#0 - Oct. 10, 2007, 12:07 p.m.
I was instantly banned without being contacted for using:
Rocket Boots Xtreeme (http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=23824)
in conjunction with
Parachute cloak (http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=10518) in a WSG.
I am not the first person this has happened to.
So I appeal the process through wowaccountadmin and get nothing but denials. Either they know their GMs made a mistake and don't want to undermine them or they are genuinely misinterpeting the server logs.
wowaccountadmin's response was:
"Thank you for your follow-up email. We have reinvestigated our extensive in-game logs as well as all the pertinent data involved in the suspension of this account and have determined that the original action was indeed merited. The account was found to have used prohibited third-party software, which is a serious violation of the Terms of Use. To protect the integrity of our investigation process, we must refrain from disclosing any information about our investigation methods or findings, and are unable to make exceptions to this policy. This includes but is not limited to the names of prohibited programs found to have been employed."
I am not using ANY 'speed hacking' 3rd party programs. My list of add-ons is as follows:
AlphaMap
Auctioneer
Custom Pet Bar
Deadly Boss Mods
Detached Mini Buttons
Gatherer
Inventory on Par
Item Rack
Killing Blow Announcer
Lock Bar II
Mail To
Junk Manager
Omni CC
Perl Classic Unit Frames
Rico Mini Map
Trinket Menu
Uber Quest Reborn
X Bar
SSPVP
No blues have responded to any of my posts about this, but some did respond to the first player banned for using this combination of engineering devices.
The blue response to the first person banned for using these two items in conjunction was as follows:
GM Syndri wrote:
"Regrettably, Aliandren, the specific "use" of these boots will only allow one's running speed to increase for approximately 3-5 seconds; according to my records, however, your particular character was observed moving quite quickly for nearly 3 minutes.
I believe there's a bit more to this story than what is being communicated at this point in time."
The problem is the GMs do not understand the mechanics of (pay close attention here blue) THE PARACHUTE CLOAK. The boots are not the source of the serverside log inconsistencies that are being misinterpreted to get these people banned.
The mechanics of the cloak apply the speed the player is traveling at the time of deployment to the entire duration of the 10 second cloak effect. If the boots were used prior to deploying the cloak, that translates to 15 seconds of 300% speed increase.
GMs look at the notes on the boots that they got from the developers and see "3-5 seconds at 300% speed increase" then look at the server logs and say "he used the boots 4 times in a 20 minute period, that should equate to 20 seconds max at 300% speed."
The reality is that when using this combination, the serverside log should show a full minute of player time at 300% speed increase (per every 20 mins of gameplay) due to the cloak applying that rate of speed to the 40 seconds of parachute buff time.
Here is the real problem that hasn't come up yet, but certainly will due to the 2.2 changes to the parachute cloak. When I am in AV, every time I am at an elevated point (which is 50% of the time due to the terrain) I jump my mount off a cliff edge, deploy the cloak, and continue on at 100% speed increase for an additional 10 seconds even though I am unmounted. Over the course of a 1 hour AV, this could potentially translate into server logs showing a character traveling unmounted at 100% speed increase for 5 minutes out of a 60 minute period of time (cloak cd=30 seconds, buff length=10 seconds, potentially usable 30 times in an hour, 30 uses times 10 seconds=300 seconds or 5 minutes of server logs showing 100% increased movement speed on an unmounted character)
This has to be addressed soon, because while the boots are somewhat uncommon, any serious world pvp'er is going to have the parachute cloak or skylords cloak or both so that they can do epic flying mounted aerial assaults. Of course using the cloak from an epic flying mount would cause 250% speed increase to be transferred to the parachute cloak effect and thus server side logs would show "speed hack flags" due to an unmounted player logging a movement speed of 250%.
This is a very technical game and the 2.2 changes to the parachute cloak increased the need for GMs to be given proper information to accurately evaluate serverside logs.
I would love nothing more than for a GM to come on and even post something like "While we still believe that this issue with server log inconsistency is caused by 3rd party 'speed hack' programs, we will submit your mathematical findings to our development team for review" That in itself would make the time off my primary account received worth it for bringing this issue to light and facilitate some interaction between the development team and the GMs.
For Blizzard to ban people for using player crafted devices; regardless of whether the developers intended for those items to be used in that fashion or not, is beyond irresponsible. This problem is NOT going to go away unless we demand the GMs consult developers on game mechanics before off-handedly issuing bans.
Again, it was recomended that I post this here as well as where I began posting in the PVP forum... to me I am just beating my head up against a wall, but what the heck, not like I have anything else to do at the moment besides type :P
Pertinent links on this subject:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2215456198&sid=1 (the current ongoing discussion on this subject)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1531254200 (previous user who was banned’s guildie posted thread trying to get him justice on CS forum)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=712401775&sid=1 (original post by banned user on CS forum trying to get his account reinstated this one has a blue reply even)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2215646799&postId=22153188549&sid=1#0 (my thread on CS forum simply asking them to look into the issue, followed by rude comments by numerous posters)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2287949941&sid=1&pageNo=2 (Thread complaining that the use of these items is an exploit)