IP-Address ban, the new norm.

[Macatho]

Just FYI. IP-Address ban is the new standard.

If you get appealed and a GM investigates, you can kiss all your accounts on that IP-address good bye. If you're lucky the GM fatfingers and dsnt ban them all and misses one here and there

Third time this has happened now. Just wanted to confirm it to all you ney sayers who does not think blizzard bans by IP.

This was not the norm 2-3 years ago, then you could get a GM to investigate one account and that one would get banned and the rest would be fine.

 

[markop]

Were all the accounts on the same pc?

 

[Goshinki]

Same IP and same Payment method etc... Everything is extremely easy for them to look up and tie to other accounts. Name, address... Why would you think any of that is off limits to them?

They did this 2-3 years ago. This has been going on forever. They are just quicker now with server side scripts and player reports.

 

[Croga]

Just FYI. IP-Address ban is the new standard.
If you get appealed and a GM investigates, you can kiss all your accounts on that IP-address good bye. If you're lucky the GM fatfingers and dsnt ban them all and misses one here and there
Third time this has happened now. Just wanted to confirm it to all you ney sayers who does not think blizzard bans by IP.
This was not the norm 2-3 years ago, then you could get a GM to investigate one account and that one would get banned and the rest would be fine.

Nope. Still bullshit.

There's lots of people playing from behind the same IP. Think about student houses, company networks, shared connections in a street. Blizz has never, will never and can never ban based on IP address since IP != person. They have never used blanket bans since that will always hurt innocents.

 

[Aion]

Actually, Croga, they ban by IP indeed, but only in severe cases, usually when goldselling is confirmed or for extreme exploitation and/or botting. I havent seen IP ban on casual mats farmer with 2-3 accounts.

And IP ban means, when you register fresh account on this IP, it will be banned almost instantly, no matter if its TBC or even Starter.

 

[BrPlxGimmeGold]

Im botting 6 account right now...same ip/mac adress/pc ... already have been banned on 2 account for 72 hours like 2 week ago...one of them is 'retired' ... and the other i still botting to know if it will get deleted...

 

[Dreadlord]

I've never heard of someone being IP banned just for botting, I know they do ban hammers etc but nothing this severe. I know gold sellers / heavy farmers get the IP bans because they greatly affect the economy and Exploits / hacks.

 

[Aetheric]

A full IP-ban by itself? Nah ..

But Blizzard is getting more and more effective in cross-linking and evaluating their databases, so an exception-list is just a mouse-click away.
And once in a while, they do press that button, effectively banning part of the community of cheaters (and be honest, botting is cheating).
We see that as a "banwave", but actually it isn't ..

Botting and gold trading is risky and eventually you will get banned. Be it an IP-ban or a single account.

Reset your router, get a new IP address and take it from there.

Nothing new ..

 

[pookthetook]

What I was told is that once you've been banned too many times from the same ip it'll get flagged as a bot ip. This doesn't ban everything on it, but tells the server to pay extra attention to all accounts running off of that ip to catch botting.

 

[Gemini]

It is my understanding that Mac addresses don't leave your network but does WoW record you Mac address and other hardware info through the program? Also does using a *** mitigate any of the problems linking you to the same IP? I have heard other games flag people that connect through a ***** as well. Thoughts regarding using a ***. Forgive my ignorance I am fairly new to this.

 

[ZoOoOoM]

It is my understanding that Mac addresses don't leave your network but does WoW record you Mac address and other hardware info through the program? Also does using a *** mitigate any of the problems linking you to the same IP? I have heard other games flag people that connect through a ***** as well. Thoughts regarding using a ***. Forgive my ignorance I am fairly new to this.

Popular ***s will most likely get you banned/locked.
Gold resellers use em all the time, and when they "Flag" those, they discover that the same IP's are used by hundreds if not thousands of accounts.
Hence, why they advise against it when asked about it.
From what i know, VPS tunneled connection is the best way to go. as in, you're the only one using that IP so it wouldn't be previously flagged.
Haven't tried it though, so no experience with VPS..

As for IP bans, they do investigate "deeper" now.
Last batch of accounts i had banned, only had a couple of accounts mishap and get stuck at a certain location which lead to reports and cause all 6 of them to get banned while refusing any kind of appeal.

So it's pretty much like it's always been. they can ban by IP, but they don't do it right off the bat.
They can easily see how many accounts are logged in from that IP and if they're running on the same machine (the deciding factor in IP chain-bans, imo)

Just think about about how people get banned for simply just trading with a flagged gold reseller. They do track "abusive" IP's.

 

[Aion]

It is my understanding that Mac addresses don't leave your network but does WoW record you Mac address and other hardware info through the program? Also does using a *** mitigate any of the problems linking you to the same IP? I have heard other games flag people that connect through a ***** as well. Thoughts regarding using a ***. Forgive my ignorance I am fairly new to this.

You are shotting in the wrong direction.

Blizzard are flagging accounts simply by IDs, stored by the Windows registry. Thats the reason why when you change IP, but run from the very same computer your account doesnt locks up!

They always store account identifications in the registry when you login. Im perfectly sure its pretty login, since they operate under their namespace in the registry of course.

So it could be not hard for them to check for all the accounts loggged from this computer (aka WoW installation) in the past.

They dont need to collect personal information for this, but simply to have unique ID for every Wow client we install, and combine it with the account you login from the same client.


That way they can bypass the privacy factor and still able to link and identify tons accounts.


Im sure most of the people when cloning their bot farm to extra computer simply copy all the content of wow folder, instead of fresh installing the client. Its the same with all the virtual machines, they usually share the same wow client, indeed.