The Blizzard Bannings & Petitioning

[TheKazar 1]

Dear Readers

(DISCLAIMER: I do not support bot-users nor am I a bot-user myself, this Is not about the bot-user ban waves either I also apologize In advance this Is a longer read)
I've been fighting for upwards of a year now, more valiantly and with more effort In the last 6  months however, as I try and raise awareness of an issue that's one of many reasons Blizzard's World of Warcraft game Is losing subs and failing both In ability to keep a long term stable population and treat their customers fairly. I ask you to hear me out first, read what I have to say (write?) and then judge, take your time to read this and gather your thoughts, as I'm not here to troll, shame or point fingers, only to find a way for me and my friends to be able to play our beloved game once again & point out the flaws and mistreatments of the general WoW population In hopes Blizzard will help, not just us select few who were harmed, that we were harmed now doesn’t mean you won’t be harmed In a few days by this - to be explained further below *, thank you.

Allow me to start off with my own story of how I got here and why, In a short version. Since April 2015 I was banned on my main account, that I’ve played for 10 years now since vanilla (10 years back then, 11 and a half now of course) since the beginning of WoW, I’ve played since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed the game to high heaven, so on and so on, no need to give another written speech about how we’ve all enjoyed this game so much, we’ve all had this feeling that the game Is so great and amazing, most likely started off with Warcraft 3, and then moved on to WoW Itself. Longer version will be below, this short one was to catch your attention!

I’ve played every single month since the beginning of vanilla on EU, every single month paid for, because I love the game, I love to raid, I love to PvP, and with the added value of Roleplaying which so many people consider boring and only laugh at. While I find It as a tool to further immerse myself Into the universe of Warcraft. I’ve helped as much as I could, reported people with bad names – the best example of this Is a person whose current character will remain unnamed used to have the name Guderian on our RP server, on Moonglade. And In a group effort among my friends, we mass reported him as we associated the name quickly with Heinz Guderian Nazi General of WW2– which obviously nobody wants In their game, a person like that. With again the added effect that we Roleplayers, use an addOn called MyRolePlay which displays descriptions of your character, history, birthplace, title and so on… and we clearly saw his full name as “Heinz Guderian” and that was simply unacceptable for us all..

So that Is one of the things I strived to not have In my game, people who support such people and ideas, among other I reported spammers, goldsellers, people who would harass me back In the days, as I’m sure some of us have experienced one way or another or were participants In such an act themselves – and If you were, shame *Bell ring*

The game has helped me In life, there Is a story about Rob Kazinsky who Is of course the actor for Orgrim Doomhammer In the upcoming Warcraft Movie, he has had experience with WoW for years and years, and still plays to my knowledge. It has helped him boost his self esteem, to go out and work, make friends, be nicer to people and just all around a better person - this story Is what describes most of us from WoW as well and that Includes me. I've learnt to speak english solely by playing video games, namely Warcraft. I've begun working In tourism, In a hotel specificly a year and a half ago which gave me a nice job, a girlfriend so on and so on... It was a great influence on my life.

Some may know me and know that I post on various forums Infrequently, due to my posts being downvoted and unliked, quite obvious as blizzard fanboys will jump on the chance to try hide criticism of their favorite game. But In this post, the 1 or two that I made here before I thought reasonably explained my situation (I was mistaken), and would get the attention of a Blizzard-GM and to help me solve my problem. As I thought Blizzard are truly that helpful and want to be nice to their community and players, and If one of us was treated unfairly especially by their own staff they would try to rectifie this.

I was sadly wrong, my first post as I remember a year ago mentioned how –I- was harassing someone**, and that’s the reason I was banned… as I can’t expect people to have followed my posts In the last year allow me to explain the situation further:
I was not the harasser – I am completely innocent In this as can be. The reason for that Is I was away on a business trip since January to April 2015, to Poland hoping I’d find a good stable job there… It kinda failed as I was given a trial period and they didn’t like how I was performing so I was sent packing basically. Days before I had arrived, I was noticing towards the end of April that there were emails which came In February that were along the lines of “You’re doing bad stuff on your WoW Account, cease and desist or we’ll suspend your account further” And I was like… O.O I’m not even on my account… haven’t been for months, so I call up my family and find out my brother’s been playing on my computer, and account with a password he STOLE from me (I repeat, stole, I did not give him access), my parents were convinced I had given him access to my PC so they shrugged It off

And so I arrive home, obviously smack the hell out of my brother (Not really), he played on my chars, explained how he went after this girl he really liked In the game (Or guy, I’ve played long enough to not ever be sure on WoW) and kinda went too far, he realized and well since that time It’s stopped… and no harm was done long term, this was around the 2nd or 3rd april 2015, however… two weeks later, April 14th 2015 minutes after midnight I receive an email out of nowhere (You are now perma banned, sorry, we can’t tell you why, but you are). And that’s the big kick In the teeth as well, they can’t tell me why… I’ve only ASSUMED In this last year and a half that the reason Is they’ve conducted an investigation and confirmed my brother’s been doing all of that stuff. Yet… they’ve already confirmed that since they suspended the account multiple times… so I don’t get It, they already knew, they already had confirmation, they already meted out punishments, but It never went so far as to continue beyond the few warnings and suspensions put on my account when my brother was In control.
So that Is my full story, unchanged, unmoving, **but to explain the point above, why did I say It was me? Well my brother Is a teenager, and despite me hating him I couldn’t put my younger brother on the spotlight.. so I said “Hey yeah It was me.. sorry.. give me back my account now please? This Is my first offense In 10 years, won't happen again” obviously that didn’t work, and later on I just gave up and told Blizzard the whole story and that he did It, with the added Information my brother told me later on about what he did so that Blizzard can see the big picture too.

Also, let me mention that I gave Blizzard LEGITIMATE PROOF of me not being anywhere near the IP Identified with the banning during the suspending times, aka my PC at home. I gave them my flight tickets, I gave them my hotel reservation, my ID, even my bloody Authentication Key on the vanilla-wow box I bought 11 years ago which Is like –THE- proof of ownership. And all In all, all of this I would class as “Being hacked” because that’s what It essentially was. My password was stolen, used on my account for my brothers own benefits, without my knowledge… yet they won’t treat It like that. And no matter to the fact I’ve played WoW 10 years with a SPOTLESS slate, no suspensions, compaints towards my account or bans EVER prior to all of this going down and trying to help out where I can as mentioned above.

The main argument here of my innocence Is this: I didn’t do It, why should I be punished? There Is no evidence to support It either, none that they are showing and I doubt they have. He already was punished, he got his punishment. While I was away on a work trip, hoping to supply for my family and myself working hard day and night (And a hotel receptionist you get both shifts at times) and just wanting to return home eventually and play WoW again which keeps me happy, relaxed and fine. My brother commited these things, I did not as the proof shows. And before you start arguing “I deserve to be banned too” – how would you feel If someone literaly hacked your account, stole your password, played for a few weeks or months, caused you to be banned for using bots, harassing, economy abuse or other and then you got the account back… and despite given the account back, the suspensions and things done on the account pour over to you as the owner, even If you didn’t do any of them and COULD NOT stop It? Is that fair…? That's like saying "Well -you- didn't do the harassment, but someone on your account did, so you'll suffer for It now" ... what??????

*To continue what I mentioned even more above – In a few days, you might get banned yourself, or even suspended which Is fine, you most likely did something wrong, you wait It out, realize your punishment and move on with playing fairly, a simple and good practice for a company? I would say so, the rules when It comes to banning WoW players Is something as follows: “We will suspend players for violations of our EULA & ToA for a certain period of time, 3 hours or upwards of a week/months with the hopes that they will learn their lesson, and realize that this will not work and they will resume playing the regular way”

Not a direct quote, but It goes something like that, Blizzard will suspend your account initially, a few times If needed to tell you “Hey, stop…” and If you persist they will have to put a perma ban on your account to put you away from the regular community – which Is a reasonable stance, In my case I have been given an instant perma ban for exactly nothing – It was not my fault, how could I even prevent It? Which Is In itself bizzare, not to mention there’s only been 1 GM that’s been “Resolving” aka cancelling my tickets In the last half year, I feel he has either a personal bias here, or just likes to ban people a lot, I’m sure he’s banned, suspended or harassed more than just me – for proof of this check one of the links below which show about half of the tickets I made answered by the same Game Master, as If they put a flag on my account that said “Only I <Unnamed GM> can answer this guys’ tickets now”, why do I say harassed?

He literally threatened to suspend my other blizzard game accounts, starcraft, hearthstone, Diablo 3 and so on If I continue to try and plead my ban case to them via ticket or email form (Which Is twice as Insulting, as I've bought Starcraft and Hearthstone only recently around April 2015, which quite frankly I consider harassment and trying to silence criticism of their game and their policies, as well as general bad PR for them since hey, now I’m telling you all of this on the forums so that doesn’t put them In a good spotlight, considering the state of WoW and how it’s falling down I’m not surprised they’d be as desparate as to try shut down any criticism of their games, yet my gallery and my posts still remain. While Instead of me giving Blizzard such a bad speech and preaching It to the Internet, showing all how badly they treat me and others… all they should’ve done to make me praise their game Instead and say how good and enjoyable It is (Like I've been doing the last 10 years), was to GIVE ME BACK MY ACCOUNT with a press of a few buttons… Speaking of my gallery…

http://s1077.photobucket.com/user/TheUnbanusshield/library/The Tickets to Blizzard and their bad responses?sort=3&page=1

http://s1077.photobucket.com/user/TheUnbanusshield/library/The Victims of Blizzards Unfair Bannings?sort=3&page=1

Please, take your time and read the victims stories, and what I personally wrote to these cases in the description under each screenshot – as well as viewing the tickets I’ve written to Blizzard and how robotic their answers are, repeated, samey, and quite frankly unhelpful.

Here are two links to a gallery on Photobucket, that showcase two things: My tickets to blizzard and their horrid response to me, and the other more important note, OTHER banning victims – yes I am not alone In this, I’ve been scouring the wow-forums, mmo-champion forums and others to showcase how other people are having problems with blizzard, and while there Isn’t thousands of them that doesn’t mean there aren’t many thousands or hundreds of thousands… because there could be. The people that made these posts are the very few brave to show their case, try to find help and friends In this dark hour of their account being shut down for no good reasons. There are many people who were simply banned unfairly and just left to rot, without making a post – there are MANY hundreds and thousands of ex-subscribers ready to return to your game, Blizzard. If you are willing to give them second chances. There might even be as much of us as there were players supporting Nostalrius & Legacy Servers.

Lastly, after reading all of the above and you feel like I am right, or at least partly right, and you are perhaps one of the victims of Blizzard’s bad customer support, sign this petition. I do legitimately believe this can make a difference, If we sign this petition In the name of all who were banned unfairly, like me, or had a false positive on their account or anything else, and we could be able to come back to WoW before Legion launches.

https://www.change.org/p/michael-morhaime-petitioning-blizzard-s-ceo-mike-morhaime-to-unban-innocent-unfairly-banned-wow-players

It will be delivered to Blizzard’s CEO himself, or at least someone high enough the ladder to help a large amount of players return to their game – we may be as large as the ones who were signing the petition for Nostalrius, hell some of the ones signining the petition for Nostalrius might’ve been banned unfairly on WoW In the first place and came to Nostalrius instead. Because what Blizzard doesn’t understand Is that Sentimental value Is real. “But why don’t you just start a new account and play again” – well the answer Is sentimental value, I have items, weapons, armors and things that you CANT have In the game anymore (Example: Benediction Priest Staff, Original Quel’serrar from Dire Maul, various Items, bracelets, boots, chest pieces and so on you can’t get anymore. As well as just the characters that you made are sentimental value) It’s this rarity after playing 10 years that makes me feel great about having played for so long – and I loose that value, I loose all my proffesions, all of characters, all my transmogs, my character names, my RP-connections, everything… all of that Is on my real account that I need to get unbanned, or else I simply will not play WoW again with such enthusiasm or joy as I did before and that counts for the MAJORITY of WoW players, not just the banned ones, but all of them. It’s this sentimental value and the time spent on the game – and the account moreso then anything else that keeps us wanting to play on.

Lastly, I am here to showcase to Blizzard, and to everyone reading how badly Blizzard Is treating us, to sign the petition and hope that Blizzard notices and helps us - and to ask Blizzard to RE-REVIEW all and any suspensions & bans made In the last 6 years or further If possible, re-review them, all the possible facts and angles, and give these accounts Including mine a second chance, despite my account personally not needing a second chance as It’s done nothing wrong (At least not In my hands). If not, I will continue to make these posts, I will continue to update and keep my gallery up to snuff and show how badly you treat your customers, now that they threatened and harassed me with forced suspensions If I continue to make tickets on the matter this is all I can do… If Blizzard wants their game to fail so badly, It will fail and with my help and I REALLY do not want to help the game fail. Really, I’d love nothing more than to ride the tide to the end of WoW’s days but Blizzard gives me no choice, not to me or my friends. I'm not really laying siege to them In a way I thought I would, but at least I will cause some wounds here and there If they will keep refusing to help their playerbase and help their own beloved game fail.

I dearly hope the Forum Moderators (As I’m posting this on multiple forums) - (Not the wow ones, they definitely will close this one I'll post on their site  within seconds) will allow this post to live on for a while, and not lock It like you’ve lock It, I've posted 4 on these forums already and were locked down of course - for some fake reason, trolling I believe which this Is not, so I hope this one will last. I hope this post looks legitimate and well enough constructed to not be considered bad enough to lock down, which Is why I took upward of a month making this and gathering my thoughts and updating my gallery (And I will keep updating It)

Thank you for reading through all of this, and do mind your language, try to gather your thoughts when you write a reply to this Instead of lashing out randomly, lets try and be civil about this, as I've tried the same approach with Blizzard since the beginning as much as I could for someone whose lost their 10 years of progress.

 

I dearly hope the Forum Moderators (As I’m posting this on multiple forums) - (Not the wow ones, they definitely will close this one I'll post on their site  within seconds) will allow this post to live on for a while, and not lock It like you’ve lock It, I've posted one on Icy Veins already, or two I believe and they were never locked, which surprised me In a nice way, so I hope this one will last as well. I hope this post looks legitimate and well enough constructed to not be considered bad enough to lock down, which Is why I took upward of a month making this and gathering my thoughts and updating my gallery (And I will keep updating It)

Thank you for reading through all of this, and do mind your language, try to gather your thoughts when you write a reply to this Instead of lashing out randomly, lets try and be civil about this, as I've tried the same approach with Blizzard since the beginning as much as I could for someone whose lost their 10 years of progress

[Damien 1,514]

I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for by posting here. I can understand how upsetting it is to get your account permanently banned, but we don't know you and all we have is your side of the story. Blizzard will never give theirs, so we can never truly appreciate the complexity of the situation.

In any case, here's a reminder of relevant parts from the terms of usage for WoW.

From  IV. World of Warcraft Rules of Conduct

Quote

As with all things, World of Warcraft is governed by certain Rules of Conduct ("Rules of Conduct") that must be adhered to by all users of World of Warcraft. It is your responsibility to know, understand and abide by these Rules of Conduct. The following rules are not meant to be exhaustive, and Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to determine which conduct it considers to be outside the spirit of the game and to take disciplinary measures in accordance with Article VII of the Terms of Use. Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to modify these Rules of Conduct at any time pursuant to Article XII of the Terms of Use. 

[...]

When engaging in Chat in World of Warcraft, or otherwise utilizing World of Warcraft, you may not: 

(1) Transmit or post any content or use any language, in writing or orally, which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard Entertainment, is deemed to be offensive, including without limitation content or language that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above;

From VI. Consequences of Violating the Rules of Conduct.

Quote

Blizzard Entertainment may, in its sole and absolute discretion, take whatever action it deems necessary to preserve the integrity of World of Warcraft. Violation of any of the Rules of Conduct set forth above may result in actions being taken by Blizzard Entertainment, effective immediately or at a time determined by Blizzard Entertainment, which may include without limitation: 

1. Temporarily suspending your access to World of Warcraft,
2. Permanently terminating your access to World of Warcraft (see Article XV, Section 2 below),
3. Modify a character or an Account, including without limitation, reducing or removing experience points, skills, levels, in-game currency or items; or
4. Temporarily or permanently suspend, or terminate, your access to an Account that you use to access the Service. Without limiting the foregoing, Blizzard Entertainment retains the right to decline service to any user who violates the BNET TOU, the Terms of Use and/or the EULA. 

The bottom line is that even if the whole world thinks that Blizzard is wrong, they still have the right to terminate your WoW account. The only way to make them reopen it is to take them to court and win.

[darkdiamond87 3]

i mean, it sounds to me like you broke the ToS, or at least your account did. and as im sure youll find with a little looking around the "my brother did it while on my account" excuse never works, because unless youve been legitimatly hacked, youre the one responsible for your account and password.

also, why would you mass report that guys hilariously glorious name? thats terrible.

[Rambunxious 1]

I understand your point   but you are still responsible for your account whether your brother is the culprit or not.  How does he have your password or authenticator code?...

Ive gotten temporary bans for responding to trolls and harassers.......and im banned because i use profanity or sexual references.....very well i understand that...but Blizzard is too damn lazy to read the entire conversation to see who started the exchange and who started the BS    name calling  profanity  and etc.  i get banned and im just the responder  not the instigator .   Blizzard  hire some damn employees and do some more research before banning people.