Double account ban.

[Venusfly]

I was handed a double account ban about a week ago and have been trying to deal with it ever since.

the first e-mail i received stated both accounts had been permanently closed due to "economy exploitation", a follow up e-mail in which i asked them to elaborate on what i had done exactly got me an e-mail that stated "
Thank you for your follow-up email. The information regarding the account ********* has been reviewed once again and determined that the closure was indeed warranted." A third e-mail has not been sent.

both accounts were closed on the same night.

Things i did not do: Buy/sell gold, Buy/sell either account, bot

Things i did do: raf'ed up 2 hunters to 60, 2 paladins to 30, then one of the paladins was granted 29 levels from the raf hunter, transfer 500 gold via trade window to the raf account.

As far as I can tell "economy exploitation" refers to buying/selling either gold or accounts. and i can't get them to tell me which they think i've done in their e-mails. I'm 99% sure i didn't miss a gm tell while 2-boxxing unless i was afk. i recieved zero warnings or suspensions on either account. and i had about 6 people ride up to me and ask if i was 2-boxxing to which i did not reply at all.

anyone have anything to enlighten me on what it is i could possibly be being accused of beyond what I've stated? or had a similar experience 2 boxxing with keyclone?

[Tight]

Call them up.

[warbringer]

Indeed. Call them up. Explain what you did and that the money you transferred was your own.
I hope that both accounts ARE in your name.. ?

[Khatovar]

The same happened to another poster here recently. Assuming both accounts are in your name, you should be able to call someone who actually has to talk to you and fix it or explain why you were banned instead of e-mailing someone who's gonna throw you a canned response so they can run out for a smoke with their buddies. ;)

[Svpernova09]

From what you've told us, the kicker here is to make sure the accounts were in the same name. If they are, you should be able to fight this.

[beyond-tec]

economy exploitation = trade gold in large amounts, recieve / give gold to accounts that have a different owner or move large amounts of gold via guild bank / via auction house with selling "crap" for tons of gold.

third party program = bot tool, no responding to GMs. It doesn't matter if you respond to players as long as warden doesn't detect a third party tool or you ignore a GM.


in your case: economy exploitation, so check your gold transfers, check your account owners, call them up.

[Gadzooks]

I was handed a double account ban about a week ago and have been trying to deal with it ever since.

the first e-mail i received stated both accounts had been permanently closed due to "economy exploitation", a follow up e-mail in which i asked them to elaborate on what i had done exactly got me an e-mail that stated "
Thank you for your follow-up email. The information regarding the account ********* has been reviewed once again and determined that the closure was indeed warranted." A third e-mail has not been sent.

both accounts were closed on the same night.

Things i did not do: Buy/sell gold, Buy/sell either account, bot

Things i did do: raf'ed up 2 hunters to 60, 2 paladins to 30, then one of the paladins was granted 29 levels from the raf hunter, transfer 500 gold via trade window to the raf account.

As far as I can tell "economy exploitation" refers to buying/selling either gold or accounts. and i can't get them to tell me which they think i've done in their e-mails. I'm 99% sure i didn't miss a gm tell while 2-boxxing unless i was afk. i recieved zero warnings or suspensions on either account. and i had about 6 people ride up to me and ask if i was 2-boxxing to which i did not reply at all.

anyone have anything to enlighten me on what it is i could possibly be being accused of beyond what I've stated? or had a similar experience 2 boxxing with keyclone?It's not the gold, I've sent thousands of gold from account to account.

Economy exploitation is usually used for gold selling/buying, but it can cover other things as well.

Do you own both accounts? If not, you'll probably not get the account back.

If you do own both legitimately, then you need to investigate your computer for trojans and keyloggers. Also, are you on any arena teams or received anything from other players? It's a small chance, but you could have been caught up in a small ban wave, as a recipient of "stolen" goods.

If you think your account was compromised, or find something, clean your machine up, and hit up the customer service forum at their site and start the process to get your account reinstated.

Also, are you using LowerPing?

If you want some clues, head over to the customer service forum at Blizzard's site, and ask a GM if they can give you more details. They won't tell you specifically, in a public forum, but a lot of times they'll "hint" at what they see on their end, ie. if they suggest you visit the account security threads, that means they see signs of your account being compromised. If they tell you to contact account administration, and nothing else...not a good sign.

Last week there was a small group of players who got banned for the same thing, and they were claiming they'd done nothing wrong, and are still waiting to see what will happen to their accounts. I would suggest you contact account administration, to get the ball rolling, and be warned, response times right now are in weeks, not days.

Good luck!

[Tombs]

My girlfriend's account got compromised a few months back and blizzard called it "economy exploitation". Her 70s were transferred to different accounts and many level 1s sprung up on many servers to sell the gold probably from vendoring her gear. Contact customer service.

[Catamer]

as a multiboxer you have so much more invested in the game. you need to look into trying to get one of these Blizzard Authenticator ('http://www.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000182')

it sounds like they don't think your two accounts are owned by the same person OR someone hacked your account.
good luck with getting your accounts back.

[Batato]

Had the same problem last friday, I send e-mail complaining right away and called billing department canceling all my other 4 accounts, in exactly 3 hours my accounts were back to normal, My problem was related to grant a leve and giving money to that char, and I did received the same e-mail.

Good luck




I was handed a double account ban about a week ago and have been trying to deal with it ever since.

the first e-mail i received stated both accounts had been permanently closed due to "economy exploitation", a follow up e-mail in which i asked them to elaborate on what i had done exactly got me an e-mail that stated "
Thank you for your follow-up email. The information regarding the account ********* has been reviewed once again and determined that the closure was indeed warranted." A third e-mail has not been sent.

both accounts were closed on the same night.

Things i did not do: Buy/sell gold, Buy/sell either account, bot

Things i did do: raf'ed up 2 hunters to 60, 2 paladins to 30, then one of the paladins was granted 29 levels from the raf hunter, transfer 500 gold via trade window to the raf account.

As far as I can tell "economy exploitation" refers to buying/selling either gold or accounts. and i can't get them to tell me which they think i've done in their e-mails. I'm 99% sure i didn't miss a gm tell while 2-boxxing unless i was afk. i recieved zero warnings or suspensions on either account. and i had about 6 people ride up to me and ask if i was 2-boxxing to which i did not reply at all.

anyone have anything to enlighten me on what it is i could possibly be being accused of beyond what I've stated? or had a similar experience 2 boxxing with keyclone?

[Venusfly]

Heh..... of course my accounts are not under the same name =( oh balls.

i made one in my girlfriends name for recruit a friend in the hopes she might play with me, of course she wouldn't so i just used the account myself. SO i guess game over for my accounts? I've used the same credit card for start/upgrade/monthly bills on both accounts forever.... not sure if that will help me out. guess i'll give em a call.

[Talamarr]

....dude....

[Frojax]

Are the accounts at least registered to the same address? If they are, even if one is for the girlfriend, then I would still give support a ring, explain the situation and try. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

[elsegundo]

double check your armory to make sure your accounts are not hacked into. if they're stripped, then its probably not because you're trading gold between two of your accounts. but having different names on each account, that may still be a problem.

[Maxion]

Indeed.
Next time, remember that you can recruit yourself.

[Reglar]

On the thread of keeping the contact info the same, I had decided to use 2 accounts my kids stopped using, however one of the boys turned 18 a month previously and so Blizz wouldn't transfer it into my name since the owner was now over 18, even though it was the same Credit Card, same last name and same address info.

Bottom line is its best just to RAF yourself than use existing accounts.

[Vyndree]

Heh..... of course my accounts are not under the same name =( oh balls.

/facepalm


I warn people soooooooo many times.

Account sharing is bad, mmkay. If your gf's name is on the account, it's HER account. They banstick'ed you for giving large amounts of gold/RAF levels to another account that isn't yours. Normally, you could argue (if you weren't account sharing) that they were both your accounts and you can xfer benefits as you choose because they're yours... Except in this case, you might overturn the "economy exploitation" and get hit with "account sharing" instead.

Take it as a learning experience and create your next account the right way -- with your own name. :)

[railz]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.

[elsegundo]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.
reset your router.

you can have multiple email addreses so long as your accounts are under the same name. you can even have different types of billing (cc, paypal, phoneline, gamecard... one type for each account if you so desire).

[railz]

Already tried. My Cable provider gives out a static IP address based on the router's MAC. Even tried via my iphone :( Same 203 error

[Talamarr]

Why did they ban him for exploitation and not account sharing? I give my RL friend thousands of gold all the time.

My assumption is that the money transfer put up a red flag that later revealed the "account sharing violation" but they still called it economy exploitation. Is that what happened?

[gantell]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.
No worries, just go to a different computer on a different IP address and create the last account, or you can wait about 3 days untill the timer expires. If the accounts are all in your name you have broken no rules, you can have as many accounts as you want to pay for. I ran into the same issue when I started up my 5 box team (my RAF runs out March 24). I drove to work created the last account, went back home and have been playing ever since.

You don't need to use different email address, it is the IP address that it is flagging.

Good luck.

[CommanderChaos]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.Don't be afraid to call them. You're doing it the right way, but Blizzard has protections in place to prevent credit card fraud. This happened to me too, trying to get 4 new accounts upgraded from trials, and then again when I tried to upgrade them to Burning Crusade. Just call them, they'll take care of you then and there.

[Nitro]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.

How many account did you create at once? At one point I had 8 account and I made 5 more in one night bringing myself to a total of 13 accounts and I had no issues doing it.

[Reglar]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.
This happened to me, I just called Billing, they helped me register the account that was complaining via the phone, trust me, they want your money.

[keghia]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.



Just ring them. I dont understand why you wouldn't? Error 203 is a simply error that shows up when you try to create more than three accounts in a given time period (I thought it was 24 hours but it might be longer).

Happened to me, I rang Blizz, customer service representative was more than helpful and happy (and was actually an american *shock*) and it was a quick simple process.

[Spatulor]

I have to add something to this.

Sorry - I just got into MBxing from a guildie in WoW.

Sometimes you simply can't create more accounts, in your name or otherwise. I started last night, used my "main" account as the referrer for four RAF invites to various email addresses, and successfully created accounts using my same real-life info as my main account. Well, all except the last one, which was denied by an error 203 on the account page. I emailed Bliz and they told me to call Billing and Support, which rang a few warning bells for some reason. It seems error 203 is when they flag your IP and details as creating too many accounts within a certain time period, so I am sat here waiting for my T7.5 Priest account and my RAF accounts to be banned, but at the same time I'm afriad to call Bliz and see what's going on so I can have a true 5-box.This happened to me as well, when I set up. I tried to get through to Customer Service, but got a busy signal over and over for half an hour before getting fed up. The IP block went away after a while, but in the meantime, I went to an internet cafe for 5 minutes to set up my last account. I seriously doubt you'll be banned for this. They'll take a look at your accounts, go "Oh, he's a budding multiboxer" and leave it alone.

[Gadzooks]

Why did they ban him for exploitation and not account sharing? I give my RL friend thousands of gold all the time.

My assumption is that the money transfer put up a red flag that later revealed the "account sharing violation" but they still called it economy exploitation. Is that what happened?This is an assumption on my part, but I'm assuming that they looked at both accounts, saw different names, but being played from the same IP, and saw gold transfer, and that triggered the ban.

I'm thinking that the initial suspicion - transferring illegal gold, or that you were part of a farming operation, or one of the accounts was stolen and being stripped - is what locked the accounts down, and then if they're wrong, the review of the logs by Account Admin would show it being legit or not.

If you had the same info on all accounts, then you'd just contest the ban, and get the accounts back.

Since the accounts don't match up, you won't be able to contest, because they now have account sharing to nail you, not being a farmer or account thief.

I'm wondering if they have something set up to look for this exact situation, to lock down stolen accounts asap. We MBers don't get hit because all of our accounts are legit, and have passed "review" by having been reported in game, so gold transfers don't trigger anything.

If they have, that is a VERY good thing, they'll be able to nail stolen accounts as soon as gold is transferred. Bad for those who's accounts don't match, and yet another solid, solid reason to make sure you set up your accounts very, very carefully!

Again, all my assumption, but I'm wondering if they have something new working on the server, and led in part to the recent ban wave, and all the people in the customer service forum who had accounts banned, were also dual boxing them and transferred large amounts of gold - and were using old accounts a friend gave them, or they bought, or whatever.

The GMs have said it's laughably easy to spot us, I wonder if they've automated the process...

[Sajuuk]

The GMs have said it's laughably easy to spot us, I wonder if they've automated the process... Several, if not many things are automated (In relation to account action, that is why it is a good idea to always contest something if you didn't do it instead of shrugging and moving on)

[Souca]

Funny, they told me to go to a Starbucks or something and that they couldn't create the accounts over the phone. This was the infamous error 203.

- Souca -

[railz]

I ended up stealing some wireless for a couple of minutes to create the last account. I was a total noob and RAF'd all four from the same master, now I cannot summon anyone. Bah. Oh well.

GL with your accounts OP. I hope you get them back. I too learnt the hard way about having someone else's (ex-gf's) name on an account. I wonder if she ever played it after she took it?

[Kayley]

A lot of my accounts (friends + family also) have also been hit with Economic exploitation. I wonder what triggers it. I'm stingy, I don't give out gold.. :p - don't even move it around lol.

@op
You should be able to get them unbanned if you really didn't buy/sell gold. Although they might just slap an account sharing ban then.. idk. You can always prove you and your gf own the accounts though :P

[puppychow]

stuff like this always scares the hell out of me, I have 5 accounts all in my name with authenticode but sometimes I trade large amounts of gold between accounts (8k last time to buy my DK his epic mount and other stuff) and I always worry it'll trigger something automated.

[Vyndree]

Just ring them. I dont understand why you wouldn't? Error 203 is a simply error that shows up when you try to create more than three accounts in a given time period (I thought it was 24 hours but it might be longer).

Happened to me, I rang Blizz, customer service representative was more than helpful and happy (and was actually an american *shock*) and it was a quick simple process.

Not to mention that, when you get that error, it simply acts as if it were a website error and instructs you to call the Billing phone line.

Yes, Suvega and I also got that error message almost 2 years ago when we attempted to create 8 accounts from the same IP within the same day. It has nothing to do with the OP's ban -- creating a new account in your girlfriend's name would not be possible if you were getting the account creation error 203 from creating too many accounts under the same IP.

In fact, creating a new account under anyone's name but yours or your minor child's is probably not kosher to begin with, since the legal adult has to click "I accept to the ToU/Eula" when signing up for an account -- therefore you'd be impersonating their electronic signature on the ToU/EULA agreement.

[Rin]

@OP -

Since you have not admitted to any guilt, why not have your girlfriend call up Blizzard? If the addresses between the two accounts are different, you could argue that your girlfriend lives (and plays, no pun intended) with you. Also, depending on the extent of Blizzard's IP tracking, they should be able to verify that both accounts were always/almost always logged in with the same IP address. I must admit though that your story begs the question: where did you get 500g at level 60 from? I've R-A-F'd plenty of characters, and I'm lucky to have 100g at 60, even while R-A-Fing with only quests. If you got it through some legitimate source (Auction House, item trade, (please don't tell me that you farmed 500g at lvl 60 :P ), or whatever), Blizzard can easily verify that, and I'm sure they would be more than happy to assist you.

The economy exploitation letter is pretty generic, but is usually triggered by your character giving out gold to multiple sets of people. One or two transactions typically doesn't set off a red flag, but 5-10 would.

EDIT: Also, you claimed that you didn't buy/sell gold, or bot... but did you pay a powerleveling service to R-A-F you? Many of those companies will use your characters as toons to trade gold with. They will also create level 1's to spam trade channels with gold advertisments (what did you expect?). If you're absolutely certain that you didn't engage in any illicit (as deemed by Blizzard) activities, you shouldn't have a problem getting your accounts back.

Good luck.

[Gizmo3k]

I must admit though that your story begs the question: where did you get 500g at level 60 from? I've R-A-F'd plenty of characters, and I'm lucky to have 100g at 60, even while R-A-Fing with only quests. If you got it through some legitimate source (Auction House, item trade, (please don't tell me that you farmed 500g at lvl 60 :P ), or whatever), Blizzard can easily verify that, and I'm sure they would be more than happy to assist you.

It isn't hard to get 500g at level 60, at least dual-boxing. When I dual boxed paladins, I had 1100g at the end of it - one miner, one herbalist, and both skinners makes for a lot of cash out of the AH!

[Gadzooks]

@OP -

Since you have not admitted to any guilt, why not have your girlfriend call up Blizzard? That might unlock the account, but he *cannot* MB them together with different names - if he gets reported in-game and a GM looks at him, he's permabanned, guaranteed, both accounts.

You have to remember, they can *easily* tell when two accounts are being played together. If he multiboxes with two accounts with differents names, he is violating the rules, and can and will get banned.

[Iceorbz]

Already tried. My Cable provider gives out a static IP address based on the router's MAC. Even tried via my iphone :( Same 203 errorIts so that they dont get spammed with bogus account creations, thats all... seriously you have nothing to worry about.

Ive had about 13 accounts at one time before, hell there are some people here that have atleast 30 + lol.