Admiral_TeaRex

So introduce time-limited strikes. Make it so honest players are "forgiven" for mistakes after a given period of time, while violators get banned permanently. It's a reasonable middleground solution. You keep your system privacy, but your honest users are not permanently punished for not knowing what you refuse to tell them.

It has been a couple of years now since I was served not one, but two unexplained bans. My account is now on its last "strike". I have been extremely careful about what applications I have running when playing WoWS, to the point it feels like my own computer is a minefield that is liable to cost me a massive time and money investment without warning, justification or explanation. This is an unreasonable situation to be left in, especially when my previous two strikes were tied to a modpack that was supposedly assembled with WG supervision and approval [Aslain, though an admin in this thread claimed it couldn't be the modpacks, meaning it was likely some other file on my computer, used for some other purpose, that could not possibly have any communication with WoWS game files]. What was it? I have no idea, even now. Because WG refused to tell me. My inquiry was conducted strictly between me, the end user, and a Wargaming support representative, so no violation of the privacy policy should have occurred. I was pretty much told to accept the fact I was given strikes and to be more careful in the future. "Be more careful" doesn't work when I don't know what to be careful of. The fact that WG is abusing a condition [seemingly to prevent reverse-engineering the system to make something that doesn't get detected?] in order to screw over its legitimate users with no way of alleviating it is abhorrent and infuriating. At the very least, we should be given the ability to have strikes wiped from our accounts after a given period of "good behaviour". You could even make that conditional and tied to player activity, so that it can't be cheesed by a hacker who just stops playing until the strike is lifted. That way it's not worth it for the intentional rule breakers, but your legitimate customers [who were victims of a mistake, miscommunication or lack of knowledge] are informed that their presence, business and activity are valued. EDIT: Tweaked for accuracy. The possibility that it was Aslain's modpack is my hypothesis, since the second strike happened the moment the game patched after the mod rules got revised; a time during which there would have been inactive files from newly prohibited mods left in the game files by Aslain's Modpack. Otherwise, my best guess is that it was ReShade or some such mod I had installed on Fallout 4 or some other singleplayer game I was playing at the time. Again: Not things that should have any communication with WoWS game files, and thus, should not trigger the scan unless WG's scanning violates my privacy by scanning all my computer files.

As I said. The only mods I ever downloaded were from the two modpacks. However, I remember that the policy on mods changed around the time I received a strike. It's a long time ago now and I don't recall if I raised this possibility in the tickets, but some members in the WoWS Discord communities I was part of suggested that perhaps during the update that coincided with that policy change, remnants of newly prohibited mods were left over in the code. The corresponding modpacks had removed them and the old files were inactive because they were incompatible with the new update, but the fact they were in there at all was enough. But surely if that was the case, and in light of the fact that many players would have leftover files like this in their game files, WG would have recognised this was unintentional and omitted the strike incurred by it during that patch? Rather than have it be a permanent mark on the account that was through no fault of the players' own? I thankfully have no problems with my game right now, but coming back to the forums and reflecting on those warnings, I am reminded that even one small problem could cost me my account, and support has never helped me or shown any intention of being reasonable with the previous strikes. At the very least, I want to be sure that this problem cannot happen again.

So here's something. For context, I have only ever used the Aslain's Modpack and the ModStation in WoWS. Originally it was specifically Aslain's because I liked the cosmetic selection there more, but the mods that changed the UI and map were shared between Aslain's and ModStation. So here's where it gets a bit confusing. I have received 2 warnings, about a year apart, last year and the year before. Both times for Aslain's Modpack. I was told that something was illegal. I did everything I could. Shared mod lists, screenshots, replays, everything. I was never given a specific answer, and I was never able to figure it out. The only conclusion I could come to was that WG no longer wanted to approve Aslain's Modpack and remove it from player use, and that the best approach to that was to hit people's accounts with strikes that they could not appeal so that they would stop using it. A public announcement stating as much would have been enough. I am now on my last strike. I never did anything wrong. Never cheated, never so much as considered something that would give me an advantage [I pride myself in my ability to play well, even if it's not superunicum-level performance], and am now genuinely terrified that I cannot trust WG not to rob me of my account. I want to use the ModStation and some of the mods it provides. But can I be certain that it, or as mentioned above, some other, random piece of software completely unrelated to the game, won't end up costing me my account and all the time and effort I've spent on it? Is there a way to review this or maybe remove previous strikes? Or am I just doomed to walk on eggshells for the rest of the game's lifetime, afraid to do anything with my computer for fear that my account will go up in smoke due to an algorithm that has already given 2 false positives?

That's the thing though. I wasn't expecting free. I was expecting possible. They're asking for several years worth of grinding, in a month.

They're assuming that Wargaming is the family intended. Bloody moronic, honestly. Everything about the "rewards" and "gifts" this patch has been utterly stupid. It's like it's a Christmas tradition at WG to create a colossal PR nightmare for themselves. Lutjens for the same price as Kuznetsov, dangling the OP Premiums on a string in front of the community via Christmas containers, Puerto Rico's absolutely absurd grind...It's like they don't care anymore. That or someone was celebrating New Years a month early when they were designing this event. An absolute travesty, seriously.