After 10 years of playing the game for almost every day, Blizzard decided to ban me for “Exploitation of game mechanics”.
When I tried contacting the GMs, their response was totally generic and can be summed up as “we found you guilty, go read the rules”.
I asked them to check my issue a bit more because I honestly have no idea what I did (I’ve been playing the game the exact same way all these years).
Their response was still the same, with the added threat that penalties stack and that I should make sure I avoid any action that could get me banned.
The only problem is that I have no idea what I did wrong!
What mechanic did I exploit and how??
I believe that a customer service team who respects their customers should spend a few minutes to explain the violation, otherwise how can I make sure that I won’t repeat it again?
Well, to be honest, after the horrendous treatment from them, I decided to uninstall every single Blizzard game, including Battlenet, so I definitely won’t be violating any rules.
I just wanted to make sure that my story was heard, so that people can realize that we are not valued customers, just expendable dummy dolls upon which Blizzard employees unleash their God syndrome.
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Blizzard never really did explain the reasons why the ban happens beyond the most vague of terms. This is a deliberate choice to prevent loopholes and to prevent cheaters from finding workarounds (And before anybody says anything, no, those cheaters you might see won’t stick around for long if you just report them and move on). Any reports of cheating or such in a sufficient quality is then handled by a staff member who determines the punishment.
At least, that’s how I imagine it going. Automated punishments sound like something that can’t be done reliably when it comes to punishments like in-game bans, especially when these can’t be contested.
Only way I could see any justifications being given away to anyone is if it was part of a criminal investigation where a player’s activity was related to the crime and the punishment having been part of it.
It still doesn’t make any sense. Imagine being arrested IRL and when you ask the reason why the only response you get is “here is the Constitution, try to find out what you did”.
I don’t think they care about someone finding a way to cheat again because they will just ban them just as easily.
My only explanation is that Blizzard is understaffed and don’t have the personnel or time to give proper feedback to their players.
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In real life there is a duty for the officer to state the reason why you are being arrested. Blizzard does not have such obligations, they can ban you from their service for any reason and without justification. Like I mentioned, only a high suspicion of criminal activity could warrant disclosing the ban reason.
I do think they care about the cheaters getting caught because statistically you’re a lot more likely to quit cheating after getting caught than you are to keep cheating.
As for your explanation… They’ve never given reasons when asked, not even during WoW’s golden days.
You are never arrested because you violated the constitution. You have a Criminal law. Technically if you are banned from a game, and you know you didn’t violate any rules and did not cheat in any way, you can hire a lawyer and appeal officially, stating you lost money and some form of personal thing. But this will take months if not years to resolve in court. But you can do it…