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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBanned for no reason at all
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 8th 2008 at 4:30PM
GuamPDN.com ("Guam's complete source!") has an article up by Duane George, who tells his story of woe: he got banned from the game for suspected Arena win trading, and had to deal with 72 hours without the game. Blizzard, obviously, doesn't provide any information on how many players get banned from the game, and it would be even harder to determine the number of false positives out there like Duane: people who didn't do anything wrong but end up getting banned anyway. We've heard stories here of course, but this is a tough area to investigate by its very nature.For Duane's part, he does say that he plans to stay out of Arenas and stick to battlegrounds, so you'd think that if there were a ton of false positives like him who were turned off from the Arena experience because it wrongly got them in trouble, Arenas wouldn't be nearly as popular as they are. But of course we don't know -- there's no oversight on Blizzard's part (and you could argue that there shouldn't be anyway, since it's their game), not to mention that they've got the right, according to the Terms of Use, to ban anyone at any time for any reason without notice anyway. If they were really going overboard, you'd expect them to be losing customers, and that's not the case yet.
Fortunately, this wasn't a permanent ban, and while he did apparently lose some Arena rating and the gear that came with it, his character wasn't too much the worse for wear. A 72-hour ban isn't too big a deal, so Blizzard probably hands those out with much less consideration than a permanent ban anyway. But we're sure Duane isn't the only case out there -- as small as the number may be, there's almost definitely other players like him, banned for doing nothing wrong at all.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard, PvP, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Busilak Oct 8th 2008 7:30PM
When I joined WoW several months ago, I got the 72-hr banhammer shortly after I bought my first subscription. The e-mail said that I had engaged in disturbing the game's economy or something to that effect.
I know it's a game, but it was a frustrating progress - Blizzard wouldn't tell me a damn thing. It was also scary - I thought for sure I was hacked. And about 50 hours into the suspension, my account was deemed to have not been involved in exploting the game's economy at all.
Go figure.
Ilnara Oct 8th 2008 7:36PM
Bottom line, Don't associate with people that Win trade.
So he may not have arranged it, or had knowledge of it, but someone along the line in that team did, and as a result of it, they gained a bigger advantage as a team because of it, regardless of if they were actively win trading while this one person happened to be playing or not.
Lemons Oct 8th 2008 7:46PM
Wow...so this dude got banned for win trading and he didn't even win trade? If Blizz is going to do this they should start at the beginning. Ban all the real win traders before you start banning the fake ones :P
Seriously, I confronted a dude about win trading and he openly admitted it in trade chat! I e-mailed blizz about it and they gave me some wishy washy answer like "we might do something...but then again we might not, and even if we do do something we can't tell you because blah blah blah."
To this day I see that db running around in WoW, he hasn't been banned or anything that I can see. Maybe he got the 72 hour one...that'd make me happy, dude like that would probably die if he was off wow for more than an hour XP
But anywho, What's the deal? I can't see how this guy got banned for "suspected" win trading when some1 who basically yelled "I'm a win trader and I'm proud!" from the rooftops didn't get banned or nuthin : \
Teg Oct 8th 2008 9:10PM
Wow, I look at this site every day and the last thing I expected to see this morning was my very own guild in the first story.
So after reading the comments thought I should clear up a few things. Firstly, we're an Australian based guild on a US server so the arena queue times are OUTRAGEOUSLY long when we play. 5v5 queues can go up to an hour so you'll end up against just whoever happens to queue up at the same time. So of course if they finish a game at the same time, they're going to queue at the same time and probably end up versing each other. In my own arena team (2v2's) I've ended up versing the same team for 10 games in a row with huge gear and rating differences simply because there aren't many teams at that time.
While I wasn't one of the ones banned because I don't arena with guildies, everyone, including every single one of the players banned, were shocked by this decision by Blizzard. Particularly because we're a PvE raiding guild, no ones ratings are particularly high anyway, and they only versed each other on the one night, a handful of games, and there were no warnings or questions asked by Blizzard before such a harsh decision was made.
Jagoex Oct 8th 2008 9:35PM
I was banned for using 3rd party software--an accusation that took months for Blizzard to retract and apologize for.
However, when they finally did, they hit me with another accusation: creative geometry. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that means...
onetrueping Oct 8th 2008 9:46PM
That's exploiting the way the world is put together to get to places you aren't supposed to go, such as the Karazhan basement, Old Ironforge, inside Stormwind, in Mount Hyjal, and the like.
Bottom line: stop going where you aren't supposed to be.
Jagoex Oct 8th 2008 10:57PM
Except that I wasn't engaged in that kind of behavior.
They accused me of "creative geometry" while in the Dire Maul Arena, kiting one of the rares that spawns there.
The initial assumption by the GM was that the event's teleportation to the center of the Arena was a movement hack of some sort, and therefore they accused me of using 3rd Party software (lol @ an employee not being familiar with the mechanics of old world content). When they realized they were wrong, after several emails to Account Administrators, they apologized for the initial accusation, but continued to support their decision of guilt with the "creative geometry" explanation.
I am 100% sure nothing I did was wrong, and so is Blizzard, but I understand why they must back GM decisions the way that they do.
If they themselves acknowledged weaknesses in their own system, one can only imagine what kind of havoc could ensue.
Faxmonkey Oct 8th 2008 10:09PM
The same thing happened to Houndus. He was one of the highest rated 2v2/3v3 mages on BG9. One day, he was suddenly banned and had all his S4 gear stripped and got an email from Blizzard stating he had his gear removed and a 72 hour ban for win trading.
He had no idea why, of course, and emailed to find out. After many, mostly unanswered emails, he finally managed to piece together how Blizzard had determined he had win traded. A team he had beat many times, and that he was friendly with a player on, had whispered him and said "queue up".
This was not an invitation to win trading, but rather an invitation to combat. Moreover, he WAS ALREADY QUEUED when he got the tell. His queueing was in no way based on that tell, nor did the the team in question, which he did get matched against and win against, "throw" the game to him in any way.
Based on that, and that alone, he was banned and had his gear removed. To date, it has not been restored.
So the moral of the story is, if you want to get someone banned, find someone who's doing arena near your rating, whisper them "queue up" -- and if you do get paired against them and lose, they'll get banned for it. GG!
lur Oct 8th 2008 10:17PM
Yet another reason why Arenas are probably the worst thing to happen to WoW. Here we have a game that was already being taken way more seriously than it should be and Blizzard adds ANOTHER reason for people to revolve their life around it.
This kind of small group PvP is better handled by other game genres period. I wish... that if they insist on keeping the arena that they would seperate arena servers from the normal population. That way they can isolate the balance mechanics there instead of making all these arena-driven adjustments that make some classes flat-out awkward to play in PvE.
Andrew Oct 8th 2008 10:44PM
Oh come on, he did it... got caught, can't cope with the embarrassment, so is now trying to "clear" his name.
Barnister Oct 9th 2008 2:34AM
And this is worth a post on a popular blog because...?
Am I missing something or is there anything new in this article?
Yada Oct 9th 2008 2:43AM
I am highly skeptical, and more importantly, before you go posting statements like "there's almost definitely other players like him, banned for doing nothing wrong at all," I would think you would take the time to be sure of what you're saying. I don't see anything in your story that shows me you did any due diligence, other than taking the word of someone who cried to another website, and then quoted that website as if it were a definitive source. I have had a ton of experiences with Blizzard GMs, and I have never yet talked to one who wasn't courteous, helpful and more than reasonable. The GMs have access to logs and they can literally watch you play if they want to. In my experience they bend over backwards to give players the benefit of the doubt, and I don't believe for a minute that any of them hand out bans for no reason, or for supposition. I am extremely suspicious of many of the comments to this post, especially the one about being banned for making gold at the Auction House. They have detailed records of AH transactions and it's very easy for them to verify if you made your gold at the AH, or not. As far as I'm concerned this story is a black mark on Wowinsider, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Spider Oct 9th 2008 3:31AM
I have to agree with Yada on this one.
Also, the article and the comments from other players keep misusing the word ‘ban.’ When you get caught doing something stupid and they kick you out of the game for 72 hours that’s called a suspension, not a ban.
When you clicked on a link and got a keylogger on your computer and they prevent that account from accessing the game, they didn’t ban you. They shut your account down so that you can make sure it is secure. If they have enough reason to suspect that someone else is accessing your account, why should they let that person have access? Do you really want some gold farmer to have access to an account for a week while the owner of that account is out of town or hasn’t logged in for a while, or maybe can’t log on because the hijackers also changed the email address so the original owner can’t regain access to it?
And speaking of hijacked accounts, I laugh when people say “My account got hacked.” No, your account didn’t get hacked; your computer got hacked because you were stupid and clicked on a link you shouldn’t have. Why does that matter? Because to people who may not realize what actually happened they’ll blame Blizzard and then they feel entitled to have everything restored. It’s not Blizzard’s fault. It’s yours.
Sill, Blizzard does take the time to restore as many items as they can. Not many other companies do that; when your account gets hijacked they say “Sorry,” and lock the account. Case closed. Sucks for you.
Using the correct words is important because the words you choose can completely change the tone of the conversation. “Ban” is much more dramatic and final than “suspension.”
Getting back to the issue at hand though, it seems silly to jump to conclusions about corruption so put the tinfoil hats back on the shelves people. It’s Blizzard’s game and I’m sure they have more information than you could fathom about what players are doing in it.
You want their policies and procedures to be more transparent? All that would do is cause more problems because then people know how to skirt the rules. While I would love to say that having full information about Blizzard’s policies might help prevent players from breaking them by mistake, it’s much more likely that people would just find more ways to abuse them. Look at some of the stupid crap that players do now. Blizzard has to maintain the integrity of their game and they’re doing it the best way they see fit.
Do they make mistakes? I’m sure they do. They’re human. That’s why they have ways for you to contest any actions taken on your account. It may be frustrating to be one of those people caught by a mistake when you might not have access to all the information, but from what I’ve seen on the Customer Service Forums it’s not uncommon at all for Blizzard to correct their mistakes and for the GMs there to apologize for it (including cases of win trading that proved to be false).
When it comes down to it, if you really think that they’re corrupt or that their methods are wrong, stop giving them money. I’m not trying to say “if you don’t like it, quit” but seriously, what is the best way to show them that you’re not happy with their service? Stop paying them for it.
In the meantime, take this story with a grain of salt and try and look at all the conflicting stories you hear about things like this. Read the CS forums for a while and you’ll see twenty posts about “Why don’t you do anything about win traders/afk exploiters????” and then a few weeks later you’ll see twenty posts about “Why are all my marks/honor/pvp items missing?” Or “Why don’t you do anything about cursing?” followed immediately with a post from someone saying “Why was I banned for saying the f word?” (misusing the word “ban” again, naturally)
We’ll never have the full story because we’ll never have Blizzard’s side of it other than “This suspension will be upheld” which means that after further review of all the information they have, they still think they’re right. I, personally, am fine with the fact that they don’t disclose all the information in these cases because I don’t think that would help anyone other than those who are looking to break the rules.
Sure there will be mistakes, and those mistakes get attention because they post on the forums, or on fan sites. You’ll also see Blizzard GMs posting on the forums saying “Yeah that was a mistake. The suspension is lifted and the mark on your record removed.” What you don’t see are posts from the 10 million other players saying “Everything’s cool” because they’re too busy playing the game and enjoying it.
But I guess there will always be people who look at one example and say “Corruption! Incompetence!” because those make for better headlines. Yay sensationalism!
Månestråle Oct 9th 2008 5:42AM
@Spider Omg, please keep it a bit shorter. I'm sure theres a point in there, but thats just too much. And Yada, there is no shame in questioning Blizzard, you crazy fanboi you. Raising questions is never wrong. I mean come on, why on earth would you get mad at someone for assuming that people has been wrongfully banned or suspended? Are you against a fair trials in real life too? It happens, people make mistakes.
Soleloth Oct 9th 2008 9:26AM
So to chime in here since I cant log into the WoW forums. I was banned yesterday. I had just re-subbed my account 6 days before that. I was banned for messing with the WoW economy. Now I understand that means they thaught I baught or sold gold. But I think I had maybe 40ish gold on the entire account. I've never baught gold, I've never sold gold. I've since then sent an email in to the Account Managment team, so we will see where that goes. I'll be a little upset if this stays the way it is now. Granted my highest lvl is only 47 but still. I just re-subbed the account of a year of not playing.....So frustrated.
Kusasi Oct 9th 2008 9:27AM
Friend of mine got a ban a while back, and he got French law on Blizzard's arse, which basically said that my friend had a right to see all copies of Blizzard's logs that warranted a ban. In response to this Blizzard wanted a copy of his passport sent to them I think.
Lysator Oct 9th 2008 11:56AM
It is easy for us to point the finger at Blizzard for trying to make the game playing experience fair for everyone and of course they make mistakes and could have an easier way to communicate with them on these problems. The real blame should go to the players that practice these exploits and ruin the game for the rest of us. It is not Blizzards fault that there is "win trading", "gold selling", and "powerleveling" it is our fault for either doing it or by turning a blind eye to it. I am sure if we are not the guilty party, we all know a friend or a guildy that has done something that is agianst the TOS and empowers these activities that ruin the game for the rest of us.
SINisterWyvern Oct 9th 2008 2:13PM
Well, it's hard to tell what exactly happened without talking to the person on the other end. The GM that gave the temp ban. (and yes a temp ban and a suspension mean the same gd thing).
I myself have done quite a few things before and never had anything happen for them. I saw Caverns of Time pre-bc. As well as the basement of Khara. Never got into old ironforge though. I've also done a couple of other things I'm not quite proud of so I'll leave those alone.
As others have said, mistakes are made. Yes they miss banning people that deserve it and yes they ban people that don't deserve it. Others have also proven though that if you talk to them, reasonably mind you, you can probably get it worked out. The logs may not lie, but they can be misinterprutted. Imagine how huge these things are. In this case someone said "queue up" and Blizzard took that as a prelude to win-trading. They however missed when the person was queued. They may not even have gotten that far into the process. You ever find what you think is an answer and stop there w/o fully reading something? Same thing.
Lachann Oct 9th 2008 2:49PM
This article is a bit credulous. All we have are the words of two people, Duane George who is adamant he didn't win trade and the Blizzard GM, who (having presumably looked at the logs) is equally adamant that he did. Either could be true, but for the article to automatically side with one over the other risks egg on Wowinsider's face: after all, people have challenged Blizzard decisions before until the GM came back with very specific logs that backed up Blizzard's case (remember the guy who said he'd bought an epic mount that went missing?) Equally, Blizzard has got it wrong sometimes too and had to backtrack, so either could be true.
mikeylou Oct 9th 2008 6:15PM
I once got slapped with a permaban (no previous notices) for "exploiting the economy". I sat there in disbelief for a bit, then fired off an email complaining. Basically I said that if I had been "exploiting", then why did I not have oodles of gold and epic mounts on all my 70s, and the best that money could buy from the AH?
A few days later, I received an email apologizing for their error. Someone else was supposed to get the ban-stick.