From donotreply@blizzard.com Sun Jul 31 03:57:38 2005 Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 07:10:14 -0700 From: donotreply@blizzard.com To: tempaddyforwowpolicy@toogam.bespin.org Subject: Blizzard Entertainment - World of Warcraft [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Greetings Conrad, Thank you for contacting the World of Warcraft Game Master Department. We have very stringent and set guidelines for our actions whenever we action a player's account. For any suspensions or bans we have to double check with a supervisor who, in turn, double checks with a manager. There isn't any chance of your account being banned for a simple difference in artistic values. In addition, you don't have to worry about us constantly snooping through your drives. With so many players online, the act of invading a players hard drive would be impractical. We gather all of our information from our side for increased speed and efficiency. I believe that stipulation is in the terms of agreement on the off chance that a player creates a truly malicious program with the intent of breaking the game in some way, so that we can further investigate. We also have detailed records of every action taken with a players account, every email sent or received by a player, and every conversation that a player has had with a Game Master. They like to keep a p retty close eye on us. And thank you for reporting the typo. Should you require further assistance, please submit another help request the next time you are online. We hope you continue to enjoy your experience in World of Warcraft! For any game play questions, please refer to our site at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/ *** Please do not respond to this email as all conversations on this matter would be best handled online. *** Regards, Daerlock Game Master Blizzard Entertainment www.WorldofWarcraft.com Customer satisfaction is a top priority here at Blizzard Entertainment, and we would like your feedback on the level of service you have received. Please feel free to provide such feedback at the following web address: http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=eSurvey000&i=367&d=7/30/2005%207:05:25%20AM&t=tempaddyforwowpolicy@toogam.bespin.org -----Original Message----- From: tempaddyforwowpolicy@toogam.bespin.org To: wowgm@blizzard.com Sent: 7/29/2005 7:31:43 PM Subject: World of Warcraft - In-Game - Policies Info - From: TempAddyForWoWPolicy@toogam.bespin.org Info - Name: Conrad Account - --------------------------- Account - Character(s): Account - Name: Unknown Account - Realm: Lothar Description - ----------------------- A player's concern has not been responded to, and I am wondering about the legitimacy of MyWarCraftStudio, particularily with some distributed files that may not qualify for an ESRB T rating. Although the Allakhazam forum post says "a GM friend and said there would be no possible way I could get in trouble", I'm wondering if I can hear this directly from a Blizzard employee, that I would not be receiving an account ban just due to the nature of content used locally, client-side. The closest thing I could find for official Blizzard-written material is: http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01716pmum "We definitely want people to create their own UIs utilizing custom menu configurations, graphics, and even sounds. Anything that can be coded to modify the style and the look of the UI is fair game, as long as the modifications are done to the sanctioned internal files of the game. However, anything done to the UI to gain any sort of an unfair advantage over other players is unacceptable." Blizzard's Harrassment Policy seems to focus on language and words. My concern is that although Blizzard says they allow modification of "the style and the look", that the Terms Of Service allow Blizzard to scan a hard drive and if Blizzard, perhaps one employee with differing artistic values than myself, found some material on my hard drive then would long-term ("ban") account penalties result? Regarding the patches made from MyWarCraftStudio, must I concern myself only with other player's experiences, or also of any possible "snooping" that Blizzard may decide to do? Also, are in-game tickets/conversations, including Blizzard responses (like GM chat), recorded to a player's account for later reference (in the event of any possible dispute)? Also, http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=egm01721p2&msg=1 has in the "Category" field a misspelled word, "Dungeion".