Blizzard have designated a number of US servers as “Oceanic” so that those of us down-under get to play at populated times.

Weekly/Fortnightly server maintenance for all US realms happens 5-11 am PDT, which means 10pm AEST (Aust eastern standard time). This isn’t TOO bad, get some wife-rep by logging off early; but when there’s extended maintenance 3-11am PDT = 8pm AEST… wife rep’s one thing, not being able to play at all for a whole night?!!!…. /DT’s

This has been the case since the year dot. “That other MMO” (AoC) gets released and magically Blizz start advertising Oceanic servers will have their maintenance schedule at 5-11 am AEST.

I am a practical man, somehow I just cannot believe 3 years of outcry was finally heard by Bli$$ard, the only thing that got their attention was “That other MMO” may steal some of their customers away. Perhaps this mass ban was designed to show they do care about the paying public; perhaps it’s just a political stunt that has backfired.

Personally, I would have cancelled and never purchased another product from them again. But I believe in reciprocity. If they want my money they need to earn it.

Blizzard has done this kind of thing before when they banned the accounts of a number of players who were using winex under linux to play. It took weeks if not months for Blizzard to admit wrong-doing and to work on rectifying the situation. That’s unacceptable in my opinion.

@Tekkub

Someone could as easily hack the Blizzard servers.”

The funny thing is that a few of the ‘Blue’ posters did get hacked in 2007. Someone got a hold of their accounts and started posting key loggers on the forums.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/06/12/keyloggers-2-blizzard-employees-0/

You think they’d be a little more understanding.

All the major addon sites validate files that are submitted to ensure they don’t contain viruses. As far as I know, none of the sites allow executable uploads anymore either, only zip/etc archives. So really the only thing to worry about there are vulnerabilities in your zip extractor.

However, addon updaters have became a major target. Incgamer’s updater got hijacked a number of times. Ace’s updater had a trojan in an embedded ad (not a keylogger, just a random trojan… the ads have since been disabled until the issue is resolved with the ad provider). As with the rest of the internet, you just need to be wary of any executable you download and the ads you are being served.

But because Blizzard is now offering cash prizes for online competitions it would seem reasonable that they need to make fairness a priority.

But here is some other math for you…..

If one person botting makes 10 people quit because they see the game as unfairly played. The “Hell yes” you axe the botters as efficiently as possible.

JMHO

To be clear, it’s not that they can’t make mistakes – it’s that this particular type of mistake doesn’t happen to a SINGLE individual. When Blizzard makes mistakes with this type of detection they are mistakes of great magnitude. In other words, it wouldn’t be just Lamaa but anyone in Lamaa’s situation.

My point with regards to customer service is simply the facts. If Blizzard banned Lamaa, they didn’t act unless they felt they had very compelling evidence. Lamaa has little to no chance of being able to provide any supporting evidence to the contrary. At the end of the day, a nice appeal process isn’t going to change the fact that Blizzard thinks a thing and Lamaa has no way to disprove it. This call to action to improve the appeal process can’t change that.

I 100% agree that it is grossly unfair to be hacked (which I have – my bank account too), but the situations are not even remotely comparable. In the “hacking” situation, Blizzard has done little to no investigation. Your situation really is unique and should be treated with care and consideration. You are a VICTIM who obeyed the rules. By contrast, a ban doesn’t take place until Blizzard has already done the investigation and found you guilty. So in the “hacking” case, we have no investigation and a victim. And in the “banning” case, we have strong evidence indicating that the person making the complain is guilty. The guy getting banned is asking for a second chance, while the hacked victim is just looking for his first chance.

@Ratshag
The credit card rumor is based on Blizzard making that request in the court case. I don’t believe the judge in the case has even ruled on that issue yet. And even if he finds in favor of Blizzard, history tells us that they wouldn’t use the information to ban accounts. They simply don’t account link in this manner. A player can get banned by Blizzard today and then turn around and create a new account with identical subscription information. The whole idea of “cross linking” accounts is mostly rumor. In the hundreds and hundreds of ban reports and speculation threads I have read have, there was never any solid evidence that linking accounts based on subscriber information alone. In the cases where it appears like some cross linking may have taken place, the accounts appeared to have been personally investigated by a GM who specializes in cheats and exploits. Even in those cases, the same network address (IP) is the most likely explanation for the cross-link because the reports never mention offline accounts that are getting banned.

In addition, Glider users who did not use Glider 1.6.0 between May 13th and May 20th did not get banned. The two major botting authors both came out and publically admitted they made mistakes and didn’t catch the new detection scheme. It wasn’t an update to Warden, but to the 2.4.2 client itself. The other major botting system based on ISX, also received bans and they didn’t share any credit card information at all.

And I also changed all of my online banking and email account passwords in-case they had gotten any of my account information off the servers.

Someone could as easily hack the Blizzard servers. Notice that Blizzard does not tell you how many unsuccessful attempts have been made to access your account. Or give any sort of stats on hacker activity on their servers.
Also who validates add-ons for malicious code? The first thing I did was delete all of my addons, do a virus and spyware sweep (Spybot search and destroy is awesome with McAfee Corporate edition) then I reloaded addons one day at a time. That way if I got hacked again I would be reasonably sure which addon was the culprit.