Hello there, I tried posting this in the general forum, because I felt it might be a useful heads up to the community, but once I saw that all posts on that forum are screened by mods I have no confidence that it will ever see the light of day, so I'll post here instead:
I'll try to be as brief as possible but I think it's relevant feedback and might be useful to someone.
For starters, I'm one of those folks who was turned on to Nostalrius through a friend that I played vanilla WoW with, since release. We had lots of good times and this was an attempt to recreate some of that experience. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Basically something happened which I found very disturbing, and it turned me off to the whole idea of playing here:
Just for some short background, I mained a warrior in classic wow, tanked MC through Naxxrammas for a guild called <Revival> on the Eredar server, got rank 12 in PvP, and generally played several hours each day. Me and my friends were fresh out of high school with no prospects in those days, all we had was time. Anyways, essentially I decided after some deliberation to roll a gnome mage, a race+class combo I fell in love with in classic wow but never got to main.
I got him up to level 6, and moreover prepared myself for the long haul of leveling, a few hours each day here and there, but to try and do it as efficiently as possible: I researched old compatible addons, tried to relearn the old pre 2.0 macro syntax, and generally rebuilt (from memory) the UI I used back in 2005. A lot of it as you know is buggy and/or tricky to make work right. Between leveling and doing all this research I've probably got about 8-9 hours into it all at this point. The actual leveling went pretty smooth, except for a warlock called Morgana who kept summoning an infernal onto the noobies inside the cave in the starting zone. But I digress...
So yeah, I get to level 6 and figure I'd better go grab mining and herbalism from Ironforge, and maybe I could look around in trade for a guild with similar players like me, from the old days. However, for some strange reason I could not type anything into trade chat; no message was displayed on screen when I typed the following in /2. There was no error message either, so it went through, but nothing was displayed. So, I just typed out the following in general chat:
"~ Veteran player since beta+release 2004 lf guild with other vanilla players to level/raid with, have played every class @60 in vanilla pst", short and sweet just to catch attention.
the only reply I got was from, I think his name was "Krantos(?)"
Krantos: You should roll druid or lock, this server is full of mages
Krantos: Just my 2c
Contentz: Yah, you know I thought about that it was a hard decision. Ultimately I rolled mage just because it's the most fun to me
Krantos: Word, play what you love
Then I tried to type the same message into trade again. Again, nothing was returned, and no error message, although this time I was immediately DC'd from the server. Upon logging in I get a "This World of Warcraft account has been closed, and is no longer available for use" notification.
So, I go to the forums and see that if you're banned you should log onto the homepage and see the reason on your account. There was no reason given. All it says under my account is "Your account has been banned permanently".
At first I was going to write something explaining everything in the account forum, and try to get it back, when it hits me:
What if it happens again? In one respect I was kind of lucky, I had just under 10 hours of time invested total (not played, but from remaking the UI and macros, etc.), which is still nothing to scoff at in my book, but what if I had gotten level 20 and had a lot more time invested? What if this happens at level 40? 60?
All I can figure, and this might be tough for the Dev team to accept, but that there is ban-happy mod or GM that didn't like something about what was in my ad, perhaps some secret disdain for people who played in vanilla... honestly I have no clue whatsoever. I minded my own business completely, made a warlock friend called "Anand" in the starting zone, got to level 6, went to Ironforge to learn professions, put my ad into Ironforge General chat (although couldn't type in trade for some reason), and had my account summarily executed.
No warning, no message, nothing.
And honestly if whoever did this to me can become a GM and insta-ban whomever he wants, there is absolutely no assurance I can have that it will not happen again, at level 20, 40 or 60.
I just thought the Dev team and the general community should be made aware of this and to be on the lookout for abusive mod activity in general, because I've seen this sort of thing many times before, and it threatens the welfare of the community.
Also I was really looking forward to going back in time here... I'm impressed with the recreation of something I have very fond memories of. However stuff like this scares me, and I have no way to be sure it won't happen again...
-Contentz, lvl 6 gnome mage
Anyways, back to it