Recent Action Against Real-Money Raid Clears

[Deleted]

I hate this whole Boost Crap. Thats because of this stupid Crossrealm Bullshit they introduced and completely killed Server-Communities with it.

[Daan]

They should do it with boosts for gold, too. The whole game suffers from the boost/sellrun pestilence.

[Agrias2x]

Good, hope they keep this up.

[BellicoseAxe]

Use IRL money > Buy gold > Buy boost!

"Problem" solved :/

Many carry groups only sell for cash so, once those services can no longer be sold for real money, there should be a lot less of them to go around as they scurry back to other games where they won't be punished. Spamming as well as scamming should grind to a halt.

Blizzard is trying to cut the problem at the root, which is the provider.

[Raelbo]

In other words.. "Some players were doing a job and getting paid on the outside and us, Blizzard, were not getting our due cut. Now we're going to more closely monitor these players to make sure the bads actually purchase WoW tokens from us so we get our money, then they can pay those players for their time with make believe digital currency"

Garbage posts like this are little more than a weak attempt at trying to excuse what really is a despicable practice by the cheating scum whose deliberate actions are wrecking the game experience for honest players.

It's like defending any common criminal on the basis that they are losing their job because of law enforcement. And please don't pretend that these assholes are doing is "harmless". It's not, and this should be obvious to anyone with any critical thinking capacity who is prepared to look at the full picture.

The harm is done because when real money becomes involved this creates an incentive for unscrupulous scum to exploit the game in any manner possible to make more money for themselves, with zero concern for the impact on the game. Among the problems caused:

1) Bots abusing the group finder tool to realm hop in order to farm herbs. This makes the GF tool useless to players wanting to use it for its intended purpose.
2) Bots flooding the market with "cheap" materials. While some morons think this is good for the economy, it is actually catastrophic. Because while you might think you are benefitting from an abundant supply of cheap materials, your ability to make gold is undercut by the same cheaters. Left totally unchecked the result of such activity would be world in which all goods are supplied by goldsellers, and the only way for anyone to get gold to buy it from goldsellers.

So please, do us all a favour and bugger off with your silly notion about this all being a scheme by Blizzard to milk us for more cash at the expense of honest, hardworking people. Yes, Blizzard are in the business of making a profit off us, but their business model is to do so by providing an awesome gaming experience.

[Penguin06]

Blizzard gets the $$$ from WoW token, boosters get only gold. Blizz didn't get anything from these real money runs. That's the difference.

You also forget that with in-game gold that have control over scammer anything outside of the game involving real cash they can help you if it through a third party. This solves problems and keeps everything legit.

[Raelbo]

So as long as Blizzard gets a cut, it's ok?

Hmm, sounds like a strawman argument to me. No, you're way off base. It has nothing to do with Blizzard getting a cut. It has to do with what wrecks the game and what doesn't.

The same should go for selling runs for gold. The same scams exist. Double standard. Blizz is ok with the scams, as long as they are getting a cut.

Blizzard are not ok with gold scams either, so I am not sure what your point here is.

[schwarzkopf]

Hmm, sounds like a strawman argument to me. No, you're way off base. It has nothing to do with Blizzard getting a cut. It has to do with what wrecks the game and what doesn't.

Well, technically you can still legally buy a run for real money - legally. It is just now less efficient to do so.

What the problem is - scammers, the current systems in play for $/gold exchange are safe - paying someone $100 for a run and them not delivering - that's unprotected and causes issues.

[megaurko]

Good. Now I hope PvP boosters get their arses fried too. It is such a 'good' feeling when you queue for RBG with mmr of 1.6-1.7k and get a team match of 2.1-2.2k 4 times in a row. And what is interesting, is when you look at the matching team's ratings, there are 7-8 guys with 2.4-2.5 and the rest are 0-1.5. Yes, it sounds like 'cool story', but it is true! Just 2 days ago I was trying to get RBG cap and this is exactly what happened - boosters 4 times in a row!

[Jamìe]

yeah... I'm sure they're gonna take actions. like they've been taking action about those spammers since vanilla offering gold for real life money. there are so many trying to sell gold, pvp levels, mythic clears, ... you can't even read anything in the chat window. it's been going on for years.
they're always gonna find a way to try to sell stuff anyway.
Plus, the free account don't help, lvl 1 allowed to spam on the commerce channel, or /y in the capitals don't help either. you want to piss them off, free accounts should not be allowed to write on the /1, /2, /y. same thing for lvl 1-10 on paying account. make some sort of timer, like you're not allowed to /1 or /2 for about 10min following the connection on the server. making their bots impossible to connect, spam 10times and disconnect.

[Jingbaby]

The real question everyone is interested in is which "members of top raiding guilds" are affected

[Raelbo]

Well, technically you can still legally buy a run for real money - legally. It is just now less efficient to do so.

Also, "buying gold" by using the token system is a way to do so without fucking up the game in the game in the process. The problem with goldselling has nothing to do with the exchange of gold between players. It has everything to do with how goldsellers ruin the game in their pursuit of getting real money out of the system. The thing that makes tokens benign to the game is the fact that no one gets money out of them. It's a way for people to spend money to get gold, but without the ability to get money out of selling gold.

What the problem is - scammers, the current systems in play for $/gold exchange are safe - paying someone $100 for a run and them not delivering - that's unprotected and causes issues.

Well yes, that is certainly one problem with these transactions. But like I was saying, even if you assume that the transaction itself still happens, you still have the other problem of the impact that the people who sell these services are having on the game. And what I am talking about here is the cheating, game ruining stuff they do to get hold of gold in order to pay other players to perform the boost.

Obviously there are many cases of benign real money transactions that happen and don't wreck the game. The problem is that because it is a way for people to get money out of the game, the entire thing is infested with unscrupulous scumbags doing lots of shit that messes up the game for everyone else.

[TOM_RUS]

Blizzard is trying real hard to kill this game.

[nekobaka]

Hmmm.....I remember TCG mount scams and boss kills for gold (HC Archi for the mount, Mythic Guldan when we were in the next tier, Garrosh for the heirloom) but never RL money for raids until Legion. Maybe I am on a backwater server.

Third party agreements. Ive had my experience as a lowly "casual" in some guilds that did such along with acquaintances that raided in the kind of guilds that could run split loot farming. Some of the guilds also ran bots for mats and gold. Low level was game time codes which Blizzard eliminated with tokens. The ones that would dabble in cash still did such. In general those involved was smart and kept third party as Blizzard would not recognize such interactions.

I do agree with others that streamers are one of the popularity sources for the popularity of advertisement of such runs. Blizzard took too long to take action that players thought it was acceptable. Hopefully Blizzard hits the streamers on top of the in game advertisers as this has been going on for years without action. If only in-game advertisers get hit then I still hold a negative view on Blizzards care on the situation.

[Usagi Senshi]

Woooooooow you people are scary... wth? "The top guilds in the world were making a living off WoW. TO BAD! LET THEM STARVE!" - The WoW comunity O_o. You're endorsing the suffering of another human being you sick FUCKS!. Like this will pretty much kill the World First scene just because the GM's / Officers of those guilds COULD live off playing WoW thus could put the insane hours in to compete...

Also, the spin on this is... horrifying "something that was ok for the last decade is no longer ok because .... reasons. By the by it's still toooootaly ok guys if you pay us instead." Somewhere in the design document of Legion , written in golden letters with the popes piss is "just do the oposite of everything players were used to since vanila". I've seen blizzard do some questionable shit in the past but this .... ow this is in a whole new level... fuckin speechles.

Eh, there is more than enough humans in this world as is and it will continue to turn even if a few die as result of starvation from selling in-game services.

Also, way to over-react to stupid shit. /golfclap

[Alvito]

It only took them a decade to do something about this. It is amazing how blatant people were about selling runs for gold in LFG descriptions or in advertisements in /trade. If they really wanted to stop this they could have paid some poor bastard 10 bucks an hour to check LFG descriptions or monitor trade on different servers. At this point it just seems like another way to get people to by tokens with gold/cash and put more money in their pocket.

[Hottage]

It only took them a decade to do something about this. It is amazing how blatant people were about selling runs for gold in LFG descriptions or in advertisements in /trade. If they really wanted to stop this they could have paid some poor bastard 10 bucks an hour to check LFG descriptions or monitor trade on different servers. At this point it just seems like another way to get people to by tokens with gold/cash and put more money in their pocket.

Except that Blizzard clarified that runs for gold are not a breach of the ToS and won't be punished.
It's only real-world currency transactions which will be actioned.

[Masternewt]

Good riddance. I just hope we can notice the effect and it won't be back to same old in a week.

[Dracullus]

Honestly, I am speechless. Blizzard FINALLY do something with this huge problem (seriously, group finder is literally swarmed with this shit) and there are still whines in comment section. You all was selling this, right?

Sometimes I think that if Blizzard would invent cure for cancer, there would be voices that cancer is in fact good thing for our civilization and Blizzard is literally killing the planet (and WoW).

[Mendzia]

What about most of big streamers from 'put random top guild here' with advertising 'put random shitty wow boosting service link here'? Is anyone of them banned? Twitch also should do something about it.

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Woooooooow you people are scary... wth? "The top guilds in the world were making a living off WoW. TO BAD! LET THEM STARVE!" - The WoW comunity O_o.

I am pretty sure that maybe only a few streamers or sponsored pvp players can make enough cash to live from WoW.
If someone wants to 'not starve' only from boosting other ppl... that person probably has got a huge problem.

You're endorsing the suffering of another human being you sick FUCKS!.

Is punishing someone for acting against law (against ToS in that case) 'suffering' for that person?... For me is just another pointless 1st world problem.

Like this will pretty much kill the World First scene just because the GM's / Officers of those guilds COULD live off playing WoW thus could put the insane hours in to compete...

There will be always be world 1st. I don't care if it is sponsored guild or not.
Nighthold has shown us that hardcore players retire due burnout and endless grind. Most of them do not care about selling stuff for real money.

Also, the spin on this is... horrifying "something that was ok for the last decade is no longer ok because .... reasons.

It was never ok. For some unknown reason Blizzard decided to do something with it now.

By the by it's still toooootaly ok guys if you pay us instead." Somewhere in the design document of Legion , written in golden letters with the popes piss is "just do the oposite of everything players were used to since vanila". I've seen blizzard do some questionable shit in the past but this .... ow this is in a whole new level... fuckin speechles.

How does this relate to vanilla?