Recent Wave of Account Actions

[heyaz]

I have not ever used follow strobing and have been suspended twice, on two different teams - just one toon from each group for 3 hours. I have never used multiboxing tools to just jump around in BGs and avoid being AFK which is what I was accused of the first time. My second suspension was for gaining an "unfair advantage" in battlegrounds, whatever that means .

I use ISBoxer. Others use ISBoxer, don't use follow strobing, queued same BGs, and didn't get a suspension. I queued 5 at a time and got suspended. Others queued 5 at a time and didn't. Some queued 10 at a time and didn't get suspended. Some did. Some had the same suspension repealed. At least two of us have had suspensions and were not able to get them repealed.

Sorry, given all of that, it just seems random or based on factors we don't know about. Something triggers it, you lose a guy. Different customer support reps give different responses.

[ebony]

I have not ever used follow strobing and have been suspended twice, on two different teams - just one toon from each group for 3 hours. I have never used multiboxing tools to just jump around in BGs and avoid being AFK which is what I was accused of the first time. My second suspension was for gaining an "unfair advantage" in battlegrounds, whatever that means .

I use ISBoxer. Others use ISBoxer, don't use follow strobing, queued same BGs, and didn't get a suspension. I queued 5 at a time and got suspended. Others queued 5 at a time and didn't. Some queued 10 at a time and didn't get suspended. Some did. Some had the same suspension repealed. At least two of us have had suspensions and were not able to get them repealed.

Sorry, given all of that, it just seems random or based on factors we don't know about. Something triggers it, you lose a guy. Different customer support reps give different responses.

this i my friend got banned and she uses her own boxing software so it is just random though. all we can say is there is a automated system in place and sometimes some how we get put in the waves. it could be anything, and probs a mix. all we know is blizzard said boxing is fine so carry on.

[Ualaa]

Jamba has had the strobe follow as a feature from the beginning.
And there has never been an issue with it.

It does automate the /follow command, without user input (at least while Strobe is enabled).
So I could see that as an issue, at some point.
But it has not been an issue to date.

[Khatovar]

then its hard to see it as likely to be one single thing that is auto-banning people. Blizzard is sure to use a very complex formula containing much data we probably dont even know exists.

I'd say it's this. It's not going to be one single common denominator; it's a chain reaction of things. You get reported, Blizzard's "anti-bot program" or whatever looks at damage/healing and weights it against movement and inactivity, number of current reports, number of previous reports in X amount of time, repetitive actions, amount of time doing the same activity {bgs, spawn camping, other common bot activities} blah blah blah and if you hit the magic "if it walks like a duck, kill it" in its heuristics you get flagged for an account action.

It's probably the exact same thing people complain about with transferring gold between toons and farming mobs for XP or whatever. PvPers aren't the only ones hit recently. Combine it with GMs who don't know WTH they are doing and you get the "ban now, repeal later" action we tend to see waves of any time they are working on killing bots. So speculating that it's this one thing or that one thing is pointless. They'll tweak things until they are done purging the bots and these suspensions will be back to freak occurrences again.

[Feehza]

I'd say it's this. It's not going to be one single common denominator; it's a chain reaction of things. You get reported, Blizzard's "anti-bot program" or whatever looks at damage/healing and weights it against movement and inactivity, number of current reports, number of previous reports in X amount of time, repetitive actions, amount of time doing the same activity {bgs, spawn camping, other common bot activities} blah blah blah and if you hit the magic "if it walks like a duck, kill it" in its heuristics you get flagged for an account action.

It's probably the exact same thing people complain about with transferring gold between toons and farming mobs for XP or whatever. PvPers aren't the only ones hit recently. Combine it with GMs who don't know WTH they are doing and you get the "ban now, repeal later" action we tend to see waves of any time they are working on killing bots. So speculating that it's this one thing or that one thing is pointless. They'll tweak things until they are done purging the bots and these suspensions will be back to freak occurrences again.

But its nice to see when some of us find out 1 or more indicators of this heuristic methods. So hole up and waiting for a multiboxing friendly world is much more pointless then speculating.
In Nox case its clear that strobe following is one of these ban triggers. ... very plausible imo, jamba strobe is spamming follow exactly every second. Thats not human.

[Khatovar]

Tons of people use Jamba's follow strobing, that doesn't make it an indicator that it flags accounts. You say it's clear that Jamba follow strobing is to blame, I could just as easily say it's because his tickets were escalated and his account had already been flagged as clean by a "Specialist". Or perhaps they had already adjusted their system to be less sensitive to any number of factors.

Heyaz posted just four posts up that he's been nailed twice and he's never used strobing.

Unless Blizzard comes out and says "These are what was getting people flagged," which they will NEVER do, all you are doing is shooting blind and freaking people out for no good reason. Compared to the number of regular users on this site, we've seen only a handful nailed in recent account actions and that's not enough to draw any valid conclusions from.

[Feehza]

Tons of people use Jamba's follow strobing, that doesn't make it an indicator that it flags accounts. You say it's clear that Jamba follow strobing is to blame, I could just as easily say it's because his tickets were escalated and his account had already been flagged as clean by a "Specialist". Or perhaps they had already adjusted their system to be less sensitive to any number of factors.

Heyaz posted just four posts up that he's been nailed twice and he's never used strobing.

Unless Blizzard comes out and says "These are what was getting people flagged," which they will NEVER do, all you are doing is shooting blind and freaking people out for no good reason. Compared to the number of regular users on this site, we've seen only a handful nailed in recent account actions and that's not enough to draw any valid conclusions from.

It isnt my intention to spread panic.

I will correct my conclusion:
In Nox case its clear that his strobe follow settings, which is assisted via jamba-strobe-follow contribute to his bans.

[MiRai]

I will correct my conclusion:
In Nox case its clear that strobe following contribute to his bans.

This still isn't a logical conclusion because he isn't the only person who uses JAMBA's follow-strobe feature. Many, many people use JAMBA's follow-strobe and Blizzard could have changed anything internally since the day Nox received his first suspension. Just because there hasn't been a rolling restart in the middle of the week doesn't mean that stuff/code/features/numbers/systems aren't constantly changing.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I will correct my conclusion:
In Nox case its clear that his strobe follow settings, which is assisted via jamba-strobe-follow contribute to his bans.

No, that is NOT clear. Unless you have direct feedback from Blizzard showing that to be part of the root cause, all you have is speculation. Are you saying you have this confirmation?

[edit] Also, sample size of one person over a few hours (or days) is not enough to gain any meaningful perspective.

[Owltoid]

It isnt my intention to spread panic.

I will correct my conclusion:
In Nox case its clear that his strobe follow settings, which is assisted via jamba-strobe-follow contribute to his bans.

Why is it clear that's the case? To me there is still a ton of doubt that's the smoking gun.