Banned! :P

[MoMedic]

1)Were you using Honorbuddy, Gatherbuddy or both on the account? - GB2

2)If so, when was the last time?: - Up until the moment I was banned 45 minutes ago.

3)What profile were you using?: - Zuabro's Uldum Mining Only 3.1

4)What combat class were you using? if None Just put Default then the Classname: Default Warrior

5)What plugins are you using?: None

6)How many hours per day did you bot for?: - 6 to 8, most everyday.

6.5)What honest percentage of time did you supervise your bot? - 95% or more.

7)How many auctions per day did you have?: - Less than 40 on a separate account.

8)Did you Use Any Other Bots, Hacks, or Mods? - Nope

9)Was your account involved in gold selling? - Nope

10)EU or US realm? US

Ok, my first ban...lol. I'm certainly not going to whine about it, as I wear big boy britches and know the risks.

A little more details....I supervise my botting in Uldum 100% of the time (yes I know Uldum is the ban capitol). Although my server has A LOT of bots doing circles in Uldum, I figured I was relatively safe as I never go AFK there. Just prior to getting the ban, a few strange things happened....about 10 minutes before the ban, my botting character got randomly teleported to a few random spots within Uldum. The first 2 times, I just thought it was some sort of glitch in the matrix. After a 3rd and 4th time, I shut down HB, and rebooted my CPU, thinking that perhaps the random porting was a net issue. After rebooting, and restarting WoW and HB, I saw one more random teleport, and then 5 minutes later was disconnected from WoW. Attempted to reconnect, and got the dreaded ban notice. I immediately put in a ticket on the battle.net website, and am still waiting on a reply. If I have to follow up with a phone call, I will...and give them the same story as the one in my ticket "I have no idea why or what this ban is about"

I will post back the results of my appeal. And also, never got an email from Blizzard, which may or may not have been gobbled up by my email spam folder.

Just wanted to share my story here...again not whining. The unusual teleporting right before the ban was highly unusual, and not something I've seen before. Not sure if it's related at all, but thought I'd share it in case it is.

 

[MoMedic]

After many petitions, and threats of nuclear war, I finally got Blizzard to re-send the missing initial email:

----ORGINIAL MESSAGE-----
Greetings,

Account Name: XXXX
Realm: XXXX
Character Name: XXXX

A user of the above account has recently been involved in actions deemed inappropriate for the World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This decision was made after a thorough investigation of the situation as a whole.

Any disputes or questions concerning the following account action can only be addressed by Account Administration. To learn more about how Account Administration is able to assist you, please visit us at Support Contact Information - Battle.net Support .

Account Action: 72 Hour Suspension

Offense: Unapproved Third Party Software

A third party program is any file or program that is not a part of the World of Warcraft software, but is used to gain an advantage in the game, such as increasing your movement speed or teleporting from one place to another beyond what is allowed by game design. It also includes any programs that obtain information from the game that is not normally available to the regular player or that transmit or modify any of the game files. Normally, this classification does not include UI modifications, except those UIs that require an external application to function. Any external applications that are used in conjunction with World of Warcraft can cause quite a few unwanted side effects. Some of the major possible results of the use of third party programs can be instability of the game to the point that a player "crashes" from the game quite often. External programs can also be used to transmit viruses, spyware, and other unwanted programs into a player's computer. Third party programs can also be used to obtain information from the player's computer, such as account, password, and personal information.

For further information, please view the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (In-Game Policies - Battle.net Support) and (Blizzard Entertainment:Battle.net Terms of Use). Please be aware that additional inappropriate actions may result in further disciplinary action, up to or including Account Closure.

We understand that these policies may seem harsh, but they are in place to ensure that every player is able to fully enjoy their travels in the World of Warcraft. Thank you in advance for respecting our position.

Yours,

Customer Service
Blizzard Entertainment
Battle.net Support
----ORGINIAL MESSAGE-----

Strange...very strange. Not the usual "abuse of economy" ban. Although I definitely wasn't using any other software other than HB. Guess I'll just sit on my 72hr ban and contemplate my revenge...

 

[Eisenberg]

You simply got reported, and a GM has personally checked behavior of Your character by teleporting it. You should play stupid saying that something weird started to happen when You were farming in Uldum, and after that You got ban. Maybe theyll think that by mistake they banned real person not bot.

 

[MoMedic]

After I got the ban, was when I started thinking the 5-6 random teleports were related to it. I'd never heard of that GM tactic before, so I didn't initially put 2 and 2 together. If any good comes of this, perhaps others might see a random teleport issue with bots they're running and be able to react fast enough to avoid a ban.

 

[Syn Acid]

If you monitored your account I don't think there's anyway to prove this because tbh I think they just hit or miss type bans.

 

[Smoogel]

After I got the ban, was when I started thinking the 5-6 random teleports were related to it. I'd never heard of that GM tactic before, so I didn't initially put 2 and 2 together. If any good comes of this, perhaps others might see a random teleport issue with bots they're running and be able to react fast enough to avoid a ban.

Back on the pirox forums many people thought about this tactic and experienced it. Even the bot deveolper had somesort of 'protection' coded in. I assumed it was affective on pvptool because it was not a mesh bot and it just followed way points.

It was commonly used then but I have never heard about it for honorbuddy :S

 

[webhond]

teleport ... realy... you give blizz way to much credit fighting bots.

player reports, mass emailing and sticking to much stuff on ah. All things that can be dealt with automated.

they dont do shit else.

 

[MoMedic]

Well however you want to look at it, my botting character most definitely got teleported 5-6 times minutes before getting banned. As I previously stated, I was monitoring the bot 100%, and was watching it while it happened. The first 3-4 times, I just thought it was some sort of cpu or latency glitch...the other few times I got teleported was after I rebooted and relogged.

Take my info I've posted however you like. I just wanted other HB users to be aware of what happened with my ban so that they may react a little quicker than I did should they see the same thing.

 

[celmaisef]

teleport ... realy... you give blizz way to much credit fighting bots.

player reports, mass emailing and sticking to much stuff on ah. All things that can be dealt with automated.

they dont do shit else.

They do teleport, what do you think a GM does when he wants to see if u are botting or not and he aint sure?
You think he will message you and wait 30 mins or a couple of hours for u to reply to see if u bot or not?
They just teleport you to a small room usually, where they see if u fly into walls or you just plain and simply walk out the door (if u are a player).

 

[mat53]

Well however you want to look at it, my botting character most definitely got teleported 5-6 times minutes before getting banned. As I previously stated, I was monitoring the bot 100%, and was watching it while it happened. The first 3-4 times, I just thought it was some sort of cpu or latency glitch...the other few times I got teleported was after I rebooted and relogged.

Take my info I've posted however you like. I just wanted other HB users to be aware of what happened with my ban so that they may react a little quicker than I did should they see the same thing.

Thats true report

They do teleport your characters, sometimes inside caves and watch what are you doing. Just because this never happened to you, doesnt mean this is fake report, this happened to me, but tbh its rare.

 

[MoMedic]

Final thought: Stay away from Uldum! (as suggested a thousand times here...lol)

 

[blaize9]

Final thought: Stay away from Uldum! (as suggested a thousand times here...lol)

\
I don't know how many times i had to say that.

 

[HBfanboy1980]

All well and great fellas, but I've been teleported/moved in vashjir at least 3 times. Guess what my bot did? It acted like a person.... using the mesh it freaking leaves the location and continues on it merry way. I don't see how or why a GM may have done it though. WTF does it do for him to watch you fly around? HB is [NOT] some random waypoint bot and they know this. They can and will lock your character in place not allowing it to move and have a nice conversation with you....

 

[MoMedic]

All well and great fellas, but I've been teleported/moved in vashjir at least 3 times. Guess what my bot did? It acted like a person.... using the mesh it freaking leaves the location and continues on it merry way. I don't see how or why a GM may have done it though. WTF does it do for him to watch you fly around? HB is [NOT] some random waypoint bot and they know this. They can and will lock your character in place not allowing it to move and have a nice conversation with you....

What's your point?

 

[celmaisef]

All well and great fellas, but I've been teleported/moved in vashjir at least 3 times. Guess what my bot did? It acted like a person.... using the mesh it freaking leaves the location and continues on it merry way. I don't see how or why a GM may have done it though. WTF does it do for him to watch you fly around? HB is [NOT] some random waypoint bot and they know this. They can and will lock your character in place not allowing it to move and have a nice conversation with you....

That was an old tactic. What they do now is... they watch your character and DONT INSTA BAN YOU. They let you play for 24-48 hours more to get more data and maybe catch you using other accounts from that PC.
They will not insta ban you. Its a new tactic with which they are trying to make bans more effective by banning all accounts that bot from the same PC.