TJ has posted about a member of her guild who has recently been caught up in a mass ban of people using Glider,  a botting program that automates game play in ways it’s not supposed be automated.  In a mass ban of 56,000 players, inevitibly there will be a number of users who are wrongly caught up and TJ’s guildmate, Lamaa, is one of these.  The problem is not that he was wrongly banned but how hard, if not impossible, it seems to communicate with anyone at Blizzard to rectify the situation.  To add insult to injury on the day that was Lamaa received the notice he was banned Blizzard renewed his 3 month subscription charge and have told him to it is non-refundable.  Blizzard maybe accusing Lamaa of cheating, however to my mind Blizzard are stealing; there’s no other word for it.  In his position my first call would be to my credit card company to have them issue a charge-back against Blizzard; after all, if he can’t log into his account, he can’t stop his subscription can he?

I think every genuine player will be glad that a lot of cheating players got banned.  I think most of us accept that amongst the many banned accounts that deserved their ban there will be a few that didn’t.  The issue is how Blizzard then deals with that.  Part of the problem seems to be the fact that these bans, when they happen, involve such a large number of accounts.  Let’s say that Blizzard get it right 99% of the time.  On the face of it that seems pretty good however when you ban 56,000 accounts at a time that means that 560 were wrongly banned.  How long is it going to take Blizzard to process all those investigations and reinstate those accounts.  Factor in that, of the thousands of people who were rightly banned, a fair proprotion will also be crying foul that is one big Customer Services bottleneck!

There are also those who will argue that is acceptable for a few innocents to lose their accounts if it means being able to ban thousands of cheating players.  This is all fine and dandy if you’re not one of those innocent players.  I have been playing WoW for 3 years.  I have made many friends and along the way I have levelled up 4 characters to 70 plus assorted alts that I dip into now and again.  Not only have I paid a lot of money to Blizzard over the years to do that but I have invested a lot of time and energy in it as well.  If what has happened to Lamaa happened to me, I would be absolutely gutted.  I have always felt that collateral damage is not acceptable, mainly because I am not prepared to be collateral damage.  To me, such a concept is dehumanising.

Blizzard need to remember that their Warcraft players are people not an “account” or a credit card number.  They need to start treating their customers with respect, something that often seems to be lacking.  Lamaa, I really hope that you get your accoutn reinstated soon.  In the meantime contact your credit card company.

Posted by Hulan on 22nd May, 2008