Friend keeps getting banned for "playing too much" (false alarm please close thread)

Support Customer Support
1

Friend pranked me.

False alarm, please close thread.

Original post:

Hello, i come to you today as a frustrated customer.

One of my guildies and long time friends (whom i played classic with for the past 5 years) has recently decided to reroll from alliance to horde on Living Flame (which is a pvp server, and this will factor into the issue) in Season Of Discovery so he could once again play with me and our group of other friends.

this has been a troublesome affair to say the least.

since you cannot have characters of two different factions on a pvp server in SOD, he has had to make a new account to make a horde character and he has had to do this TWICE now.

my friend plays the game A LOT and often sit many, many hours playing long sessions.
sometimes upwards of 24 hours or more in a row.

he made a new account about 1-2 weeks ago (this was his first attempt at a new account) and we powerleveled his character from 1 to 52 in the span of a couple of days (about 21 hours of /played) at which point we ran into the first automated ban for “botting” which was infuriating to say the least.

i was literally there boosting him for 2 days straight to get him up to lvl 60 so he could raid with us, and while we were in Stratholme undead he just gets permanently banned out of nowhere (mind you this was while we were on discord, talking and joking around etc.) and the email that followed said it was for “cheating”.

we made tickets in an attempt to appeal it, but since blizzard customer support is non-existent all we got as a reply was automated bot responses doubling down, affirming that the matter has been “investigated” and “confirmed” and will not be reverted.

now, we as players all knew this was a load of BS, and tried to make more tickets to try and get in contact with a human gm (of which there are few) to get the issue solved, but all we got was even more bot responses and average wait time on up to 14 DAYS.

unacceptable.

okay, so he decided to open yet another account because honestly we can’t be arsed waiting for blizzard to stop sitting on their thumbs for 14 days or more only to get another bot reply that lies to us, telling us the matter has been “investigated” etc.

this 2nd account that he opened and played on for about half a week to one week now (we’ve all kinda lost track of time because we’ve been so busy just playing the game), just got hit with yet another ban today (i assume its permanent) about 1-2 hours ago.
he posted a screenshot taken with his phone of the login screen (which said he is banned and to go to httpblablabla for more info) and left an angry message on discord to inform us that he has once again been banned for what we can only assume is “playing the game too much”.

the automated system has obviously detected “suspicious” behavior in the fact he plays the game for long sessions, and honestly, this is insanely infuriating BECAUSE HE IS NOT CHEATING.

we have spent so much gold and time getting this 2nd character up to par, buying FR gear, materials and crafter fees for blackguards, doing days and days of ‘coin runs’ to purchase shadowcraft items and did the tier 0.5 questline to upgrade that to darkmantle items ETC. ETC. ETC. and we even gave his new character loot from MC heat 3 which we did this thursday night at 20:00-23:00 and now his account yet again gets unfairly banned!?

CAN WE GET SOME HELP HERE PLEASE.

i assume he went to sleep the second this ban happened (which again, was about 1-2 hours ago) because he is not replying to me on discord, which is likely because he has been playing the game since yesterday and is probably dead tired now, which is why i am making this thread on his behalf.

honestly, we did everything we could to make sure blizzard was aware that this 2nd account he made was actually being played by a human.
he made tickets when he made it to try and get the 30 day trade/mail/AH restriction removed so he could at least be traded items from other players which he did successfully, and even appear to have been in touch with an actual human at the time as he got the restrictions “soft” lifted, but i guess that did nothing to help prevent getting auto-slammed by your awful AI “bot detection” system.

i will ask him to come here and make post replies (assuming his forum access was not revoked in that same ban) in an effort to get this sorted, but until then, is there someone around who can help me/us out here?

feeling a little bit lost, because it honestly feels like its impossible to get in touch with blizzard customer service AT ALL, and when it comes to getting this sorted with emails and/or ingame tickets its a hopeless effort.

EDIT: not sure why that last part is crossed out. i did some editing back and forth and it seems to have bugged the post when i attempted to reinsert the original.

2

Yeah good luck getting a human answer these days that isn’t an automated bot reply

3

This part at least is untrue. You can always be traded gold and items, even with the limitations up. You can not trade them away. There is no “soft limit removal” required, so at least here your “friend” is telling you a blatant untruth.

4

i was under the impression that you could not trade anything to players who was under the confines of the full restriction.

like dude, why would this guy lie to me about having his restriction soft-lifted so he could be traded items?
that makes absolutely no sense.

i also do not appreciate the insinuation that i am somehow being deceitful by saying that.

5

Question is: if he spun that tale for you, what else is he telling you untruths about?

“Players under this restriction can still receive gold and items, so established players can still help friends.”

There’s a lot of things here, like telling you a fake story about getting a “soft restrictions lift”, which is something current Blizzard would not do for an individual (they stated so multiple times); having to make multiple accounts, playing for more than 24 hours in one session - don’t you think all that sounds a bit weird?

6

i think you misunderstand that article.

players affected by the full restriction cannot even open the trade window.
once the “hard” restriction is lifted they can open the trade window and be traded items.

there is another guy in my guild who opened a second account and he wanted me to trade him some minor healing potions, but when he tried opening the trade window with me, it automatically closed and kept closing.

when i traded him the trade window remained open.

the friend in question in the OP can open trade windows, but just cannot trade items to other people and can only receive them.

“spun this tale” bro please stop like i don’t need that crap from random strangers right now.
i’m looking to get a reply from actual blizzard representatives here, not some rando who likes to larp as customer support.

7

Aren’t you just a peach.

I have played an account with this restriction, when people trade TO you, a trade window opens. There is no misunderstanding.

Nobody will give YOU answers about an account that doesn’t belong to you.

Good luck with whatever it is you’re trying to crusade for here.

Lots of love,

a knowledgable internet stranger

8

okay so now you fail at reading comprehension too.
wonderful.
i just explained to you that the trade window interacted differently with another player under the same kind of restriction (who had not had it ‘soft’ lifted).

my friend (who this thread concerns) will come and give input later when he wakes up, so the hope is that when he does that, maybe customer support will help us out.
if not, we’ll have to make him make his own thread, which i will then help him out with.

lol ok thanks i guess.

9

About reading comprehension. You can always trade to people even when their accounts are thus restricted, you’re just trying to move the goal post with “oh yeah he could be traded but only if the other person opens the trade”, which is exactly what I said. There is no restriction that needs to be lifted for people being able to receive items. That’s always possible.

I will patiently wait for a customer support agent to chime in whether or not ANY Blizzard agent would be able to lift a “hard” restriction that doesn’t exist. You can plug in an addon that lets you open all kinds of windows, but performing the restricted action still won’t happen.

I highly doubt that your friend contacted a Blizzard person who then changed your friend’s account to “lift a hard restriction”. I would gladly be proven wrong by a forum agent reporting in, because that’d mean they’d be doing case-by-case resolutions again, which they haven’t for quite some time.

Unfortunately, this will likely just be closed with a notion that it’s not allowed to discuss account penalties on the forums, especially not for accounts that aren’t your own.

10

okay, well seeing as he is the guy who had the restriction affecting him, i’ll choose to believe him over what you are telling me here.
even if the bluepost says different, it wouldn’t be the first time blizzard miscommunicates something, and judging from current events and the game essentially being policed by AI, i’d say there’s plenty of room for error on their part.

i guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we.

i can’t think of any reason why my friend would lie about something as inconspicuous as a restriction being lifted, but hey, if you wanna play the suspicious detective feel free to do so.
seems fruitless, but yeah.

if that is the case, then i would like to be pointed in the right direction where such matters can be addressed by HUMAN blizzard representatives, because the avenues normally used for this are clearly not being ran by any humans from what i can tell.

blizzard is infamous for its bad customer service, and there has been hundreds of examples of the system false flagging accounts for cheating which has since been addressed and lifted.
there has even been examples where blizzard representatives, whether bot or human, have doubled and even trippled down on the notion that the offending person was in fact guilty, only to have been investigated a 3rd or even 4th time, with the matter being resolved and the person found innocent.

if nothing else, that goes to show that blizzard make errors and mistakes all the time.

11

Your friend - not you - have to make a ticket. You cannot do that on behalf of other people.

12

Apparently my friend has a terrible sense of humor, decided to play a “prank” on me and posted the screenshot he took from when his first account was banned (which was an actual real ban). leading me to believe he was banned for real this time around too.

so this is great, i now look like a clown by token of being concerned on his behalf and going out of my way to make this ticket and everything.

consider this post a flag for a mod to close the thread (and preferably delete it) since i can’t do it on my own.

13

They don’t delete threads that have replies.

Maybe you should consider counter pranking your friend somehow.

14

i gave him a verbal slamming for his ‘prank’ and we had a bit of a fallout on discord as a result, but there’s not much else that i can do about it.

so i apologize for wasting the customer service members time with this false alarm and once again ask that the thread be closed.

15

You’re a great friend for trying to help him though.