Just going to throw this out there i think it applies.

A large number of bans went out yesterday, targeting a popular injector program which allowed users to not only edit and swap in-game models, but also exploit various aspects of the game. Today, several of those bans were overturned.

Why Ban in the First Place?

Many players used these programs for relatively harmless purposes, such as swapping their character model from one race to another, creating custom outfits, using transmogs they hadn't earned, adding nudity to the game, or giving female character models bigger boobs. While still against the ToS, these purposes have long been seen as harmless, due to the fact that only the user see the difference (the injector only affects what you see, not what other players see), and even tacitly approved as similar previous types of these programs, such as Tmorph, were used for several years without bans being issued. Blizzard broke the use of Tmorph in Legion, but over time several new programs became available with even more functionality.

However, some users have found more exploitative ways to use these programs, such as resizing flags in Battle Grounds to make players easier to find, manipulating model scale to increase the size of resource nodes, exploit their way into areas they otherwise shouldn't have access to, and otherwise manipulating the game world. Similar to the infamous wall hacking incident during AQ40, these are obvious exploits which Blizzard has very little tolerance for and has frequently issued bans on in the past.

This recent round of bans appears to have hit everyone using those programs, whether they used it for seemingly innocent reasons or not, from anywhere between 30, 180, and 549 days. Predictably, this has lead to a large amount of outcry on forums and social media platforms from both users claiming they'd done nothing wrong and others admitting guilt.

Ban Reversals

This afternoon there have been multiple reports of bans being overturned, purportedly for players who claimed to use the programs for innocuous reasons. While Blizzard has not yet commented on the situation (edit: they have now commented on the situation, see below), we can surmise that this means their intent was to target those players actually exploiting and negatively impacting the game, rather than the initial heavy handed pass. Although this is a good thing for those players who've found their situation reversed, it should serve as a reminder that while Blizzard may at times choose not to ban people for using programs which break the ToS, those players are still running the risk that it may happen at any time.

We recently completed a wave of suspensions for World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be operating third-party software that undermines the security of the World of Warcraft client. Reverse engineering and bypassing security protocols that safeguard against client modification is a clear violation of our Terms of Service, and we regularly take action against such behavior.

Many of the suspensions issued were for 180 days, as the exploit we detected allows for very malicious activities such as gameplay automation or rotation/interrupt botting. Upon further review, we found that some suspended accounts appeared to be only using the detected exploit to do client-side character model alteration. That is an activity that we would prefer to respond to with a warning, rather than a suspension, this time. As a result, we have reversed all of the suspensions issued in this action.

The use of third party software that modifies the World of Warcraft game client is against our Terms of Service. We expect players to remove such third party software, or their accounts will be subject to further action. Any future use of software that bypasses the security of the game client, regardless of intention or gameplay advantage, will be detected and sanctioned with increased penalties.

Started to comment but decided, why bother ?

Um... I know it is a waste also... but just gonna put this out there... This is not the game you are looking for, and that is not our dev team. Do you perhaps have the wrong forum? Or was the intent something along the lines of encouraging/discouraging the UO dev team from banning ''harmless'' 3rd party programs?

This is not the Blizzard forum.