Is this really bannable??

[Hennelorix]

I got a very interesting opinion why someone like me was banned. Blizzard might have used any automate check for 11 boosters running TW dungeons. One of them was Blood Furnace, which i was running in usual tbc mode with my high level character. As blizzard decided that 11 booster xpoff bug is a bad thing they might have created algorith to check the speed of finishing dungeon because 11 levels clear them very fast. I also was clearing fast because my lock had 228% movement speed and i spent like 1:20 min total running from the start of dungeon to the bosskill moment (after clearing it with my 70 character for like 2 min). This might have lead to the situation where due to speed of the clear i was triggered by their system as 11 xpoff booster.

 

[SPQR]

Had false week ban on license with level 10 monk when tw first cameout and it was auto unban with apology after 3 hrs.
if yall getting your entire bned accounts nuked then it has to be your actions or system background process that triggered it.

Learn and adapt.

• Put your valuable items&gold in guild banks that your other bnet accs got access to in order to mitigate potential damage.
• In general never run multiple things when u run wow. keep amount of processes in background to minimum whenever possible.
• Have low effort bnet account set up if u wish to do the boosting.
• Stay far away from lfd whenever possible.
• Don't do stupid things unless you ready to win stupid prizes.

As stated before we all living on the edge and a miracle most here still not deleted out of existence yet.

Wonder if there are people who never in their life used xp debuff script that got banned. (yall just gonna lie about it here anyway)
If yall did even once then you flagged. No matter how long ago it was. Server records any action and all they have to do is filter out script.
Since this is something that rely on server delay and close to impossible for blizzard to fix they will send a message and there you go.

Honestly yall dungen xpoff debuff clowns not better than those who use same methods to get in to leveling battlegrounds.
Perma ban is too kind for yall. You all should get hardware id ban.

Just play level 20 and eat the 30% dmg nerf. Problem solved.

 

[Hennelorix]

Had false week ban on license with level 10 monk when tw first cameout and it was auto unban with apology after 3 hrs.
if yall getting your entire bned accounts nuked then it has to be your actions or system background process that triggered it.

Learn and adapt.

• Put your valuable items&gold in guild banks that your other bnet accs got access to in order to mitigate potential damage.
• In general never run multiple things when u run wow. keep amount of processes in background to minimum whenever possible.
• Have low effort bnet account set up if u wish to do the boosting.
• Stay far away from lfd whenever possible.
• Don't do stupid things unless you ready to win stupid prizes.

As stated before we all living on the edge and a miracle most here still not deleted out of existence yet.

Wonder if there are people who never in their life used xp debuff script that got banned. (yall just gonna lie about it here anyway)
If yall did even once then you flagged. No matter how long ago it was. Server records any action and all they have to do is filter out script.
Since this is something that rely on server delay and close to impossible for blizzard to fix they will send a message and there you go.

Honestly yall dungen xpoff debuff clowns not better than those who use same methods to get in to leveling battlegrounds.
Perma ban is too kind for yall. You all should get hardware id ban.

Just play level 20 and eat the 30% dmg nerf. Problem solved.

So what about me who never used xp debuff script for all 15 years of twinking and was using legacy loot with logout for gearing my old 20 toon? It is so fun that you make your opinion against everyone who got banned objective and not subjective. Btw the only things i have running in background on my PC whenever i play any game is discord and nvidia app. Sooooo...

 

[orcgazmatron]

I got a very interesting opinion why someone like me was banned. Blizzard might have used any automate check for 11 boosters running TW dungeons. One of them was Blood Furnace, which i was running in usual tbc mode with my high level character. As blizzard decided that 11 booster xpoff bug is a bad thing they might have created algorith to check the speed of finishing dungeon because 11 levels clear them very fast. I also was clearing fast because my lock had 228% movement speed and i spent like 1:20 min total running from the start of dungeon to the bosskill moment (after clearing it with my 70 character for like 2 min). This might have lead to the situation where due to speed of the clear i was triggered by their system as 11 xpoff booster.

It cannot be the speed. Max level dungeon farmers go even faster than that with Druid speed-sets.

My thinking is: other than the repeatedly mentioned TW ques with random levelers,
My guess is that anyone who was boosting in any way is getting the atomic ban elbow off the top rope.
Considering that the whole point of TW"s was to expedite leveling in a fun way for retail enjoyers,
anyone circumventing that with boost toons has now paid the ultimate price. It may not have even been the scripts after all.

Hopefully, these 'perma' bans will be revoked after a few days.

 

[Hennelorix]

It cannot be the speed. Max level dungeon farmers go even faster than that with Druid speed-sets.

My thinking is: other than the repeatedly mentioned TW ques with random levelers,
My guess is that anyone who was boosting in any way is getting the atomic ban elbow off the top rope.
Considering that the whole point of TW"s was to expedite leveling in a fun way for retail enjoyers,
anyone circumventing that with boost toons has now paid the ultimate price. It may not have even been the scripts after all.

Hopefully, these 'perma' bans will be revoked after a few days.

Ok, then the speed of clearing Blood Furnace isnt the case, but the fact that i was constantly clearing it with my high level and low level while it is in TW rotation. Still very unlucky for me to get caught by banhammer for no real reason.

 

[Hennelorix]

I just got this after making 2 ticket. Let's see what they will decide to do.

 

[Zishy]

so heres my story. came back yesterday from work, saw account was banned. heres a list of things i did and things i can exclude doing

1) i boosted timewalking for guildies but never used any macro or script to get into the same dungeon as they
2) i boosted guildies 80s through quick timewalking dungeons
3) i was gearing up my old mage with TW items
4) i was gearing up my fury warrior with TW items

no usage of macros, no usage of any scripts, no usage of any weak auras or follower macros or anything. currently waiting on my ticket to get a non bot reply

 

[Spazzrella]

so heres my story. came back yesterday from work, saw account was banned. heres a list of things i did and things i can exclude doing

1) i boosted timewalking for guildies but never used any macro or script to get into the same dungeon as they
2) i boosted guildies 80s through quick timewalking dungeons
3) i was gearing up my old mage with TW items
4) i was gearing up my fury warrior with TW items

no usage of macros, no usage of any scripts, no usage of any weak auras or follower macros or anything. currently waiting on my ticket to get a non bot reply

Genuinely curious. How did you do #1 (I'm assuming below 80 since you specifically called out 80s in #2)? As there is no way for you to get into a group with them, without doing some kind of "sorcery."

Now I don't think that the whole "XP disabled causes the entire party to have their XP disabled" makes any sense in the first place, as it only penalizes the group if you group up with them before you queue. You can queue with random people and they get the same benefit, but how dare you queue with friends. And to add to it, based on what I've seen in other posts, you can do the same thing using a level 20 or level 70 and not have to do anything funky at all, as they're at MAX level according to the game, and thus no need to disable XP gains.

But here we are. I personally have not been banned (though I've stopped for now, and the last time I did it was Monday), and I was using the macro to drop group / press enter dungeon on queue pop. But I was doing this with 5 of my own accounts (all on a single BNET account, my twinks weren't on another bnet account). I had two level 11 twinks (one horde, one alliance) and would group up with 4 of my characters. I've used it to level 80+ toons from 70-80 in the past few weeks. I never grouped with anyone other than myself, so I would have never been reported. This is what makes me think there was more to this process than just pressing the macro. I did gear my twinks up, but it was always solo, no high levels for the guaranteed loot trick, or anything like that.

I did run a few dungeons last night with a level 70 instead (I had an account with a level 70 Blood DK at 519 ilvl). I did nothing special to it yet (enchants, gems, etc.) just played it as I did in S4 of DF, and was able to run my own toons through several TW dungeons. It's not as fast as the 11 twink, but it's completely doable (what would take 5 minutes took closer to 10). And since it's level 70 without TWW, there was nothing funky required to get into the group together (and it was also nice to have instance queues vs the random time frames the groups with a XP disabled character take (instant to 5 minutes))).

So at this point, I'm still not sure we have actually figured out what Blizzard triggered this ban wave off of.

 

[cletus]

Been using the xp debuff macro a while now, let’s hope for the best, using a alt acc to boost my mains alts, gonna keep continue using it too

Best of luck to those out there and RIP to those who got banned

So here's an alternative if you're concerned about the XP debuff macro.

Queue up separately if you can for an SL dungeon. SL is so dead you'll probably end up in the same group, particularly if you all choose the same pointless dungeon. Now this is an issue if you're 70+ so don't have easy access to Chromie Time. There may be workarounds for that such as queueing with a sub-70? I honestly don't know if this works or not.

But the point is that once you end up in the same group this way, you can just queue freely for TW without the no-XP debuff.

I presume they either fucked up and never wanted this to be ran through addons or as the description says they made the change because of boosters.

It was a change because of boosters. It was popular in SM boosting because the booster would go between two instances to extend the instance reset limit (which works or worked differently in Classic than to Retail), like doing Cath/Atm or GY/Lib. ZG boosting required logging out so didn't apply. People may have done it in Stockades but I never did that. And for some reason it never came up in Maraudon boosting.

But yes this was a change because of boosting.

 

[Spazzrella]

So here's an alternative if you're concerned about the XP debuff macro.

Queue up separately if you can for an SL dungeon. SL is so dead you'll probably end up in the same group, particularly if you all choose the same pointless dungeon. Now this is an issue if you're 70+ so don't have easy access to Chromie Time. There may be workarounds for that such as queueing with a sub-70? I honestly don't know if this works or not.

But the point is that once you end up in the same group this way, you can just queue freely for TW without the no-XP debuff.

Yeah, as you said, this doesn't work for toons 70+, and I have no toons below 70. I level my entire army of toons to max level every expansion. And I'm not sure that doing it with party sync will work either. This feels more risky than using the macro to be honest.

 

[toskosa]

Heh never boosed myself and I am not banned, boosting others goes against twink ethos of helping ppl instead of yourself.

 

[glibay]

So here's an alternative if you're concerned about the XP debuff macro.

Queue up separately if you can for an SL dungeon. SL is so dead you'll probably end up in the same group, particularly if you all choose the same pointless dungeon. Now this is an issue if you're 70+ so don't have easy access to Chromie Time. There may be workarounds for that such as queueing with a sub-70? I honestly don't know if this works or not.

But the point is that once you end up in the same group this way, you can just queue freely for TW without the no-XP debuff.

It was a change because of boosters. It was popular in SM boosting because the booster would go between two instances to extend the instance reset limit (which works or worked differently in Classic than to Retail), like doing Cath/Atm or GY/Lib. ZG boosting required logging out so didn't apply. People may have done it in Stockades but I never did that. And for some reason it never came up in Maraudon boosting.

But yes this was a change because of boosting.

Like @Chops said before (i think it was chops in this thread, my bad chops if it wasn’t you) you are still “exploiting” the LFD system to intentionally remove the xp debuff in a way which Blizzard never intended. Which is also more than likely bannable, especially if blizzard wanted to be dicks about it. Not once, that i’ve seen, has blizzard said that method is ok or any other method to get around the xp debuff.

I’ll continue using the macro, as i really don’t give a shit lol. If my main gets banned, who cares, it’s just pixels. I’d honestly just restart.

 

[cletus]

Genuinely curious. How did you do #1 (I'm assuming below 80 since you specifically called out 80s in #2)? As there is no way for you to get into a group with them, without doing some kind of "sorcery."

If the boostees are under level 70 it's relatively easy: you just all separately queue for a specific SL dungeon because the SL dungeon is so dead you'll likely end up in the same group. At that point, you can clear it and then freely queue TW without penalty.

I'm not sure you can do this with 70-79s because they don't have access to Chromie Time or SL dungeon queues. There might be something else you can queue for. Not sure. I haven't thought about it too much.

But here we are. I personally have not been banned (though I've stopped for now, and the last time I did it was Monday), and I was using the macro to drop group / press enter dungeon on queue pop. But I was doing this with 5 of my own accounts (all on a single BNET account, my twinks weren't on another bnet account). I had two level 11 twinks (one horde, one alliance) and would group up with 4 of my characters. I've used it to level 80+ toons from 70-80 in the past few weeks. I never grouped with anyone other than myself, so I would have never been reported. This is what makes me think there was more to this process than just pressing the macro. I did gear my twinks up, but it was always solo, no high levels for the guaranteed loot trick, or anything like that.

I too am laying off any twinking to see how the dust settles on this.

To the rest of your point, this really doesn't feel like reporting players is the issue. All of this is happening at the same time, which is the exact MO for a Blizzard ban wave. They've created some automated system that now bans everyone for whatever infraction they've decided on. It's not even necessarily something you did in the last couple of days. Blizzard doesn't like to advertise what caused the ban because people will work around it (according to them). But of course this makes it difficult if not impossible for anyone to know what they did wrong.

I did run a few dungeons last night with a level 70 instead (I had an account with a level 70 Blood DK at 519 ilvl). I did nothing special to it yet (enchants, gems, etc.) just played it as I did in S4 of DF, and was able to run my own toons through several TW dungeons. It's not as fast as the 11 twink, but it's completely doable (what would take 5 minutes took closer to 10). And since it's level 70 without TWW, there was nothing funky required to get into the group together (and it was also nice to have instance queues vs the random time frames the groups with a XP disabled character take (instant to 5 minutes))).

So at this point, I'm still not sure we have actually figured out what Blizzard triggered this ban wave off of.

This is the frustrating part. And if you follow the logic, the results aren't great. We now have legitimate fear of a permanent ban to an account we've spent years on. Now if the ban is limited to the F2P/Vet account and not your bnet account then that's less bad but it's still bad.

So what do you do? You stop doing behavior that you think (but don't know) might be causing the bans? What if you think doing legacy content and twinking is the only fun part of the game? That's a reasonabl eposition because the Retail end-game is (IMHO) a dumpster fire, to the point where I'm not sure I'll buy any future expansion. If anything, I'll play up to TWW through Midnight until Midnight becomes included when the expansion after launches.

Remix was fun but part of what made it fun was playing 20 Priests and destroying dungeons. If you do this when the next Remix (many suspect Legion) comes out in the next year, are you now doing something that Blizzard considers bannable?

Remember, all of this is 100% Blizzard's fault. We're here because Blizzard decided to extend TW dungeons from level 30/35/40/45 down to 10. This destroyed a TW community and style of player for literally no reason but also created this power dynamic because suddenly level 10s could group wtih level 80s.

And with the content scaling working as badly as it does, that's a huge problem. 70-80 in TWW has felt the worst for me by far than any expansion since at least BFA. The scaling at 75-79 feels like playing MoP Remix at 60-70. In Remix you could skip over this with mailed XP tokens, something virtually everyone did. But the point is that content scaling is so bad it's creating these twinking problems. And that's entirely Blizzard's fault.

 

[cletus]

Like @Chops said before (i think it was chops in this thread, my bad chops if it wasn’t you) you are still “exploiting” the LFD system to intentionally remove the xp debuff in a way which Blizzard never intended. Which is also more than likely bannable, especially if blizzard wanted to be dicks about it. Not once, that i’ve seen, has blizzard said that method is ok or any other method to get around the xp debuff.

I’ll continue using the macro, as i really don’t give a shit lol. If my main gets banned, who cares, it’s just pixels. I’d honestly just restart.

We can't really see into the mind of Blizzard here so it's all speculation.

To me, the macro "feels" a little more "hacky" than SL queues being just a clever use of game mechanics. Just IMHO.

It's a bit like how you don't have any problems with slowed queues or an XP debuff if you simply group with an F2P/Vet 20. For example, I'm told running a dungeon with a 20 Prot Paladin isn't as good as an 11 Warrior but it's still pretty good.

Isn't that removing the debuff in a way Blizzard never intended as well?

 

[Spazzrella]

If the boostees are under level 70 it's relatively easy: you just all separately queue for a specific SL dungeon because the SL dungeon is so dead you'll likely end up in the same group. At that point, you can clear it and then freely queue TW without penalty.

I'm not sure you can do this with 70-79s because they don't have access to Chromie Time or SL dungeon queues. There might be something else you can queue for. Not sure. I haven't thought about it too much.

I too am laying off any twinking to see how the dust settles on this.

To the rest of your point, this really doesn't feel like reporting players is the issue. All of this is happening at the same time, which is the exact MO for a Blizzard ban wave. They've created some automated system that now bans everyone for whatever infraction they've decided on. It's not even necessarily something you did in the last couple of days. Blizzard doesn't like to advertise what caused the ban because people will work around it (according to them). But of course this makes it difficult if not impossible for anyone to know what they did wrong.

This is the frustrating part. And if you follow the logic, the results aren't great. We now have legitimate fear of a permanent ban to an account we've spent years on. Now if the ban is limited to the F2P/Vet account and not your bnet account then that's less bad but it's still bad.

So what do you do? You stop doing behavior that you think (but don't know) might be causing the bans? What if you think doing legacy content and twinking is the only fun part of the game? That's a reasonabl eposition because the Retail end-game is (IMHO) a dumpster fire, to the point where I'm not sure I'll buy any future expansion. If anything, I'll play up to TWW through Midnight until Midnight becomes included when the expansion after launches.

Remix was fun but part of what made it fun was playing 20 Priests and destroying dungeons. If you do this when the next Remix (many suspect Legion) comes out in the next year, are you now doing something that Blizzard considers bannable?

Remember, all of this is 100% Blizzard's fault. We're here because Blizzard decided to extend TW dungeons from level 30/35/40/45 down to 10. This destroyed a TW community and style of player for literally no reason but also created this power dynamic because suddenly level 10s could group wtih level 80s.

And with the content scaling working as badly as it does, that's a huge problem. 70-80 in TWW has felt the worst for me by far than any expansion since at least BFA. The scaling at 75-79 feels like playing MoP Remix at 60-70. In Remix you could skip over this with mailed XP tokens, something virtually everyone did. But the point is that content scaling is so bad it's creating these twinking problems. And that's entirely Blizzard's fault.

100% agree. I have the massive alt army I have today thanks to remix and my 2 level 20 priests (which you can do in retail as well, it's just not as powerful as a level 11) on an account with no subscription. And here we are with no idea what anyone did wrong, and Blizzard being completely silent on it. They have to clear the air, at least about what is allowed and what isn't. They don't have to say "we banned anyone who did X, Y, and Z" but they could at least give us some kind of clue (disable the ability to queue for dungeons if you have XP disabled (though 20s and 70s would still work for this), break the macro, etc.). It's the complete lack of any response that's frustrating to me.

 

[cletus]

100% agree. I have the massive alt army I have today thanks to remix and my 2 level 20 priests (which you can do in retail as well, it's just not as powerful as a level 11) on an account with no subscription. And here we are with no idea what anyone did wrong, and Blizzard being completely silent on it. They have to clear the air, at least about what is allowed and what isn't. They don't have to say "we banned anyone who did X, Y, and Z" but they could at least give us some kind of clue (disable the ability to queue for dungeons if you have XP disabled (though 20s and 70s would still work for this), break the macro, etc.). It's the complete lack of any response that's frustrating to me.

I lost exactly count but I think I leveled 40 70s in Remix and another 35 or so in the TWW prepatch event after Remix ended (many of whom were starting from 60 not 1 or 10, for the record).

I had been levelling a bunch of my 70s to 80 in the anniversary and Turbulent Timeways simply to farm Marks of Honor through Comp Stomp. I get like 500 every time just by doing the weekly once per toon. I used to farm TW badges the same way, doing one dungeon per toon for the 500 badge bonus (since nerfed to 200 for the 2nd and subsequent toon). But it's why I had 350+ TW badges.

Blizzard has, to my knowledge, said nothing about this. That means that internally they don't view this as a change of policy. They likely believe that whatever the offending behavior was, it's covered by the existing ToS.

They are wrong, from a communications standpoint. If you decide to enforce a policy you previously didn't, that's a change in policy that needs to be communicated prior to any enforcement. If you change the punishment, that's also a change in policy.

For me, they have to address 1) what's changed so people can avoid doing something that Blizzard previously gave tacit approval for through inaction and 2) why the punishment is so harsh. Like why a permaban and not a 3/7/14/30 day suspension? A permaban puts this on the level of actual hacking like wall hacking or using software to automatically run your character through content with zero human input.

An infraction so severe to warrant that kind of punishment needs communication.

 

[glibay]

We can't really see into the mind of Blizzard here so it's all speculation.

To me, the macro "feels" a little more "hacky" than SL queues being just a clever use of game mechanics. Just IMHO.

It's a bit like how you don't have any problems with slowed queues or an XP debuff if you simply group with an F2P/Vet 20. For example, I'm told running a dungeon with a 20 Prot Paladin isn't as good as an 11 Warrior but it's still pretty good.

Isn't that removing the debuff in a way Blizzard never intended as well?

I don’t have to see in the mind of blizzard to realize doing anything to remove the xp debuff is an “exploit.” If blizzard didn’t want us to have an xp debuff, the feature wouldn’t exist. And well, no matter what method you use, macro or not, you are intentionally removing this debuff to get XP on a character intended to not get XP.

The only speculation is if that’s the reason for the bans, but we won’t know until blizzard says something.

I don’t agree with the punishments, either, i think they are a bit harsh like you said, but it is what it is until we get some more info from blizzard, once they start human reviewing these tickets that have been escalated.

 

[Chops]

Whole lot of "I see people run red lights all the time and have never myself gotten a ticket for running red lights. Must mean running red lights is fine and accepted behavior" going on now

 

[Wowplayer]

I got banned (starter account with sub for twinks) and I can speak on what I think may have lead to my ban.

I was using 2 accounts (one high level) to use legacy loot in TBC dungeons to gear up and get BIS for my lvl 20 twinks. I did this a lot and almost exclusively in gearing up my twinks.

I used the Timewalking reset trick where you logout inside the dungeon and logon to fresh instance and inviting another toon to reset instance after clear. I did this many times the day before my ban.

I never used the XP debuff or any type of macro. Nor did I level any of my alts.

Also, I saw some mentions about speed triggering flags and bans. I had recently geared a lvl 20 resto shaman who was travelling at over 200% in ghost wolf form in dungeons.

I'm pretty certain it was one of these actions that triggered my ban. It was a starter account with a sub that I made 2 weeks ago.

My main account has not been affected. Not yet at least.

 

[cletus]

I got banned (starter account with sub for twinks) and I can speak on what I think may have lead to my ban.

Thanks for the report.

I was using 2 accounts (one high level) to use legacy loot in TBC dungeons to gear up and get BIS for my lvl 20 twinks. I did this a lot and almost exclusively in gearing up my twinks.

I used the Timewalking reset trick where you logout inside the dungeon and logon to fresh instance and inviting another toon to reset instance after clear. I did this many times the day before my ban.

I did this a ton to farm Legion trinkets and TW weapons like Baron Rivendare's sword. I'm glad I'm not doing it now.

Also, I saw some mentions about speed triggering flags and bans. I had recently geared a lvl 20 resto shaman who was travelling at over 200% in ghost wolf form in dungeons.

This is possible but Blizzrad should be aware of this issue. It's why they slow down queueing when XP is locked (in a completely unintuitive and undiscovered way, I might add).

I'm pretty certain it was one of these actions that triggered my ban. It was a starter account with a sub that I made 2 weeks ago.

Permaban?

My main account has not been affected. Not yet at least.

I have twinks on my main account but I've spent the last few months building up twinks on Vet accounts (I'd pay for a month to load up with gems and enchants and other stuff). I'm glad I did that. I certainly won't run any twinks on my main account AT ALL until we get some clarity here.

But I don't even feel safe about my Vet account twinks. I kinda wish I'd created them on a separate bnet account to further insulate myself from Blizzard's whims.