For your reference;

Account name: edited
Character on account: edited
Server: edited

8/28/2008

Received an email stating a 72 hour suspension and a review for Account Closure.

Offense: World of Warcraft Terms of Use Violation

Details: Character(s) on this account were found to be used for intended exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy.

8/29/2008

Received another email stating that my account has been reviewed and has been permanently closed.

Reason: The account has been identified as having been involved in the sale of virtual World of Warcraft content or Account trading. Additionally we found extensive evidence of Exploitive Account Sharing which is also a severe violation of our terms of use.


First of all, the email of the 29th stated 3 offenses from what I can tell.

1. Selling of virtual WoW content
2. Account selling / trading
3. Account sharing

Im quite amazed how Blizzard claims to have found enough evidence of the above all in one day.

My account has been active for the last 2.5 years and during this time I have not sold gold or anything else for real life value.

I do admit to selling arena points during Season 3 (and making a fortune in in-game gold), and attempting to sell in Season 4 and have been posting in the trade channel mentioning so. In this message was a link to my personal website which is basically a place for potential buyers to sign up as there are always a lot of people looking to purchase personal ratings.

The website I linked in trade chat was edited

This website is not affliated with any Gold farming / selling / buying organisation and is personally owned by me.

It was made just to organise people into their respective classes so that we dont have to be harassed with numerous whispers in-game. We did not ask for real-life money in exchange for helping them get to their desired Personal Rating.

As far as I'm aware, helping another player's character get to a certain personal rating in exchange for their gold as payment is not against the TOS, as is selling arena points every week.

The gold I had previously made by selling arena points during Season 3 was thoughtlessly passed around to my real life friends who also play the game. Now I'm talking thousands, sometimes even 10's of thousands as my "gold income" from selling arena points was far greater than the ammount I passed on to my friends.

If Blizzard saw this as gold selling, why do they assume that I have sold the gold without even asking or verifying that they know me in real life?

Is giving my real-life friends a share of my gold a bannable offense? Enough for account closure?

Regarding the account trading point, I am able to provide copies of my passport or drivers license to show that the information of the above WoW account holder match. I believe that this will clear the air of any account trading / selling nonsense.

Account sharing is another point where Blizzard fails. I access my account from 2 physical locations, home and work. However I have the SSH tunneling service provided by lowerping.com installed at both locations and do use it when i need to. The fact that my logins to the account come from up to 3 IP addresses is a fact as described above. Is it wrong for me to access my account from more than 1 location?

Last of all, I am aware that Account Administration can be swamped at times, but I've sent an email on the 29th and have no received a response since. Whats the deal there?

I'm requesting that my situation be looked into with more detail as this "review" seems to be very quick and brief with no definate details to what I have done to warrant such actions.

[ Post edited by Soliloquy ]

I'll check this out for you, Sol. Care to wait a few moments?

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Game Master ♂ In-Game Support
Architeuthis, lean and fast.
Show us your sublime buccal mass.

To be clear, this suspension had nothing to do with any IPs from which you may have been logging in.

In an effort to maintain your privacy, I'll simply state that the website you were involved with/advertising combined with the extensive evidence of policy violations led Account Administration to the decision to close your account. It wasn't reached lightly or frivolously.

Any further appeals will need to go through AA.

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Game Master ♂ In-Game Support
Architeuthis, lean and fast.
Show us your sublime buccal mass.

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Q u o t e:


The message I posted in trade went something like this;

Are you un-satisfied with your 1500 ratings? Cant find a partner who can play at your skill level? We offer 1700/1800/1950/2050 Personal rating [WEBSITE HERE].

Am I to understand that posting an internet link in trade chat is a bannable offense? or is taking arena outside of WoW.exe itself a bannable offense?

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Actually, yes, advertising in-game is against policy. But that's not the only reason why this action was taken.

It's not in your best interest for me to deconstruct the nature of your business, and I'm not going to. Just understand that the action was legitimate and you won't be able to appeal it with us on the forum.

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Game Master ♂ In-Game Support
Architeuthis, lean and fast.
Show us your sublime buccal mass.

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Q u o t e:


I would love an answer here too Belfaire.

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Pure and simple:

There's a difference between broadcasting your guild's website and advertising a site that promotes exploitative action in-game.

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Game Master ♂ In-Game Support
Architeuthis, lean and fast.
Show us your sublime buccal mass.