The Anatomy of a 48-Hour Ban

Earlier tonight, I paid a visit to Dire Maul, as I so often do before heading to bed, to check for the rare, elite mobs that spawn in the Arena there. When I arrived, I found two of the three spawned waiting on the Maul floor; Skarr and Mushgog were disengaged, and ready to be solo'd by my Warlock DoTS. I didn't plan for anything to go differently than it usually has for the last year or so, since I began regularly farming the mobs for the Orb of Deception, which sells for a decently-hefty 400g on my server. Little did I know, however, that I would soon receive my first ban from the game, almost two years after starting my first toon.

For those of you that have seen these mobs engaged, you know how the mechanics work. Once in combat, if you remain out of reach of the mob's attacks for too long, your toon is ported to the center of the Maul. If you do not land a direct damage attack on the rares for some time, they will reset quickly, taking away any chance you may have at completing the encounter. Keeping these two mechanics in mind, it is easy for any Level 70 to solo these NPCs, making sure to regularly land a direct-damage attack while kiting, and using the ports to the center as shelter from the mob's high-damage attacks. Easy stuff, and known to just about everyone since the encounters have worked that way for as long as I can remember (which is at least since Summmer, '06).

Well, carefully keeping away from Mushgog so as to engage only one at a time, I drop Skarr after kiting him around one-half of the Maul and proceed to gather the herbs that spawn upon Mushgog's appearance. During a harvest of Dreamfoil, however, my connection suddenly drops. I try logging back in, but upon entering my login info, I find that I am unable to, and a message appears stating that my account has been temporarily suspended.

Double-You. Tee. Eff.

In the message was a link to Blizzard's Account Administration website, which then urged me to check my registered email address for any information regarding my ban. At first, there was nothing to be found. But then an email finally appears 5 to 10 minutes after the suspension, detailing the cause of my ban and it's duration.

Account Action: 48 Hour Suspension

Offense: Exploitation Policy - Unapproved Third Party Software

Player found moving in ways not possible by any means in-game in order to gain an advantage over other players.

Excuse me? Exploiting? Third Party Software? "What the hell are they talking about?" was my initial and is my ongoing reaction to the claim. I have never exploited or hacked the game in any way, shape, or form. I play a Warlock. I don't need to exploit to own.

I immediately wrote an email to dispute the claim that I was "found moving in ways not possible by any means in-game in order to gain an advantage over other players." Upon reading that statement in the email I received, I could only assume that the porting mechanic in the DM Arena was involved in my suspension, and that somehow Bliz missed the fact that the ports occur without any help from external sources. They are a part of the encounter. They always have been. And they probably always will be.

Oh, and get a load of this nonsense:

"Though we are unable to discuss the outcomes of our investigations due to privacy concerns, rest assured that this incident has been looked into very thoroughly, and the appropriate actions have been taken on all involved accounts."

Translated out of it's corporate banter, it basically means that some ghosting GM saw a Warlock porting around in the DM Arena, couldn't explain what he or she was seeing, assumed hacks were involved, and hit the ban button. Thorough indeed.

What's ironic is that Blizzard, in executing the suspension in the fashion they did, broke their own methods of standardized procedure for handling ill behaviors. According to an Account Penalties article on the company's Support website, there is a "Penalty Volcano" that acts as a hierarchy of punishment, ranging from the simple warning to the most serious act of account closure. In describing the 48-hour suspension that I received, the support website states that:

"48 Hour suspensions are most often assigned when the player has repeated an action he or she has been previously warned for."

So, instead of receiving an outright and semi-serious 48-hour ban, I should have received a warning first, instead of an outright suspension, which would have actually given me the opportunity to dispute the claim without Bliz locking me out of my own account and account management page.

As it stands now, I could only email the account administrators for clarification and resolution of the issue at hand. But unfortunately, according to Blizzard's own email, "it may be several days" before the admins are able to respond, and my suspension will likely be long over by then. /sigh... you always hear about Blizzard's apparent trend in screwing over their loyal and rule-abiding customers, but you never think it's gonna happen to you. Little did I know...

I'll keep you all posted on the happenings of this frustrating event. Wish me luck.

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