Recent Action Against Real-Money Raid Clears

[Raziella]

What country do you live in that buying a 12 pack of pepsi and selling the individual cans is illegal?

A lot of items as part of a multipack even say "not for individual resale" on them. Some product manufacturers even go out of their way to not put individual UPCs or nutritional values on the items.
You won't go to jail if caught, but can be cut off by your supplier, or even a retail store you're buying from.
Which is pretty much the same thing WoW is doing.

Like it or not, WoW is a commercial product, and the owning company has every right to profit off of it, even through shop sales, and the customers do not.
That's business, and it doesn't matter if someone agrees or not.

And there's more items you can own but not be allowed to sell than you might think. Medications and medical supplies being a big one. Computer programs and things with licenses and contracts. Much like the one you sign with WoW when you agree to ToS.

[Zoneseek]

A lot of items as part of a multipack even say "not for individual resale" on them. Some product manufacturers even go out of their way to not put individual UPCs or nutritional values on the items.
You won't go to jail if caught, but can be cut off by your supplier, or even a retail store you're buying from.
Which is pretty much the same thing WoW is doing.

Like it or not, WoW is a commercial product, and the owning company has every right to profit off of it, even through shop sales, and the customers do not.
That's business, and it doesn't matter if someone agrees or not.

And there's more items you can own but not be allowed to sell than you might think. Medications and medical supplies being a big one. Computer programs and things with licenses and contracts. Much like the one you sign with WoW when you agree to ToS.

haha i could go and buy a 12 pack of pepsi and sell each can to whoever i want on a street corner or craigslist or whatever and nobody is going to do shit

[Kazuchika]

lol, so you're saying that because you bought a 12 pack of Pepsi, you should be able to sell each of those cans to your friends? Nope, not the way things work. You CAN sell the cans, but you're breaking the law and can be punished if caught.

Haha what third world cesspit do you live in where reselling soda is against the law?

Man this is top shelf kek even for MMOChamp

[Deleted]

...selling those things in exchange for in-game gold is perfectly legitimate...

Lol, of course it is, after all you sell gold for money . Progress raiding in 2k17 anyway lul.

[Themerlin]

- "How much for the run, master loot run of Mythic EN?"

- " That will be 90$, just go to this website, "******", or you we can talk on this skype, "********""

- "You know you can get banned for this? I can buy the run in gold."

- "Sorry we only accept real life money, not my fault if you are poor "

- " But...what?"


Man I hope he got banned. Most likely was. I reported him

[Idletime]

Not everyone in top raid guilds has full time work. Some cannot work even part time due to gaming and guild needs. Many of these poor bloaks have an existence completely subsidized by gold selling and raid selling efforts.

If you eliminate the means of income then these people may not be able to pay their rents, phone bills, and internet bills. Do you want a world (of Warcraft) where only the top guilds in the world consist of people who have full time jobs? We'd lose most of the trade chat personalities on most servers. The real heroes of the game would be shuffled off to myth and legend status, never to be seen again.

We went through this back in the GM/HW grind where people had to unfortunately leave careers due to the requirements of the game, it wasn't pretty. These guilds will have stunted progress, and it may require them to even not be able to log in for raid night due to internet service being cut. Oh sure, they could try to raid on phone tethered internet, but have you ever seen this? Have you? The progression race would come to a near halt. We would start to see weeks required to down entire mythic raids instead of mere days. They would have to settle for the guys who put in 40 hour weeks and may be late to raid due to requirements at the office. Someone could get called in to work at their pizza delivery job not being able to make raid that night without risk of getting fired. You'd have to bring Larry, who is a nice enough guy, but let's be honest the guy is a total carry who still stands in fires but he got his spot because he's the husband of your healing officer. Worse, if you were completely made up of students who don't have to work, maybe this will interfere with their grades, and the future cure for cancer may not happen because Warcraft got in the way.

There's a lot of hate here for top guilds and players, but let's be realistic, we get to see the kill cinematics as soon as they are released, clean kill videos with dubstep music turned up to 11, go to Blizzcon in search of these heroes and their autographs, and join in on the revelry on Twitch with them. If they can't pay their bills, we all lose. Bad call Blizz. Just sayin'.

[Doombringer]

The hypocrisy in this thread is staggering. With mounts and pets on sale, paid boosts, gold available for sale - which then can be used to purchase gear, the game integrity has long gone. If you accept any of that shite, then why the hell should someone selling boosts through raids for real money bother you?

Its the same old story, if Blizzard cant profit from it they take action against it, but of course its OK to do it for in game gold because there a potential for them to profit from it.

All these fanboys hiding behind the "ToS" and "Blizzard is a business" bollocks seem to forget that its them they are taking the piss out of along with every player stupid enough to still play this shell of a once great game.

Of course it's OK for Blizz to profit from it. That's kind of how business works.

It's not bollocks ... what do you expect, this game should be free, Blizzard should be a charity? You'd like Blizz to freely and willingly set up a complicated infrastructure supported by their army of employees to make it possible for YOU, a schlub, to turn the game into your OWN digital marketplace, which YOU profit from? No rules, do what you want, sell ERP on the corner of Goldshire for all they care?

In what whacky world does this make sense? Blizzard isn't eBay. They're not there to provide you a mercantile platform which you can use and profit from.

[ImpTaimer]

Blizzard is being a slowpoke about bans, and apparently the bans are handslaps. Top streamers/raiders that are major advertisers for Blizzard got a rude finger waggling in comparison.

Normally I'd be happy about this, but they didn't take any real action. This is just a warning to not bite the hand that... takes food away.

I'd rather this have been another cheat/hack/bot ban announcement with a small note about real-money brokers.

[sluddyazin]

It's clearly against ToS. However, I don't understand it.

Blizzard didn't want people to buy gold because it could ruin the "game economy" - Yes, I'm laughing. It's their game, so they get to decide. Then, they decided they could be the one's selling gold and it was okay. Honestly, they just wanted to be the only one's profiting off their game.

The Gold Seller's evolved to start selling runs through raids, selling BoE items, power leveling chars, reps, etc. Again, Blizzard is pissed that they found yet another way to profit off their game. I am not waiting for the Blizzard Store to sell reputation.

At the end of the day it's their game. They got the money for the game + expansions, the subs, now the gold selling, mount selling, etc. Why do they care if people are paying to have their characters geared? One reason; SHOW ME THE MONEY!

[HeyGuysHello]

"Top guilds were doing it."
Most runs sold by top guilds were actually groups comprised of a few top members and exceptional players they knew, almost always on dummy accounts. Congratulations, you might've made a couple of top people quit if you were lucky. I hope they IP or range banned just to see an Exorcus letter on the front page.

[judgementofantonidas]

About time. And hopefully the real accounts were banned with the dummy ones.

[primalmatter]

I guess I don't understand why...?

We always did it with gold when I was selling stuff through tbc to wod but if they are going to sell gold for real money what is the difference?

Is it just they can't be the middle man for that? This isn't about cheating or unfair advantages or people getting rewards they didn't earn as they are cool with gold so...

Is this just blizzard being annoyed they don't get a cut?

[Greevir]

I guess I don't understand why...?

We always did it with gold when I was selling stuff through tbc to wod but if they are going to sell gold for real money what is the difference?

Is it just they can't be the middle man for that? This isn't about cheating or unfair advantages or people getting rewards they didn't earn as they are cool with gold so...

Is this just blizzard being annoyed they don't get a cut?

Yup. Blizz wants their cut. Maybe in the future Blizz will put in a feature that would allow just that.

[Deleted]

Blizzard selling gold for money is totally fine.
Players selling boost runs for money is BAN!

Guess blizzard wants to have all the money and is greedy and now want more WoWtoken money in there pockets.

Do you really want to stop boost runs blizzard? then maybe you need to do the same thing as the gold and sell packages.

[Frolk]

Blizzard selling gold for money is totally fine.
Players selling boost runs for money is BAN!

Guess blizzard wants to have all the money and is greedy and now want more WoWtoken money in there pockets.

Do you really want to stop boost runs blizzard? then maybe you need to do the same thing as the gold and sell packages.

I would argue that Blizzard isnt selling gold, just allowing players to trade gold/money within the game, they can also make sure this happens safely, blizz cant do that with 3rd partysites etc. Overall its a good thing, maybe less spam in the groupfinder or general chat now, for a couple of weeks.

[Beet]

Blizzard selling gold for money is totally fine.
Players selling boost runs for money is BAN!

Guess blizzard wants to have all the money and is greedy and now want more WoWtoken money in there pockets.

Do you really want to stop boost runs blizzard? then maybe you need to do the same thing as the gold and sell packages.

You're joking right? People get scammed all the time with this. It's why Blizzard is stopping it. And good for them. If you want to make money then maybe get your ass off WoW and get a job? Fucking crazy idea I know.

[Ryme]

I guess I don't understand why...?

We always did it with gold when I was selling stuff through tbc to wod but if they are going to sell gold for real money what is the difference?

Is it just they can't be the middle man for that? This isn't about cheating or unfair advantages or people getting rewards they didn't earn as they are cool with gold so...

Is this just blizzard being annoyed they don't get a cut?

Well, there are genuine legal concerns and various regulations that Blizzard can't manage if you bring real money into the equation outside their purview, that's about as far as I can imagine for an honest reason.

[primalmatter]

Well, there are genuine legal concerns and various regulations that Blizzard can't manage if you bring real money into the equation outside their purview, that's about as far as I can imagine for an honest reason.

Yeah that makes sense and it isn't something I considered. I thought it was either revenue or just the nuisance the ads were becoming.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I haven't played in a while, but from what I'm gathering the worst part about this business was how spammy it was on chat/group finder? Yeah, it's a stupid idea to announce publicly that you're doing something that breaks the TOS, they should've just kept it hush hush and done it on the sly. This has been going on for multiple expansions now, anyway, I remember runs being sold for real life currency back in Cata.

It's been going on since Classic.

[Crashoveride189]

The flip side to that argument is that people that make gold on the AH, but tokens for free game time thus circumventing blizzard collecting sub fees for that user... For players in top guilds, this is merely a setback, they will absolutely be back, bans only affect one account, they can create as many as they need.