People getting banned for "not participating" in BG

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Hey guys, just wanted to see people’s opinions on this matter.

Some background info: Played WoW since 2007, majority of active time during TBC/WOTLK. Came back for classic. Never exploited/violated anything ingame, not even a single warning in my 350+ days /played time. I didn’t even buy gold in classic, which it seems like 90+ % of people do, i farmed all my gold the old fashioned way.

A week or so before TBC classic launch i was farming honor to prepare for TBC, my gaming rig started to have some issues, so i digged up an old laptop to play on while i fixed my main PC. Framrate/lag was so bad i could barely play, but i wanted to minimize farming downtime so i queued for AV’s. With the bad framrate/lag i was pretty useless anyway, so i ended up not contributing much, mainly sitting in frostwolf base defending. We are talking a few days of this, with ~1h queue time, a few hours a day, not many games in total at all.

Yesterday my account got suspended for 9 days because of this, with no warning. I have 0 (ZEEERO) history of any kind of “bad behavior” in the past, i feel this is way too harsh of a punishment. I’ve seen people getting suspended for shorter periods than that for using bots and real exploits lol. I didn’t even know you could get suspended for “not participating” for a couple of BG’s. I would have understood it if we were talking weeks and weeks of AFK farming BG’s, but this is just laughable. I see people that have gotten banned for defending stables/farm in AB that haven’t been AFK for a second, they are just there watching the flag.

I understand that “AFK” people and bots in BG’s aren’t what we want, but jesus, this has gone too far in my opinion. And the double moral standard makes me even more angry, because they don’t seem to give a s*¤% about people buying gold. I guess it’s bad for income if you ban 90+ % of your player base? So we will just look the other way when people buy gold…

Gold is a currency in game, so is honor points, it should be treated the same. I guess you could make the argument that being AFK in BG’s destroy’s peoples game experience, but the point still stands.

I would have never “not contributed enough” if i knew i could get suspended for 9 freaking days, where can i even read about what i can get suspended for? I don’t see any list or examples in either the code of conduct or the EULA.

I agree that people who bot or AFK farm BG’s should get suspended, but there is a huge difference between that and being a little inactive in a few AV’s. I would at least expect to get a warning since i have no history of “abuse” before i get a 9 day suspension out of thin air, which now destroys my early TBC gear farm, which in turn might mean that i miss my raid spot in my guild…

What are peoples thoughts on this?

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Without any proof I don’t believe you were banned for defending the base in AV

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it’s good that blizzard bans leeches. however the issue is that the way the battleground system works with automated groups it promotes leeches and bots

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Of course i wasn’t defending all the time. I was defending some, and “afk” some of the time, I’m not trying to hide the fact that i was semi afk at times. What surprised me was the fact that i got suspended when i only did this for a couple of AV’s. Are people in general fine with the fact that you can get banned for being AFK in a single BG? What if something happens IRL, that you have to attend to, like someone at the door that you didn’t expect, you AFK for 2min and you get suspended for 9 days? I’m not saying that was the case for me here, but that’s a scenario that can happen to anyone.

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Isn’t there already an in-game penalty for afk, in form of deserter? Why such drastic measures? 9 days?! It’s like putting someone in jail for walking too slow.

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In general I am for banning everyone who violates any rule

And your example is useless because to receive a 9 day ban for afking in bgs you were not only afk once for 2 Minutes to answer the door, you must have been afk so much that A LOT people reported you so the investigated saw the logs and banned you I guess

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No it’s like putting someone in jail that broke a law

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But you already got penalized. Its called “deserter”.

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And repeat offenders get more and more severe punishments… After you get caught breaking the law over and over again at one point you’ll get a big sentence even for stealing bread because you need a bigger “Incentive” to learn to not break the law so it sticks in your brain and you stop commting crime because the punishment is laughable and you don’t fear it

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I somewhat agree, and that is why i am writing this post. If i were AFK in BG’s four 5 hours every day for four weeks, i would say i deserve the ban without question. But in my case we are talking about 5-8 games in total. And this was weeks ago, it was in the TBC prepatch, it was not like i continued with this behavior for a long period of time.

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As I understood it, this was OP’s first ever punishment.

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So you feel a 9 day ban for being semi inactive in 5-8 BG’s is fair as a first offense punishment with no warning? While at the same time they choose to ignore everyone who buy gold, aka also “breaking the law”?

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Seems fair to me, you leeched honour.

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Nine days suspension is fair for this? Botters get away with less punishment…

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Botters get 6 months.

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How do you know they never ban people for buying gold?

And as I said I don’t believe that it was as little afking as you claim having personal experience with how they ban I simply doubt it.

If you feel the punishment is too severe or unjust you can always start the appealing process

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Blizzard dosent ban, its just auto with x report, thats why many left the guild Progress when they griended cuz people know us, and people just report to get us banned.
its a St!upid system and blizzard is just awfull with anykind of support.

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You got what you deserved

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Sounds like the length of the ban was a bit over the top, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere. Maybe you only afked “a little”, but at least you now know not to.
And personally I really dislike bg leechers because just a few of them in your team can quickly cause a snowball effect, noticed this happening quite a bit when ranking. A game of AB starts, a few people go afk at farm at the start, causing us to be outnumbered and end up in a 2-3 situation. Then a few more people are like “ok guess this is a loss” and “defend” LM or GM. So in the end you are like 7-9 actively playing people against 15 who are having the time of their lives. Of course the situation can be reversed as well if the opponent team is the one with more afkers.
I sometimes tell people to report someone if a dps player has done very little damage for example and are clearly afk, and then the usual excuses start flowing when they alt-tab back in to the game. “My baby was crying”, “Sorry I had a package delivered”. OK, sure whatever, but maybe if you have a baby with colic you should be taking care of him/her/xir instead of playing wow.

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maybe it’s a sign they will actually ban people for afking now and that should make av matches better since ppl are afraid to afk spam bgs in case they get banned so u actually get competitive bgs