Do not play world of tanks or support wargaming.net

[Sammich]

Please allow me to vent or I am going to put my fist through the wall, again. World of Tanks is a MMO/FPS type free 2 play game that I have been playing for the past 3 weeks and was having so much fun that I was going to buy "gold" so I would be able to buy a "premium" tank. This joy lasted UNTIL today when I became a victim of their bullshit "automated Team Killer" penalty system. For those of you not familiar with the term "team killer" it is a person that gets off disrupting games by intentionally killing member of his own team. 30 minutes into playing WOT today, I sighted in on a disabled enemy tank with a damaged tread. I waited for the gun accuracy indicator to reach maximum and the exact moment I fired a lightly armored tank on my team drove right into the path of the shell and was destroyed. This same thing happened again at the end of the game as I tried to stop one of the enemy tanks from capturing our base. The result of the accidental shootings was the "automated system" suspended my account for 24 hours. In mmos, suspensions are what you get when you do something really bad, like repeated harassment, threats, botting etc. So, I figure this has to be a mistake. I send in a ticket contesting the suspension and I get this canned response: Dear player, Thank you for contacting support regarding this matter. Due to the introduction of our automated system of violation tracking (team damage, team killing), all such offenses will be addressed by the automation only. The system has been customized, tested extensively and is currently working as intended. No player is immune, nor do any players receive preferential treatment from the automation. Even those of us here in the office receive account sanctions from the automated system when our shells go astray. Unfortunately, you will have to wait out your suspension. We deeply apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused. Please understand that violating the game rules, regardless of the reason, will be met with sanctions. As you have now personally experienced, violations of this game rule will be dealt with by our automated Team Damage/Kill tracker system. Once a player has reached a threshold set by the automation for team kills/damage, they are banned; no questions asked. In addition, they are forced to pay a portion of the damage caused and forfeit some experience to their victim. We allow for some team damage to occur before that takes place, and we feel we're pretty generous with the amount allowed, but once it crosses over that line, the sanction is imposed. The first offense is a minor 1 day ban, but habitual violations have an escalating punishment. Because of this, we highly advise that you do not take matters into your own hands as we will be unable to change any actions taken by the automated violation tracker. We truly do appreciate your interest in World of Tanks and your contribution to our community. We can only hope that you understand that we must be fair and treat all friendly fire cases the same, regardless of the motives. Additional information on the automated system of team killer and bot user tracking can be found on the following page: http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index....l-auto-system/ Please feel free to contact us anytime with future difficulties or questions. Best Regards, [Name of some nobhead removed] So in effect, they are saying "our customized, thoroughly tested, working as intended system" is infallible, humans are not allowed to question because they are always wrong. It sounds like someone at that company watched Colossus The Forbin project a bit too many times. "Violating rules" implies wilful intent, which is not the same as doing something accidentally. Also check out the threat they make: "we highly advise that you do not take matters into your own hands". WTF? Do they think people are going to do turn into Paul Kersey vigilantes or something? I find out this new system is being discussed in the forums so I go on the thread, post what happened to me and put in some suggestions on how things could have been handled more appropriately. A couple hours later some admin asshole (and that is being nice) comes out of nowhere, calls me a liar because I didn't supply a fraps of what happened and then bans me from the forums for 3 days. If there is one thing that pisses me off to no end is being falsely accused of something. I never forget nor ever trust people that do this to me. I have heard horror stories about the Russians that run this company are devoid of social skills much less capable of a minimal amount of customer service. I now believe it. So in the end, I uninstalled off of my computer the piece of crap called World of Tanks. Why anyone would pay real money into a game that has such a hugely flawed program which can arbitrarily issue uncontestable suspensions is beyond my comprehension. My advice is: do not buy any products from or support wargaming.net in any way or you will find out how despicable they really are.

[Mr. Clean]

It was only for 24 hours right? Lick your wounds and wait your time out if you loved it that much. At least they have a system in place to discourage team killing. Sounds like it needs work though.

[Danny]

uh, yeah, thats called greifing dude. that happens in every single online game ever made.

[Tricky]

Why don't they just turn team killing off on the servers? I play Battlefield 3 heavily and there aren't many servers with teamkilling switched on. It may not be realistic but at least you don't end up being punished or killed everytime one of your own team lobs a grenade into a room you're hiding in or runs out in front of you and you fire before you see they're one of yours.

[Sammich]

uh, yeah, thats called greifing dude. that happens in every single online game ever made. About.com Internet Games: griefer Definition: A griefer is someone who is in a game only to disrupt gameplay and annoy other players. Common griefer activities include team killing, corpse camping, obstructing key map points, and spamming chat channels. Extreme forms of griefing are a bannable offense in most online games, but eliminating it completely has proven to be difficult. That is not what I did. What happened is the the equivalent of you driving down the street when one of your kids chasing a ball runs in front of your car and gets killed. Instead of it being an accident you are told by the arriving authorities that you are guilty of first degree pre-meditated murder. You get no appeal and are summarily executed right on the spot. -- -------- Post added at 07:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:30 PM ---------- It was only for 24 hours right? Lick your wounds and wait your time out if you loved it that much. At least they have a system in place to discourage team killing. Sounds like it needs work though. Yes, I would have just let the 24 hour ban slide, but what pissed me off and drove me to delete the game was the way the admin came out and said I was lying about what happened then banned me from the forums for 3 days. Making false accusations against me is a one way ticket to my irrevocable shit list. He even went so far as to delete a post I had made with suggestions on how tk could be handled better. Companies that not only allow, but condone that type of behavior by it's employees will never get a penny from me.

[Danny]

no, dude, YOU were the subject of the greifing. Get in the way so a teammate kills you for a tempban as a repeated team killer. greif someone into being banned by making THEM look like the greifer. its one of the oldest tricks in the 'being a dick online' book.

[Sammich]

no, dude, YOU were the subject of the greifing. Get in the way so a teammate kills you for a tempban as a repeated team killer. greif someone into being banned by making THEM look like the greifer. its one of the oldest tricks in the 'being a dick online' book. Ok I get what you are saying, sorry for the misunderstanding. Everyone involved in the game in question was legit. Unless they were psychic it would have been impossible for them to position themselves so they could have moved directly in the path of the shell the moment I fired. When I apologized to them they said it was no big deal.

[Rancid Carcass]

I have heard horror stories about the Russians that run this company. Hmm... another hardcore Russian crackdown. Guess this makes you HPOTDs answer to Pussy Riot...

[Sammich]

Here are just a couple examples of how crappy their customer service is from their own WOT forums. In this case a guy prepays for a 1 year premium account, gets deployed and can't play. So he asks them if they could credit him for the time he is unable to use. They tell him to screw off: Customer Service drops the ball... Here is another where a guy's account was suspended because his name was deemed "inappropriate" after he started bringing up the problems of wargaming.net's lack of customer service in the forums: WG should focus more in customer service This company is lucky it is based in Russia because it would have been shut down long ago if it were in the U.S. Just an update to my situation, I sent in a ticket to asking if it was company policy to allow admins in public forums to falsely accuse customers of lying. I guess the forum admin got his ass chewed out because I got a response back last night from the nobhead saying that he undeleted my suggestions post and lifted my 3 day forum ban. Of course there wasn't any apology. Well, too little, too late.