Against the rules to pay someone to join your guild as a "carry raider"?

[evotech]

I don't want to get our guild into trouble, so wanted to see if someone knows if it's against the Blizzard rules to pay someone to join our guild as a raider? Basically going to offer someone (let's say $200/month) to entice them to join our guild and help us progress.

[Lord Pebbleton]

...boy what

[Calfredd]

Real money transactions are indeed against the rules.

...boy what

Also this.

[LordVargK]

Yes. Real money is always illegal, pay them in gold, they can buy tokens and get their money the legal way.

But really, think about this. It sounds TERRIBLE. One (or even more) persons won't carry your raid.

[Justpassing]

For 200 bucks a month that carry guy better be level 150 or something.

[bloaf]

If it involves real money from the real world it's against ToS. You could pay the person in in-game currency and be within ToS. but why would anyone want to do this? Work together as a team and progress through raid.

[Biomega]

ANYTHING that involves real money and things within the game itself (and is not transacted through official Blizzard channels) is a EULA violation and grounds for suspension. It doesn't matter if it's leveling toons, carrying you in arena, or what you describe.

There exists a grey area with things not DIRECTLY related to the game itself, such as paying for guides, addon development, and, of course, anything that's outside content creation. The lines can be blurry sometimes, but a paid raider to carry a guild would definitely be on the illegal side of the line.

[RobertMugabe]

I'll carry your shitty guild for only 100$/month

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Its a predictable reaction, but I think it was just worded poorly.
Instead, what you should have said was, have some one as a contracted raider.
This is something I actually considered looking into as a guild master, because I was sick of the turnover.

Make no mistake. There is no rules about being a part of a third party esports team and playing wow together.

I'm not sure how the legal stuff works though, so that's all I can say.
Obviously Method demonstrates this. They have an esports team that competes and likely gets paid in various ways to do various things.
I don't think there is any way to enforce things like a non-compete clause or something like that though.

That's ultimately where it stopped seeming realistic when I was looking.
You can make a contract and pay people by its term, but realistically, there is no way you could ever enforce it, because Blizzard's own ToS forbids monetary interactions in this way.

So at best, you'd have a gentleman's agreement that they get paid for every raid / event they show up to, and that's it.
They could leave whenever they want and you would have no say about it.
Probably.
I'm not a lawyer.

[evotech]

I know it sounds silly, believe me

Thanks for the helpful responses. Sounds like we'll have to adjust the offer to "1.5 million gold per month" hehe

[JoshuaNLG]

Hit me up, I'll join your guild for 100$ a month. that's savings of 50%!

This has to be a troll though, no one is THAT stupid surely? ...Then again..

[Hellobolis]

yeah it's against the rules. but how is blizzard going to find out?

[evotech]

Its a predictable reaction, but I think it was just worded poorly.
Instead, what you should have said was, have some one as a contracted raider.
This is something I actually considered looking into as a guild master, because I was sick of the turnover.

Make no mistake. There is no rules about being a part of a third party esports team and playing wow together.

I'm not sure how the legal stuff works though, so that's all I can say.
Obviously Method demonstrates this. They have an esports team that competes and likely gets paid in various ways to do various things.
I don't think there is any way to enforce things like a non-compete clause or something like that though.

That's ultimately where it stopped seeming realistic when I was looking.
You can make a contract and pay people by its term, but realistically, there is no way you could ever enforce it, because Blizzard's own ToS forbids monetary interactions in this way.

So at best, you'd have a gentleman's agreement that they get paid for every raid / event they show up to, and that's it.
They could leave whenever they want and you would have no say about it.
Probably.
I'm not a lawyer.

You're right, I did word it poorly, but looking to essentially do the same thing as what you described. I'm going to borrow your "contracted raider" term if you don't mind

[deenman]

its against the rules,but there is no way blizzard can know that unless you record them talking about it,and even then i dont know if it would count as ''proof''

[Hellobolis]

Make no mistake. There is no rules about being a part of a third party esports team and playing wow together.

Don't think it's that black and white. It's probably fairer to say that method has a "license" from blizzard to make money (indirectly) from playing wow.

theres clearly a spectrum.
selling mounts, m+ runs, arena rating for money is against the rules.
selling those things for twitch subscriptions is more of a grey area, especially if you add a random, contest or raffle element to it.

so you know, worst case you could just have the contract raider stream it and then give him "donations" on the stream or something.

[MrLachyG]

I know it sounds silly, believe me

Thanks for the helpful responses. Sounds like we'll have to adjust the offer to "1.5 million gold per month" hehe

I think that’s an exceptionally bad idea and a total waste of gold. Part of raiding is being able to work as a team, especially in mythic raiding, and bringing in a ringer or two won’t help as much as you think it will.

[Shelly]

Not a lawyer but even with it being against the ToS you should be able to do so by having them set up either a patreon or twitch donation channel and pay them through that. If they bust you then you've got plenty of precedent with every WoW streamer out there being paid by those same means as well as sponsorships.

[f4ncybear]

That escalated quickly

[Lucifer Morningstar]

That escalated quickly

This is gold

[PaladinBash]

It's on Tich and it's Horde paying people real money (or piles of gold) to boost their entire guild. Man this just writes itself. If it's all a troll well played, I bit and had a good laugh.