Bluetracker
Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
Went to WV, got banned, thanks Blizzard...
EDIT: I just tried another live chat and again they said that this has already been upheld and they won't discuss it at all or give more information. It looks like I'm truly losing my account for something that I haven't done. I appreciate all the support and visibility on this post, especially so fast (2 hours and already front page wow!). I have no clue what I can do about this situation. The only thing I can do is stop playing their game and giving them my support through playtime and purchases. It's been real Hearthstone, but I can't stick with a company that has no loophole in their ban system to help players who get banned undeservedly...
UPDATE: They just ghosted AGAIN!!! I tried to do a live chat with Hearthstone support about the issue. They connected with me, didn't say anything for 5 minutes, I guess looking at my second appeal, then merged my chat support with the second appeal ticket and instantly marked is at resolved.
Tl;dr I traveled to another state over the weekend to visit family. Played Hearthstone while there. Now I'm banned and Blizzard won't even communicate as to why, nor consider an appeal.
So, my wife, baby and I went to West Virginia this weekend so that we could visit our grandparents. (We're traveling to California for the rest of the year in a couple of weeks, and they haven't seen the baby yet.) While there I decided to pull out my tablet/phone at times throughout my stay to play some lovely Hearthstone. I ended up playing a lot of the new Solo Adventure and took breaks from it to bounce back to ranked and grind some wins on Mage (the next class I wanted to get a Golden Hero on.).
That all went fine and dandy over the weekend and was a blast! Or so I thought. We live in Maryland, which is roughly a 4-hour drive from where my grandparents live. So we took the drive back yesterday afternoon, got home, unloaded the car, got some dinner, and then finally sat back down at my computer to play some more Hearthstone only to be met with the message on the loading screen "Your account has been banned."...
"Well, that's strange, let me put in a ticket to Blizzard support and figure that out, after all, the last time I used their help they were able to help me just fine." (I wasn't receiving the Morgl hero from Refer a Friend and needed help getting it issued to my account.)
Well, FUCK me. I put in my ticket, got some very good help from Agecmor who guided me to the appeal ticket location that I would need to use to inquire about my account. From the live chat conversation, he said something about 'it looks like it was banned due to the different logins and the type of activity,' which I can only assume was due to me switching from my phone to my tablet at times, and the switching to and from Solo Adventure and Ranked. Well, okay. So I took the link he sent me, thanked him for the help and went to submit my ticket, partly as an appeal, because I have done nothing wrong, and partly as a "What's going on and why?" message. Well, here's how they responded:
Pay attention to the \"Further requests to review this penalty WILL NOT be answered.\"
Okay, wtf Blizzard? I got no information from this ticket, I got a copy paste response THAT DOESNT EVEN HAVE MY NAME NOR THE GAME FILLED OUT, and it got INSTANTLY marked resolved before I could even respond more and have a dialogue to find out more.
Well, okay, it does say to go back and check the e-mail, as they won't give me more information beyond that, so let's do that, it must have a TON of info to answer all of my questions!
Okay, so there was a survey at the bottom of my ticket. So, naturally, I filled it out with most everything on the as bad as bad can be side, and left a comment at the bottom. I doubted anyone was going to look at my survey and reopen my ticket to help me out. So I copied my comment and opened ANOTHER appeal ticket to hopefully get an answer. Here's what I said:
So by the looks of it, I got banned for playing Hearthstone in another state, which apparently isn't allowed. And because my first appeal was bs-answered so quickly and marked resolved, this new appeal probably won't get any response. So it looks like I won't be getting my account back anytime soon, if ever.
Reddit is probably the only outlet where this can get any somewhat meaningful facetime, so if it doesn't help my situation, at least it's a warning to others to not be surprised if you get banned for no reason and aren't able to fight it at all.
Kauza
We took some time to dig into this to make sure there wasn't a mistake. Playing the game from West Virginia did not lead to the ban. Having the game played for you from another country and being boosted did.
To ensure there is no confusion, playing Hearthstone in another state or another country is not against any terms of service and would not lead to being banned. Account boosting, however, is not allowed.