your community for doing creative things with your virtual world.

I've been in a sore mood all night (and a rough run through SM didn't help much), so I think it's about time for a controversial rant. Lately, as you may have noticed, Blizzard seems to be cracking down on "third-party app" usage-- sometimes, it seems, whether or not you're actually using a third party application in the game. They accidentally dropped bans on a few Linux-running players (because the client had issues with the software used to run the Windows version on Linux), and lately it seems as though the boards (and our inbox) are full of players complaining that they were unfairly banned-- either because they never used third-party programs, or because they were likely hacked by a keylogger. The Customer Service boards are filled with players complaining about being banned, most of them swearing they didn't deserve it.

I know that, simply by the numbers, there must be a number of players out there who are having legitimate issues with what Blizzard is doing. It's very likely that someone could browse a website about WoW, unknowingly download a keylogger, and then get their account banned by Blizzard. And I know that, for whatever reason, it seems like Blizzard has made some mistakes lately, and probably banned some people who truly didn't deserve it.

But here's the controversial part: Have you noticed, like me, that a lot of the "banned" stories don't seem to hold water? Here's one who says he lost his druid-- after logging on during an account suspension. I have to think that if you got suspended before, you likely got banned for doing the same thing again. Then there's the "my friend got banned and he doesn't know why" argument, or the "I gave my account info to a guildie and then got banned" argument-- if someone else is playing on the account that got banned, guess what? They got you banned. I know, I know, they're swearing they didn't use any third party applications, but I hate to tell you: if your friend did cheat, wouldn't he also be willing to lie to you, too?

But my point is not to ridicule people who got banned, my point is to help people who were "legitimately" banned wrongly. Blizzard has put up an easy guide for anyone who's worried their account might get banned called "How to Stay in the Game." (For the record, UI mods won't get you banned) They've also posted a thread about where to go if you have been banned (contacting wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com with your info is a good place to start), and finally, tips to stay away from keyloggers and such.

I've never been banned (but then again, I've never bought gold, shared my account, or hacked or botted, either), so I don't have a firsthand look at Blizzard's process. But issues with Linux aside, from what I've seen Blizzard has done a pretty good job with their player bans. You won't hear that from the players who actually got banned (they'll probably be in the comments section of this one yelling at me), but I haven't heard a story I believe yet where someone got banned without doing anything suspicious at all.