Dear Blizzard Entertainment and the World of Warcraft community,

I’m writing this not for myself, but for my friend — and for every veteran player who woke up this week to a permanent ban they did not deserve.

My friend has been playing World of Warcraft for over 15 years. He is the kind of player Blizzard should cherish: loyal, passionate, a guild master, a collector, someone who bought collector’s editions, merch, virtual tickets and BlizzCon bundles, and made WoW a part of his life and his family’s leisure. He has never had a ban. Not one. He does not bot. He does not cheat. He does not use automation. His PC has a premium antivirus, his system is clean, his keyboard and mouse are ordinary, and his addons are the most basic CurseForge stuff: TomTom, HandyNotes, Bagnon, etc. No auction addons, no fishing bots, no mouse macros.

Last week, he was permanently banned. The reason: “use of unauthorized cheat programs (hacks).” He appealed. He asked for escalation to a human. He got automated replies: penalty upheld. Just like many others on US, EU, and RU forums. Veterans with 10, 15, 20-year accounts. People who never had a single violation. All hit with permanent bans, all told the same thing, all left with no explanation of what actually triggered Warden.

And this is not new. 6–7 months ago, two of my friends went through the same nightmare. They appealed, begged for manual review, got robot answers, and waited six months. Only then did Blizzard send an apology, admit the bans were incorrect, and give one month of game time. But by then the damage was done. They felt betrayed. They stopped talking to their guilds. They stopped playing. A month of subscription does not heal that.

Blizzard, we are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for the truth and for basic fairness.

We are not asking you to reveal how Warden works or to share your detection methods. We are asking for a manual review of each case to determine if these bans are mistakes. If they are, we hope you will correct them. And if there is something on our end that triggered a false positive, we would appreciate a general note about it — not technical details, just a chance to avoid repeating it. We will gladly remove any addon or adjust any software. But we cannot fix what we don't know is broken. Right now, every veteran player feels unsafe. I am afraid to play too. I am afraid that my 10+ year account, my progress, my memories, my friendships could be taken away tomorrow by an algorithm that will not even tell me why.

Permanent bans are too harsh for accounts with a decade or two of clean history. They should not be the first response to an ambiguous detection. They should not be handed out in waves without manual review. And appeals should not be answered by robots while real people wait in despair.

I respectfully ask Blizzard Entertainment to:

• Manually review every permanent ban issued in the last 1.5 weeks to identify and reverse false positives.
• Provide affected players with a general explanation of what may have triggered Warden — not technical secrets, but enough to avoid repeating a mistake.
• Give players a real chance to respond before a permanent ban destroys years of progress.
• Fix the Warden algorithm so that innocent players are not swept up in mass bans.

To the community: if you or your friend were hit by this wave, please sign this petition and share your ticket number in the comments. Together we can get a human to look at this. We love this game. We want to play it. We want to keep our guilds, our friends, our memories. We are asking not to be treated like criminals for loving a game that has been part of our lives for decades.

Blizzard, please hear us.

Sincerely,
A worried friend and fellow player

Sources and similar reports:

US Forum Threads: 1​ 2​ 3

EU Forum Threads: 1

RU Forum Threads: 1

Reddit Posts about this ban wave: 1

Reddit posts about the previous ban wave 6–7 months ago: 1​ 2