Blizzard's Thoughts on the WoW Token in Wrath Classic, WoW Hotfixes - May 24, 2023

[sam86]

Blizzard: "We've banned 73,057 account during last two weeks".
Players:


Reading comprehension at its finest.

literally just read the post below you

If they wanted the WoW token to eliminate illicit third parties then they wouldn't take a 5$ cut on the sale of WoW tokens. When gold buyers can get more gold per dollar spent by buying directly from a gold seller, then there's still going to be a third party market.
Blizzard should change the price of the token to 15$ and give 15$ credit to the gold seller. The 15$ is still going to end up in Blizzard's pockets, it's not like there's a real cost to someone using that balance for Hearthstone packs or WoW game time. It would show they really are trying to make illicit third parties irrelevant.

exactly, let's defend a big cooperation who lives on scamming average worker so if i ever one day become multi rich i find simps to defend me too

[Biomega]

Do people ever get banned for buying gold? i've reported multiple people before the token who spoke openly about buying gold yet they're never been banned

They do. There's plenty of angry forum posts when they get banned, don't you worry.

That being said, it's not as easy or as straightforward as people think to find who is and isn't buying gold, because gold sellers (and buyers) aren't complete idiots that whisper each other in game "hey Susan Express here, I've got the 500,000g you illegally purchased for $19.99 please trade me!". Nor is anyone who receives 10,000g in the mail or purchases a trivial auction for a ton of gold automatically guilty of gold-buying. The sheer volume of even just the suspected cases must be staggering, given how many players there are and how much gold is transacted by and through them all the time in various ways. It's a Sisyphean undertaking to try and catch them all, doubly so because as soon as you find one way to detect what they're doing, they'll come up with another way to hide it better - if you flag transactions over 10,000g, they'll just trade in batches of 9,999g. If you flag mail delivery, they'll do it in person. And so on and so forth, until the amount of work involved simply overwhelms the financial feasibility of any countermeasure that doesn't address things at the root - which is what they're doing with the token.

Is this the perfect solution? No. But there... isn't one. For 20 years, people have stubbornly and insistently made clear that A LOT OF PLAYERS WANT TO BUY GOLD. Period. You're not just going to suddenly make that slice of the population disappear, and short of implementing heavy-handed, Draconian measures with a wide margin of error (a 'solution' that'd be worse than the problem) there just isn't a realistically implementable way to keep this in check. By taking control of the supply and legalizing it, at least now it's safer and you don't have to deal with scammers, credit card theft, hacked accounts, and so on as much as before.

Is Blizzard making money on this? Absolutely. But it's not like money is their sole motivator here - they've tried for years to solve it in other ways, and it's just not working. It's not even surprising that it isn't working, given the scope of the demand. If anything it's surprising they didn't start selling tokens much sooner.

For most people, this shouldn't really change anything anyway. People who buy gold always existed before, too. It's not like this'll magically make everyone become a gold buyer. If you don't want to buy tokens, don't buy them. Tokens don't create gold, either (since they're only a medium of exchange, any gold that you get from selling one comes from another player so it already existed). GDKP runs were dominated by people with tons of gold anyway, and those that wanted to buy gold for GDKP runs more than likely already did so before. What's REALLY changed, in terms of measurable effects for the average player?

[DeltaLimaCharlie]

I don't understand why people seem to think this is some easy solution..."Just hire more people, just ban more people, just find a solution to an age old problem dummy"...Every major MMO/game with currency/market/trading has a massive issue with this, too many armchair devs think they have the perfect solution. By the very nature of these things they will always be behind the illicit RMT trade.
I don't really have strong feelings either way for or against the token. In retail I just used my gold to play for free and turn into Blizzard balance. I'll do the same for Classic. If it helps combat the bots and illicit RMT stuff great, if it not well nothings really changed for me except someone else is paying my sub now.

[Rageonit]

literally just read the post below you
exactly, let's defend a big cooperation who lives on scamming average worker so if i ever one day become multi rich i find simps to defend me too

Lets start with the fact that I'm not defending them, because they are doing nothing wrong. They're a company selling stuff, as companies do. Don't like the product, don't buy it. I'm in a guild and I don't give a shit about GDKP, tokens and what have you. If YOU have a problem with that, don't hop into the hamster wheel in the first place; nobody forced you there. Then everything is bliss.

[Algorath]

I'm sure the 37 people still playing WoW:classic are devastated

Ulduar is gone. The last "nostalgic" thing is done. You are basically playing Retail:Timewalking from here on.

[Relapses]

"crimes happen since 7000bc so we should just stop fighting it and defund all legal laws"
we can also save money by remove court and judge, u know what just give everyone a gun and let them solve their problems

Slippery slope, and not even a good one. There's a tipping point somewhere and while I disagree with Blizzard adding the token at this time I feel like it was an inevitability given how they failed to stop it from the beginning.

[Maell]

Those talking about Korean Servers saying there can't be bots there because you need a SSN to create an account there, if you could see the demographics of those accounts, you would not believe how many senior citizens play it.

[rNadom]

Those talking about Korean Servers saying there can't be bots there because you need a SSN to create an account there, if you could see the demographics of those accounts, you would not believe how many senior citizens play it.

Identity thief is also a criminal offense, not just an EULA violation.
If caught, doesn't cost Blizzard any resource, just forward the data to the feds.

[Gorsameth]

"crimes happen since 7000bc so we should just stop fighting it and defund all legal laws"
we can also save money by remove court and judge, u know what just give everyone a gun and let them solve their problems

But that isn't what Blizzard is saying at all. Introducing the Token won't stop them from fighting bots or RMT.

The real world is full of examples that support Blizzards view.
Just look at the effects of legalizing cannabis on crime, addiction and healthcare.

[Mendzia]

Those talking about Korean Servers saying there can't be bots there because you need a SSN to create an account there, if you could see the demographics of those accounts, you would not believe how many senior citizens play it.

Of course there can be and are bots.
Korean client is the same as we have it in EU/US.
Nobody cares if X person uses fishing bot for a 5min.
Problem is botting in large scale when it ruins in-game economy, they are everywhere and it is not worth to having herbalism, mining and skinning and you can't progress with your quests because they are killing everything.

Even if they use random senior citizens IRL data... that is something several degrees worse than just 'oh no they are botting in game' and potentially is probably like criminal identity stealing stuff.
At the end this system is definitely not perfect but is the reason why there is no 'AI friends' problem in Korea in large scale because it is not easy to just make another account after being banned.

[Skymercy]

No idea what some ppl are smoking, but I'd love some of that.

I have been playing WoW classic since early TBC and I have been raiding in GDKPs since then. Back in TBC some whales were willing to pay 25K+ for BiS items. I had seen it multiple times. There was no token back then, and ppl were still buying gold from 3rd-party websites. Even in WotLK classic, 3 weeks ago, a player bought comet's trail for 200k and another bought Pharos gloves for 170K. Clearly, those players are gold buyers. Adding WoW token for WoTLK classic allows those transactions to still happen but under Blizzard's watch and profit.

You can't blame Blizzard's for everything that is going on. Think of this issue as a necklace that is made of small chains attached to one another. One chain is blizzard, another is the player, another could be the economy..etc.

Some ppl have issues that Blizzard wants to profit and make money by adding wow token to classic. Of course they want to make money, it's a huge company that has huge expenses and they want to get paid for the work that they do. Don't be naive thinking that blizzard would put the player before itself, because if it ceases to exist, we all would cease to exist (in-game).

Blizzard's main fault were allowing some ignorants (mainly casuals, nubs who play the game seasonally) share their opinion about the game and listening to their feedback. If it were to me, I would say "this is what we have, play or fuck off, your call."

Unfortunately, some ppl don't deserve freedom or democracy. However, this is some philosophical view that many would not understand. After all, most humans "hear" not "listen", "skim" rather than"read&comprehend" so that at the end they would speak with the lack of understanding.

[Stickiler]

I can foresee tokens to be able to exchange for b.net balance 6 months after D4 launch, when they haven't meet their D4 sales target.
They would just done that and delay launching the token 6 months altogether, if they weren't scrambling to gain alternative revenue today.

You can already exchange tokens for b.net balance in Retail, and have been able to almost since they released it(I think it was like, 12months after token release they added the b.net balance?). The fact that it's not possible in Wrath means Blizzard specifically didn't enable it, probably because they didn't want the two games' tokens influencing each other. If you could exchange them both for b.net balance, you'd have a seesaw effect of people farming whichever game was easiest to earn token gold in, which would be detrimental to both games.

[vizzle]

I just find it hard to believe that botters can get their giant teams of bots all the way to max level without any internal flags going off notifying Blizzard of the bots. I just don't buy the excuse that they work so hard to ban bots. It's not like you can start the game up to a fresh max level character (or can you? Correct me if I'm wrong). There's an entire leveling journey these bots have to go through before they can start end game botting and farming and yet they can't do anything to detect that and automatically ban them?

[sam86]

But that isn't what Blizzard is saying at all. Introducing the Token won't stop them from fighting bots or RMT.

so why they introducing token then if having token or not u still have bots problem? according to them it is to fight bots, yet they already admit it won't?
as one of ppl i quoted here said: if it is just to 'fight bots' why take 5euro/$ profit out of it in ur pocket then? why not sell it for exact price of sub (since it is for sub in first place) and still get gold from it?
It is flat out scamming, they doing that to compensate for losing the massive chineese market, and unlike wrath era where they didn't need china in first place (fun fact, wrath was released in china almost at time of pre-patch cata, and heavily censored too, wow biggest success was pure western with zero china) because i-hate-videogames bobby kodick wasn't still in charge, they need any money source now
Want to prove goodwill and actually trying to solve it? sell token for same price as 1 month sub, that simple and easy

[SL1200]

Wow token has had such a major impact. There isn't anything that's not for sale. Blizzard wants their cut. I don't blame them, but I think it's a better game without it.

[sam86]

I just find it hard to believe that botters can get their giant teams of bots all the way to max level without any internal flags going off notifying Blizzard of the bots. I just don't buy the excuse that they work so hard to ban bots. It's not like you can start the game up to a fresh max level character (or can you? Correct me if I'm wrong). There's an entire leveling journey these bots have to go through before they can start end game botting and farming and yet they can't do anything to detect that and automatically ban them?

they can't, and add to it bot spots are very well known and infamous like Hellfire roc's farming spot where u find hunters 24/7 there, heck bots can't gold farm as any other class but hunter in first place, and lastly a gold farm lvling bot won't lvl as fast as a human can at all, so they are already slower than even average player

I still remember even now after ~18 years back in tbc at a patch launch (when they removed priest racials, was it 2.3?) and tickets were overflowing i made ticket and got a 'late' answer in less than 2h and they apologized for being slow too, tell me what is average ticket time right now and they have 1/10 of player population they used to

- - - Updated - - -

I have been playing WoW classic since early TBC and I have been raiding in GDKPs since then. Back in TBC some whales were willing to pay 25K+ for BiS items. I had seen it multiple times. There was no token back then, and ppl were still buying gold from 3rd-party websites. Even in WotLK classic, 3 weeks ago, a player bought comet's trail for 200k and another bought Pharos gloves for 170K. Clearly, those players are gold buyers. Adding WoW token for WoTLK classic allows those transactions to still happen but under Blizzard's watch and profit.

why u didn't think they are goblin AH? i knew a priest back in TBC whose main way of playing was controlling AH, just that, he was richest on server, in wrath in my guild a troll priest (weird class pick coincidence) was also an AH goblin who was using advanced addons to maximize profit, when our guild collapsed in wrath end after we killed LK and half us got done with game, he left game since - back then - u couldn't transfer char with more than 25 or 35k gold (is it still true now?)
My server Ghostlands EU had at least 2 ppl i knew who control AH, had bank alts and their main joy in game is to have as much gold as they can to do as they want, they were the type who bid 200k on a rare drop when back then in wrath buying a mammoth traveler was impossible for half of playerbase (16k at exalted)
Seeing someone rich doesn't mean he bought gold illegal, in fact the ppl who bought illegal gold i knew did that to buy mount in classic/tbc, or a boost in tbc, but they never had 200 or even 100k gold from buying

[Stickiler]

wow biggest success was pure western with zero china)

That's just not true, if you look at the Blizzard Financial report where they reported their highest ever subscriber count, and read the fineprint, they clearly state that the subscriber number includes the chinese market, aka anyone who's purchased at least 1 hour of WoW time at a PC cafe in the China region. WoW's "biggest success" was a carefully fabricated half-truth designed to make their subscriber count look way larger than it actually was.

[Hitei]

Of course there can be and are bots.
Korean client is the same as we have it in EU/US.
Nobody cares if X person uses fishing bot for a 5min.
Problem is botting in large scale when it ruins in-game economy, they are everywhere and it is not worth to having herbalism, mining and skinning and you can't progress with your quests because they are killing everything.

Even if they use random senior citizens IRL data... that is something several degrees worse than just 'oh no they are botting in game' and potentially is probably like criminal identity stealing stuff.
At the end this system is definitely not perfect but is the reason why there is no 'AI friends' problem in Korea in large scale because it is not easy to just make another account after being banned.

What do you not get about the post that you read being just complete bullshit?

There is plenty of regular botting on korean servers. The claim was literally proven wrong in the same reddit thread.

Here are literally pictures of korean botting.



Here is an entire article talking about how terrible the botting problem is on Korean Classic in 2020:
https://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news...40501&site=wow

1,846 accounts were banned in April, 3,860 accounts in March, and 3,929 accounts in February.

Here is an article explaining how the "omg social security lock" does fuck all because Chinese workshops will just set up phishing scams and other illegal methods to acquire numbers, steal accounts, or otherwise bypass the protection.
https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9E%91%EC%97%85%EC%9E%A5#fn-6

Here is a video from three months ago of a guy pointing out and complaining about the atrocious DK botting problem

[Relapses]

What do you not get about the post that you read being just complete bullshit?

The best part about it, to me, is that you literally found everything you linked in this post from the reddit thread he linked. It's almost like he wasn't actually looking for a source to corroborate his views, he just wanted hollow validation that his viewpoint was correct in his mind.

[vizzle]

they can't, and add to it bot spots are very well known and infamous like Hellfire roc's farming spot where u find hunters 24/7 there, heck bots can't gold farm as any other class but hunter in first place, and lastly a gold farm lvling bot won't lvl as fast as a human can at all, so they are already slower than even average player

I still remember even now after ~18 years back in tbc at a patch launch (when they removed priest racials, was it 2.3?) and tickets were overflowing i made ticket and got a 'late' answer in less than 2h and they apologized for being slow too, tell me what is average ticket time right now and they have 1/10 of player population they used to

So yeah, exactly. It's such a shame that Blizzard would rather say "oh we try so hard to ban bots but it's a never ending arms race" when bots are -more obvious than ever before-. The only investment on their end would be having a few hourly minimum wage guys to patrol the world, respond to reports, find the hotspots, and just ban every single day. Then if they want to automate it, just write up a few scripts/flags of the things these bots keep doing and just follow them as they move to a new location. Again, it's not like they can break an economy in one day; Blizzard lets it go on for weeks and months and then pretend they're on the frontlines of Bakhmut, lmao.

But they don't want to do that because it would lose them so much money, apparently. *shrug* They benefit from these bots more than anyone.