I think you might have to be more aggressive (but be diplomatic about it). They say that you are in violation of their Terms of Usage.

If you answer yes to any of these, they will ban that account :

1. Access to your account e.g. sharing passwords. Blizzard doesn't like this at all, even if you are sharing passwords with family.
2. Sell Gold
3. Buy Gold. If they catch a gold farmer, they will trace all transactions back to the customer who bought the gold and ban gold buyers too.
4. Selling a lot of stuff for RL money. They can't prove that the financial transaction has taken place but if there's a lot of transferring between different characters, they will ban first and wait for answers later. If transferring between alts or accounts that are under the same name, they shouldn't be banning you.

This seems to be the explaination from them. How did you create the account and did you use the WoW Launcher or bypass that? If you bypass the Launcher, they will suspect that you are hacking, etc. and would ban you.

If you did not violate the Terms of Usage, go and defend your case but make it a strong one. Not offensive or rude as that will get you nowhere. But state your case clearly and reitierate it. Also, ask them for specific details pertaining to the ban.

For everyone else, don't panic lah. The ToU states down the location because it's to indicate where Blizzard have their legal attorneys to handle disputes. Not sure whether their official distributors can represent.

The Blues have already clarified in the forum that the ToU is to cover Blizzard's IP (Intellectual Property) and not to ban legit players from countries not mentioned there. Only if you are hacking, selling gold, buying gold, sharing passwords, and other stuff mentioned in the ToU, you will be banned.

Of course, there are always one or more innocent parties out there that get caught. Just get back to them but don't say that you're going to commit suicide. They will call the police. True story.

There was one more thing I forgot to add : if your account was hacked into (by brute-forcing the password or keylogging) and there was suspicious activity, they would close it down. Although this wasn't mentioned at all in their email. Happened to a friend of mine that

But you're right. I couldn't tell which part of your posting was your message and which part of it was from Blizzard. So I didn't catch the bit about the ban of the account.

Disclaimer : I'm not a lawyer so my interpretation may not be accurate. Anything past this point would just be my opinion but not necessarily applicable in the legal sense. That one, you have to check with someone who is a lawyer lah.

After much digging, there are 2 parts to your problems :

1. Terms of Usage : To subscribe to WoW and play the game

I remember back in January 07 that players outside of those countries were concerned about the ToU. This was the previous ToU before the Jan 11, 2007 revision (from a blog posting I put up awhile back) :

4. Limitations on Your Use of the Service.

A. You may only access the Service from within the territorial boundaries of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Singapore. Any access to your Account, whether by you or anyone else, from any location outside those countries is a breach of this Agreement.

After that, the ToU got changed so that Section 4A is no longer stating what it did above.

4.Limitations on Your Use of the Service.
A. Only Blizzard or its licensees have the right to host the Game. You may not host or provide matchmaking services for the Game, or intercept, emulate or redirect the proprietary communication protocols used by Blizzard in connection with the Program, regardless of the method used to do so. Such prohibited methods may include, but are not limited to, protocol emulation, reverse engineering, modifying the Program, adding unauthorized components to the Program, or using a packet sniffer while the Program is running.
Link 1
Link 2

From the ToU, it seems to indicate that Blizzard does not have an issue with player from other countries. Therefore, as long as we abide by their rules, we can play their game. They will not ban us.

Conclusion : Malaysian accounts will not get banned if you follow their Terms of Usage, dated January 11, 2007 or the latest revision.


2. Free 10-day trial from online site (from the link that you posted)

From the link that you provided on where you got the 10-day trial, it looks like they have a right to ban the account. From what they mentioned, that free-trial signup is for those few countries.

For myself, I got the 10-day free trial from Fileplanet.com which didn't have this country restriction. I downloaded the game online and then inserted the trial key obtained from Fileplanet.com. On the 5th day, changed to permanent status and since June 06, my account is still fine.

Getting the trial keys looks to be harder than ever before. It could be that Blizzard are trying to curb the Gold Farmer's Advertisement ingame because they were created with trial accounts.

Anyway, you could try to plead with them to say that you have since converted to a permanent account with a valid CD key. They may look more favourably towards you but the ball is still in their court. They might not because you committed an offense first by obtaining a trial key that was not meant for ppl outside those 4 countries.

When you signed up for the trial keys, was there a notice stating that the trial keys are only for 4 countries? If it wasn't there yet, you could argue your case stating that you got the key before that notice went up. If it was already there and you went ahead, they should have beef up security to check for IPs outside those countries or the database they're referring too is so screwed up that it didn't detect your IP location.

If you had obtained the trial key via a friend (Recruit-a-Friend programme where players have 5 trial keys a month to give to friends) or the trial keys that comes with the retail game version, your account wouldn't have this issue. A lot of ppl have created accounts this way without any issues.

I hope that things do work out for you. Mind you, it might take a few days to a couple of weeks before you hear a reply. I had a friend whose account got hacked, his items reinstated and then banned. Sigh. Eventually, they reinstated his account but it was a painful 1 month process for him. When I meant by aggressive, I didn't mean that you had to be rude. What I should have said was that your reply to them may not be convincing enough to convince them to reinstate your account. Comparing my friend's email and yours, he's is more stern but probably because he knows how to argue back (comes from tender negotiations ).

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Added on March 14, 2007, 7:22 pmgg, a crit of text.

This post has been edited by myremi: Mar 14 2007, 07:22 PM

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...836412458&sid=1

I posted up a question about it with a link to the Customer Service Forum. And the link was removed with no explaination. O_O You can see that a Blues edited it.

I'm suspecting that it's the 10-day free trial key that you got online. Lung is right about the press release - if there is such a substantial amount of players in Malaysia, they wouldn't be hunting everyone of us down. lilzany is right too about the digital download but i suspect that we need to get the CD key and start paying the subscription straight and not the free trial. Didn't realise that they stop the Free-for-All trial keys.

denistan07, did they ever reply to you after that?





And I was still able to log in this morning with no issues.

They're not known to be fast in cases like these. Few friends that got the suspension/ban said that they had to wait for up to a week for a response and that's if they're lucky.

One friend who bought gold managed to get her account unbanned and to a temporary suspension instead. There are rare cases that this can happen but I'm not sure whether it will continue to happen. She still pays the game but now doesn't buy gold anymore.

Blizzard may ban that account but you are free to create another account with another full-game-version CD-key. They probably will watch you more closely though if your personal details matches the previous account.

Your best bet would be via Asiasoft since you did mentioned that they will be also looking into this matter.

One thing about US companies, they like to crit everyone with so much legal text that very hard to understand.

Kepala pusing.

Probably they did send it to your friend but so much words, very hard to see.

Or, they put up a public announcement and expect everyone to view it via that announcement.

they never replied. still waiting.

I'd be careful though. I think it's :

-Online-10-day-trial key from website : BAN
-Trial Key from another player via Recruit-a-Friend : Maybe BAN. Not sure.
-Trial Key from Retail Box : Shouldn't be because the paper with the key does not state that it's only for 4 countries only. Plus, it's also not stated on their Trial Key FAQ online.

Blizz never answered back my question so I don't know what is their position. Waiting for a reply to denistan07 2nd email.

The only way that you will not get ban is that you create an account and immediately put in the retail key + subscription / game card. No trial account created.

probably not a good idea lilzany. becoz once u upgrade using a credit card, your address need to match.

unless using gamecard i guess.

anyway, can't seem to log into the forums at all. always connection timeout.

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Added on March 19, 2007, 1:10 pmhmm..now can after emailing their support email.

This post has been edited by myremi: Mar 19 2007, 01:10 PM

Not to sound offensive but where one is selfish, it could also mean that they don't believe in free handouts. Or powerleveling a friend either. It's still their prerogative.

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/430517

continue on with this thread instead.