Since there are a lot of theories in the wild what is about Term of Service and Code of Conducte, we have asked a GM for a clear answer.
As you may know, GMs are the ones handling reports, cheating and bans for their daily bread. Therefore their assessment regarding following question is valuable:
Does engaging in queue syncing (where players coordinate to form multiple 5-man groups and sync their queues to enter unranked (epic) battlegrounds together) constitute an unfair advantage and thus fall under the category of cheating or is this practice allowed by Blizzard?
The GM answers that there is no violation and doesnât mention anything about this procedure to be bannable or breaking ToS or CoC.
This conversation with the GM was held on 2024-7-23
Disclaimer: I am opening this thread for everyone who might need a reference to an official Blizzard response regarding queue-syncing being against ToS/CoC.
Iâm not convinced he/she/they answered the question that was asked.
âŚno violation from âqueuing together or organising a group queueâ.
However, âqueuing togetherâ or âorganising âaâ group queueâ was never in question.
If by âclearâ you mean âevasive & ambiguousâ -then sure.
I think youâre hearing the answer you want to hear, instead of comprehending the actual answer that was given.
Q. Does engaging in queue syncing (where players coordinate to form multiple 5-man groups and sync their queues to enter unranked (epic) battlegrounds together) constitute an unfair advantage and thus fall under the category of cheating
A. âŚqueuing together or organising a group queue is not a violation of our terms of services.
I just treble checked & no one asked if players queuing together or if organising âaâ group queue was a violation of ToS.
Had the GM responded: âEngaging in queue syncing (where players coordinate to form multiple 5-man groups and sync their queues to enter unranked (epic) battlegrounds together) does not constitute an unfair advantageâ
-then sure, the answer would be crystal clear.
But a GM wouldnât be so dense to write that, because cheating or not, it very clearly constitutes an unfair advantage. Iâd be amused to see you argue otherwise.
The only thing I can tell you about it is that you look for the other image they published where they said very clearly in the American forum that synchronizing premades counting to enter at the same time was not illegal.
Iâm too lazy to look it up myself, but it was recently posted on the European forum.
Maybe. But they also say the same thing about the premades of 5 stacks in the 10-15 Bgs.
What do we do?
If they think itâs unfair, let form their own teams.
But what these people want is that no one can play with anyone. They want to impose their tastes on others.
The next thing will be that the low geared will ask that those who are fully equipped cannot queue for random Bgs because they interfere with their progression, since a geared one can oneshot a low geared one.
Thereâs nothing I can say that hasnât been said 100 times.
Forming ~5 in Randoms does give an advantage, but itâs not unfair as everyone has the opportunity to do so (without circumventing restrictions).
Queue-synchronisation gives an insurmountable advantage & makes the BG unwinnable. The game is lost before the gates open, making âplayingâ futile & pointless.
If GMs are actively condoning queue-syncing, more people will stop playing.
Havenât seen this yet, but seen plenty of posts from max geared players asking to ban lowbies (or just straight kicking them from the BG).
But: There are a lot of things that are possible for anyone playing this game, are not against ToC or CoC, and which result in an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, we all have to cope with this imbalanced, unfair game.
I mainly created this post to capture that official answer from a GM regarding queue-syncing, because some people claim:
it would be illegal (which is not)
it would be right to report players based on that (which is not)
so that those players get banned (which has never happened)
Personally I would just get rid of toys, engineer in BGs. While they allow ppl like naka to make âgreat montageâ (sarcasm) its not really that much âfairâ either even if he claims it is.
Also why people keep asking for changes to get rid of atleast majority of the unfair advantages in this game.
Are more people upset than happy about sync premades? Absolutely. My guess is blizz is just as normal, afraid to actually make a full official blizzard statement on the forum that tells people they have to live with 20+ syncers steamrolling kids.
Them having 1 ideology before which just randomly stopped for some reason is just weird without explaining why.
I usually tend to play BG/Epic bgs at the start of seasons. But when there are times you face syncers in 5 games in a row with 100% chance of loosing I just stop playing it.
Its actually really fun when theres no syncers. But the instant there is, its the most boring thing in the world. I just can never understand why syncers actively try to ruin BGs and be proud of making people quit or less likely to play. I know its their enjoyment but still. Its sad.
You showed the picture before which I counter-argued.
Its an answer from a GM.
Its not an official statement of blizzard on the forum from a higher up that actually makes the decisions. What these GM, atleast in my understanding, reads the ToS/CoC and just say what they believe outside from just those lines.
If all you do is that, then its quite easy to see that it do not break CoC.
I personally believe thats mostly because they do not know the actual situation or have been part of the situation.
So that picture, like I told you, is contradicting their ideology from before.
They are free to report if they feel the game is unplayable because of syncing.
