The World Of Warcraft community has rallied behind a 70-year-old man who was banned for “playing the game a way that Blizzard assumes bots do,” and his six month ban has been overturned.
On Friday (January 21), the children of a 70-year-old World Of Warcraft fan took to the MMO’s subreddit to ask for help in getting their father’s account unbanned. According to the post (via PCGamesN), he received a six month ban “for basically playing the game a way that Blizzard assumes bots do.”
“He’s been playing WoW since the original launch of [Burning Crusade]. He’s a 70-year-old guy who loves to quest around and lvl new characters,” reads the post. “He also doesn’t talk in chat much at all. To the outside perspective… yeah, he seems like a bot. But, it’s an old guy playing who loves the fantasy elements of the game and the world. He’s probably made close to ten hunters at this point.
“But, he’s been playing this way for over a decade. It was something that he really loved doing, especially now as he retired from work.”
Although the user (going by the name ‘Mydadwasbanned’) reported little success with going through Blizzard’s community support, eventually the post raised enough traction for Blizzard to re-assess the case.
In a last update to the post, “Blizzard finally came through and reversed the ban”. A screenshot of Blizzard’s un-ban message also shows that the company admitted “the actions taken were inappropriate for the behaviours identified,” and credited the banned man’s World Of Warcraft account with 30 days of game time.
In other news, YouTube’s head of gaming is leaving Google. According to his statement, he is leaving the company to pursue a career in “blockchain app development”.
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