WoW player since 2010 here. Never had any account suspension or any other action taken against me. Today I made the major error… of trying to help people! The help was a “stormwing portal” group, which has gotten me silenced / banned for a week on my main account, the worst timing ever since I may no longer join LFG groups now.
Background: For avid collectors, getting the mount, toys & mog from the new limited Hearthstone event in WoW kind of requires joining as many “portal up here” groups as possible. Unlike with the Diablo goblin, there is no hourly lockout so you rely on strangers to announce they have portals on their shards. I joined a few groups, and when finally a portal popped up on my shard, I started a group as well.
Here is where it went downhill: Instantly HUNDREDS of people applied to my group. I couldn’t have invited them all, and i actually wanted to keep it simple: I noticed how the servers get laggy to the point of being unplayable (you cannot tag Mr. Boom so no loot), so I picked a handful of people, nice small group. Next thing I know, I have two mails that my account is silenced for a week - and I also cannot join LFG groups in-game, which is a tragedy since that is exactly the duration of this highly limited event and joining other groups is the only way to complete things I miss such as the mount.
What happened? I can’t have been communication (other than complaining about lag, noone really talks in those groups) so the only thing that makes sense is that the hundreds that I did not accept into the groups all mass reported me. Then some Blizzard automization said: Yep, this guy has been reported so much, he must be a baddie. Let’s give him a one week ban.
I think this is a tragic example of how you can actually add to the already high toxicity in WoW by combining:
- bad game design
- lack of humans in customer support
- bad algorithms / AI to replace customer support
Three steps:
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The event is programmed in such a way, that you actually need to “hop” through shards, which means groups have hundreds of sign-ups, creating an actually overwhelming experience when you try to form a group.
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Then, when you actually help people you get punished! Because obviously, many are disappointed of not getting into the groups, they report the group owner.
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Last but not least, since Blizzard cares so much about a non-toxic player environment, but also appears to love minimal head count, an AI is left with the decision to ban people (it took 2 minutes after I formed the group to receive the ban, so I doubt that someone human had an in-depth look at the situation).
Funny enough, the email refers to the code of conduct that states “While we encourage you to report players that are behaving in a disrespectful manner, falsely reporting another player with the sole intent of restricting their gameplay is also unacceptable and will result in penalties to your account.” - it certainly doesn’t look like that part is enforced.
The whole situation is insanely frustrating. Of course, I appealed to the suspension. Waiting time for my ticket? 13 days, 7 hours! Absolute madness, since that is longer than my one-week suspension - but also longer than the event itself!
All I can say right now is one has to be SUPER careful when making groups for those portals.
Don’t help people - it will get you banned.