So.. this post is a little bit more in contrast (ie, evil) to the others that I've written.
But, I'd like people to be aware about just how easy it is to get a player banned, point out flaws in Blizzard's investigation process, and just how important it is to play nice and not piss off other players. In fact, these 2 methods alone have been tested and have worked for many years.. and there are even more advanced methods available.
If you're going to do this: please only reserve for your worst enemy. And they have to be completely terrible human beings too. So if someone is better at PVP than you or they consistently undercut your auctions, please just leave them be.. it might be me after all. =]
If it's a foul-mouthed brat though, go ahead and "give him the business" since it's probably not me (I'm actually very polite and helpful to players in-game.)
Blizzard Banning Policies
First thing I want to do is bring you up to speed on Blizzard's policies regarding suspensions and perma-bans.
Here are the links to their Terms of Use (TOU) and End User License Agreement (EULA).
Basically, they state:
- The game belongs to Blizzard. You're not the owner, just the guy renting the service from Blizzard.
- They can monitor you and your PC, you have no rights and no expectations of privacy.
- They can make any changes to the agreement whenever they want.
- Blizzard can do anything to your account, at any time for any reason or without any reason at all.
- If you look at a Blizzard employee sideways - you can get banned.
- If you question Blizzard on their forums (like this poor guy) - you can get banned.
- If you drink skim milk on a Sunday - you can get banned.
- Blizzard doesn't have to provide notice of any kind, you're on your own.
There are notices in big bold letters just so that you don't forget: "BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."
Who Does Blizzard Typically Ban?
Blizzard will ban you even if they suspect cheating or exploitation. Investigations by Blizzard are very fast and limited in scope, so action is decisive even when there is no supporting evidence.
Blizzard typically bans players for hacking/botting, harassment/spam, buying/selling gold, and buying/selling characters.
Since you can't force a player to hack/bot and it's difficult to get them to harass other players (but not impossible for a talented troll who can get them to say something offensive), that leaves us with the "shady underground activities" such as gold buying and character selling.
The thing is, most players are guilty of something already.. so if they're investigated, Blizzard always finds something. These are all dangers that completely innocent players can face.
Preparation Steps
- An anonymous Gmail account. Gmail doesn't attach originator IP addresses to email headers, which is an extra level of security for you when you're emailing the "hacks@blizzard.com" address.
- Firefox with FoxyProxy installed. (Proxy redirect software to mask your IP address.)
- You'll need time (You need to research the mark.)
- You'll need gold (About 10k or 15k gold. The more the better and you can use my gold making strategies.. it'll take a couple weeks to hit 10k gold.)
- You'll need a wireless laptop and real money (One method involves purchasing a new WoW account.)
Consider the costs first before making your decision.. is it really worth it?
Note: The use of FoxyProxy is optional, it might be a little overkill but it's always a good idea to mask your IP address when researching information or accessing wowarmory.com. The "hacks" department, GMs and Support Personnel don't have access to that level of detail (ie, wowarmory IP access and logs), but you never know when you might come across an overzealous IT security manager.
If one were so inclined..
Technique #1: I'm New At Selling My Account
This one has about a 60-70% success rate, and just requires an investment of time.
First, investigate the mark - the most important information you should find out is if they have any alts on the same account. Check their guild (he might be in his own guild, and all members are alts), add them as a friend to track movement, check AH auctions to see if they have any alts selling similar items, check arena partners (might have alts as backups), make friends with them on your own alt, or even join their guild if you can (learn more about them from fellow guild members).
Wowarmory.com is also an extremely useful source of information. You can actually get away with this method just using information from Wowarmory.
You see, Blizzard has a team of employees who monitor common hacking/trading webpages like MMOWNED.COM and ELITEPVPERS.DE. They're looking for new exploits or hacks, and occasionally come across players selling or buying accounts.
You will need to sign up with a new account (on the account selling forum) and pretend to be a "noob" selling his WoW account. You'll want to sound innocent, and sound like you're trying to protect your account and privacy as much as possible. Throw in some spelling mistakes too.
For example,
"hi everyone. i'm new to this, but i'm getting really bored with wow and wanted to sell my accounts. i hear its hard to sell an entire account so ill prob just sell my characters one at a time. what's a good price for this character?
*Link to their WOWARMORY.COM account*
i've been running him through ICC a lot recently, and do a little pvp. I got a ton of gold selling flasks and elixirs though and my character has 450/450 herbing.
how does $100 sound? please email me at xxxx@xxxx.com for more information
i want to make this transaction as safe as possible since this is my first time. i have a list of rules that the buyer must follow and i intend to use paypal"
Don't overdo it too much though, but try to make the person sound as "new" as possible. You can even research posts made by other users (from character selling forums) to get an idea of what exactly to write. You want to make sure their wowarmory.com account is linked, and add their alts if you're CERTAIN they're linked to the same account (adding their alts as "friends" will confirm this for you.)
Be polite, stress the importance of SECURITY in selling your account (ie, you're new so you're very afraid of selling your account for the first time.)
You also want to "poke a stick" at Blizzard employees since they'll be reading it. The idea is to upset them. For example, "Blizzard employees are so fat and lazy and they're no help at all.. I just want to get out of this game." You can say something even worse if you want. Just keep in mind that personal ego plays a large decision-making part of banning a player.
This method actually works surprisingly well, it just depends if someone from Blizzard reads it or not. I know a group of users that have been doing this for YEARS successfully. I'm not sure how well it will work now, though, since Blizzard reads this blog. =]
Try selling the target's account on Elitepvpers.de, wait a couple weeks, if the account isn't banned yet, bump it to the top and post it on MMOWNED.COM. If there's still no account activity after 2 weeks, contact Blizzard's (hacks) email address and notify them that you know someone who is selling their account. Don't link to the elitepvpers.de or mmowned.com websites though, just give them the toon's name. If they search Google for the wowarmory link, it will likely redirect them to the forum webpages where they were trying to sell their account.
The idea is not to tell them too much, but rather have them come to their own conclusions through their own investigations.
Technique #2: Pleasure Doing Business With You, Mr. Gold Buyer
This one has a 90% success rate and requires an investment of time, money and a lot of gold.
Build up enough gold, until you have about 15k. The more the better.
Access an open/public wireless access point from your laptop (desktop with wireless card would work fine too) and create a new WoW account with fake information.
Launder gold through the Auction House so that you can get the 15k gold to your new account. (e.g. buy out items 50-100g at a time, or transfer items that they can resell for much higher values. My cross-faction guide for example can quickly net the new account several thousands per day by just selling rare and limited supply items & pets, without actually involving your original account. You want to separate yourself from your original account as much as possible.)
Take your time doing this, build up a ton of gold on the fake account.
Then, all you have to do is walk up to the mark with your fake account, open up a trade window, and just GIVE THEM 10,000G. You can log out immediately after handing over the gold, or if they whisper you just say "plz follow instructions of what we told u 2 do" and logout.
Then after they go offline, transfer another batch of gold (e.g. 5,000G) to their mailbox from another toon on the same account. Delete both characters (Level 1's) after you transfer the gold, and stop using the account for a while.
Plan ahead for when you know they'll be raiding or running dungeons (humans are creatures of habit), so that on the next day you email Blizzard and tell them that a "player named x on y realm was bragging on vent about how they just bought out a bunch of gold from some gold selling webpage". You can use their armory information to find out which dungeon/raid they were in (and during which days/times) to give further confidence to your story. For example, "this past saturday at around 2PM he said.."
Typically, they'll keep the gold and not report it.
The gold transfer alone will raise some red flags (they monitor that sort of thing), it's highly unusual, and if a third-party reports the "inappropriate behavior" to Blizzard it will give them the excuse they need to ban the account.
In Closing..
There are a lot of variations to these social engineering methods too (for example, ensuring that the mark will keep the gold and not report it by convincing them it's a prize or reward from the guild. Communications of the "prize" cannot be made in game though. Most players are very greedy though and they never report it.)
There's a bunch of other methods, but these are the easy ones that anyone can do. It's scary to think of how many players have been banned for not breaking the rules but rather for being obnoxious assholes. This is just karma support.
