Warcraft III and Diablo II player base culled for terms of use violations; 30-day suspensions for first offenders, perma-bans for all others.
While Blizzard has spent months prepping its newly revamped Battle.net service, it hasn't stopped paying attention to the original Battle.net. As evidence of this, the publisher yesterday announced a massive wave of account bans for the service that still operates Warcraft III, Diablo II, and Starcraft.
According to a post on the official Battle.net forums, Blizzard recently suspended or permanently banned 320,000 accounts for Warcraft III and Diablo II, citing terms of use violations. First offenders were slapped with a 30-day suspension, while accounts with prior problems had their CD keys banned permanently. The post didn't specify what the violated terms were but instead reminded players that "abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net."
It's possible for players to inadvertently run afoul of Battle.net. Blizzard hands down temporary restrictions for creating or joining new games too frequently (the publisher suggests staying in new games for 10 minutes to avoid problems) or creating dummy characters just to store items and weapons. For more on what is and isn't allowed, check out the full Battle.net terms of use.
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
@dsb333 all i gotta say is i have not used a cheat code for a game since i was about 10.... for all those people using them please do not call yourself a "real Gamer" your anything but a real gamer "Your like The little kid who needs a booster seat at a table just to reach his plate" except You Need hacks so you can beat a game "kinda sad when you think how easy most of these games really are" BAN HAMMER FTW!!!! ("MY BAD" should of read a few more down and posted this at wrong person!!!!)
on fun note..those 320.000 people are currently at walmart returning their battlechests saying "this doesnt work online! i want a new one or a refund!" or better yet..buying a new cd key for 2 bucks from one of the spam ad botter's sites..yay! good job blizzard...good job.... and last note...as for all that "gear" those "people" lost...they got d2jsp accounts with hundreds of fg to replace it all..so..grush..new bot..farm..make 10k more fg..ban again..wash rinse repeat..no one loses anything or gets punished here...(and most that do run item bots..only use one account per that cd key..so they lose like 1 hdin ..aka 300 fg..all the gear is farmed off to other account on clean slate cd key) and to top it all off..those people use programs like sandboxie etc to run 8 bots per computer...yeh...math much? so who's down for opening an item shop online? jk..nn spam in my favorite game
QUOTE mrzero1982pt2: "i will admit, i have used cheats, but then after a while, a cheat is kinda boring. i havent played on battle.net since december, so i am safe, but if you havent used a cheat in a game, something is wrong. heck, i used the weapon codes on gta. if you never used those codes, you have a problem. that code was known everywhere. and then the "the$#!t" code for the original? come on. if you have never used a cheat code in a game, you arent a real gamer" Bull****. Whatever makes you feel better about your own cheating, I suppose, but don't even try to tell people who don't cheat that THEY have problems.
As you may guess by my name, I've been gaming for a long time. Pong long time. RPGs are my favorite. I cut my teeth on Diablo as far as online RPGs go. I picked up Diablo II as soon as it hit the shelves. Loved it and loved Battle.net from the start. BUT... as soon as all the bots started showing up, (as well as people popping on, spamming their gold farming websites and eBay auctions, then popping off) I switched over to The Elder Scrolls series and haven't been back to Battle.net since. I say good show Blizzard. I look forward to Diablo III and that good ol' blue Blizzard logo flashing on my screen again. As for the farmers, cheaters, bots, people using pirated keys, pi$$ off. You ruined the game for long enough. You just got SERVED! :)
BTW regarding my last post, I haven't played any battlenet game in years and only remember item and character hacks in diablo, if there is indeed a cheating method that ruins gameplay for everyone then just disregard everything I say.
Bastards. With old games like these the only people still playing probably are hardcore enough that they would buy more copies of it, they are about to sell 320,000 more copies of games because of this. I used to cheat in diablo all the time, why are they cracking down on it now? And seriously, who cares about cheating in diablo? It's basically a sp game with a coop option, it's not like your forced to play with cheaters, just go to another server if it bothers you. I could see cheating in starcraft and warcraft as a problem, however.
@ S3RAF1M Blizzard isn't corrupt, just a heck of a lot of people who play their games are.
320,00 is like a spec out there lol.. tey need to seriously clean up there act for me to ever go back.. like change their policies on credit card use for wow,, crackdown on cheater on wc2 and maybe burn away diablo classics mp.. which is all bots now.. period im serious there are NO players left there just bots..
You can cheat all you want in a SP game, no one cares, but if you cheat in a MP game you ruin it for everyone else.
Well good form in my opinion. Of course from a fiscal stand point banning people from these games that require use of a CD key and has no monthly fee makes sense. Might have to go buy another. Youll never see somethign like this from WOW. Of course thats much harder to hack and I never actaully had any problems when i played. Which utterly suprises me why most games are easily hacked. Ive always liked Blizzard (cough not this Activision nonsense)
320,000... that probably means there's still another 900,000 that are able to cheat without getting caught that won't be banned for another 5 years.
That's how it should be. I got my copy right here, no tools, nothing. As long as no people get caught in collateral damage, it's all good.
For the most part they aren't going to do anything about mules or the game jumping of normal people. Both are actually implemented in an attempted to get at gold farmers/sellers. Gold farmers typically have tons of mule accounts to hide their activities and transfer gold around making it hard for the companies to ban them. They also jump in a game, advertise, then jump out, and into the next one. Unfortunately, this policy occasionally catches the random non-gold farmer. Gold sells can very easily ruin MMOs, so companies implement extreme measures sometimes to try to stop them. Sometimes it seems like a losing battle, because nothing seems to stop the jerks.
Guys, tell me it's not true that they ban all the mules... Mules are almost essential in Diablo, maybe they'll add a little bit of space in stash or backpack in some new patch or somethin...
Finally, Blizzard makes a good step to make BN better. Banning 320'000 cheating pu****s will surely help in making Diablo (and not only) more peaceful. When a spambot enters my game... I only wish that D3 was released this year;P Keep up the splendid job!
@Ediehunter Thing you're overlooking is that Blizzard encourages the creation of add-ons and that they're exempt from the whole no third party stuff. If an add-on does something that Blizzard doesn't like, then they change the code so that the add-on breaks and can no longer function as it did. Diablo and WC3 on the other hand were never designed with the use of third party material in mind, which does lead to the conclusion (whether correct or not is another issue) that anything found is used for cheating. As for the bank toons, again WoW has been created with that in mind (it's been an industry standard since at least EQ1 and possible older still), less so Diablo. It's quite literally the differences between apples and oranges in this case.
so i wonder how long before blizzard starts doing this to all the WOW players also. becouse if they do WOW won't be the number 1 MMOG any more. if they say the bank toons and using third party stuff like addons and so forth are a violation of there terms and agreement rules. also to note yea i know some of the WOW players might make a added note to this or give this post a thumbs down. but think about it serouisly how long before they do this to WOW players with out wsay they won't or that never happen. becouse like a job work rules or a apt and other things in life every thing changes.
Now that the full power of Battle.net has come to fruition, there's only one appropriate thing left to say... BOOM!-Shakalaka!!!!!! pwnt.
Only Blizzard can give itself the luxury of banning 320k users. Seriously, that is a lot.
Wait, what? Bank characters are a violation of the TOS now? If we end up in a situation where you have to use Battle.net to play Diablo III and that rule carries over, that might just stop me from picking it up. They've already slowly choked the life out of my interest in Starcraft II though, so I guess it's no suprise.
One more quick thought, if you really wanted to cheat in diablo II, you would do it on single player and then go over to multi with all your stuff. I know I did that once I had gone though the game with one character and wanted to test the abilities of the others
haha how old are these games? 10 years? That seems ridiculous to be banning now, I didn't even know they still supported those games. Probably to get hype for the next-gen games coming out and to show they ban for obnoxious reasons....joining too many games and bringing an extra player for packing....seriously?
i will admit, i have used cheats, but then after a while, a cheat is kinda boring. i havent played on battle.net since december, so i am safe, but if you havent used a cheat in a game, something is wrong. heck, i used the weapon codes on gta. if you never used those codes, you have a problem. that code was known everywhere. and then the "the$#!t" code for the original? come on. if you have never used a cheat code in a game, you arent a real gamer
In single player more of a feeling of satisfaction to think ur way thru a puzzle instead of cheat, suppose its the same for MP
@Gladestone1 I call bullsh***. You never cheated in a game? You never used the famous contra or mk blood code? You never beat a game, and played it again with cheats? I am all for online games and banning cheaters, but if you are playing by yourself who cares if only YOU can feel special and only YOU see your shiny new achievement. I will cheat with any single player game that has cheats so long as i beat it first.
When did this ban occur? seriously, all at advertising in Diablo 2! Lovely. Thanks blizzard :) I do use dummy characters to store tones and such... do hmm :S
Holly Mother 320,000 , good job i respect it :), did not thinked that False cd key owner were abble to play on battle net :D
last time i heard about diablo 2 banning, it was like 2004 or 2005, where all the minor hackers like map-hackers and botters get banned, but realy serious hackers like dupers and tppkers didnt get banned. I wonder how yesterday's banning was different than 5-6 years ago.
Owned? I thought "epic fail" was the latest stupid Internet fad. If you're going to latch onto idiotic phrases like sheep, at least pick a more recent one.
@The-Techspert About a month ago my WoW account was banned because some gold farmer hacked it and was selling items for real cash. I hadn't played in over 3 months at that point so I had no idea that was going on until I got the e-mail from Blizzard. So now I have to worry about my Battle.net account being banned for that (which happens to have Starcraft, Diablo2, Wacraft 3 and their expansions tied to it).
lol, ok Activision since you messed up Infinity Wart, I guess you are going to mess up Blizzard. they are on self-destruction mission. but hey, I don't even play WoW and doesn't want to play endless game.
My allegiance to Blizzard stopped at Diablo II. I have no desire to play anymore of their games at this point....just retreads of an old game in newer graphics. Common now, just getting around to banning 320,000? How long have these games been around and they are only now doing this.
oh wow, sucks to be them. I can't believe so many people play those games anyways, they look mad boring!
320,00 people try to break the rules and get caught. I wonder how many more weren't caught?
Diablo III is a devilishly captivating and addictive action role-playing game.
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