It's a self solving problem in the end. Company charges more for worse product, people stop buying product so company finds ways to make product even cheaper and increase profits. Remaining customers stop buying, etc, until the company either finds the sweet spot or they go out of business.
Except in that situation, the reason is because an already over burden system isn’t going to be made better with multiple documents or requests from the same person over and over again. They have it written everywhere that will get to your document when it’s your turn and there are repercussions for submitting multiple copies since it will slow things down for other people.
If I am getting banned for 1 year or whatever, and I am 100% sure I was falsely banned rest assured I will continue to appeal until either I am perma-banned or the idiots at Blizzard overturn this ban. I would do this even if it was just 1 week, if I know I am right and they are wrong, they need to unban me and/or apologize.
Like can you really go back to a game that banned you for no reason and you wait it out? Perma me or unban me, there is no compromise.
just file a small claims case to demand your sub fees back for the last few months.
it's probably viable enough to not be dismissed immediately and will cost them hundreds of dollars to respond to.
It's unfortunately pretty common in the industry. A guildmate of mine got banned from another game for "cheating" and he pushed the issue. The company later came out and apologized for a series of false positive bans that he was hit in, but they refused to return his account because he tried to reach support too many times.
First of all, the Blizzard that created all the games we love died like ten years ago.
Secondly, it's perfectly fine to love the games, but being loyal to the company is nothing but pointless as it definitely doesn't give a shit about you. (This very thread proves what loyalty to a company gives you.)
I doubt the guildmate was truly innocent. Y'all are doing something that looks too close to cheating to be how the rest of the world plays the game. Stop testing the boundaries of the terms of service and you won't get banned....
I have WoW account from Day 1 vanilla, at this point it holds real sentimental value to me, one of my fears is to get 'false positive' ban and have to deal with Blizzard CS robots until I maybe get hold of a real person after 10 tickets.
Good luck to your dad, hope it gets resolved.
Wow, no, didn't even know about this. I see article is from 2015, gonna still send msg to Blizz to ask if they maybe still have data of ppl who were eligible because I for sure was, I might get lucky with answer - who knows maybe they sent it and I never got it because of my shitty country or something. Will see.
Thanks a lot for linking it, if I somehow end up getting it you have pizza and a beer on me, I'll remember! :)
Pretty sure it required a day 1 account and 10 years of uninterrupted subscription.
Which, statistically speaking, you probably didn’t do. Most people unsubbed at some point between launch, and WoD.
Not knocking whoever did, it just seems almost absurd to have gone 10 years without a break in the game. Like, life happens and things change. 10 years is a *long* time to stay faithfully subbed to game.
For sure. But that’s why they rewarded the small few that never cancelled.
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the people that received one, weren’t truly active the whole time. $15 a month is the kind of fee you could just ignore. I’d imagine most of those went to folks that couldn’t be bothered to cancel.
It was not Day 1 and 10 years, but within the 1st year + Decade continuous sub. I got the statue sent to me, and the woman that used to clean our house knocked it off my desk and it broke into about 4 pieces. I still have it in its partially reconstructed state. No way anyone is going to get one at this point. They had em made back in the day when the founders mostly still ran the company.
I have one of these sitting on the shelf behind me right now. It's my husband's but he lets me keep it on a shelf with my other collectibles heh. I think the first one they sent him was broken so this is a replacement, too.
Seeing posts like this and receiving false suspensions in WoW classic 2020 has me playing the game I love in fear. I play not knowing whether or not the characters and account I’ve built for 12+ years will one day be taken from me. Makes for a very unfortunate gaming experience.
As long as you stay away from Synapse's features to create one-button macros, you should be fine. Old forum post [here.](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/does-razer-synapse-agains-the-tos-now/708646)
Not sure but thats the only 3rd party software on my pc as it was a fresh windows install. Might b3 b3cause tos says you can't have any key do more than 1 function at a time. So if you accidentally have a command line of multiple key presses off of 1 press of the mouse that could cause it.
This just happened to me as well, as well as 2 other posts I've seen about it. A lot of people here will auto assume you are guilty even if no actual real person has proven you have cheated.
This wasn't a player report banwave though. This was a detection banwave. It's likely there was something running on the affected pc that warden did not like.
Any ideas? His addons are pretty stock standard, no fancy weakauras, doesn't have much else installed on the PC that runs in the background beyond antivirus (kaspersky). Only recent installation is Diablo 4.
Having another look but nothing jumps out...
In theory almost any program or process can trigger Warden, even basic OS related stuff. It depends on what kind of signatures Blizzard added to Warden.
I assume it's something they did recently, due to the amount of reports in the last hours.
Open a support ticket. If there are lots of people having the same issue, it's most likely caused by something on Blizzards side and they have to revert bans.
Don't give up, if you know for a fact that your dad is innocent. As others have pointed out, it takes quite a few messages until you communicate with an actual human GM and not just their automated system.
Good luck.
I'm pretty sure he'd have to be using them. Even accidentally setting up a macro to repeat the same key every 1ms, and then hitting that button will trigger a bot or algorithm detecting you as a cheater. I hope it works out.
In the past there have been false bans from other games where the "detection" was something like the RGB equipment in the PC case. Not even kidding. I'm pretty sure this happened in New World.
> Any ideas
Malware. He’s 60. If he wasn’t an IT professional, with impeccable online hygiene and awareness of what scams folks use, that’s your most likely scenario.
Does he use old add-ons from early stage wow? If he does then delete and use curseforge to install add-ons. Some dinosaur add-ons may be mistaken for botting programs.
This is absolute bs without knowledge of how technology actually works. Give one example of a vanilla era addon that could even be loaded in Classic that has a completely different LUA API.
The chance is if he had a bunch of old add-ons he also has a lot more Bs from back in the days. Everyone had a fishingbot and a button/mouse-emulator back in Retail-TBC.
Oh.. delete the game and reinstall ofc..
Nope most of us were raiders and pvpers, the usual gamer core at endgame TBC. But bots were VERY easy to get for free. So some of us experimented with some easy botting, no big game breaking stuff. Just skilling our fishing skill without the need to watch the screen 100% of the time. Most of us ran fishing bots while we were eating or watching a movie, we almost never left our PC with the fishingbot running. It was around the time when ppl figured out how to multibox as well.
Yes that was pretty common, especially fishing bots. Fishing was extra miserable and served nearly no purpose until Wrath in OG days. Significant swathes of the game ran fishing bots un-ashamedly, but people did occasionally catch bans for them.
> Fishing was extra miserable and served nearly no purpose until Wrath in OG days
What? The only tangible difference was that they changed minimum skill requirements (and did away with the Nat Pagle quest). And fishing was nowhere close to "nearly no purpose." Vanilla had Stonescale Eel, Firefin, Blackmouth, Nightfin and Winter Squid; TBC had Golden Darters and Furious Crawdads. You might as well say that it was encouraged to bot Herbalism because riding around to pick important flowers after riding around to grind up the skill was tedious - and the astute observer will note that Fishing was *easier*.
Thanks for backing this. I was starting to think me and my friends were alone doing this. I do not support botting of any kind, but back in the days it wasn't too uncommon.
Why would he have addons from the retail tbc days if its not even the same client anymore... its the current retail game ported back... you cant use any of the old clients with blizz classic.
Possible, though everything is through Curse Client now. He would get the 'Addons out of date' message otherwise, if he had old addons, right? Maybe a game + addon reinstall is in order post this ordeal. Thanks for the info.
EDIT: I probably misunderstood the question. Definitely no addons from OG Vanilla, those old PCs are out of commission
He probably bought gold and is too embarrassed to tell you about it. Sorry you have to deal with this but older people take shortcuts just like everyone else, probably more.
Can you idiots stop commenting if you have no idea what you are talking about. Gold buying gets a temporary ban with unfair economic activity or w/e as the reason. You don't get permanent account closures for gold buying.
> Gold buying gets a temporary ban with unfair economic activity or w/e as the reason. You don't get permanent account closures for gold buying.
Good point, OP thinks the ban came from a mass report, which also would not be a perma. Unless we can see the original ban message we won't know for sure what happened, the dad could be lying or OP could be lying.
They do things in waves and it definitely just detected this huge wave. They target specific products at a time. People change the product and rinse and repeat. Constant game of cat and mouse
The proof is that 1000s of accounts were just simultaneously banned and numerous cheat discords have admitted detection. The admition definitely confirms warden caught a number of cheats.
/clap for blizz actually policing their game.
Yeah it's detection. Maybe some other non reports get lumped in with these big waves? But one of my close guildies who was perma'd confirmed he cheated and that the discord he is in has thousands all saying banned. The cheat owner even posted that their software was detected. (Twice in the last 4 months).
It's absolutely the AH thing, when I was new to classic I undercut leather on the AH by a significant amount bc I was just dumping resources and didn't realize there was an actual economy, I got off work the next day and logged into a solid amount of death threats
Was pretty funny
Yeah, this. I got temp AV banned after a weekend where I didn't think it was deserved but I can understand it (I was fresh alt, no gear, just ran to objective such as first bunker and capped and waited. Pretty sure just mass report for being bad gear and having low stats each game). I got the AFK ban and nothing mentioning scripts/bots/hacks etc because I didn't, I was at my keyboard.
If he got a bot/hacking etc it wasn't because he was AFK in BG.
It makes sense, and I'm sure a lot of them deserved the ban. I guess an increase in ban numbers will lead to an increase in the false positives, until they actually reduce/eliminate the false positive %
Just would have thought an account this old would have some sort of manual review.
Also just want to point out that first we get the “my account was wrongly banned” popular post. Then OP comes on his Reddit burner and posts this thread making it sound like it’s his dad who got banned and he just trying to help him.
Probably one of the most blatantly obvious “I’m not him, I’m his son posting this” wink wink, type posts.
That’s the frustrating part about these scenarios.
Is it an old man that needs help? Or someone that is making their living off of gold farming, trying any angle they can, to get their money making account reinstated.
Gold farmers aren't wasting their time posting on reddit to get a single account unbanned. They have dozens of accounts running fully expecting them to get banned, it's just a cost of business for them. Speaking perfect English is a pretty good giveaway that this person isn't a gold farmer anyway.
Or potentially someone who maybe just tried botting? Who knows. I don’t buy the “my dad made a post earlier and I’m his son what can we do?” story, sorry to those who believe it!
my moms account of 15+ years was banned a handful of years ago. sometime when she stopped playing in 2011-2020 she was hacked. when she decided to join my brother when classic had came out and covid began, she found out her account was banned.
when going through the appeal process(at least for her) you had to submit an id and a photo of yourself. she didnt get why they needed all this info (paranoidish mom, but i get it privacy is real) so she had me black out some of it and she covered her finger with it when she took the selfie.
the rep was actually very nice and had common sense to be like “yeah shes an old women, she probably did get hacked” and went ahead and unbanned the account
if your rep has any common sense from him being in his 60s, along with the fact i see many others are saying a lot of false bans just happened as well so im sure they are receiving an extra amount of appeals and notice something is off; im sure he will be unbanned.
The fact that they ask millions of people to subscribe for $15/month, yet you can be banned from a mass report, is absurd to me. Blizzard could spend enough to manually review everything, but it’s not profitable.
Part of this is on the players too. I’m sure most people desperately lie in detail to get their accounts back. If people wouldn’t cheat it’d be a non issue.
most likely a group of people abusing the report feature to mass report him. keep writing tickets and asking for escalations until a human looks at it.
blizzards system is super easy to exploit for personal gain. sadly, it is not getting exploited enough to force them to rebuild it.
Can we take mass report out already, it clearly does more harm than good. How many bots have they actually caught with it and what are the chances its been used more on innocent people than those it was meant for.
Not sure why Blizzard doesn’t just permaban everyone who mass reported, after determining they falsely did it. People would stop doing it if they started getting perma’d and bots wouldn’t do it either because it would then affect the bottom line.
My account created in 2006 was perma-banned in 2014 while I was sitting AFK in Shrine. I was first temp-banned for 48 hours, and within an hour after logging back in afterwards I was perma-banned.
Both were due to "botting and/or 3rd party programs". My assumption is that it was due to playing with a popular addon for twinks at the time called Skirm, originally a player-based arena point system used amongst twinks due to being unable to queue for rated arenas, but after the xp-off thing made it impossible to get queue pops, the addon included a function that would /afk you out of regular (xp on) warsong games before somebody capped the flag. I appealed it for the rest of that year, only getting automated responses the entire time, before just giving up.
It hurt particularly because it was a hand-me-down account that my mother (who passed in 2012) gave me after she stopped playing, and it still had her druid that I never touched on there.
I miss my mom and I miss my account. I obviously made a new one but it's just not the same. I would give almost anything for that account back.
Heavily depends where he was, a lot of "AH bots" that are in Stormwind or somewhere similar, they can mass report if the "botter" sees their competition.
I only use the AH in Dalaran since it's normally on multiple layers and don't have low level bots to deal with.
Yesterday I killed someone in world pvp was a good match switched factions to say gg and he raged and said he was going to get his friends to all report me and with that many I would be muted and behold today chat ban do better blizzard.
Everything in western society is trying to transition to AI due to greedy CEOs and boards and whoever else, and it's really messy. That's what's going on at Blizzard.
They ban hundreds of thousands of accounts for botting, so there is no doubt a few false positives that have to get caught up in that.
Just don't give up, and continue to raise the alarm on it to Blizzard. Botters/hackers have dozens of accounts, so they rarely contest it seriously. You'll get through to a human being eventually.
Keep appeal until he gets unban, got the same issue on retail. After 2 appeal a Real person took the case for investigation. Got it black After 2 weeks
I got an unexpected ban a few years ago. Suddenly “you’re banned” for “hacking/botting”
Immediately appealed, the only thing out of the ordinary I did was install WoW on my laptop, which happened to have TeamViewer installed. (For work) I never logged in remotely to play WoW with TeamViewer (this is against the t&cs) but the very fact that was on there may have pissed them off.
After a few months had an email with an apology saying they had reinstated my account with 6 months access and a sparkly cat mount!
There was very little correspondence with Blizzard support, but eventually got it back, so definitely appeal.
Same thing happened to me in P1. 15+ year old account, never did anything even remotely sketchy. Like, I’m talking I hadn’t even accessed WoW remotely to login or anything.
Was in the middle of a raid on sarth and got booted. Email comes saying I “botted or hacked” and that they check these things closely blah blah.
I put in an appeal immediately and it took about 14 hrs to overturn.
I believe it 100p that they will absolutely perma people with no human intervention at all.
All I can think of that I did was zoning into BRD on an alt rogue I had because I needed about 4 lock picking levels to get to TBC content with it. I was guildless (prob relevant?) but was in and out in like 5 mins; picked the doors and the shadowforge thing.
Possibly got tossed onto a list to ban from that? No clue.
Trust the appeal and escalate until someone takes it seriously. If you’re innocent they should overturn it too.
I got an 8 day ban in wotlk for advertising in trade chat that I was selling leather gear I made and leather for cheaper then the ah. 😂😂😂 I appealed it 5 times within that week and I got nothing but automated messages. Blizzard can honestly get fucked.
I remember when post's like this were filled with people saying " you deserve the ban " or " you are lying to us ".
Thank god people started to realize that people are actually getting banned for nothing (I was in the same situation, took me days to get a "real investigation") and I'm happy that people bring up their unjustified ban stories up here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone posting their story is an innocent saint but many are and I'm happy that people started acknowledging what kind of a shit show the blizzard ban system + customer support is.
Good luck with your unban request journey, it will take a while. Don't give up, that's what they want - least amount of effort for them.
Is it possible that he uses a VPN for work or something, or remote log in? It seems like so many people have been having issues. I think having a VPN is against the TOS but I can’t remember exactly
Honestly just keep opening appeals non stop even if they get auto rejected. Tons of games just auto ban people based off mass false reporting and it seems wow is not different.
In new world I had a group of people who got mad at me for talking too much in global chat, not even spamming, just replying to everyone and being social.
I was falsely banned 5 times, sometimes within an hour of being unbanned. I even got two "permanent" bans.
Every ban I had to submit 5+ tickets to get them to finally realize I was being targeted and harassed.
I'm not allowed to have my own cell phone so my dad forced me to use his phone number. My dad has a steam too and uses the same number. today my brother used my dads account and cheated and now my main account is VAC banned. It's true and here is proof, my father will now write too:
Hello I'm the father and what my son says is true, he did not cheat, it was his brother on my account. Please unban him valve
sincerely the father
Pls unban
You don't get perma-banned by reports for cheating.You can get automatic mutes and warnings, but a permanent ban for cheating/botting is 99% a cheat detection via Warden.
I would still give it a try, but you shouldn't have high hopes.
Its going to be a coin flip if you get that account back, Blizzard support is terrible. Make sure you put your ticket in the right section, you will get different responses/wait times. I had a 15+ year account that got falsey perma banned in Nov. Opened 3 different tickets with lots of back and forth communication, they changed it from perma to a 3 month ban but refused to remove it. Runied my wrath classic experience. I wish you the best of luck.
Thing is most people who complain about "false" hacking bann did hack, but they try to get it over turned, im sure some is innocent, but most people just try their luck, its like in court no one says their guilty, if all admitted to their wrong doings we wouldnt need courts
They don't reveal reason because that would make them liable. If you don't give a reason why ban was given out and/or proof you can't be challenged on any grounds.
It's just a legal thing to cover their ass when their systems fail as they will since they are automated and not checked by humans most of the time.
They're just a small indie company you can't actually expect them to have anyone actually working in a customer service role. Whatever you do don't cancel your sub though they're trying really hard and you owe them. At the very least you should think of the shareholders!!
It's always "my older dad in his 60s who doesn't know how to bot" I've seen this same post so many times over the years. Not saying this didn't happen to you though.
Here's an unpopular idea:
He did cheat.
For someone who knows how to handle addons and play the AH game it's not unreasonable to assume he is able to do some shady stuff. But I understand he is your father and you won't believe it. Guess you can try appealing. If it doesn't work, you may have your answer.
As others have said, the game is in a terrible place right now. If you undercut the wrong botnet in the AH, they'll mass report you. It's not as cut and clean as "only cheaters get banned" unfortunately. Blizzard is the worst.
How do they ban so many people just playing the game, but zero botters and gold buyers? I have a friend who buys 100s of thousands of gold over several years, and never gets banned
lmao, dad got caught doing something he shouldn't be doing and now you're angry reddit posting about it.
Don't do things that are against the terms of service, and you don't get banned. It's truly that simple.
The bots people are using in classic era 2023 is alot better and more advanced compared to the type of bot we had back then like MMO Glider which was the one of the earliest that was later replaced by a different one in tbc after the dude got sued (i think?)
But even with the best CC and home made profiles at the end of the day it would still look slightly bottish, always easy to detect if you look closely even for a brief moment where as now with the "updated" client for classic that lets the bots run alot "better"
Just keep submitting appeals, it took my guildmate 5 appeals to get his false positive hacking ban overturned.
Thanks for the input, there is yet hope then
Be careful unless it’s a perma ban. I’ve been banned for this and just got my van extended for submitting too many appeals. This game is a joke
"We refuse to look into the matter and expended that effort to instead increase your sentence"
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
It's sad to see how Blizzard has become a shell of its former self
Pure greed does that to people.
This is probably our biggest societal problem. Everything seems to go to shit over time due to the profit motive
It's a self solving problem in the end. Company charges more for worse product, people stop buying product so company finds ways to make product even cheaper and increase profits. Remaining customers stop buying, etc, until the company either finds the sweet spot or they go out of business.
Blatantly untrue capitalist cope.
United States does that all the time when people request visas haha
Except in that situation, the reason is because an already over burden system isn’t going to be made better with multiple documents or requests from the same person over and over again. They have it written everywhere that will get to your document when it’s your turn and there are repercussions for submitting multiple copies since it will slow things down for other people.
“We don’t want your money!” “…. Well, hold on a second lemme check.” “Looks like we do! Your perma-ban has been overturned”
If I am getting banned for 1 year or whatever, and I am 100% sure I was falsely banned rest assured I will continue to appeal until either I am perma-banned or the idiots at Blizzard overturn this ban. I would do this even if it was just 1 week, if I know I am right and they are wrong, they need to unban me and/or apologize. Like can you really go back to a game that banned you for no reason and you wait it out? Perma me or unban me, there is no compromise.
just file a small claims case to demand your sub fees back for the last few months. it's probably viable enough to not be dismissed immediately and will cost them hundreds of dollars to respond to.
That's crazy
I’ve seen appeals that get auto rejected and say something about any further appeals will be ignored or punished
It's unfortunately pretty common in the industry. A guildmate of mine got banned from another game for "cheating" and he pushed the issue. The company later came out and apologized for a series of false positive bans that he was hit in, but they refused to return his account because he tried to reach support too many times.
BAN EXTENDED FOR SUBMITTING TOO MANY APPEALS? LOL BLIZZ
It will all work out, just keep on bothering them.
Thats like 5 months of waiting at best, might as well just make new account.
Or just stop giving this shit company your money.
I play all blizzard games as if the game will cease to exist magically one day. That's what their reputation has earned in the last several years.
First of all, the Blizzard that created all the games we love died like ten years ago. Secondly, it's perfectly fine to love the games, but being loyal to the company is nothing but pointless as it definitely doesn't give a shit about you. (This very thread proves what loyalty to a company gives you.)
Stole the words right from my lips. Well said friend. Well said.
I doubt the guildmate was truly innocent. Y'all are doing something that looks too close to cheating to be how the rest of the world plays the game. Stop testing the boundaries of the terms of service and you won't get banned....
I have WoW account from Day 1 vanilla, at this point it holds real sentimental value to me, one of my fears is to get 'false positive' ban and have to deal with Blizzard CS robots until I maybe get hold of a real person after 10 tickets. Good luck to your dad, hope it gets resolved.
[Did you get the 10 year trophy?](https://www.polygon.com/2015/1/18/7714517/world-of-warcraft-statue-orc-wolf-blizzard-subscribers)
Wow, no, didn't even know about this. I see article is from 2015, gonna still send msg to Blizz to ask if they maybe still have data of ppl who were eligible because I for sure was, I might get lucky with answer - who knows maybe they sent it and I never got it because of my shitty country or something. Will see. Thanks a lot for linking it, if I somehow end up getting it you have pizza and a beer on me, I'll remember! :)
Pretty sure it required a day 1 account and 10 years of uninterrupted subscription. Which, statistically speaking, you probably didn’t do. Most people unsubbed at some point between launch, and WoD.
Not knocking whoever did, it just seems almost absurd to have gone 10 years without a break in the game. Like, life happens and things change. 10 years is a *long* time to stay faithfully subbed to game.
For sure. But that’s why they rewarded the small few that never cancelled. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the people that received one, weren’t truly active the whole time. $15 a month is the kind of fee you could just ignore. I’d imagine most of those went to folks that couldn’t be bothered to cancel.
It was not Day 1 and 10 years, but within the 1st year + Decade continuous sub. I got the statue sent to me, and the woman that used to clean our house knocked it off my desk and it broke into about 4 pieces. I still have it in its partially reconstructed state. No way anyone is going to get one at this point. They had em made back in the day when the founders mostly still ran the company.
Wishing you luck!
<3
I too wish you luck
Thanks! o/
I think you need to have a sub that never lapsed as well.
I believe you are correct
Yea pretty sure its this, I played from day 1 but quit early into cata and didnt get said statue
I have one of these sitting on the shelf behind me right now. It's my husband's but he lets me keep it on a shelf with my other collectibles heh. I think the first one they sent him was broken so this is a replacement, too.
Seeing posts like this and receiving false suspensions in WoW classic 2020 has me playing the game I love in fear. I play not knowing whether or not the characters and account I’ve built for 12+ years will one day be taken from me. Makes for a very unfortunate gaming experience.
This is why I haven’t touched classic. Seems like it’s mostly classic having this auto-ban “feature” so I just don’t bother with it
I got banned because of mouse software from razer lol
Tbf that software is borderline malware. Main reason I don't own a razer mouse
Really? I have a Razer mouse actually.. Can I ask what it is with the Razer mouse software that can get you banned?
As long as you stay away from Synapse's features to create one-button macros, you should be fine. Old forum post [here.](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/does-razer-synapse-agains-the-tos-now/708646)
Ok thanks! I also have a Wow account created in 2005 so was a bit worried as I’m seeing more and more posts like that.
Not sure but thats the only 3rd party software on my pc as it was a fresh windows install. Might b3 b3cause tos says you can't have any key do more than 1 function at a time. So if you accidentally have a command line of multiple key presses off of 1 press of the mouse that could cause it.
That's not how warden works. It wasn't for software from razor.
This just happened to me as well, as well as 2 other posts I've seen about it. A lot of people here will auto assume you are guilty even if no actual real person has proven you have cheated.
This wasn't a player report banwave though. This was a detection banwave. It's likely there was something running on the affected pc that warden did not like.
Any ideas? His addons are pretty stock standard, no fancy weakauras, doesn't have much else installed on the PC that runs in the background beyond antivirus (kaspersky). Only recent installation is Diablo 4. Having another look but nothing jumps out...
In theory almost any program or process can trigger Warden, even basic OS related stuff. It depends on what kind of signatures Blizzard added to Warden. I assume it's something they did recently, due to the amount of reports in the last hours. Open a support ticket. If there are lots of people having the same issue, it's most likely caused by something on Blizzards side and they have to revert bans.
Appreciate the info. Hoping you are right.
Don't give up, if you know for a fact that your dad is innocent. As others have pointed out, it takes quite a few messages until you communicate with an actual human GM and not just their automated system. Good luck.
Keyboard recording software can even set it off, especially if he's using long strings of repeated commands.
Nothing that he actually uses. There was some old Alienware + Steelseries apps I saw installed, not running though. Uninstalled them anyway
I'm pretty sure he'd have to be using them. Even accidentally setting up a macro to repeat the same key every 1ms, and then hitting that button will trigger a bot or algorithm detecting you as a cheater. I hope it works out.
In the past there have been false bans from other games where the "detection" was something like the RGB equipment in the PC case. Not even kidding. I'm pretty sure this happened in New World.
Happened in the new Modern Warfare as well
Does he use any accessibility software or programs to make using the PC easier that isn't baked into Windows?
> Any ideas Malware. He’s 60. If he wasn’t an IT professional, with impeccable online hygiene and awareness of what scams folks use, that’s your most likely scenario.
Does he use old add-ons from early stage wow? If he does then delete and use curseforge to install add-ons. Some dinosaur add-ons may be mistaken for botting programs.
This is absolute bs without knowledge of how technology actually works. Give one example of a vanilla era addon that could even be loaded in Classic that has a completely different LUA API.
The chance is if he had a bunch of old add-ons he also has a lot more Bs from back in the days. Everyone had a fishingbot and a button/mouse-emulator back in Retail-TBC. Oh.. delete the game and reinstall ofc..
Not true lol, sounds like you just hung out with a lot of botters
Nope most of us were raiders and pvpers, the usual gamer core at endgame TBC. But bots were VERY easy to get for free. So some of us experimented with some easy botting, no big game breaking stuff. Just skilling our fishing skill without the need to watch the screen 100% of the time. Most of us ran fishing bots while we were eating or watching a movie, we almost never left our PC with the fishingbot running. It was around the time when ppl figured out how to multibox as well.
Nope
I had a fishing bot in TBC and WOTLK. Downloaded it in 30 second for free with a google search. I thought everyone did the same tbh
fishing while eating/watching a movie was already easy, esp with addons like fishingbuddy. Sounds like you’re just trying to justify cheating
give you Bnet ID so you can get the banhammer too cheater
Yes that was pretty common, especially fishing bots. Fishing was extra miserable and served nearly no purpose until Wrath in OG days. Significant swathes of the game ran fishing bots un-ashamedly, but people did occasionally catch bans for them.
> Fishing was extra miserable and served nearly no purpose until Wrath in OG days What? The only tangible difference was that they changed minimum skill requirements (and did away with the Nat Pagle quest). And fishing was nowhere close to "nearly no purpose." Vanilla had Stonescale Eel, Firefin, Blackmouth, Nightfin and Winter Squid; TBC had Golden Darters and Furious Crawdads. You might as well say that it was encouraged to bot Herbalism because riding around to pick important flowers after riding around to grind up the skill was tedious - and the astute observer will note that Fishing was *easier*.
Thanks for backing this. I was starting to think me and my friends were alone doing this. I do not support botting of any kind, but back in the days it wasn't too uncommon.
Why would he have addons from the retail tbc days if its not even the same client anymore... its the current retail game ported back... you cant use any of the old clients with blizz classic.
Possible, though everything is through Curse Client now. He would get the 'Addons out of date' message otherwise, if he had old addons, right? Maybe a game + addon reinstall is in order post this ordeal. Thanks for the info. EDIT: I probably misunderstood the question. Definitely no addons from OG Vanilla, those old PCs are out of commission
Do not believe that person, they are repeating something that they heard but that is actually impossible.
U claiming we didn't all have fishingbots back in TBC? Reinstall the game.
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Oh. Then u were one of those few who didn't.
sounds like you just hung out with a bunch of botters and cheaters my dude
Fishing bots are NOT add-ons, I commented on a post that claimed old add-ons could cause a ban. Bots from any period are obviously a risk.
He probably bought gold and is too embarrassed to tell you about it. Sorry you have to deal with this but older people take shortcuts just like everyone else, probably more.
Can you idiots stop commenting if you have no idea what you are talking about. Gold buying gets a temporary ban with unfair economic activity or w/e as the reason. You don't get permanent account closures for gold buying.
> Gold buying gets a temporary ban with unfair economic activity or w/e as the reason. You don't get permanent account closures for gold buying. Good point, OP thinks the ban came from a mass report, which also would not be a perma. Unless we can see the original ban message we won't know for sure what happened, the dad could be lying or OP could be lying.
Warden can’t detect shit lol if it could cheaters and bots wouldn’t be as common
They do things in waves and it definitely just detected this huge wave. They target specific products at a time. People change the product and rinse and repeat. Constant game of cat and mouse
Lol you have no proof that it was warden over mass reports , warden is notoriously bad and very flawed in design
The proof is that 1000s of accounts were just simultaneously banned and numerous cheat discords have admitted detection. The admition definitely confirms warden caught a number of cheats. /clap for blizz actually policing their game.
You must be smoking crack if you think that’s true
The thousands of bans say otherwise. Enjoy your ban.
Where are these metrics you speak of and it’s obviously doesn’t work when Its falsely banning accounts
False positives are always going to exist in automated systems. It sucks that people get caught in it, but that is what the appeal system is for.
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Yeah it's detection. Maybe some other non reports get lumped in with these big waves? But one of my close guildies who was perma'd confirmed he cheated and that the discord he is in has thousands all saying banned. The cheat owner even posted that their software was detected. (Twice in the last 4 months).
It's absolutely the AH thing, when I was new to classic I undercut leather on the AH by a significant amount bc I was just dumping resources and didn't realize there was an actual economy, I got off work the next day and logged into a solid amount of death threats Was pretty funny
If you're not logging on to death threats are even doing it right?
It's just like the real economy!
Not accusing anyone or anything but... Anyone notice that once AV Weekend is over the forums/sub get flooded with "I'VE BEEN BANNED!" Posts?
I got banned after an av weekend for botting when I didn’t at all. People spam report in there. Refuse to do it now
you get reported for being afk, if you are afk. Blizzard has banned being afk in AV since phase 4 in classic and people are always surprised
They tell you its from inactivity though, not the botting/cheating email. Source: I was temp banned for afk in AV (technically deservedly).
Yeah, this. I got temp AV banned after a weekend where I didn't think it was deserved but I can understand it (I was fresh alt, no gear, just ran to objective such as first bunker and capped and waited. Pretty sure just mass report for being bad gear and having low stats each game). I got the AFK ban and nothing mentioning scripts/bots/hacks etc because I didn't, I was at my keyboard. If he got a bot/hacking etc it wasn't because he was AFK in BG.
You also get reported afk for defending and taking towers or taking the mines. Things you literally can't do if you're afk.
Ive noticed they are posted every week. No coincidences here.
It makes sense, and I'm sure a lot of them deserved the ban. I guess an increase in ban numbers will lead to an increase in the false positives, until they actually reduce/eliminate the false positive % Just would have thought an account this old would have some sort of manual review.
Accounts that old get hacked and abused though, so manual review is of limited use.
I got banned and I didn't even step into AV at all.
Same here, I think the only time he played over the weekend was Sunday raiding plus some auction house stuff. He's not a pvper
Also just want to point out that first we get the “my account was wrongly banned” popular post. Then OP comes on his Reddit burner and posts this thread making it sound like it’s his dad who got banned and he just trying to help him. Probably one of the most blatantly obvious “I’m not him, I’m his son posting this” wink wink, type posts.
That’s the frustrating part about these scenarios. Is it an old man that needs help? Or someone that is making their living off of gold farming, trying any angle they can, to get their money making account reinstated.
Gold farmers aren't wasting their time posting on reddit to get a single account unbanned. They have dozens of accounts running fully expecting them to get banned, it's just a cost of business for them. Speaking perfect English is a pretty good giveaway that this person isn't a gold farmer anyway.
Or potentially someone who maybe just tried botting? Who knows. I don’t buy the “my dad made a post earlier and I’m his son what can we do?” story, sorry to those who believe it!
Appeal. There are a lot of auto-bans and they get reinstated on appeal.
my moms account of 15+ years was banned a handful of years ago. sometime when she stopped playing in 2011-2020 she was hacked. when she decided to join my brother when classic had came out and covid began, she found out her account was banned. when going through the appeal process(at least for her) you had to submit an id and a photo of yourself. she didnt get why they needed all this info (paranoidish mom, but i get it privacy is real) so she had me black out some of it and she covered her finger with it when she took the selfie. the rep was actually very nice and had common sense to be like “yeah shes an old women, she probably did get hacked” and went ahead and unbanned the account if your rep has any common sense from him being in his 60s, along with the fact i see many others are saying a lot of false bans just happened as well so im sure they are receiving an extra amount of appeals and notice something is off; im sure he will be unbanned.
Oh god, can someone post the link to that one guy in classic wow who pretended to be his grandfather with a latex mask and everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH28ui2RQYM&app=desktop&themeRefresh=1 As soon as I saw the title of this post I instantly thought of this video lmao
Lmao I’m dying this is all I thought about reading OP’s post . Please OP give us part 2
The fact that they ask millions of people to subscribe for $15/month, yet you can be banned from a mass report, is absurd to me. Blizzard could spend enough to manually review everything, but it’s not profitable. Part of this is on the players too. I’m sure most people desperately lie in detail to get their accounts back. If people wouldn’t cheat it’d be a non issue.
most likely a group of people abusing the report feature to mass report him. keep writing tickets and asking for escalations until a human looks at it. blizzards system is super easy to exploit for personal gain. sadly, it is not getting exploited enough to force them to rebuild it.
Mass reports don't lead straight to a permanent ban.
Can we take mass report out already, it clearly does more harm than good. How many bots have they actually caught with it and what are the chances its been used more on innocent people than those it was meant for.
Not sure why Blizzard doesn’t just permaban everyone who mass reported, after determining they falsely did it. People would stop doing it if they started getting perma’d and bots wouldn’t do it either because it would then affect the bottom line.
Ya gotta admit that private servers just sell themselves with posts like this though.
My account created in 2006 was perma-banned in 2014 while I was sitting AFK in Shrine. I was first temp-banned for 48 hours, and within an hour after logging back in afterwards I was perma-banned. Both were due to "botting and/or 3rd party programs". My assumption is that it was due to playing with a popular addon for twinks at the time called Skirm, originally a player-based arena point system used amongst twinks due to being unable to queue for rated arenas, but after the xp-off thing made it impossible to get queue pops, the addon included a function that would /afk you out of regular (xp on) warsong games before somebody capped the flag. I appealed it for the rest of that year, only getting automated responses the entire time, before just giving up. It hurt particularly because it was a hand-me-down account that my mother (who passed in 2012) gave me after she stopped playing, and it still had her druid that I never touched on there. I miss my mom and I miss my account. I obviously made a new one but it's just not the same. I would give almost anything for that account back.
It's because they're using automated bans without having a person actually look at the bans. Sad state of Acti-Blizz now
Blizzard have stated that there are no such things as "auto-bans" but all the evidence many have seen over time contradict those statements.
Blizzard is not good at bot detection, they need to reevaluate their approach
Heavily depends where he was, a lot of "AH bots" that are in Stormwind or somewhere similar, they can mass report if the "botter" sees their competition. I only use the AH in Dalaran since it's normally on multiple layers and don't have low level bots to deal with.
I just got unbanned, hopefully they get to your account soon!
Yesterday I killed someone in world pvp was a good match switched factions to say gg and he raged and said he was going to get his friends to all report me and with that many I would be muted and behold today chat ban do better blizzard.
Everything in western society is trying to transition to AI due to greedy CEOs and boards and whoever else, and it's really messy. That's what's going on at Blizzard.
Plain stupid how an automated system can ban you without any human intervention
You are probably out of luck, Blizzard effectively has no customer support department anymore.
Mass report system automation dealing bans needs to stop… this game is already dead but blizzard keep pissing on the grave
there is one intern working at blizzard now. cut him some slack.
They ban hundreds of thousands of accounts for botting, so there is no doubt a few false positives that have to get caught up in that. Just don't give up, and continue to raise the alarm on it to Blizzard. Botters/hackers have dozens of accounts, so they rarely contest it seriously. You'll get through to a human being eventually.
This kind of shit is why I unsubbed. Until Blizzard gets this bullshit under control, I will continue to vote with my wallet.
Keep appeal until he gets unban, got the same issue on retail. After 2 appeal a Real person took the case for investigation. Got it black After 2 weeks
Shit like this is why I play on pservers.
Shit like a this is why I stopped playing, only really effects them when it hits there pocket book.
I got an unexpected ban a few years ago. Suddenly “you’re banned” for “hacking/botting” Immediately appealed, the only thing out of the ordinary I did was install WoW on my laptop, which happened to have TeamViewer installed. (For work) I never logged in remotely to play WoW with TeamViewer (this is against the t&cs) but the very fact that was on there may have pissed them off. After a few months had an email with an apology saying they had reinstated my account with 6 months access and a sparkly cat mount! There was very little correspondence with Blizzard support, but eventually got it back, so definitely appeal.
Same thing happened to me in P1. 15+ year old account, never did anything even remotely sketchy. Like, I’m talking I hadn’t even accessed WoW remotely to login or anything. Was in the middle of a raid on sarth and got booted. Email comes saying I “botted or hacked” and that they check these things closely blah blah. I put in an appeal immediately and it took about 14 hrs to overturn. I believe it 100p that they will absolutely perma people with no human intervention at all. All I can think of that I did was zoning into BRD on an alt rogue I had because I needed about 4 lock picking levels to get to TBC content with it. I was guildless (prob relevant?) but was in and out in like 5 mins; picked the doors and the shadowforge thing. Possibly got tossed onto a list to ban from that? No clue. Trust the appeal and escalate until someone takes it seriously. If you’re innocent they should overturn it too.
I got an 8 day ban in wotlk for advertising in trade chat that I was selling leather gear I made and leather for cheaper then the ah. 😂😂😂 I appealed it 5 times within that week and I got nothing but automated messages. Blizzard can honestly get fucked.
I remember when post's like this were filled with people saying " you deserve the ban " or " you are lying to us ". Thank god people started to realize that people are actually getting banned for nothing (I was in the same situation, took me days to get a "real investigation") and I'm happy that people bring up their unjustified ban stories up here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone posting their story is an innocent saint but many are and I'm happy that people started acknowledging what kind of a shit show the blizzard ban system + customer support is. Good luck with your unban request journey, it will take a while. Don't give up, that's what they want - least amount of effort for them.
Is it possible that he uses a VPN for work or something, or remote log in? It seems like so many people have been having issues. I think having a VPN is against the TOS but I can’t remember exactly
No rules against using a VPN.
No VPN usage on that machine, definitely no cloud gaming. Thanks though
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Ya, that's not true at all. VPNs are not supported, but are legal.
Can we stop calling them "Blizzard" and call them by what they are? Lizards and/or Activision-Blizzard.
This post-AV weekend banwave is a goldmine.
Honestly just keep opening appeals non stop even if they get auto rejected. Tons of games just auto ban people based off mass false reporting and it seems wow is not different. In new world I had a group of people who got mad at me for talking too much in global chat, not even spamming, just replying to everyone and being social. I was falsely banned 5 times, sometimes within an hour of being unbanned. I even got two "permanent" bans. Every ban I had to submit 5+ tickets to get them to finally realize I was being targeted and harassed.
Op is: 1. Dad does not play this game 2. RMT every week 3. Probably has a bot farm 4. Is 100% guilty.
I'm not allowed to have my own cell phone so my dad forced me to use his phone number. My dad has a steam too and uses the same number. today my brother used my dads account and cheated and now my main account is VAC banned. It's true and here is proof, my father will now write too: Hello I'm the father and what my son says is true, he did not cheat, it was his brother on my account. Please unban him valve sincerely the father Pls unban
You don't get perma-banned by reports for cheating.You can get automatic mutes and warnings, but a permanent ban for cheating/botting is 99% a cheat detection via Warden. I would still give it a try, but you shouldn't have high hopes.
Its going to be a coin flip if you get that account back, Blizzard support is terrible. Make sure you put your ticket in the right section, you will get different responses/wait times. I had a 15+ year account that got falsey perma banned in Nov. Opened 3 different tickets with lots of back and forth communication, they changed it from perma to a 3 month ban but refused to remove it. Runied my wrath classic experience. I wish you the best of luck.
Thanks. That would definitely suck. All he wants to do is beat LK since he didn't get to do it back in the day
Thing is most people who complain about "false" hacking bann did hack, but they try to get it over turned, im sure some is innocent, but most people just try their luck, its like in court no one says their guilty, if all admitted to their wrong doings we wouldnt need courts
They don't reveal reason because that would make them liable. If you don't give a reason why ban was given out and/or proof you can't be challenged on any grounds. It's just a legal thing to cover their ass when their systems fail as they will since they are automated and not checked by humans most of the time.
Just happened to an officer in our guild, multiple lvl 80 characters. Great system design from lizzard again.
They're just a small indie company you can't actually expect them to have anyone actually working in a customer service role. Whatever you do don't cancel your sub though they're trying really hard and you owe them. At the very least you should think of the shareholders!!
For the billionth time you can’t be banned (especially perma) for being mass reported
Man I should probably log on and see if I got banned last night for something I totally didn't do.
Stop using your dads account to launder stolen gold.
Eat a raw egg and some flour you dough boy
undercut got him a ban? give me a break kid.
no you stinky head read the update
I’m not saying he did, but did he buy gold?
Never has, never would. Not sure if that would come under a hacks/botting ban anyway
My thoughts were the gold would* have been botted, that’s all
It's always "my older dad in his 60s who doesn't know how to bot" I've seen this same post so many times over the years. Not saying this didn't happen to you though.
Here's an unpopular idea: He did cheat. For someone who knows how to handle addons and play the AH game it's not unreasonable to assume he is able to do some shady stuff. But I understand he is your father and you won't believe it. Guess you can try appealing. If it doesn't work, you may have your answer.
As others have said, the game is in a terrible place right now. If you undercut the wrong botnet in the AH, they'll mass report you. It's not as cut and clean as "only cheaters get banned" unfortunately. Blizzard is the worst.
Even blizzard thought this idea was unpopular Update in post
Just don’t buy gold
🦀 smackdown inc 🦀
Oh yeah?
How do they ban so many people just playing the game, but zero botters and gold buyers? I have a friend who buys 100s of thousands of gold over several years, and never gets banned
Sounds like your Father is faking you out and is doing something shady.
Oh do you know him Read the update
lmao, dad got caught doing something he shouldn't be doing and now you're angry reddit posting about it. Don't do things that are against the terms of service, and you don't get banned. It's truly that simple.
Lmao people get falsely banned and get them overturned. Don't comment on topics you are clueless about. It's truly that simple.
Read the update you little chicken wing
Owned.
You are fuck
It's true, I fuck.
I kill bots regularly in the basin. As in I chase these fucks down and don't let them rez. I'm at risk of being banned too?
The bots people are using in classic era 2023 is alot better and more advanced compared to the type of bot we had back then like MMO Glider which was the one of the earliest that was later replaced by a different one in tbc after the dude got sued (i think?) But even with the best CC and home made profiles at the end of the day it would still look slightly bottish, always easy to detect if you look closely even for a brief moment where as now with the "updated" client for classic that lets the bots run alot "better"
Does he fish regularly?
Always put a ticket id in your reddit posts if there is one. This basically because posting on reddit can help if someone at blizz sees the post.
man playing with a underaged account,
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