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Blizzard said it has not been careless in its banning decisions and that there has been no intensification of efforts to enforce terms-of-service rules.
"For any account that is suspected of breaking the (terms of service) and/or the (end-user license agreement), we conduct a very thorough investigation before the actual ban takes place," Shon Damron, a Blizzard spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "In order to ensure that no ban is made without good reason, this system has been extensively refined and contains numerous safeguards."
Blizzard keeps "thorough records of any account-related actions, and we don't show any unusual recent banning-related activity," Damon added.
Not all WoW players think the company is being heavy-handed. In fact, they think most of the people getting caught in the dragnet are guilty as charged.
"It's quite possible that the people who have complained about 'heavy-handedness' have not taken the time to read the terms of use," a WoW player named Mike wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. He also asked that his last name not be used. "Ignorance is not an excuse. It's just ignorance."
Stephen Kittel, another WoW player, echoed Mike's sentiments in his own e-mail. "When someone gets banned, there is a reason for it," Kittel wrote. "Blizzard does not wantonly expunge loyal customers. Most of the time, the complainer is not being forthcoming about what he has one."
It's hard to know for sure, since Blizzard is not sharing information about its banning decisions and would not directly answer concerns. It's clear, however, that while some players may be mistakenly banned, many others have either knowingly or unknowingly committed terms-of-service violations, and that Blizzard is operating under a low-tolerance system for those breaking the rules against power leveling, using various exploits or either gold farming directly or buying gold from gold farmers.
But because Blizzard is taking action against even players who are caught associating with violators, alarms have been sounded among some guilds, or organized groups of players.
"If Blizzard is now banning people who might have been in touch with someone who broke (the terms of service) in addition to the people who broke it themselves, then that is very risky for a guild because of the interaction that goes on" between guild members, said Sean Bonner, a Wow guild leader and CEO of Metroblogging.
Bonner said if a player buys gold illegitimately and gives it to guild mates, the consequences could be severe. As a result, he said his guild now requires all players to acknowledge and reiterate they have read and accepted the Wow terms of service as a guard against guilt by association.
"We changed our build bylaws," Bonner said. "We will also take action if we find someone violating" the terms of service...Even if someone hasn't been caught by (Blizzard) and we find out they are involved with something like that, we'll kick them out to prevent it spreading to others in the guild."
Bonner also said he thinks that some banned players were likely unintentionally taking disallowed items from intentional violators and were simply caught up in Blizzard's purges.
"In some cases, I think people are on the receiving end (of terms-of-service violations) without knowing it," he said, "which is why (Blizzard is) unbanning some folks who appeal. I think they are painting with a really wide brush trying to catch it all."
See more CNET content tagged:
Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft, online game, account, customer service
When I read this article on March 22, the ads below it were all advertising the services that the article implied would get you in trouble!
(Power Leveling, Gold Farming, etc.)
Hey, it must be OK, CNET is advertising it, right?
And don't give me that "random google ads" excuse. You can filter.
Herb
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That's absolutely beautiful... And I don't even play World of Warcrack!
Why would CNET want to filter out perfectly good ads? They aren't owned by Blizzard. It's Blizzard that doesn't like gold farming. CNET couldn't care less. They just reporte the news.
Stop blaming CNET for accounts being banned. Stop blaming Blizzard. Start blaming the ones actually responsible...the people who own these accounts who are breaking the rules.
Advertisements are encouragements to purchase.
(IANAL, but I think that is from a legal definition somewhere.)
And my point is CNETs responsibility.
I don't see advertisements for porn sites after articles mentioning pornography. I don't see advertisements for... well, you get the idea.
IMO, it is not a good thing to have adverts for the subject in debate. For one thing it implies support.
And finally I was chiding them on not really paying much attention to what they were doing. It's kinda funny here, but it could really be embarrassing for something serious.
And like I just said, it was funny!
Get it, humorous!
Geez, some people are just too thin skinned.
HH
The long and short of it is, it's a game. If you start bringing in concepts like exploiting the economy and such, then you should limit the age of the players to those mature enough to understand that a EULA is not just something you have to click through to play your new game.
So, on Saturday night instead of being huddled behind my computer screen trying not to violate some game's EULA I'll be drinking beer, eating pizza with my buddies as we explore the depths of Farshore. Then on Sunday I'll boot up NWN2 and cheat my butt off and no one will say anything about it.
Have a nice day.
Don't assume Blizzard can't make a mistake. The people they hired to do this particular job are just as fallable as you and me.
The issue here is that this kid didn't PAY to get power level'ed. He was power leveling himself by spendin MASS AMOUNTS of time on Blizzards game. Instead of sending a warning they just ban and don't ask questsions. Which is crap in the customer service realm.
I know many people that have seen blizzards CS just drive bomb as they grow. This includes ban issues to in game issues. Also, as most players will note, the game currently is currently in a funk. Game play, class balance, gear itemization, Instances that are way to hard for what your reward is...etc.
its basicaly a shame cause the game is a gorgeous game but I know many people that are hoping Warhammer will be what WoW was/is supposed to be.
as a friend of mine stated, WoW to him means "Waiting on Warhammer"
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Nice.
characters. I repeatedly called and harassed customer service
until I finally got someone to tell me which character I was
supposedly paying to have powerleveled... His reply was that it
was my brand new level 3 character. Yeah.. level 3. I played her
for an hour, and then went to bed.
After 5 days of trading emails and phone calls with several
people from Blizzard, they reactivated my account. The only
thing I could get out of them was that it was a mistake because
of the character name.
When I actually logged into my account, it was stripped. I had no
armor on any of my toons (including my level 70 main) on any of
the servers I play on. Blizzards response to this? "You shouldn't
share your password." Explaining to them that my account was
reactivated by them only 20 minutes before, and that no one
outside of my household knows my password (it's just me and
my boyfriend, who also has his account) and they just kept
saying that it is their policy to not replace gear and gold that
had been stolen because of password sharing. When I finally
asked them to see who it was that my items got mailed to, the
tech said no gear or gold was mailed, it was only deleted. Really
now... how does a player delete gold? And if my account was
compromised by someone wanting to steal the items and gold,
they would have sent the gold to another player... not just delete
it.
Bottom line, Blizzard stopped giving a rats ass about their
players when they figured out that they can do whatever they
want and still have people pay. It's not going to change... They're
just the next SOE with Star Wars Galaxies... Wonder when the
new game enhancements are going to hit.
Overall WoW is a great game but if they're letting their customer service slide... or handcuffing them with rules... well, it's not a good sign.
The best customer service I've ever had in relation to these games was with Mythic.
The problem is with Blizzard creating a blanket solution to a problem with many exceptions. (i.e. a character going from level 1 to 3 in a short amount of time being put on the same playing field as someone going from lv. 10 to 35)
Blizzard should come up with a better solution, or you can take your business elsewhere. They will only learn when people take their business somewhere else. That?s how Capitalism works.
'bots' are a bane of real players as they cause inflation of in-game economies, as well as competing for in-game resources. But if I get a snow day and want to play all day long, that shouldn't have any adverse impact like a ban.
In my not so humble opinion, this shows that WoW apparently is employing morons for account activity analysts. Occasional day or week spikes of activity are no grounds for banning; and can be expected based on weather conditions, holidays, and vacation times around the country/world. If you have episodic questionable activity, you send in a flesh and blood administrator to invisibly observe the behavor to confirm or deny your suspicions. Otherwise, what you primarily need to look at are accounts being operated on a continual basis.
But it seems somewhat crazy that they have a policy in place that punishes those that apparently like their game.
Let me see, if you play WoW and do very well, Blizzard ban you and possibly anyone that associated with you online.
I know I'm not the only one puzzled by this RIAA style customer service.
And to ban people permanently with no warning - where's the logic in that?
Surely they recognise that certain people will make mistakes, won't have fully read or understood their EULA, and could dish out warnings or temporary suspensions prior to cutting off their own source of income.
Sure if they have problems with blatent attempts to ruin the game for paying customers, or people that continually violate terms and conditions, you ban those people from your game space.
But it appears that they have implemented a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
No one I know of has a problem with other players that do well or play the game to the exclusion of all other activity.
So that person leads a sad life of killing the same creatures over and over, selling loot and gathering gold and successively smaller amounts of experience. The only person being punished here is the idiot that wastes their life doing this.
But to punish loyal customers, those that maybe did violate some terms when they, say bought a small amount of gold online, or with the help of online buddies power leveled an alternate character, this is madness.
Read my blog at tylerthedruid.1up.com.
Also head out to the MMORPG.com forums where you'll fidn some good debate material about the problems with grinding.
Check out Gamasutra's recent feature on reinventing the MMORPGS. I think the ideology will appeal you to very much.
a)give the kid teh card so he can start teh account on a computer obviusly hooked to teh internet thus eliciting that you dont care what your kid does with YOUR money or your rich as hell and anything he could buy is abviusly not expensive enough to warrant your attention.
or you B)go over and see what your kid is spending your money on thus when the TOS pops up you teh adult who put your money on teh line for this account should check what it says if you let your kid just do whatever he wants with your money your an ignorant sap of a parent.
so ignorance that your kid did it and didnt know it was wrong wont get your account back. futher more if the bot DIDNT work how is that blizz even new you had one.they dont check every computer with a account that plays for illegal programs cause that violates our privacy and doing such a thing is taxxing on bandwith for the game resulting in high lag/ latency for teh players.
Most of the people banned (which in reality isn't much) were banned for things they didn't know they could be banned for. Nearly every WoW player skips the ToU and EULA and then gets mad when they're banned after account-sharing or gold-buying, or even glitching into areas which they aren't allowed to explore.
The only real wave of innocently banned players was when Linux users were banned, which as since been undone. Anyone claiming to be banned for no reason here has fell victim to ignorance of Blizzard's terms, ignorance of what they really did, or complete chance -- if Blizzard's in-built Warden program detects anything suspicious, and they they're falsely reported for hacking, Blizz will ban.
this story, but I can't see what "selective wording" I used that got
JaedxRapture upset. I represented both sides of this argument, got
Blizzard's response and tied it into how this is affecting guilds. I
think it's a fair representation of what I am hearing is going on.
Why is Blizzard reinstating these accounts if the players are obviously in the position where they need to be banned? I think you are defending a point that Blizzard itself has conceded.
2nd Ban(suspension, dunno)March 9th,2007, last level i was at was 58, grinding another character to where I was so i could catch back up with my guild during burning crusades. I have sent an email a day and NO RESPONSE from Blizzard other than "We've received your message". I have emailed Vivendi and supposedly they are taking the Email higher. Screw Blizzard. Both times I have been brushed off and my money literally stolen from me. Warhammer Online will be the death of WoW, so it doesn't matter.. Bye Bye Blizzard and Vivendi... you will get no more money from me.
2nd Ban(suspension, dunno)March 9th,2007, last level i was at was 58, grinding another character to where I was so i could catch back up with my guild during burning crusades. I have sent an email a day and NO RESPONSE from Blizzard other than "We've received your message". I have emailed Vivendi and supposedly they are taking the Email higher. Bye Bye Blizzard. Both times I have been brushed off and my money literally stolen from me. Warhammer Online will be the death of WoW, so it doesn't matter.. Bye Bye Blizzard and Vivendi... you will get no more money from me.
I asked if I should buy 4 accounts for myself and my boys to all try out the game, and he agreed.
GG Blizzard, jackasses.
As far as powerlevelling goes. I've met people who claimed to use an automated program to level - and they were never banned. It's incredible, how incompetent Blizzard can be on this subject.
Since this is true, anyone who uses real currency to buy gold or to pay for a power leveling service, or to pay for an honor farming service are breaking these two well-documented sets of rules. The same holds true for people who sell these services. Not only that...but since the game is copyrighted to Blizzard, and they claim the right to own everything in said game, these people are breaking Federal copyright laws, by buying and selling these goods and services without express permission from Blizzard. They're lucky they're only being banned!
Blizzard has also said many times, where anyone who has half a brain can see on the forums, that automatic bot programs are considered exploits...and that anyone using said programs and caught in the act will be severely dealt with. No matter what these people say, they are NOT being unfairly dealt with. If you break the rules, you get punished. I, for one, am very glad Blizzard is finally doing something about these people. They make it very hard for those of us who don't see a need to break the rules to enjoy the game for what it is, and I cheer Blizzard for its attempts to make the game unbiased to any one group of people and enjoyable for all.
Player 1 goes to a gold farmer. player 1 gives gold to player 2 who is just getting started. player 2 gets banned. This is not fair.
Now if Blizzard started banning players for not having a life, that would be public service.
I was temporarily banned (without warning, or communication prior to the ban) for 'Speed Hacking'. The GM described the offense (after-the-fact, via e-mail) as 'Visually confirmed - through one minute of observation - player moving at an increased speed while stealthed in cat form with no speed enhancement buffs present'. Long story short, the GM was not knowledgable about my class (Druid) and the fact that my talent selection did in fact give me this ability.
The great thing about these bans is that it is like being tossed in solitary confinement where no one can hear your proclamations of innocence. The customer service line is a joke (they actually hung up on me - which has never happened to me in dealing with 'customer service' anywhere else). All I got was 'Sorry sir, we can't help you - moving on to the next call - wait for an e-mail response'. The e-mail support is this kind of black-hole where cries for help goes in, and automated messages come out. If you're lucky, many days later, you might get a canned response. These e-mails are responded to in the order received, and given the current state of things, I can't even begin to imagine how many hundreds of thousands of cries for help are flying into that inbox each day.
Ultimately, I received an e-mail response that - in typical blizzard legalese - stated that the issue had been investigated, and the ban had been removed. No offer to credit back the time lost, no admission of guilt or mistakes made.
I love this game - but this has gotten out of hand. Blizzard's customer service function has not sufficiently grown to support the growth and success of World of Warcraft. There are - apparently - no checks and balances or peer review OR significant investigations required PRIOR to banning a player. One GM made a (in my opinion) simply mistake, and that was it - I was out, in my solitary confinement cell feeling unjustly imprisoned by my judge jury and executioner. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that he DID at least spend 1 minute observing my actions to sentence me.
This IS good for the game. I don't agree with people being banned unnecessarily. But if you cheat by buying items/ingame services/gold with real currency from a 3rd party outside of WoW, then you deserve to be banned. If you cheat by installing a bot program that does the work for you, so you can go do something else, then you deserve to be banned. If you spam me with gold selling/PL-honor farming services, then expect to be reported.
This can lead to such problems as STD, Divorce court, and in a worst case scenario, paying for kids STD treatment, Divorce court and 4 or more years of collage.
The only statistic that really matters is the people banned vs. the people banned and reinstated ratio.
Forum topics like this love to use 1 or 2 examples of people that were banned and reinstated. However, how many players were banned legitimately and never reinstated?
We're not talking about executing people to save the rest. We're talking about MMO bannings. So a few people are banned. It's not the end of the world. I've never been warned or banned, but if I was ... meh, I'd find another game to play and move on. I enjoy WoW, but not being able to play would not be the end of the real world for me.
- Blizzard assumes guilt before innocence
- by Stryker2 March 23, 2007 1:26 PM PDT
- Having known firsthand exactly what this articles discusses, I will confirm completely they will ban your account for what they determined to be against their EULA, before completing any type of investigation. Now before any of you Blizzard Fanatics think they can do no wrong, I have documented proof regarding my account's ban and it was in no way shape or form due to my flippant disregard to their EULA.
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