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Blizzard Issues Stern Warning About Exploits & TOS Violations on the Eve of the Opening of Antorus
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Blizzard Issues Stern Warning About Exploits & TOS Violations on the Eve of the Opening of Antorus - World of Warcraft - MMORPG.com
World of Warcraft News - Blizzard has launched an early warning to Mythic raiders on the eve of the opening of the Antorus raid in World of Warcraft. Mythic raiders are being reminded that any players selling raid clears for real world cash, account sharing by raid teams and the use of any other exploits to gain an advantage in the "race for the World First" will be met with harsh punishment.
Comments
35 years old. Purchase D3 Collectors Edition. I log in on day... All my characters are gone. I call up support, tell them of the issue, and they reinstate my characters. However, my characters are naked. I call back and talk to support again... They are kind. The tell me that they will get this taken care and to wait for their email.
Next day I get a letter stating how I'm perma-banned for trying to "defraud the system in order to duplicate items." HUH?!
I call up again... "Sorry. There is nothing I can do."
don't use "password" as your password
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
I've literally met thousands of players and not a SINGLE one complained of incorrect bans. Just cheaters professing innocence get into these situations.
Jails are full of people claiming they are innocent.
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women...
This happens, not just with Blizzard. I got an account locked by NCSoft in Lineage II because of a payment issue. I moved cities, but forgot to pay attention to the zip code field when resubscribing (which would never update and always defaulted to filling in your ORIGINAL zip code - this was on the older NCSoft/PlayNC site). They locked all 4 of the accounts because of it, but still charged the card (Lol). I called in, and they told me what happened, and said they would unlock the account. "They should be unlocked right now..."
Didn't happen.
Called back in, and told me the account should be unlocked. Minutes later, I get an email from someone saying that my accounts were locked due to RMT activity or something. Basically, an excuse to not have to deal with the issue, and send me away.
Gaming companies do this all the time. I've known people who were banned while their accounts were unsubscribed for several months for infractions it was impossible to commit (cause they couldn't even log in the account) in other games... Ridiculous things happen in these games, Lol.
Never bought a single Adena (and wasn't exactly an end-game player, either, so no point wasting my RL money on a useless digital currency in a super-niche MMORPG), so I didn't really care... What DID piss me off, is that they still tried to keep the money they charged from my card, so I had to go through the bank to charge it all back. 4 Accounts was $60 (this is when it was still a subscription game), so I wasn't going to let that slide. I got my money back, and moved on.
I think that's when I started playing WoW!
But I don't think Blizzard should care what people do with their own time, and RL money, for example people selling gold I can understand why they would ban for this because you can use illicit means to get gold such as credit card fraud using the in game passes then re-sell the gold, but for example myself if I still played WOW if I put an AD on Fiverr offering power leveling service, or Dungeon Runs I do not think this should be ban worthy, and I strongly believe this is where Blizzard could ban innocent players.
IMO no game company should have control of a persons Real Life, or what they choose to do outside of the game is their own business, now there is a difference if a person comes into the game and starts advertising they are selling services, or something that is illegal, but if people want to pay someone 1 million dollars for a dungeon run (Who Cares) thats their own thing let them do it no one is getting hurt.
Also I am extremely concerned about Guilds being banned for exploiting, what if I was a member of the guild, and doing the run and didn't know people were exploiting, or found out they were exploiting and reported it I take this extremely seriously and I hate exploiters, but to ban an entire guild who's members may not have known...
As for hacked accounts that happened to me guessing over 3+ Years ago now my characters were naked I called Blizzard twice on the phone they fixed it like immediately with me on the phone, not sure if Customer service has changed or what.
I believe that gamers have already reached a point that any game that has an open world and no instances will be controlled like this by the big guilds. You will not be able to do much after awhile and no game developer will be able to control how these big guilds will monopolize and bully the players in a server to play by their rules.
In WoW since there are instances it is able to mitigate this because they cannot control the content but instead they make money by offering these runs and get paid ridiculously and get a monetary advantage. You can say this a private thing and Blizzard should not control it but seriously do you really believe there is no impact on the game economy?
Okay I think I understand what you are saying but I am slightly confused.
How does a guild or a few guilds, control what others do, offering such services (In World OF Warcraft chat, Private Messages, or In Game Mail) would be illegal and I could understand a ban for this.
How does having lets say 1000 players out of a million who want to sell services as in (Sellnig their own Real Life Time to do a run not Blizzards Intellectual Property) going to effect the game if that is what they want to do I personally have no problem with this what people do outside the game is their own business for example I pay a friend $100 to heal for me for 8 hours how is this illegal, how is Blizzard going to know unless one of us tells them.
This is why IMO Blizzards Control should end at the game / door when a user logs into the game these activity would be illegal, but if a user wants to pay outside of the game and never discuss it in game at all then it should be a gray area where nothing can be done.
Obviously this would be a hand full of people rather than everyone in the game and every guild is still free to put together their own raids and run them without any requirements or do what they want people should retain their own Real Life rights, no game company should have this type of control or power over it's players, and I wish I had the money to go up against Blizzard I would do it because their control is on their games / servers only.
Edit: and if this is a bad issue for the games economy, then my question is why am I allowed to pay (in Game Gold) and just buy a bunch of WOW tokens sell it to gold then pay people an insanely huge amount of in game gold for the runs doesn't seem like a big issue as people make it perhaps I should start a website or something, allows people to sell their services for (In Game Items) aka Dungeon Runs for a Epic Weapon / Armor, or 1 million wow gold for example, just run a simple currency conversion for example $50 of wow tokens for a dungeon run, What is the difference? I am not sure the rates of the gold because I don't play WOW for many years but its the same damn thing. Also now can I no longer party with random people?
Also, every time one of those type of people are punished, society gets that much better,
Even with an account hack, they have a system of verifying the person with the original information for the original payment instrument used to purchase if digital as well as the original phone number etc or even the code for the game itself.
Completely cutting off innocent players never ends well for the company.
Solutions other than permabanning innocent players are way better to use then sounding like a stepfather who's trying to sound strict.
Also Blizzard has actual security, they collect "IP Address" and "Hardware GUID / profiles" so if a user, for example, lets say lies trade their gear to an alternate account or sells it through the auction house or something, then calls and claims it was hacked and tries to get a restore Blizzard can quickly look at this and tell if it's you or not, this is for players who hide behind a VPN and try to change just their IP Address it won't work but obviously if a user owns more than one computer with different GUID yeah easy assuming it has never logged into Blizzard services before.
I haven't had a bad experience with Blizzard personally yet, only one game company has ever given me a hard time trying to get an account back and it wasn't Blizzard as they seemed to be good at it, I am not sure how long ago this happened but when I had logged in and was naked in the air was 3+ years ago.