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Are Blizzard's Bans
Hitting the Wrong Customers?
By Cody “Micajah” Bye
April 22, 2007
On March 12, 2007, Mark - also known as “Thendar” - tried
to log-in to the World of Warcraft, but received a message stating that
his account had been banned for violating Blizzard’s terms of
service. To his knowledge, Mark had done nothing wrong. He’d
just finished collecting enough money to purchase his epic mount and
had done so without hesitation. He’d barely gotten a chance
to use his mount when the ban was enforced. Thinking there was clearly
a misunderstanding, Mark called Blizzard customer support.
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title="Some mounted characters in WoW."
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style="font-style: italic;">Thendar was just gathering gold
for his new mount.
While the customer service team on the line admitted that they could do
nothing over the phone, they encouraged Mark to send an email to the
account team to see if the issue couldn’t be resolved.
They’d had numerous calls like Mark’s, and they
figured the issue would be resolved quickly if he just submitted a few
emails. Slightly relieved, Mark sent out his first email and waited for
a response.
As a two-year subscriber to the game, with two level 70 characters, six
level 60s, and a stable full of alts and other avatars, Mark was
slightly off-put by the whole situation. As a middle-aged retiree
– a sold IT business under his belt, Mark and his wife were
used to spending their off-time playing through quests and grouping
with their guildmates in the hardcore raiding guild, Cairdeas.
According to Mark, he’d never had an issue with GMs and had
actually gone out of his way to report botting or gold spamming when he
could.
When Mark received the response email, it wasn’t what
he’d expected. The message he received back only stated this:
“Access to the World of Warcraft account XXXX has been
permanently disabled. The account has been identified as having been
involved in the sale of virtual World of Warcraft content or Account
trading and thus is in violation of the World of Warcraft Terms of
Use.”
In the final comments in the email, Blizzard asked Mark to review the
Terms of Service once again. As far as Mark could tell, he’d
done nothing wrong. “I was raising funds for a second flying
epic mount for my priest (5200gp),” he said. “I had
been clearing out my banks of all my characters and selling a lot on
the AH and in trade channel. Nothing I did not do when I was raising
funds for my hunter's flying mount.” He hadn’t
purchased any gold from a farmer or had been a part of any selling
scam. He’d only traded and sold his goods like any individual
vying for a flying mount might do.
Frustrated, Mark sent this response:
“I am starting to get a bit irritated at the lack of
communication. According to Austin F. in your customer service
department, he feels I have been the victim of some kind of keylogger.
I know virtually nothing about that, and have a fellow from a local
computer company coming to check out my computer this evening. I was
hoping to have heard something before then - please contact me as soon
as possible and let me know what is going on. Thank you.”
Once Mark received confirmation from the computer company that his
personal computer had been hacked into, he sent another email to
Blizzard trying to get his account reestablished.
And received this from a Blizzard Account Admin in response:
“Thank you for contacting us regarding the recent closure of
your account. I understand that your account is important to
you, and have conducted another investigation of its closure with that
fact in mind. Unfortunately, however, I was only able to
verify that the closure of the account in question was
justified. We will therefore be unable to restore access to
it for any reason. Please understand that these actions are
only taken when absolutely necessary.”
Despite his attempts at resolving the situation, Mark had been clearly
told that there was no possible way his account could be reactivated.
Mark pulled the subscription from his other account, packed up his
bags, and moved away from the game.
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reading to learn
why the WoW bans are a threat to the entire MMO market!
