Recent Wave of Account Actions

[DMan]

Finally had my fill of Warhammer online. See that MoP is at $20 in the blizzard store. Are these bans still going on or has this been resolved? Will I be able to queue my 5 man team into bgs together?

thanks for any updates at where things stand!

[Lax]

Finally had my fill of Warhammer online. See that MoP is at $20 in the blizzard store. Are these bans still going on or has this been resolved? Will I be able to queue my 5 man team into bgs together?

thanks for any updates at where things stand!

I can't say for certain, but it's been a month since this thread was bumped prior to your post, my guess is that if people were still getting banned they would still be complaining.

I don't think it's possible that multiboxers stopped doing battlegrounds entirely, there's new multiboxers every day and certainly not everyone has even heard of a possibility of getting banned from battlegrounds...

My guess is either that they changed some parameters on their end in a server update and that it's harder to get automatically banned by this system, or that they turned the automatic bans back off for now.

[zenga]

I can't say for certain, but it's been a month since this thread was bumped prior to your post, my guess is that if people were still getting banned they would still be complaining.

I don't think it's possible that multiboxers stopped doing battlegrounds entirely, there's new multiboxers every day and certainly not everyone has even heard of a possibility of getting banned from battlegrounds...

My guess is either that they changed some parameters on their end in a server update and that it's harder to get automatically banned by this system, or that they turned the automatic bans back off for now.

Over the past week or so a ton of players have reported getting banned for botting in BG's (even on that particular bot it's forum). Most seem to be banned after using one of the so called public profiles. A profile is a certain route that a bot takes to run around in a BG. Hence why you could see certain bot trains in random bg's, people using the same profile. Apparently one can make their own profile, and it doesn't look like those 'players' got banned who kept their profile private. So it was not really the bot that got detected, but rather the bot behaviour that triggered the banwave.

By the looks of it blizzard implemented a detection tool that tracks routes that characters take in random battlegrounds, and compare those routes to other players. What happened with all the boxers getting banned, and the fact that some main toons/leaders did not get the ban, is imo that they did not have enough data yet to compare. The system detected multiple toons taking the same route while it was in fact a multiboxer, and given their sample size not being big enough, the system flagged them as botters. Now that their is plenty of data available, it looks like the false positive detections for boxers disappeared.

[DMan]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Shodokan]

Over the past week or so a ton of players have reported getting banned for botting in BG's (even on that particular bot it's forum). Most seem to be banned after using one of the so called public profiles. A profile is a certain route that a bot takes to run around in a BG. Hence why you could see certain bot trains in random bg's, people using the same profile. Apparently one can make their own profile, and it doesn't look like those 'players' got banned who kept their profile private. So it was not really the bot that got detected, but rather the bot behaviour that triggered the banwave.

By the looks of it blizzard implemented a detection tool that tracks routes that characters take in random battlegrounds, and compare those routes to other players. What happened with all the boxers getting banned, and the fact that some main toons/leaders did not get the ban, is imo that they did not have enough data yet to compare. The system detected multiple toons taking the same route while it was in fact a multiboxer, and given their sample size not being big enough, the system flagged them as botters. Now that their is plenty of data available, it looks like the false positive detections for boxers disappeared.

Had 4 friends get banned. From what I've been told by a friend inside the company GMs are actually watching players in bgs once a flag comes up that they are "botting" from their internal detection system (not player reports) and taking actions based on that since there were more false positives than just for boxers, if it is your first offense you receive a 72 hour ban and a final warning and if you have ANY strikes on your account otherwise you get perma banned.

They've also implemented a new anti-botting features for gathering as well.

Thank god.

But yes, the bans shouldn't occur as often anymore if at all simply because you are boxing in bgs. You should only be banned if a GM doesn't know much about boxing but I've been told that they have made it clear if someone isn't sure to go to their supervisor before taking action.

[Narij]

Thanks for the info, almost enough to make me reactivate, to bad sc2 in < a month.

[Oldboxer]

Had 4 friends get banned. From what I've been told by a friend inside the company GMs are actually watching players in bgs once a flag comes up that they are "botting" from their internal detection system (not player reports) and taking actions based on that since there were more false positives than just for boxers, if it is your first offense you receive a 72 hour ban and a final warning and if you have ANY strikes on your account otherwise you get perma banned.

I'm dropping out of years of lurking here to share my experience. I got 3 hour suspensions on two characters back in the end of Jan. They came after the two characters got AFK'd from an AB. There was a player in it spamming for other players to report mine AFK because I was botting. I said in the game chat that I was multiboxing which was legal, but he kept it up. I reported him for griefing / harassing. About an hour later the suspensions hit on the two characters. I appealed them, saying I was multiboxing, playing by the rules. I also told about the harassing player, saying that his behavior shouldn't be allowed. I asked that they remove the suspensions and flag my account as being a multiboxer so that I wouldn't be misidentified in the future. The suspensions were dropped (although way after the 3 hours were up), their reply didn't really say anything about the reason, etc.

I continued playing BG's heavily after that. A couple of weeks later, in AV, I got a message on my screen for a short time "frozen". I didn't think much of it, it was very short. A couple of minutes later I get a message up near the mini map saying a GM wanted to talk with me (the first time ever in the game for me). I think "Oh shoot, here it comes", I click it to talk to him. The conversation was this:

GM: I just wanted to apologize about randomly freezing you. I was on a bot hunt and accidentally targeted you. >.<
Me: I'm multiboxing.
Me: Thank you for asking rather then assuming we were bots.
GM: You're welcome. Have fun!

So, it looks to me like GM's may be looking for bots live in the game, but multiboxing isn't the issue. I've played BG's heavily since then and I haven't had another problem. Knock on wood.

[fcha]

I'm dropping out of years of lurking here to share my experience. I got 3 hour suspensions on two characters back in the end of Jan. They came after the two characters got AFK'd from an AB. There was a player in it spamming for other players to report mine AFK because I was botting. I said in the game chat that I was multiboxing which was legal, but he kept it up. I reported him for griefing / harassing. About an hour later the suspensions hit on the two characters. I appealed them, saying I was multiboxing, playing by the rules. I also told about the harassing player, saying that his behavior shouldn't be allowed. I asked that they remove the suspensions and flag my account as being a multiboxer so that I wouldn't be misidentified in the future. The suspensions were dropped (although way after the 3 hours were up), their reply didn't really say anything about the reason, etc.

I continued playing BG's heavily after that. A couple of weeks later, in AV, I got a message on my screen for a short time "frozen". I didn't think much of it, it was very short. A couple of minutes later I get a message up near the mini map saying a GM wanted to talk with me (the first time ever in the game for me). I think "Oh shoot, here it comes", I click it to talk to him. The conversation was this:

GM: I just wanted to apologize about randomly freezing you. I was on a bot hunt and accidentally targeted you. >.<
Me: I'm multiboxing.
Me: Thank you for asking rather then assuming we were bots.
GM: You're welcome. Have fun!

So, it looks to me like GM's may be looking for bots live in the game, but multiboxing isn't the issue. I've played BG's heavily since then and I haven't had another problem. Knock on wood.

I think it's much better if GM use "frozen" or related method to identify whether player is BOT or multiboxer rather than ingame automatic system.
Anyway, it's good experience sharing~

[Chumbucket]

Thanks for the update. I'm still a bit butt hurt over the whole suspension ugliness but this is encouraging news. I still have several suspensions on my toons record from back in December that I hope I will be able to get removed as I did appeal but was denied.

[Oldboxer]

My strange story for the day. After saying the other day that I wasn't getting suspensions while playing BG's heavily, knock on wood, I forgot to knock on wood and got a 72 hour suspension last night for "Unapproved Third Party Software". I use nothing out of the ordinary, so I appealed it, listing all the software that I had running on my machine while I was playing yesterday. I sent in the appeal at 4:47 PM, the ticket said 24 to 48 hour response time. I called customer support on the phone, they said they only deal with refund issues and that kind of thing. At 5:27 PM I get a response on the ticket saying "An additional review of the previously communicated action taken against the World of Warcraft account ... has been completed. Unfortunately, we have confirmed our initial findings. The account action will not be reversed or amended." I appeal it again, trying to get them to at least tell me the software involved. At 5:46 PM I get the reply to that. "After an additional thorough review of the action taken against this account, we regret to inform you that we have arrived at the same conclusion and the account action will not be removed under any circumstances."

I did the live chat thing, I pay 3 months at a time, I wanted to see if I could get refunds for what I prepaid. The rep said I could on some, not on others. I tried to get some details on the reasons from her, or a higher level contact, she gave me a management level customer service reps email. No details though.

At 6:37 PM I put in another ticket, asking again what program I was using, what could it hurt to tell me, I don't want to use it again. Reply at 6:42 PM: "As per our last contact, this issue has already been reviewed multiple times by our representatives, and it is now considered closed. No further dicussions (sic) or review of it shall occur."

At 6:46 PM I do another ticket asking if they could furnish me with the name of a management level contact in account management. At 7:42 PM I get this reply: "Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding the World of Warcraft account you are using. We understand your point of view and have thoroughly reviewed this issue. As a result, the account action has been removed from the account and all involved parties have been addressed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused." And I could log into the account.

I'm saying "What the f**k??" Do they think I did something wrong or not? On the one hand I want to do a ticket asking them if removing the suspension means they concluded that I was legal, on the other hand I don't want to stir it up again.