WoW Classic: A “forbidden strategy” in Alterac Valley brings victory, but leads to a ban

A druid led the horde to victory several times in WoW: Classic – but was then banned. Because others thought he was afk all the time.

Alterac Valley in World of Warcraft: Classic (and Burning Crusade Classic) is a popular place to farm for honor. In no other battlefield is there so much honor and the matches go by quickly if you stick to the “standard procedure”. However, if you don’t take part, you will be happy to report – and that can cost you victory.

What happened? Im Subreddit from WoW Classic reports the druid player “Cheezeburger” that he was banned in World of Warcraft. He has been reported too many times for inactivity when that is far from the truth. Instead, according to his own statements, he just played very strategically and defended his own boss in the bunker and achieved many victories that his teammates hardly knew about.

When everyone rushes forward, a druid will run backwards

What was his strategy? Immediately after the start of the match, actually all the players storm forward. The Alterac Valley is mostly a “race” to see who can knock down the enemy boss in the enemy base first. Real PvP rarely happens, it’s often just a PvE race.

The horde-druid Cheezeburger is one of those players who defend their boss in order to give the other players a little more time at the front. He enters his own bunker, reinforces all bosses with thorns and the mark of the wilderness and then persists for 2-3 minutes in stealth until the enemies approach.

During that time, however, he was often reported as “afk” – after all, he sits there practically motionless in the bunker, but that is part of the strategy.

Assassin Druid holds the whole raid on his own

He waits until the alliance storms the bunker and the boss fight begins. After the tank has built up enough aggro, Cheezeburger appears and covers the tank with “cyclone”. This takes the tank out of the fight for a few seconds, causing the boss to run amok and execute a number of DPS players. While panic breaks out and the tank comes out of the cyclone, it will now be killed by the Cheezeburger with a stealth attack with a high probability – after all, the healers are busy intercepting the panic in the group.

The end of the story is that too many players in the group die and without a tank the alliance has to regroup to start the fight again. As a rule, this provided enough time for the Horde to win their own battle against the Alliance’s bunker boss.

Now, after leading the Horde to victory with this strategy for a long time, he has been banned by Blizzard for 8 days – probably automatically after too many AFK reports.

What is Blizzard doing? Cheezeburger tried to break the ban and posted a ticket. However, according to his statement, Blizzard could “not comment on certain strategies” and “have no access to data that could lead to the ban being lifted”.

Cheezeburger sees the only solution, therefore, to record each of its matches on video in the future in order to have evidence.

What do you think of this thing? Is it okay to report players who don’t follow the “whole team” tactics? Or should such behavior be punished? Do you even have to rethink the automated ban system?