So, this was in my inbox this morning:
***Notice of Account Closure***
Greetings,
Account Name: PCRISSMAN
This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.
As a result, this account will no longer be able to access any aspect of World of Warcraft. This action has been taken in accordance with the Terms of Use (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html) and our game policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p). According to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all players agree when installing World of Warcraft, Section 3, Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] states that you may not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the “essence” of World of Warcraft.
Thank you for your time and understanding of our position in this matter. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.
Regards,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
www.WorldOfWarcraft.com
Hmm. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. That’s interesting.
It’s especially interesting considering I cancelled my subscription over a month ago since I simply did not have time to play World of Warcraft. I’m fairly certain I have not logged on to any WoW server in well over two months, possibly longer.
I was considering re-activating the subscription at some point, if and/or when I have more free time to play MMORPG-type games (I just like typing MMORPG) — so this is a little annoying.
I replied to them; hopefully they can explain exactly what it is about NOT PLAYING that flags an account as “exploitative”.
Hi Phil,
Funny that you mention this. I too had an account recently closed do to an unusual “I am breaking rules due to the essence of playing” i guess in your case you were not playing.
Meggi
Hi Phil,
Same thing happened to me. I cancelled my account over 6 months ago and then I receive the e-mail below. I sent a reply, hopefully they will be able to explain something, but I am not getting my hopes up. I too was considering re-activating my account when I had more time. It sure is frustrating though!
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
This is a notification regarding the World of Warcraft account, *****. Access to this account has been disabled for behavior contrary to the “essence” of World of Warcraft. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessment of all account investigations, multiple trends in prohibited behavior on the account in question have ultimately led to its closure.
As a result, this account will no longer be able to access any aspect of World of Warcraft. This action has been taken in accordance with Section 3, Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] of the Terms of Use (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html) and our game policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p).
Thank you for your time and understanding of our position in this matter. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.
Regards,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.WorldOfWarcraft.com
Got the same e-mail as Phil did. My account has been closed nearly a year and a half.
I got the same email this morning. I was out of town and I came home to see I was banned. I wasnt able to access anything except the email saying this:
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
Account Name: ***********
This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this
account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft
economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended
exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of
the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative
endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.
As a result, this account will no longer be able to access any aspect of World
of Warcraft. This action has been taken in accordance with the Terms of Use
(http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html) and our game policies
(http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p). According to the World
of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all players agree when installing World of
Warcraft, Section 3, Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] states that you
may not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the
“essence” of World of Warcraft.
Thank you for your time and understanding of our position in this matter.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.
Regards,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.WorldOfWarcraft.com
Greetings Phil!
I am a big fan of world of warcraft but recently i have had that same problem. i was busy at school for about three weeks and working hard for the finals, knowing i would have no time on the game WoW. once christmas break hits i check my email hoping to reply to friends and family but i also see two emails from blizzard.
one of them said that my account had been suspendid due to “3rd party investigation: account sharing.” and that was a week before school let out, i checked the second email and it said that i continued to share my account and they closed it! i of all people do not give out my account name or password so i am thinking someone hacked onto my account and played for me, with the possible intent to ban me from WoW which they have succeeded.
I am sorry to say this blizzard but you need to do something about this, being gone at school, working hard and coming home to find a closed account is pretty stupid, if anyone agrees with me and Phil please post your comments!
-Silenced
-##RETIRED##
It sure seems there’s been a lot of this sort of thing going around; I can understand WoW wanting to eliminate account abuse, but if they’re getting a lot of false positives, they are hopefully looking into that.
For myself, I’ve had no time to play anymore, so I haven’t even bothered to try to reopen my account. ;-) For the foreseeable future, I’ll just leave it closed.
I just had a similar thing happne to me. I started playing just over a week ago. Two days later, I got the famous email (shown above). I was just learning how to play. I wrote in and they quickly wrote back apologizing and re-opening the account. I thought that all was good until I got the same email less than 24 hours later banning the account a second time. I have now been 5 days without a response. Amazing.
youll probably find that if you werent on it, someone may have hacked it and they broke the rules, either that or your lying, gl hf.
W.O.W is an evil and addicting game. It consumes you like alcohol or drugs can. People lose loved ones to this stupid game. You should thank them for banning your accounts!!!!
Well… thanks for the support. ;-)
Yeah, personally I just found I didn’t have time for the game, so chances are that I will not renew my account.
At the same time, while it is possible that my account was compromised while I wasn’t using it, my inclination is still that whatever method Blizzard is using to detect abuse/exploitation is turning up false positives. For me it’s a moot point — if someone were really wanting to continue playing it could become annoying.
Same deal here. I canceled my account right before the 1.10 patch and recently tried to reinstate it, getting the dreaded letter. I had 2 60s on that account, along with lower toons, and probably about 1000 hours /played between them all. I’ve been emailing them relentlessly for some sort of information.
Like others have said, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.
I also have been caught up in this “witch hunt” of theirs. These horror stories keep growing and growing. Now i could care less if i get this account back or not but the fact that blizzard is pulling in 14 billion dollars a year from customers I think we should be treated with a little more priority then the automated “apologetic” nonsense. With a little help from a family lawyer we have found out what they are ding is “exploitive and illegal” so i suggest if you have any interest in striking back at ” Big Brother” you make a petition and start a class-action suit against them. It may not matter much to you whether or not you get your account back as well as it doesn’t matter much to me either, but this game does matter to some customers and this will only continue to be a growing problem for many. These posts are very helpful to people that have had this problem fall into their hands as well. But many people buy this game without the knowing of what they may be facing after investing much time and money into it, and Blizzard will censor anything that hurts their case in their own forums so please help get the word out about this unethical company
Since I’m not currently playing, a law suit is not something I have any interest in, personally. Even if I were playing, Blizzard responded that they would reopen my account immediately if I wanted, so I don’t think I’d have grounds for a suit to begin with.
Just between us, given the breadth, depth, and general legal vagueness of the average EULA, I doubt that charge against Blizzard would make it through court; I have a feeling they are within their rights to close accounts if they believe they are compromised — even if their belief turns out to be erroneous. Good luck with that, though. :-)
I have received this email also… but i was currently playing and i have a level 59 almost 60. They sent me this and i sent a reply to them stating it must be a mistake… so all im doing now is waiting for them to send a response…………
@Nick: now that would stink. Hope you hear from them soon… good luck.
Seems like a lot of people have received the same email.
I had not be able to log on for a few days due a busy schedule last week, then this weekend when I got a chance I try to login only to find I’ve been permanently banned. No idea what I could have done (No, I haven’t bought gold/shared my account), and the vague email they send out doesn’t help either.
The only possible reasons for this would be,
1. my account was hacked. (I can’t verify this, being that I can no longer log into the game)
2. Different IP’s maybe? I switched my internet provider from Timewarner to Verizon FIOS last week.
Either way, it’s pretty ridiculous. I sent them a response asking for clarification and reinstatement and I have not heard back from them yet.
Honestly though, I can’t see how I can continue supporting a company that can ban you at any moment and not offer a clear reason as to why. How do you dispute an email like the one below? “I don’t know what you say I did or intended to do, but whatever it is, I didn’t do it.” yeah right.
(Oh and the account should have been in good standing, no actions have ever been taken against it. So I really don’t know where they get the reoccurring trends line from)
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
Account Name:
This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.
….
Lastly, according to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all players agree when installing World of Warcraft, Section 5. [Rules of Conduct], Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] states that you may not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the “essence” of World of Warcraft. This entails access to another World of Warcraft account, including, but not limited to, the deletion of items/characters and redistribution of in-game currency or possessions.
Hello,
I got the same Email last night and I have not played in over a month
I received the same email. How do you fix this if you did nothing wrong. Has anyone here had any success in getting reinstated?
Thanks,
It’s absolutely crazy guys. You hear a lot of people say that they share accounts or open other peoples accounts on other peoples computers if each person trusts each other to do it .. I’d just about say that 50% of the guild has done it at least once before .. but I haven’t done it once and now I am hit with this bs.
One trend I see is that all these complaints are recent, maybe escalated since burning crusade was released. I’d be almost certain that your accounts were not hacked into. Blizzard have just turned into an out of control hurricane and are ripping up all the bad accounts and taking a lot of innocents like us with them.
If the mass of mistakes are this high, expect to get your accounts back as soon as they fix this problem. No company that makes as much money as they do wants to be exposed for this big of an omni blunder.
I’d agree w/Andy — I expect those who are still playing will be able to have their accounts reinstated without much trouble.
For my part, Blizzard was quite prompt and sent me the information to re-open my account right away after I questioned them; but since I wasn’t playing anymore by that time, I didn’t ever bother to do that. Hopefully everyone who is wanting to get back into the game doesn’t have any trouble. :)
I have been bent over by Blizzard twice this month. I work retail and we just had our yearly inventory check. I was away from the game for almost a full week due to the hours being put in at work. I come back to an account closure for “Exploitation of the Economy!” I read my e-mail, call up customer support, e-mail the admins to dispute this action. I was granted my account back, but every last bit of gold was gone, banks were empty and a few characters had been sharded. I try to petition GM’s for help, but they say they can’t do anything because my account was being investigated at the moment. OK no problem, i’ll keep trying.
8 days after getting my account back…I get banned again! This time for “account Sharing!” After they gave me a new pasword the first time, i had to write it down to remember it. No one knew it, no one has ever known my passwords. I have 3 lvl 61 characters and I’m ready to say “F Blizzard!” I’m tired of this crap coming from them. I have already filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau for their actions. I’ve disputed this again and hope to see an outcome soon. If this isn’t resolved, I’m just going to go play something else. Blizzard has become a horrid customer service company. They just don’t give a damn for anyone anymore. I just hope to see Karma come back around and kick Blizzard in the face.
That sounds pretty bad — if they keep that sort of thing up it’s sure to hurt them, so hopefully they’ll fix it. Hopefully?
Same thing happend to me. I had worked very hard to get my character up to 48, I had a baby and stopped playing for a couple months. During this time they said I had an illegal 3rd party software and closed my account.
I have sent them many emails, they always send back generic emails, and wont call me. I was using no 3rd party software, let alone illegal software. I’m very upset that I lost 100’s of hours on this game but even more upset they wont even tell me which 3rd party software I’m accused of having while not playing. I am willing to sign any petitions, and willing to pitch in on a lawer with anyone whos interested. This has to stop!
Yeah… this thread is a BIT old but heh.
warhammeronline.com go there… late this year a BETTER game comes out
Sick of WoW..
world of grindcraft imo.
Choices @ 70:
Grind Rep for heroic instances
Grind money for your far distant dreams of flying mounts ( just buy that shit XD )
Grind arena points
Grind honor points
Grind world pvp BG tokens
Grind mats for craft-a-thons
Grind suck-up-points to get into groups
Grind money for your respec mistakes WOOOOOT
Good to see I’m not alone.
My 8 year old saved up his allowance for months to get the Collectors edition expansion ($70) pack after I bought him a copy of WOW. Three days of playing and with the highest character a lvl 4 and account gets closed:
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
Account Name:
This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative
endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.
Unbelievable. My boy devestated. They’ve sent one generic, seemingly automated email after my numerous emails. They say “Greetings,
Thank you for contacting us regarding this account issue. After a review of the account in question, we regret to inform you that we have come to the same conclusion as was previously reached. Unfortunately as a result, the account will no longer be accessible in any way and will not be reopened under any circumstances. Please note that these actions are taken to maintain integrity within the World of Warcraft, and are not taken lightly.”
Something needs to be done.
and another one goes down.
I logged in this morning to see my lvl 58 char with all gold gone and most items sold. I contacted a GM about this issue and he asked me 3 questions-
Have you given your account password to anyone: no
Do you have any 3rd party Mods installed: no
Have you bought any gold or any services from any website:no
Apparently I was hit with a keylogger the night before and found a BD trojan that slipped by my firewall.
GM wrote me a letter stating he was sending info over to account services and 2-3 hours later this is the reply I received.
As it states below it says my account was connected with other violator accounts which is impossible because my account would have been shut down before I contacted a ingame GM.
If you find your items missing or gold your best bet is to just run a virus scan, and change your password do not contact anyone from blizzard because they will term your account even if you haven’t done anything wrong.
They say even the web links on their forum can be potential hazards which I have clicked on throughout the forums, I guess thats why they post the disclaimer before your directed their.
I did enjoy playing the game ,but if they are just going to ban accounts like this..just not worth it.
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
Account Name: ******
This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account.
Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the
World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which
have been closed for intended exploitation. While we try to be as lenient
as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation
investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative endeavors on your account
have ultimately resulted in account closure.
The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of
Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. Please review
the World of Warcraft Terms of Use at
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html which state that
your Password is to be kept confidential at all times and you are solely
responsible for the security of your Password. You may not disclose
your Password to anyone, or allow your Password to be used by anyone
other than yourself and/or your one (1) minor child. You are responsible
for maintaining the confidentiality of your Password, and you will be
responsible for all uses of your Password, whether or not authorized by
you. Also, note that the security of the Account is your
responsibility. Furthermore, Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize the transfer
of Accounts, and any unauthorized transfer of the World of Warcraft
software (as set forth on the worldofwarcraft.com website) will result in
the permanent deletion of the Account attached to that software. As
such, this World of Warcraft account has now been closed by the Account
Administration staff based on review of the above account infraction
incurred. This action has been taken in accordance with the Terms of Use
(http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html) and our game
policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p). The
recurring subscription on the account has been disabled to prevent further
charges.
Lastly, according to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all
players agree when installing World of Warcraft, Section 5. [Rules of
Conduct], Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] states that you may
not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the
“essence” of World of Warcraft. This entails access to another World of
Warcraft account, including, but not limited to, the deletion of
items/characters and redistribution of in-game currency or possessions. The
bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe
environment for all players. Game Play] states that you may not do anything
that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the “essence” of
World of Warcraft.
Thank you for your time and understanding of our position in this
matter. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you
may have.
Regards,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.WorldOfWarcraft.com
This happened to me recently, i was playing around 2am saturday running RFD(razorfen downs, dungeon), and i started lagging, and got disconnected, went back in said ‘hmm must just be my internet connection’ i find i cant log back in. I tried to log in the wow site and i couldnt my secret word wasnt working.. so i called up my cousin asked him to log in and check if any of my characters were online.. he explained my tooons kept switching back and forth.. I asked him to open a ticket and report it. They just couldnt catch the keylogger? i reported it when it was happening! The GMs just kept saying for me to do this and that to retrieve temp password, so i did it.. I logged back in and all my gold, bank everything was stripped, my toons were practically nude… I open a ticket and report what happened( i got hacked this and that).. 3hours later i get the famous email saying my account has been closed something to do with exploiting the economy. Thats all, that was their investigation.. Im still writing to them to explain wtf is happening, no response yet :(
My 10 year old son, a level 66, was playing Friday afternoon Feb. 23rd until around 6PM. The next morning he wakes up & attemps to log in and it won’t accept his user name or password. He tries to retrieve his password, just in case, but he it doesn’t access. My other son checks the guild roster and it says he was on at midnight…all of his characters accessed, even the one he doesn’t use as often.
We sent in an email to technical support and within several hours we get the identical message that many of the posters above have recieved. “This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation.” blah, blah blah.
We did a keylogger scan and sure enough, we found something peculiar with a _wow extension.
I sent a reply to the original account closure notice & am hoping someone can reinstate my son’s account.
Thanks for posting these messages so we know we are not alone.
yep same problem here. I finally get some time to level my char, i got like 2 weeks holidays. So i dedicated the first week to no wow, and the second week to getting lv 70. I managed 70 by the weekend, did a little PvP an instance or 2 and started some rep grinding. I started work again today, longest day ever… i come home wanting to play some games and relax and i get the exploitation of wow economy message.
Have sent them an email requesting something be done and a possibly explanation of what they think i was doing wrong. Hopefully i can get my account back, will be very anoyed if i cannot. I just hope they dont send another standardized message. I will be calling them tomorrow if thats all i recieve, or no response.. and i wont be in a very good mood if that has to happen.
Best of luck in your call.
After not hearing back from email yet, we called Customer Service today and after 37 minutes on hold, they told us they couldn’t handle the issue on their end. They said you must reply to the original message & wait it out. I have a feeling we will be waiting for quite awhile.
Of course, with a very cheery voice, the Customer Service Rep thanked me and my son for our patience. Hummph……….
well this just gets better. Im in Australia, so calling them is obviousley quite hard as i have to do it quite early in the morning. Ok so i manage to do some time zone conversions and manage to call them 2 hours before they should be closed and it dials, and it does the connected sound like it does when it gives the “we arent open blah blah” message but it just hangs up on you. Looks like ill have to wait for the email reply/try again tomorrow.
They really arent making it easy to contact them..
I dont see why its such a problem for them, and why they cant just fix it while your on the phone. All they need to do is find an accounts administrator and tell them to press the little button that changes the account status. Theres probably a bit more to it than that, but i cant seriousley see how it could take more than 5-10 mins to sort out.
Another 1 bites the dust….
I didnt log on for a week and a half.Then BAM!! a level 70 and 2 60s down the drain.
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
Account Name: ********
This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this
account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft
economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended
exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of
the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative
endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.
The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft
by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment.
Lastly, according to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all players
agree when installing World of Warcraft, Section 5. [Rules of Conduct],
Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] states that you may not do anything
that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the “essence” of World of
Warcraft. This entails access to another World of Warcraft account, including,
but not limited to, the deletion of items/characters and redistribution of
in-game currency or possessions. The bottom line is that we want World of
Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players. Game Play] states
that you may not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to
the “essence” of World of Warcraft.
Thank you for your time and understanding of our position in this matter.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.
Regards,
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.WorldOfWarcraft.com
The only way is to contact wowaccountadmin via email.
I did contact a in-game GM after my character was stripped of gold and sell-able items.
They auto perm ban you if someone else has accessed your account besides you.
The ban process is getting out of control with them ,but players are so addicted they are just buying both games again and starting new accounts, blizzard is making a fortune on this.
Blizzard’s “virtual in game material” is worth monetary value in the real world which doesn’t make it a game anymore it makes it a living and breathing substance for others to exploit.
They really need to activate a new security procedure so there can be no profiting from supposed “in game material”
They are going to be in trouble when “Ages of Conan” comes out in october unlesss they step it up
but will ages of conan be using the same sort of simple graphics ( pixilated ) that wow uses because many people would not be able to even play thegame if they put decent rendered graphics with such a large space, or there would be allot of loading screens.
And that is one thing wow offers that not many other games do, the ability to not need a top end machine to get a decent frame rate.
Called them this morning, got the you need to contact the acount admins by email and they will explain/investigate further. I asked for how long it would take and basically i was told to give them as much time as possible. Well thats great… so even if they give my account back ill probably loose 2 weeks worth of paid game time. I can see this being a long and painful process.
If i dont get my account back i dont see myself rushing out to get another copy of BC so i can play again. I just dont have the time anymore to get another character to 70.
Oh and to the person complaining about the lack of progression past 70, theres plenty enough through your gear and they cant make you get as high level as you want because there is a PvP function in the game and it would be compltely unfair to let people get like lv 1000 because there would be a neverending problem with getting owned by people much higher level than you.
I saw some video on the Ages of Conan, it’d graphics are outstanding, 3 times better than WoW. They don’t have kiddie cartoon looking characters either.. detail is pretty good on them. Most people are getting sick of how toonish WOW is and personally I can’t stand the little gnomes and these characters that are just ridiculuos looking. I do give it to them they have made a pretty well put together game and it is addicting like most MMOs, but if they keep up the “ban now” get back to you in 5-7 days instead of increasing security measures on the login in pages they are subject to lose half of their base players who are actually honest and haven’t tried to exploit the game. I am meesing around on a trial account at the time being ,but if they say you’re banned for good..I will not feed their pockets and repurchase these games I will wait for AOC to come out.
If they were really concerned about security and not extra profits they wouldn’t allow the dishonest players to create a seperate account to play on. They would ban their actual names and addresses from the server. More harm than good will come from these bannings if they don’t reinstate and taker a closer look a counter measures against hackers because this isn’t working.
My account got perma banned on feb 9th for the economy exploit reason.
still after afew dispute emails during the first week or two and filing a complaint with the BBB I have yet to get my account back.
I am among the innocent and have been playing since launch. I can only hope that Ill get my account back.
If anyone finds a better way to handle this or a way to get our accounts reinstated. Please post your story. I have nothing else to try here and still havent gotton a response from BBB. Which was filed two weeks ago.
AGAIN the same thing
***Notice of Account Closure***
Hello,
Account Name: ********
This was after having the account hijacked and everything sold.
Blizzards customer service definitely leave a lot to be desired.
Not only are they letting these people harvest innocent peoples accounts, (YES! they must be letting it happen for surely their logs and records would show them the responsible parties), BUT they are punishing their customers for having their account hijacked by canceling the victims account.
ALL in ALL i am Very disappointed in Blizzards so called SERVICE!
As Jerzi says
They are going to be in trouble when “Ages of Conan” comes out in october unlesss they step it up
I FOR ONE WILL NOT BE PURCHASING ANOTHER BLIZZARD PRODUCT AT THIS STAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Update on my son’s experience……
I sent another email to Blizzard restating what happened to my son. By the next afternoon his account was reinstated. They gave him a new password. When he was able to access his characters they were all naked & most of his stuff was sold. He has an email into a GM to try to get some of it back, but we’re still waiting on that one.
The email address that Jerzi gave, wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com was the one we used & saw the problem taken care of.
So the story ends up fine for us.
Good luck to the rest of you.
~Tina
well from all the stuff i read i got 2 of my account banned i give one account to my cousin cause other 2 week i got my BC collecors edition so i give the non BC CE to my cousin since he want to play too and i don’t know what happen but the non CE account got close i got the email i sent them an email saying i give the account to my cousin and then like 3 days later my CE account get close this is just BS
here is something i read from the blizzard site you may find this funny
Blizzard’s Absolute Right to Suspend, Terminate and/or Delete the Account.
BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE THE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME WITH ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE
I recieved this today and came to this blog.
Report this information to the bb.
http://philcrissman.com/2006/09/25/blizzard-closes-my-unused-world-of-warcraft-account-for-unclear-reasons/
Same situation here; my son and I share the account and apparently the password was compromised while using the account at a friends house and as a result got the crazy email from charging blizzard mad adms.
My child is very affected by it since most of the toons were his and he lost all; it is terrible what they do; so far no positive reaction from blizzard. I found the account retrieval instructions though at this site http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/other/Account-Retrieval-Notary-MOP-CDKEY.pdf
and will be completing it and sending it to blizzard if they don’t resolve the problem I will go to the Internet Fraud Comission and BBB and post a website about this outrageous injustice. I am not going to give up easilly; good luck to all.
Same thing just happened to me. Was away from the game for 3-4weeks during which time my prepaid card time ran out and the credit card I had ont he account was expired. So I log on last Thursday and update my credit card.
I logged on Friday and Saturday to play with a new UI and my keybindings.
I then get the dreaded email at 2Am Sun morning. My account has been closed due to exploiting or some such.
I have been hanging out watching the Cust Service forums for WoW and it sure seems that a lot of people are getting caught by this. I have to believe they tried to automate catching exploiters and their algorithm didn’t work as expected. I can’t think of any other reason why so many are being swept up in this.
It is now 4 days since the closure and I have not gotten a response to my emails yet.
I have not played this game for a very long time (>year) & they have banned my account.(”for abuse of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for activities in violation of the Terms of Use”
They have also banned my credit card “from being used in any form with Blizzard Entertainment”
I emailed them and a few days later they sent back that they had confirmed their findings. wtf???
Well, I have several other credit cards and I will make sure I NEVER purchase a product from this company ever again.
i just got this email as well, had a 64 warlock and have been playing on and off for nearly a year with thousands of hours on this toon…i am quite frankly surprised at blizzards reaction, and feel frustrated and disalusioned with their service…i was also a victim of internet hacking and as a result got my account banned…i will not be purchasing another copy of the game….this needs to stop
I havn’t had an active account in over a year and then all of the sudden today I get that same email saying I was exploiting the economy. WTF Blizzard the account hasn’t even been logged onto or payed for in over a year…
I just received this email also. I called Blizzard, and just as others have noted, they tell you to respond to the email with no promises of what may happen or when you will get a response. The Blizzard rep told me to check for viruses or key-loggers. I can do that, but I do not think these are on our computers. My wife has an account too, but she has not been banned, and sometimes, we swap computers. Also, a couple of friends have played at our house recently, and their accounts were not banned either. The only thing I can think of is that I have occasionally logged on at a gaming store near my house. I am checking with some other friends who also logged on at this store to see if they had any problems.
Anyway, it’s just the waiting game for me now, and I have no clue what will happen. Very sad :(
Account was hacked - Gm said “feel free to use our product while we investigate” … and now my account has been banned.
So far no luck. It’s been 3 days. :-(
By the way, I would appreciate if everyone keeps updating their situation whenever it changes. It appears a lot of us had our accounts hijacked and then banned. It would give some hope to us if you all shared your stories as they developed. Thank you.
Same problem here except I have an active WOW account I use daily and this hit me in the face. I had 2 70’s and 2 60 on multiple servers and have been playing the game solid for 3 years. I have done extensive research of WOW, spoken to several GM’s privately, worked with programmers, etc. over the years and have discovered a great deal about how the program and company operates. Blizzard runs an Orwellian (1984) gestapo style system of monitoring, data basing, and profiling that would make doublethink cheerleader Sean Hannity himself cringe. Not too much has been reported on the “Blizzard Warden” recently but I can confirm with all honesty and affirming my oath that the program has upgraded and has secretly gotten worse and worse. It has capability to scan emails, check open web browser locations and report back to headquarters on what it finds. They do claim that “no personal information” is mined, but this has been proven time and time again blatantly false, Blizzard circumvents users definition of “personal information” to not really be personal but “relative material” that falls within its realm of scrutiny. When scrutiny comes down upon blizzard itself from any notable source for privacy rights they always fall upon their infamous legal wiles and invariably (as of yet) escape the public humiliation they rightly deserve and which has been the downfall of other institutions employed in similuar shady operations. Allot of people are getting very wealthy from WOW and have a great desire to maintain that wealth at any cost, right or wrong as we have seen in this post. You personally mean nothing to WOW. You represent a drop of water in an ocean to them. True there are many programmers and people involved in Blizzard who are very creative, fun and innocent but where the buck meets the majority of the thugs at the top you and I and our issues are completely irrelevant.
i’ve just been banned like the rest of you guys.
it seems like you all are very gracious about this. but i remember spending hundreds of dollars over the years, not only on the games themselves, but the blasted monthly bill.
where’s my refund?
Well I could start like the last 30 letters but what can you do……Yes the same has happened to me, same BS letter same rude Blizzard CS. All in all Blizzard is making a ton of money and doesn’t care what the hell you or I think. I believe that in the long run word of mouth will prevail and Blizzard will fall like Napster or FIX! their CS and security system….Hummmmmmmmmmm…..well see………….
It sounds like this thread could grow indefinitely, so I’m going to close comments — thanks to everyone who stopped to make a comment, and I hope everyone’s account issues are resolved asap. Have fun…