It seems that today there has been a WoW ban hammer going on, with lots of accounts ending up banned for using bots and different 3rd party software. Most of the banned players claimed they were using PQR, ProbablyEngine, HonorBuddy and GatherBuddy. Even tho most of the players affected by the WoW ban hammer received 3 days (72 hours) suspensions, there were lots of permanent banned accounts as well.

The estimated number of the WoW accounts affected by today’s ban hammer is claimed to be over 1 million, with over 510.000 in the US only.

If you guys are among the people who use any bots or such 3rd party software, we suggest you should stop, at least for the moment and be glad you’ve dodged a bullet. We’ll keep posting new informations about today’s WoW ban hammer in this same post, so make sure to refresh it every now and then!

Edit: It seems like the ban hammer started after multiple player reports about people using PQR 3rd party software in arenas, which among many other unfair advantages, was also interrupting spells the exact same second as the enemy started casting it. Also, it’s being said that PQInterface was broadcasting its version information in chat channels, which was even easier for Blizzard to filter their searches and ban pretty much every account involved in using these hacks.

Edit 2: Another rumored information is that Blizzard is also able to look in your AddOn folder (even if you are not using a specific AddOn). It has also been reported that a handful of high ranked arena players were also affected by this massive ban hammer.

To see if your account has been suspended for 72 hours or permanently banned, check the “Account Status” section of your Battle.net account.

Europe: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/account-status
United States: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/account-status

Edit 3: It is almost confirmed that the WoW ban hammer came as a result of the PQInterface AddOn, which was used with PQR by pretty much everyone who got banned. Many PQR profiles are using PQI, and PQI is using CHAT_MSG_ADDON as a version check.

The confirmation of the piece of code inside PQI AddOn:


function ADDON:CHAT_MSG_ADDON( event, prefix, message, channel, sender)
--if sender == E.myname then return end
if prefix == "VC" and not ADDON.recievedOutOfDateMessage then
if ADDON.version ~= 'BETA' and tonumber(message) ~= nil and tonumber(message) > tonumber(ADDON.version) then
ADDON:Print("Your version of "..AddOnName.." is out of date. You can download the latest version from http://pqrotation.wikia.com/wiki/PQInterface")
ADDON.recievedOutOfDateMessage = true
end
 

This means that the addon messages were sent to the server and to any listening clients on that specific addon channel, and since Blizzard is logging everything they receive, it was just a matter of time until they searched the logs for people advertising their version number on that addon channel. (Source: Xelper – PQR Coder).

Edit 4: Forgot to mention in the main text. If you’re among the “lucky” ones who got away with 72 hour suspensions, DO NOT appeal your ban. There were players who have ended up with permanent bans after appealing their 3 day suspension.