Question About IP Bans

[slysiggle]

If I run two bot accounts through the same VPN connection, and one gets banned, will the other get banned? Or is it hard to say?

 

[Maddhatter]

No one can say for sure, but it is unlikely that both will get banned. If the GM that investigates is thorough and sees two connections from the same IP they may investigate the other account as well.

The only license I've had banned was botting together with a second license from the same account, same computer, same IP, and at the same time. Bans are specific to the license being investigated. Even though both of my licenses were under the same account only the one being investigated was banned.

For Blizzard to do anything at an IP level would be extreme. I suspect that any form of IP bans or investigations related to an IP would be from EXTREME abuse like someone botting 100 or more accounts from an IP. There are a limited number of IPV4 addresses and we have already hit that limit. Most IPs are dynamic or some form of address translation(NAT, PAT) where multiple people use the same IP. Because of the dynamic nature of most IPs it is not a good idea to ban or investigate based solely on IP. Having a static IP address is a premium feature from most service providers.

 

[slysiggle]

The only license I've had banned was botting together with a second license from the same account

Would you say it throws up red flags on Blizzard's side if you're running two WoW licenses simultaneously on one bnet account?

 

[Maddhatter]

Would you say it throws up red flags on Blizzard's side if you're running two WoW licenses simultaneously on one bnet account?

No

It is too common for multiple people to play under the same account. If a parent and child both play then they would likely play under the same account because someone under the age of 18 cannot legally be bound by the EULA. Someone under 18 is supposed to play under a parent/guardians supervision.

Also, with the introduction of account wide achievements many families play under the same account to share these achievements. You've got to remember that there are entire households that play wow together. There could be 5+ people logged into the same account using the same IP address at one time, and that occurs on a daily basis under completely legitimate circumstances that does not involve botting.

It is my opinion that there are two ways to get banned by Blizzard:

#1 Someone reports you and a GM investigates. If you are reported and invested then they likely have enough information to tell if you are botting on or not.

#2 You get too extreme with your botting. 100+ accounts from the same IP, mailing 1 million gold a day for over a week, or some other activity that not be normal would be the likely triggers. The criteria for investigating someone that was not reported would have to be enough to make the percentage of people very small. If the criteria were not extreme then too many people would show up in the list, and they would not be able to investigate them all.

In short, if you are a normal gamer then the only thing you likely have to worry about is someone reporting you. The only people that should be concerned about getting flagged are those that are trying to make money off of the game through gold selling, item selling, account selling, powerleveling services, or anything else that requires running a lot of bots. You make very little money from in-game sales for RL money, so in order to make any decent money off of it you have to do a lot of it.

 

[umshakalaka]

Would you say it throws up red flags on Blizzard's side if you're running two WoW licenses simultaneously on one bnet account?

that would mean at least few hundred thousand red flags :3

But it won't be in your favor in case of investigation.

Regarding running chars through the same VPN - there's probably thousands of accounts running through the same VPN's if they're very popular.