With how powerful PvP gear is at launch in SoM, lots of people are saying things in the spirit of “all you need to do is AFK in AV for a few weeks and you’ll have better gear than you could get raiding”. However, as of last night, i am banned from the game for following that logic and getting slack with my contribution to AVs.
I wasn’t pure AFKing, and i wasn’t playing 20 hours a day. I sat at a few towers and bunkers while i did housework and caught up on work from home. I got banned for that, and you can be too.
I’m not looking for sympathy, i just want others that may be in the same position i was to understand that doing this does break TOS and currently carries a more severe first-suspension penalty than gold buying.
Interestingly, the punishment seems specifically designed to cripple my ranking progress. It’s an 8-day ban (weird length) from midnight Tuesday (today) to midnight Wednesday (before next calculation). This ensures that I will feel the full force of double decay, and see my rank plummet.
Anyway, I just wanted to make people aware that that’s happening. You don’t need to be a bot, and you don’t need to be AFK 24/7. It’s a big punishment, and if you don’t contribute, it can easily happen to the average player. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by how prevalent AFKing seems to be. Stay vigilant, and stay at your keyboard friends.
I think a lot of people understand that it is against the spirit of the game, and against the rules. But they may not be aware that this is something that’s actively being acted on and enforced.
Across videos, streams and forum posts, players today are bombarded with this rhetoric that Blizzard is not acting to enforce the TOS. We’re constantly told that blizzard doesn’t care about things like bots, hacks and gold buying, which is pushing the general idea that today, you can break the rules of this game and get away with it.
I’m not trying to tell people that it’s against the rules to AFK. i’m just trying to say that this game isn’t as lawless or unmoderated as some would paint it out to be. These rules are being enforced by automated bans, and you can and will get one if you break them.
They are there have been many threads about this in the last few months, and if they actually read the terms of use they agreed to, which most don’t, they would see it too.
If you don’t then I will, it’s 100% against the rules and if you do it there is a high chance you will be punished.
Just wait until the next banwave for Bots. So many come to the forums to proclaim their “innocence”.
I don’t think they are automated, they are investigated and acted upon, despite what some people think, game bans are not automated.
To be honest you should be allowed to AFK a bit. Blizzard’s system is criminal, in SoM you basically need R14 which means spending over a month (probably two) playing every moment of every day, for a game that gets wiped in a year anyway and probably wont even last that long.
Its ludicrous they went with this insane system that was never intended to give gear this good this early anyway. In Vanilla WoW the system was designed to be gear a bit worse than current PvE gear but with PvP stats that gave none-raiders an alternative - i don’t think anyone at Blizzard actually knows that.
Because its an unreasonable expectation for people to play 16 hour sessions of a video-game for weeks on end without breaks? If a game goes full turtle i imagine that’s a good time to get something done in real life - like you know, have a shower, or get food, or use the bathroom.
Maybe those other people should take the hint and AFK games that are strategically dead.
I just think putting people into a hell grind with zero breaks is literally evil. Blizzard should have put controls on this or kept the original rewards - ranking is part of what will kill SoM for manifold reasons.
It’s simple, if you want to take a break, logout, do what you need to do, then log back in when you want to play the game, your only punishing others who actually want to win games by afking, I hope every time you do it, you get banned.
It’s simple, if you want to take a break, logout, do what you need to do
It isn’t though is it, because you’re punished for doing so.
Also why is it okay to /afk a game and throw someone else into a ruined AV? Isn’t that worse?
Then don’t go for R14.
Simple as that…?
Some people actually like PvPing.
If you don’t like the R14 system, then don’t go for it.
If you don’t like people actually PvPing in a BG, then don’t play BGs.
Because you’re just afking anyway?
That person could be helpful to the team, rather than some useless person just AFKing.
everyone ik who started ranking seriously once reaching 60, (week 2-3) with intention of getting r14, has gotten br1 every single week, on the most competitive server.
as far as I know on the biggest server the pool size is 9000
don’t know the proper math, but let’s assume around 9000 * 0.3% = 27 spots for bracket1
and there are hundreds of people 24/7 AV