Top Player Bans

[Canitnerd]

Agree. My main objection, and why I posted in this topic, is people trying to pass "boosting" as something harmless or natural.

Paying real money for in game rewards is always easy to agree on as a bad thing, but paying gold to get carried most will agree is fine. The problem is that now gold and real money are officially linked because of the token, so it's hard to come up with an argument against boosting that doesn't boil down to "Blizzard deserves a cut"

[rda]

Paying real money for in game rewards is always easy to agree on as a bad thing, but paying gold to get carried most will agree is fine. The problem is that now gold and real money are officially linked because of the token, so it's hard to come up with an argument against boosting that doesn't boil down to "Blizzard deserves a cut"

Well, Blizzard did that to themselves, so let's just sit on the sidelines and watch the thing burn. I mean, it's a pity that they ruined it, but what can you do, they've been doing the ruining for years... This "OMG, we completely forgot to say, we are against boosts!!! Everyone, be warned!!!!" will do nothing, it is quite powerless against what the game has become.

[Canitnerd]

This "OMG, we completely forgot to say, we are against boosts!!! Everyone, be warned!!!!" will do nothing, it is quite powerless against what the game has become.

They didn't really "forget to say" they are against boosting, boosting has been against ToS for as long as I can remember. It was just barely enforced if at all till now. Blizzard is hardly powerless here, if they started just tossing out blanket 6 month/1 year bans to top guilds they suspect of boosting, boosting would probably drop. They'd lose a lot of their hardcore raiding scene, but I think this expansion has shown Blizzard doesn't care much about us.

[rda]

And one final thing on the topic of the scale of boosts and money.

The GM of one of the top guilds has been able to make a living out of these boosts for several last years. Bought himself a car and apartments, plus vacations with his gf. No other sources of income. Obviously, that's an exception, but the scale of money is big enough to provide for a nice pipe dream to others.

[Cracked]

Gold in this game is useless, $$ are a universal currency. As long as there are people willing to buy rewards for $$, there will be people willing to take the risk and do it.

Position of Blizzard is understandable, they cannot ignore it completely as it would grow 'too deep' into the game, and they can't strictly abolish it due to false positives and even customer loyalty indeed, the people selling the boosts are some of their biggest fans after all.

[Deleted]

everyone will just start using VPNs if they don't already. Other than Bozzle I'm not sure many people give a shit about this tho tbh.

VPNs don't work for that. It sends over far more things than your IP. It's around 20 lines of code with various computer recognition points in it. It's similar to how Windows 10 authentication works, it sends IDs of all your hardware and such over now.

[rda]

They didn't really "forget to say" they are against boosting, boosting has been against ToS for as long as I can remember. It was just barely enforced if at all till now. Blizzard is hardly powerless here, if they started just tossing out blanket 6 month/1 year bans to top guilds they suspect of boosting, boosting would probably drop. They'd lose a lot of their hardcore raiding scene, but I think this expansion has shown Blizzard doesn't care much about us.

Yes, I agree that they were always technically against it. FWIW, I think they are quite powerless to stop it, but I guess we'll see, that's not very important.

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Position of Blizzard is understandable, they cannot ignore it completely as it would grow 'too deep' into the game, and they can't strictly abolish it due to false positives and even customer loyalty indeed, the people selling the boosts are some of their biggest fans after all.

It already grew too deep into the game. Around 80% of glad spots have been bought and sold for I forgot how many seasons already. The PVE race exists in the capacity you know it (people playing for straight weeks and doing insane prep) solely because of the money in boosts for several years as well. After they introduced the token, most of the runs became bought / sold for gold (or, with mythic, for keys - not much of a difference, it's still a transaction, in a game that is supposed to be played for fun), too.

[Deleted]

And one final thing on the topic of the scale of boosts and money.

The GM of one of the top guilds has been able to make a living out of these boosts for several last years. Bought himself a car and apartments, plus vacations with his gf. No other sources of income. Obviously, that's an exception, but the scale of money is big enough to provide for a nice pipe dream to others.

Nothing compared to what gold sellers make though. Even the small ones right now are making bank on it.

[rda]

VPNs don't work for that. It sends over far more things than your IP. It's around 20 lines of code with various computer recognition points in it. It's similar to how Windows 10 authentication works, it sends IDs of all your hardware and such over now.

If they disable piloted runs, the focus will just move to self-played runs, that's all.

[Deleted]

I am failing to see how a 7-day ban is in any way shape or form a major punishment, when the Mythic race is already over, there is no pushing for progression, and many if not all of the top guilds involved have already killed the final boss and have him on farm.
This is nothing more than a cursory slap on the wrist, and actually quite pathetic to my mind. How can you take their threats over the ToS seriously when they hand out crappy bans like this?

Because it's a warning shot. It's like the old 3 day bans. If you commit another serious offense after that, you'd be perma'd.

Don't think they perma anymore though, the max is 6 months, which makes it less likely for you to buy a new account because you don't want to start over again because you can play that account again 6 months in the future. But at the same time, if there's no permanent ban, then people are even more inclined to abuse anything that can be abused.

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If they disable piloted runs, the focus will just move to self-played runs, that's all.

Piloted means someone else plays your account, which is an incredibly small portion of all the sales.

The large majority is self played or self afked like most people call it.

[Canitnerd]

I understand the reason, but to my mind it really won't change a thing. As much as I hate the concept of "Making an example", if you have top tier guilds selling in-game loot for real money, that is a major breach of the ToS. In order for a punishment to be considered a deterrent, it really has to be a punishment, this cannot really be construed as one, and in a couple of weeks, said players will be back to what they do, complete with any money they may have gained from this.
What it boils down to, in my mind, is Blizzard just not wanting to lose the subs, but potentially long term, the "Monkey see, monkey do" mentality might pervade down to lower levels. If those guys don't get punished, why will I? Just creates bad news for the game overall to my thinking.

You don't understand. It isn't a warning to the individual players, it's a warning to the entire hardcore raiding scene. Boosting has gotten more and more popular over the last few expacs and I've never seen ANYONE banned for it. This wave is just to show the scene it can happen. I'd expect the next wave to have more teeth.

[Canitnerd]

I do understand, but it isn't as I said much of a warning when they get to keep the profits from anything they have done.

What do you expect blizz to do, call up the booster's banks and ask for their money?

They have banned individual players, hence why I mentioned them, but unless the guild actually suffers as a whole from it, they won't be too bothered by the whole enterprise.

They banned a random selection of individual players that were in guilds that do sales. I know of at least 5 guilds that had players banned in this wave, and not a SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PLAYERS was the organizer for his guild's sales, or even the player who went to the most sales. It was a random selection. This wave isn't intended to punish, it's intended to remind people that Blizzard will ban for this in the future.

A ban of a major guild just before the whole race kicks off is a far more effective deterrent to my mind, than 1-2 players here or there in the quiet period. But it is horses for courses really on what you feel is an effective ban

Sure, but that is also a DRASTIC escalation to go from "never banned a player for this" to "ruin a tier for X sets of 20 players." This is a more reasonable reminder.

[FelPlague]

I don't think there's anything you should permabanned for on first offence. A warning is always a good thing.

But sure, if they continue to do it after this very obvious "stop doing this" message, then sure permaban away.

However, 7 days is too lenient when botters are getting 6 months on first offence now.

botting and selling runs are on completly different levels! one requires actual work and dedication of multiple people well the other just requires a person to press a button then they can leave for hours well it just does it on its own, one requires people, working, together, the other is one person doing literally nothing, yes 7 days is pretty fucking short as they did make money off this, that is super shit, it should be 3 months, because one shows you care in no absolute way well the other you are atleast still playing the game

(that would be in all caps to show i would legit be screaming this but that would be stupid)

but i do agree perma banning is never a thing that should happen on first offence

ive allways said

When somone loses a wow account they worked on for 10 years they are more willing to bot, on their new account cause they have nothing to lose
but when they lose it for 6 months and are warned (do that again and you might be perma banned) they will do anything to not do it, because at that point they got the gun pointed at their head and they know they do it again they are legit fucked, and they will be much less likley to risk losing that progress


hell i will admit during the times of wrath to do that coin achieve i fish botted, i never got caught but a friend did, and it scared the complete fuck outta me, i uninstalled it and never touched botting, even something as simple as a fishing bot, ever again

(on my brothers account btw back when we shared an account, so dont yall go reporting me to blizz or some shit... i havent had accsess to that account since late wrath)

[Emancptr]

You don't understand. It isn't a warning to the individual players, it's a warning to the entire hardcore raiding scene. Boosting has gotten more and more popular over the last few expacs and I've never seen ANYONE banned for it. This wave is just to show the scene it can happen. I'd expect the next wave to have more teeth.

The problem is Blizzard's ability to detect who is actually selling for real $ is pathetic. If you know/look at the people that got banned and who didn't get banned it's obvious that their detection system is very limited. To get banned you had to be incredibly blatant with either in-game chat logs or guild website/wowprogress post. Even then, only GMs or a handful of people were hit with the ban instead of taking out whole guilds (which if they're serious about banning should happen).

Real $ sellers now just tighten up their ship. Make sure that they leave less of an obvious traceable path and continue to do what they've been doing. If banning Real $ sellers is anything like how Blizzard bans bots, it'll be another 3-6 months before another wave of bans goes out.

[Canitnerd]

2- Sure, they banned random players, but all players who boosted were by definition complicit in the activity. You cannot say "Oh, that guy we had tagging along with us for 3 hours, I didn't know he wasn't part of our guild..." week in week out. Just because they were not advertising or part of it, they were still involved. You are splitting hairs here with all honesty.

My point here isn't that the people who got banned didn't DESERVE to get banned. My point is that if blizzard was seeking to punish people who were boosting for cash, why would they not focus on getting the people actually running the sales? Wouldn't they also have more evidence on those people, considering they are the ones who talk to the buyers, find the buyers and distribute cuts? Just picking players at random out of the groups you think were likely boosting is much easier and gets the point across just as well.

[Propainn]

Hm, in the real world, this would be entrapment and a cause for dismissing the charges. Guess it's different in the Blizzarchy.

That only works if the person is unlikely to actually commit the act outside of the "entrapment." But sure, I guess the websites and laundry list of past sales that their little brother must've snuck on their account late one night to do (i swer it wusnt me) totally don't damn them or anything.

Also, slightly related: laws=/=rules.

[Redblade]

but i do agree perma banning is never a thing that should happen on first offence

It would be the only deterrent...if you know all you'll get is a few days suspension it's still worth it. If you know you will lose the account if you're caught then it will probably put a lot of people off from doing things that break the ToS.

[FelPlague]

It would be the only deterrent...if you know all you'll get is a few days suspension it's still worth it. If you know you will lose the account if you're caught then it will probably put a lot of people off from doing things that break the ToS.

people are more kikley to do something they are warned about ,then something they have been punished for in the past

[Deleted]

I have bought gold on a dozen or so occasions over the (10 or so) years... used a fishbot for a decent time and the odd exploit here and there from ownedcore.. never been banned. I don't overdo anything however.. I don't bot in pvp etc.. I didn't fish to get money, I did to farm those stupid fish in a bubble in MoP...

I did use cheat engine for Starcraft 2 single player (didn't touch multiplayer with it at all) and got banned LOL.. I am just sooo used to use trainers or cheat engine in games (love screwing around doing stuff that wasn't meant to be in games ) and SC2 is the only game ever that made a fuss about it... granted, noone cares if I lax all my skills in Skyrim or Tomb Raider I guess

[Deleted]

really, people are bickering over such small amount.
I can from my experience of being an officer say that not only is it a thankless job, there is a lot more goes on than normal raiders ever realise.
officer getting 30e a month, when they are bringing in 1250e a month from the business side is a miniscule amount.

That they are account swapping, and selling boosts, That though is a difeerent matter. I for one would have no issues seeing anyone who swaps accounts, or sells runs for real money banned. Rules are rules. you can bend them, but outright breaking them like they admitted to in that post deserves bans.

I believe leading a guild has just to be a pleasure, enough to keep within the system.... And I actually would be glad to see all those very well organized groups fall - simply because their circumstances or blizzard law does now longer allow it. Too much money was made, too much relevance was taken by boosters, brokers, boost-guilds, and whatever other more than "just ingame matters"-groups.