From In-Game Game Masters to Automated Bans:

Tomorrow marks the end of my 10-day ban in World of Warcraft, and today I want to reflect on something that's been bothering me for years. Everyone I know is talking about it in the same way. People feel like Blizzard support is ever-going downhill, and the reasons are many. But first, let's talk about how their support used to be.

If you played WoW in its early days, you might remember that Game Masters actually had characters in the game that you could chat with or interact with. Now, while that is not necessary for support to be good in the game, it did have its charm. You had a feeling that you were actually talking to a person who was not only a Game Master in the game but also a gamer who played that game in their free time, too.

While that was not every interaction with Blizzard support, it used to be different and way better, even if it was only through the chat. You could talk to Game Masters and solve your issues. Sometimes you might get a penalty for something you've done against the Terms of Use, but by talking to a Game Master, it could be pardoned. If not pardoned fully, it could be changed to something that you would agree to eventually because it felt like finding a middle ground with people.

Because of that, I never feared when I needed help with anything from support. Reporting people for whatever reason—if I opened a ticket and talked to someone—felt like it was actually doing something and not just sending a report into a void. Because that's how it feels most of the time.

With the introduction of Solo Shuffle arena back in the Dragonflight expansion, we had to deal with something extremely frustrating called win-trading. Basically, what people would do is queue all together at the same time, often early in the morning or very late at night when there is a bigger chance to get someone from their booster team in the party, and then they would intentionally lose against the person who paid for the boost. When you get in such a group and you see someone rushing in to get killed to give a free win to another group, but they fight like a lion when you play against you, it's really hard to not make your blood boil. In ranked PvP, the main problem why it's so frustrating is the fact that you are losing rating and you never stood a chance to protect it. No sir, you simply got unlucky and ended up in a lobby with people who are basically cheating.

The irony is when you start calling them out, they will eventually report you. And it piles up very fast. But to stay silent and watch your hard-earned rating diminish after you worked so hard for it hurts way too much. While yes, it is only a game and people shouldn't care so much about it, we all know it's not how it is. And people do care about it. In fact, they sacrifice a lot of their time, money, and energy to get where they are, and it's beyond frustrating when someone simply ruins it by cheating.

So Seasons 1 and 2 in The War Within expansion, I got banned both times purely because I lost my cool and tried to report people for cheating. The funniest thing is that you will get banned for reporting people if Blizzard thinks it's unjustified. And somehow, win-trading in their books is an unjustified report?

So yeah... While I can't play a saint and pretend that I didn't say a lot of terrible stuff to these people, I don't feel like they ever get banned because of our reports. And it almost looks like Blizzard would rather protect cheaters than actual players.

And now let's talk finally about how interaction with Blizzard support looks. So, if you have any issue with the game or players, or any reason to try and talk to support (I can't call them Game Masters anymore; they are nothing like it), it will take roughly 2–3 days for someone to even look at your ticket. And you better not waste your time writing a lot of text. They will not go through it. So after waiting for days, you receive a copy-paste reply that is obviously a copied script. They treat you like those online shops where agents will answer tons of your questions with already scripted answers. It is beyond insulting.

So my last ban happened over a guy who kept running in front of everyone, me included (the tank), and made the whole dungeon a hell for everyone. When confronted, I called him a r******* and he said he was reporting me. So I did the same. I reported him for intentionally making the whole dungeon a living hell for me or the healer, and I doubt even the DPS had a good time with mobs running everywhere as they were pulled way before I was even in range. So I thought, okay, if you want to report me, I'll make sure I report you. Because you have as many reasons as I do to report me as I do to report you.

Two hours later, I was banned. It was two days before the season started, so I asked Blizzard to lift my ban, explained the situation, and said that I would be fine with silencing my account because I know I shouldn't call people names and whatnot. But I still don't understand how a ban is suitable for simply toxic chat? I didn't cheat or do anything other than call him (and obviously from time to time, other people) bad names. But are people really reporting that? And if they do, how is that fine to get a 10-day ban from the whole game over something you wrote?

Other games are also against such communication and also ban people, but mostly other games would ban you from social interaction. And I would be fine with that. But a ban over chat messages seems to me a little too extreme? So I wrote a big text in my appeal and tried to explain what happened, and I hoped I could actually talk to someone. But two days later, I got a reply that extremely pissed me off.

Basically, it was what I wrote before. The answer was three sentences long and two links where you can read about the Terms of Use and bans. So I wrote again. Tried even harder to go into details. Explain that I'm fine with silencing my account but the ban made no sense, and then it took four days to get an answer. When I got it, it was a little bit more text, but still felt like they didn't read anything other than the first two sentences. They linked me to the same useless links the other guy did, and that's it. Closed my ticket as "solved," but nothing was solved. Nothing was done other than me looking at these messages and wondering, why am I even paying for this game anymore?

Yes, I have a guild that I'm the Guild Master of. Yes, I have a lot of friends in this game and I still have a lot of fun from time to time. But ultimately, the company I grew up with and whose games I've been playing for three decades is so changed it makes no sense.

Now, getting banned is never because you did nothing. And I want to make clear that I'm not saying I didn't deserve it. I did. And tomorrow, when I'm back in the game, the first thing I want to do is to turn off party chat. You know these people in groups that never talk? I'll be one of these people now. Unless I'm in a guild group, I'll never talk. Never have party chat in my chat tab. Because only then can I make sure I'll never get banned again. And hopefully, there will be another game one day that I can transition to with most of my guild and find a place where players are treated as respectful customers and not like what they do at Blizzard.