and I just checked all the accounts (that I can remember the details for) and except for the recent banwave accounts, they are all unbanned. My advice for all you hardcore botters is to go do a password recovery on any old accounts you have been banned on in the past and see if you're unbanned too. I just got 3 "free" accounts... and the crazy thing, they are all upgraded to MoP... I know 1000% for a fact I didnt upgrade these accounts, I got banned in LK on one, and TBC on at least a few others.. giggity!
This also pretty much awnsers my other question which I made a thread about earlier this week. I once got banned on my main account. Instantly perma banned. I appealed it and the GM said that the action taken was [retty harsh for a first time offender. So they turned it over to 72 hour instead. But I did get a warning saying that this is my final warning. Any other offense done on my behald such as botting would mean immidiate termination of my account. Which means that I should be perma banned right now. But I merely got a 6 months suspension. I think they indeed save banned accounts and then every once in a while they wipe out that database which incluided the flagging of accounts will be erased and even banned accounts made available again. That's just my view on the matter.
my Diablo 3 account which was banned for me macroing gear swap back when that was a thing, got unbanned a few days after the 6 month suspension on my WoW account.. weird..
Usually after a year or so i open a "i cannot login to my account" ticket on banned accounts. Have been able to get about 70% of my banned accounts back that way.
Went ahead and appealed a couple old ones...lol "Game Master ... here, I understand you where wondering about a ban on your WoW account! I took a look into it and looks like this was a ban that was done back in 2012." Terms linkage stuff "We now consider this matter closed and would not look to enter into further discussion on the subject." It was never even appealed, but its definitely a goner. Another from 2014: Thank you for your continued correspondence. After a thorough final review of the action taken against this license, we have arrived at the same conclusion. The action will not be reversed or changed under any circumstances. We understand that you may still have concerns regarding the action, but we must reiterate that it was taken to address a violation of the Terms of Use (Blizzard Entertainment:Blizzard Legal Documentation), which all players accept before logging into the game. As this issue has been reviewed by multiple representatives, it is now considered closed. If you have questions regarding a different license or issue, please feel free to contact us again. However, further inquiries regarding this issue will no longer receive a reply.
From my humble experience, I had 6 permabanned accounts for gathering in early MOP - pure Gather bots - 600 mining /600 herbalism. Around a year after their perma ban, Blizzard closed a new batch of 7 accounts, then while I appealing them, I on the fly appealed the old ones too and by my surprise, they lifted all 6 but one, which was SoR account, and combo Gathering+PP bot. Some of these was not appealed initially, others was denied once. Even had one funny situation there - on one of the appeals, I had opened Live Chat with a GM, and he seemed bot-hater, so I simply alt-f4 the chat window, and opened new Live Chat right away! While speaking with the new representative, I read on the account management, how the previous GM have declined my appeal, but the new one was nice and friendly, overtuned it, and even gave me 7 days of free time So while dealing with GMs, the human factor usually is the most key-one. Good luck!
I'd urge people to keep trying to get their accounts unbanned, generally only the guilty people say "oh well, time to move on" it might take some time but it will give the appearance of investiture (and innocence). Except for those of us who don't care, and have moved on......