Hi, my name’s Ria. I started playing February 6th and I got banned 6 days before my sub ran out. The reason for my ban stated in the email I received was “use of exploitative programs”.
I do not use exploitative programs, I do not have the need to, I wouldn’t know how to use them for World of Warcraft. I started playing Classic because my boyfriend has been excitedly talking about TBC. I had spent several days and weeks in Discord VCs listening to him and other friends play and it made me curious to look into the game, which I had only played once before on a Free Trial.
I researched several days beforehand about which kind of character and professions I would want to look into, and I purchased a month sub to check out the game - not knowing if I would or wouldn’t like the game. I was careless enough not to check with my boyfriend about the server everyone plays on and “accidentally” purchased a sub for EU instead of US. I didn’t even refund that, because that was MY mistake. I am from Spain playing on US servers, so I am active during the night/early morning.
I started the game and really, REALLY enjoyed the area I had spawned in, and the leveling and questing aspect of the game. So much so, I got to level 11 in one sitting. Within two weeks I had already gotten to level 60, but I had fallen behind on my professions (herbalism and alchemy - I picked those because they seemed to synergize). I have been told that I have very likely been mass reported by bots because I picked herbs in their same area.
When I got banned I had just made back some gold after leveling my alchemy (my herbalism wasn’t high enough, it had been a few days of trying to find herbs and not finding nodes), it was at 660g. Two days prior it was 2g. I had the one mount, a 60% purple elekk, that I would use to stand on top of ore to protect my boyfriend as he mined.
I have only used widely used and beloved CurseForge addons that my boyfriend recommended and helped me set up, I haven’t even had other gaming platforms active in the background while I was playing WoW. I fell in love with the game, I was really looking forward to playing with my friends. We even took pictures as we went through the last 10-15 levels together.
And, before the negative nancys come in here:
- I did not purchase gold, I only accepted gold from my boyfriend on Valentine’s day and I gave back about a third because he wouldn’t let me give him more back. His trade to me was 200g, you do the math. The other transactions were selling my transmute cd for 20-25g.
- I did not boost the character, I just learned what that was a few days ago.
- I did not auto fish - my fishing level was 0.
- I didn’t even know what gliding software was until two days ago because of some guy on my Tiktok making a side comment about it. No, I do not use any kind of cheat.
- My questing guide had auto turn in off. I wanted to read the questlines.
- If I was really botting/cheating, why would I care so much about ONE account?
All appeals I have sent have been resolved without any kind of explanation or interaction. Somehow my ban went from being “use of exploitative programs” to “improper use of the account”. All I have gotten have been canned messages, clearly not handled by a proper human GM. I don’t even believe one exists anymore. If so, I would give them access to my machine to thoroughly check if I really cheated. I know I didn’t.
There are many cases such as mine, even the addon made for blind people’s accessibility has had them lose their accounts because of a wrong flag in whatever botted system Blizzard has now.
