WarcraftPets Forum

Blizzard Entertainment: Legitimate Efficient Active Farming of Ore and Herbs Results in a BANNED account and accused of botting... AGAIN! Guilty until proven Innocent?

I am a hair away from giving up on obtaining the gold I need to buy the last few TCG battle pets I need for my collection, cancelling my WoW account, and defecting to Pokemon.

I am a VERY intense farmer of ore and herbs when I set my mind to collecting gold to get something I want to buy in game. I queue up documentaries on YouTube on my second monitor and farm away for hours on end. I have been doing so for the passed few weeks on the server Illidan. There is a plethora of low cost TCG battle pets on the auction house of this server. So I rolled a druid, power leveled it doing pet battles, and have been farming ore and herbs, selling them on them on the AH, and buying battle pets.

Last week, I find my account banned and an email stating that I've been accused of botting. So I submitted a ticket in appeal and received a form letter email about 24 hours later stating that my account had been reactivated, apologies abound. So I continued my farming.

This morning, I go to log in and my account is banned, AGAIN, and another email stating I had been accused of botting. This is a viscous cycle. I don't know how to get out of it. The only way I can get these TCG battle pets is to buy them off the auction house. Ebay purchases of the actual card with real money is not an option at this time. The only way I can make enough gold to buy these TCG battle pets is to massively farm ore and herbs and sell them on the AH. I have NEVER used a botting add on EVER. I'm one of those freaks that LOVES farming and I'm REALLY good at it. Apparently, Blizzard considers this a personality flaw of the gamer and automatically tags you as a User Agreement violating botter! I don't know what to do to break this cycle.

I have submitted ANOTHER ticket in appeal and am awaiting a response. Apparently, you can no longer contact Blizzard via phone and reach a Customer Service Rep. You have to leave a message and wait for a call back. This is redundant as I requested a call back in my ticket.

I have never had this problem before and I have done A LOT of farming. Does anyone know if Blizzard has changed their policy/procedure concerning accused botters? Any suggestions on how I can continue to farm without getting banned? Is it just the high pop PVP server, Illidan, that I'm trying to farm on that's the issue? The majority of my past farming has been on the RP servers, Wyrmrest Accord and Moon Guard and I never got banned.

I am a battle pet collector! Blizzard is hazing me and preventing me from doing what I need to do to collect battle pets and enjoy the gaming experience of the World of Warcraft. I will now have lost 2+ days of service this month that I have already paid for and I NEVER violated their User Agreement EVER in the 9 years that I have played World of Warcraft.

Where is my Nintendo 3DS?

DivineGeek

Wow, that's a really discouraging situation to be in. Hopefully Blizzard will resolve things quickly and this stops happening to you.

The way I understand it is that Blizzard doesn't actively look for botters and their policies are more reactive than anything. To me this would mean that someone or possibly a few people on the server have reported you as a botter. It could be someone that's in direct competition with you in the ore/herbs market or someone who legitimately thinks you were botting.

If it's the former, I really don't know what you could do. If they feel you're a threat to their market, they will just keep on reporting you to get rid of the competition.

If it's the latter, you could try farming at a slower pace or mix things up by taking frequent breaks to do other things in-game. Actions that aren't repetitive so that they couldn't possibly be suspected of botting. If you're in a guild or have any friend's online, chatting with them while you're farming might also help any GM that looks into the matter see that you were actually there and not using a program to collect herbs/ore.

I hope you can get back into collecting those last few pets that you need soon.

I'd bet they're reacting to the amount of items on the AH, not the actual farming.

Sorry to hear they're bugging you, I had read somewhere last week that Illidan had cheap pets and thought of starting a toon there to do the same. Now I'm glad I procrastinated

If it's someone repeatedly reporting you for botting because they're in competition with you I do know that people who've had that happen have gotten the reporting person banned by due to false reporting. Blizzard may be paranoid about botting, but no one likes having their time wasted with petty false reports. I'd try mentioning the past incidents and pointing out that if it's the same people (and are in the same market) reporting you each time it's going to get tedious fast for everyone involved to go through ban, appeal, investigation, repeal every time that person feels petty.

I got a form letter email response back from Blizzard. They've suspended my account for 72 hours due to "bot-like activity". They know I'm not botting, but because I'm excessively farming just like a bot, I may as well be a bot, LOL. They have threatened me with a perma-ban if I continue in my bot-like activity. This is ridiculous. I have requested a phone call from Customer Support. No phone call has been forth coming. Why is Blizzard griefing their honest subscribers? This makes no sense.

DivineGeek
griefed & confused

That happened to me once when I wasn't playing regularly and before I got an authenticator ...they had just came out. My account not only got hacked w/ all toons and banks emptied, but the hacker WAS actively botting w/ my toons. My saving grace they wre able to tracked how everything was striped and emptied so everything was reissued. The GM also told me they can track play patterns and length of play. I remember the guy who was attempting to break the wow record for longest uninterrupted length of time played and it was plan out w/ blizz being informed w/ all the player's information and was all over the forums at the time, but blizz got so concern for the player's health ( so it was told ) that they placed a " forced rest " ban on the player right before he broke the record. They also responded on the forums regarding their actions in part, I believe to a couple of people who died due to no rest, food and water at about the same time. Like you, my son and I had done some lengthy farming in order to obtain wanted items or gold for items, but as in all things in life, moderation is a necessity to one's health. I am concern in how blizz is chosing to handle your case and there should be some one- on - one phone conversation to explore and resolve your issues because automated emails just will not get it in your case. The GM did tell me, in my case, that most of their actions are due through direct reporting from other players so I don't know if that has changed or not. If that is the case, then it sounds to me like another player is messing w/ you and if proven should be FOREVER banned. If it is direct competition which is a high probability, I would seriously consider moving to another realm to avoid this person and threat of a perm ban. Its not fair to you in being forced to make all the sacrifices, but it might be the only way to stay in the game until your issues are resolved.I too had been an avid farmer...at least until pet battles came for one, I enjoyed it and two, I had a lot of toons to gear up and professions to max out. My realm was one of the highest populated at the time and bans were rampant: so I do believe that does make for a higher risk in being flag. One of the things I tried to do, because all of my high level toons are on the same realm is I started switching back and forth between toons, particularly when other players began whispering and accusing me of botting, I knew the complaints would be forth coming and it was all about the competition. I also quit fighting over nodes as well. I would fly by and keep going because I knew it wasn't going to be worth it in the end. The only area I have ever experienced w/ no fear of being accuse of anything has been fishing...most folks HATE it so there isn't much competition going on there. On my realm fish goes for premium prices as well, so that might be another path you could take (ex : jade fish raw 75g and up a stack ).As the other poster stated, blizz needs to confirm if complaints are from the same person. Keep us posted, I'm interested in how it goes and best of luck to you friend