[arglebarnacle]

I was misatakenly caught in an automated ban wave in World of Warcraft for "botting" just a couple months after joining, but as soon as a human reviewed my account I was reinstated immediately.

The automated system flagged my account a second time a few weeks later, and when I appealed they simply said that although they didn't see any evidence of rule-breaking behavior, nobody got caught by the automated system twice unless they were cheating.

I was out over $100, and I didn't even get six months to play the game. Sometimes The Machine just "knows best".

[eridius]

Simple explanation: they did in fact see what you were doing and just didn't want to tell you because they don't want to teach cheaters how to evade bans. They were hoping after the first review that you would start playing by the rules.

[milesvp]

Even simpler explanation is that false positives are real. All sufficiently complex systems have them. I'd imagine that triggering a false positive the first time greatly increases the likelihood that a second false positive is triggered.

I'd also further assert, that simply being an HN reader means you are more likely to trigger a false positive than the rest of the population. Blizzard does some very aggressive memory scans, and they look for tools that are much more common with developers than the rest of the population. I've personally used a well known library for code injection, that if I'd had it running on an unrelated binary while playing WoW they would have seen the signature of the library, and likely Blizzard would have eventually banned my account.

I don't know if the parent was doing things that Blizzard considers naughty or not, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt given what I've read about Blizzard's Warden.

[perl4ever]

As someone who hasn't played computer games much since the 90s, I read comments like this and am just boggled by how seriously everyone takes games these days, the players, and the vendors, and the general public. It's as if you had to get a security clearance to use a wiffle ball and bat.

[falcolas]

It only takes 1 person to ruin the experience for hundreds, or thousands, of others in online games. Given each of those people is a source of recurring revenue to Blizzard-Activision, the actions taken against cheaters is understandable.

[a_t48]

For Blizzard at least, it translates to bottom line. More cheaters means less happy players.

[calv]

This. I got a false positive on Runescape about 4 years ago, they won't even let you appeal because it was a serious offence. Lost my best account, and they cancelled my membership. Never paid for the game again after that, on my new account.

[arglebarnacle]

Well I wasn't cheating in any way, just using the auction house/trade chat much more than a typical new account because most of my MMO experience was in EVE online and I like the "economic PVP" of cornering markets and flipping for a profit.

Some cursory research told me that new accounts with a lot of market activity were a "red flag" for the automated system due to similarity with bots that created new accounts to evade bans, which I guess makes sense. Of course this is the internet and you have no particular reason to believe I was or wasn't cheating on World of Warcraft, but for what it's worth this HN account is linked to my real identity and if I were cheating all the time I would know better than to brag about it or even obliquely reference it in my posting here.

[falcolas]

So, based on past experience and the experiences of others - that is bannable behavior to them. They don't want people playing the AH on items - they certainly don't want people cornering a market - they just want a simple method for people to trade goods for gold.

Yours is simply the latest in a line of those who have followed the letter of their Auction House rules, but not the nebulous and unwritten "spirit".