It is in all discretion that a news for the less curious appeared this Tuesday, February 22, 2022 on the forums dedicated to World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. With the approach of the end of Season 2 of Shadowlands, a wave of bans has been deployed in order to combat certain illegal actions carried out by certain players in World of Warcraft. Only here, the e-mail that the banned players received indicates a reason for banning a priori false, and Blizzard expressed itself in response to one of these “victims” on the Battle.net forums.
Origins of the controversy
As has been the common case for many years, each end of the season sees its big wave of bans taking place in order to purge the game of all cheaters and other players who have chosen not to respect the basic rules of the game. finds in these waves two major reasons among many others:
- Exchanges for real money, so-called “RMTs” for “Real Money Transaction“
- Account shares and other types of “boosting“offered illegally
These practices have mainly plagued the rated PvP of WoW since its creation at The Burning Crusade and are often linked since the players and sites of “boosting“providing these services not only offer transactions in exchange for real money, but also what is called”pilot boosting“, literally “piloted boost”, a practice whereby you let an experienced player play for you during the period of boosting in order to accelerate this and thus reduce the price of the transaction.
In several messages posted on the Battle.net forums on Monday February 21 and Tuesday February 22, 2022, players reported being banned for exchanging in-game services for real money. However, these players claim to have never offered this type of service and believe that they were victims of an error, or at least do not understand the exact reason for their banishment since shortly after, just an hour, a new email arrived in their inbox telling them that they had actually been banned for “Unauthorized Account Access“, for wholesale account sharing.
It was in response to one of these alleged victims that Oriyia, one of Blizzard’s Customer Service members, revealed that the first email sent was an error, so it would be for this reason that a new message quickly followed in order to make known the real reason for the suspension of the accounts concerned.
In response to this, a player asked Oriyia if a new wave of bans was going to be deployed soon to punish players for sharing their account, to which Blizzard Customer Service replied that this wave of bans was dedicated precisely to this practice.
Remember in passing that lending your account to someone violates the Blizzard End User License Agreement. Only the holder whose name is displayed on the Battle.net account has the right to connect to it, any other person accessing it being illegal in the eyes of Blizzard. If you didn’t know that, now you know what you’re risking, and you won’t miss Blizzard for the slightest misstep. Mistrust !
Do the victims deserve their banishment?
Honestly, it’s hard to say with absolute certainty since I’m not a member of Blizzard Customer Service, and anyone who says otherwise would probably be a charlatan. However, with hindsight and experience, we can easily come to a fairly simple conclusion: if a player is banned, it is rarely for the wrong reasons. Mistakes happen, of course, but the overwhelming majority of suspensions are most likely justified. And this is especially true in the case of waves of banishment such as this one, the reasons for which are scrupulously studied by the pole dedicated to these suspensions.
Because yes, understand something, simple honest players, cheaters or supposed victims: bans for transactions against real money or for account sharing are the subject of a long manual investigation by Blizzard. It is mainly for this reason that if you commit fraud of this type, you have a good chance of getting away with it for a few months before seeing your account suspended “for no reason” one morning when everything seemed to be going for the best. Investigations take time!
Contrary to what many players think, real people are in control of World of Warcraft and are investigating account suspensions. This is again not the case for all suspensions, sometimes waves of automated bans are enacted, as was the case with the TMorph and ConsolePort affair for example, but the example of the day probably does not correspond to this phenomenon.
Players have, as previously mentioned, challenged these suspensions. Some say they have never participated in fraudulent exchanges, others even wonder since their account has been inactive for “a long time”, while some simply believe that they have “done nothing wrong”. However, by taking a look at the small details of their posts on the forums, we often notice a detail that makes all the difference.
But, there is indeed a controversial case because of which a suspension can take place when it is not justified: the use of a VPN. Because yes, the use of a VPN is prohibited on World of Warcraft and is assimilated to account sharing, especially if you change location at a humanly impossible frequency: to be in Paris at 10:00 p.m. then in Moscow at 11:30 p.m. in New York at 2:30 a.m. makes no sense. Moreover, it is this type of system that is exploited by the sellers of so-called “piloted” boosts, Blizzard therefore includes everyone in the same basket. Of course, the subject is a little more complex, but to put it simply, don’t use a VPN when playing World of Warcraft, period.
Suddenly… In our opinion, yes, it is very highly likely that the alleged victims of an error deserve, for the overwhelming majority, the account suspension they received on Tuesday, February 22, 2022, regardless of the reason: account sharing as illegal transaction. What if you’ve been banned and haven’t really done anything that’s prohibited by the Blizzard End User License Agreement so we are sorry. You only have one solution left: fill out a dispute form!
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Patch 9.2 is titled Eternity’s End. It includes a new area (Zereth Mortis), a new raid (the Sepulcher of the Founders) and many other major new features. This is also the last major update for Shadowlands.