Why doesn't blizzard crack down on boosters abusing lfg?

[Crimson Spears]

Huh? You can't advertise a boost run on the LFG tool. Only trade chat. From another line of the referenced support article/

Selling items and services for gold is allowed but can only be advertised in-game through the Trade chat channel

Well thank god you can't do it... here i thought group finder devolved into a cesspool of boosters spamming their wares but thankfully they can't advertise

[Shedaar]

Don't they sell gold? Are 100% of the tokens sold by players? I find it hard to believe that every single token that has been sold was purchased by someone.

Right?
I mean I would love to see some data, it's super interesting

[Unholyground]

Well, the blue post I read was from a long time ago. BC/Wrath time. Blizz explained the cycle that bots often go through. You pay for a levelling or boost service, but are dumb enough not to change your password. People use your account to bot even more, maybe even get your CC info off the WoW website and run up a bunch of charges. Then before your account gets banned they transfer everything off to another account, leaving you with an empty, banned account and a lot of CC transactions. Which is a big headache for them and you. You have all those transaction to get reverse charged, maybe have to cancel the card altogether, and convince Blizzard that you weren't the botter yourself. Maybe they decide not to punish you for breaking the EULA by buying boosts or botting in the first place and unban your account, then they have to restore an approximation of what you lost. And of course deal with the bad press of things like "My wow account got me thousands in CC debt" and such ending up on forums and such. Lots of problems for everyone.

Going back to my previous statement. Even if they had an army of ingame people who knew what to look for to immediately ban people there'd be false positives and, like I said, a flood of "I dindu nuffin unban my account Blizz" and a lot of bad press on the forums.

I know one thing for sure, WoW is on the decline and I doubt it will ever bounce back as hard, I know 3 other players who have played since vanilla who finally had enough of all the bullshit and are no longer playing on official servers, one of which was on a 6 month recurring and finally had enough. When the whales start leaving you know you are doing bad lol.

[Mafic]

I'll be the pessimist and surmise that even in the long term they don't necessarily care about boosting, as long as the WoW tokens get purchased in the end. However, as you alluded to, boosting is a symptom of a larger problem with the game: if the fun and enjoyment of the game goes down (especially in relation to the content being boosted), the boosts will increase. In the end, your game will ultimately suffer if you can't fix the fundamental problems of your game that make boosting so desirable.

Truth be told, I don't really care about player boosting in isolation, but in conjunction with the current state of the game it's pretty bad. As a restatement of what you said, players aren't leaving the game because of boosting, boosting is going up because players are leaving the game. Faction/population imbalance between servers still causes issues, the game doesn't really promote socialization as much as it used to, and the game content itself has been increasingly designed in a fashion that would promote boosting versus putting in the effort to organize a group for said content. Simply put, WoW has become much more of a chore than an engaging, social gaming experience for many players.

Another aspect is that the player mentality has drastically shifted over the years, and the experiences on classic WoW servers is a testament to this. People who are willing to put in the time and effort to learn and clear the hardest content in the game are becoming a dying breed. Players want instant gratification or don't want to have to dedicate a lot of time towards the only content in the game that actually is rewarding. This goes hand-in-hand with game design trending downward in quality when you leave out the top content, which only a tiny fraction of the population even attempts. This is just a recipe for boosting to skyrocket, as there's no other choice for some people.

As it stands right now, the ultimate WoW-killer is and always will be WoW itself, and the rampant boosting is just a sign of WoW inflicting more damage on itself.

My sentiment as well.

Boosting has always existed but since people had avenues of gaining gear through various means it was an afterthought. Now that gearing avenues are more RNG and funneled the pressures of boosting become more appealing.

Gear back in the day you could craft but took a long time was rewarding or an epic quest chain. Or even legendary weapons from a raid that you had help from your raiding guildmates. Those were the days where time and effort yielded something tangible.

[Mardux]

I know one thing for sure, WoW is on the decline and I doubt it will ever bounce back as hard, I know 3 other players who have played since vanilla who finally had enough of all the bullshit and are no longer playing on official servers, one of which was on a 6 month recurring and finally had enough. When the whales start leaving you know you are doing bad lol.

I know another thing for sure, your miniscule anecdotal "evidence" means *very* little in the grand scheme.

And having a 6 month sub doesn't make someone a whale. Lol. Especially considering that 1 person with the 6mo sub spent less on sub fees than the other "2" people you claim have left. Not that those other 2 were whales either.

[Unholyground]

I know another thing for sure, your miniscule anecdotal "evidence" means *very* little in the grand scheme.

And having a 6 month sub doesn't make someone a whale. Lol. Especially considering that 1 person with the 6mo sub spent less on sub fees than the other "2" people you claim have left. Not that those other 2 were whales either.

Regardless, when you lose this many vets there is an issue with the core of the game itself.

[Tziva]

Well thank god you can't do it... here i thought group finder devolved into a cesspool of boosters spamming their wares but thankfully they can't advertise

He was replying to someone saying it was allowed with a quote proving it wasn't.

[cparle87]

I know one thing for sure, WoW is on the decline and I doubt it will ever bounce back as hard, I know 3 other players who have played since vanilla who finally had enough of all the bullshit and are no longer playing on official servers, one of which was on a 6 month recurring and finally had enough. When the whales start leaving you know you are doing bad lol.

So we begin with a statement no one can disprove that suits your agenda. Then you further show your bias in phrasing "I know people quit" in the most offensive way. Combined with a support for criminal actions. Then another assumption that cannot prove followed by another inflammatory nonsense statement. Well done.

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Regardless, when you lose this many vets there is an issue with the core of the game itself.

You're on a roll. Stop claiming you know what other people are doing and thinking just to suit your agenda.

[Unholyground]

So we begin with a statement no one can disprove that suits your agenda. Then you further show your bias in phrasing "I know people quit" in the most offensive way. Combined with a support for criminal actions. Then another assumption that cannot prove followed by another inflammatory nonsense statement. Well done.

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You're on a roll. Stop claiming you know what other people are doing and thinking just to suit your agenda.

If you don't have an agenda you will never be heard, If I didn't love WoW I wouldn't still be on the forums. If you look at WoW objectively as someone who has played it for near 2 decades you can see the game has changed in many ways that are akin to mobile game design philosophy where you are put on a treadmill that they have made slower and slower and consistently taken away class power and reintroduced it as though it was something new, and now they literally have a season pass in the game that they call covenants. It is no longer an RPG that is for damn sure. Mark my words they will add a season pass to WoW on top of the sub fee (which is absurdly priced for what you get) and then all hell will break loose.

[rrayy]

Is this your opinion or is this a fact?

It's his opinion and his narrative.l Both false.

[Beefhammer]

so whose job is to sit and follow the game? hint: back in TBC, a GM apologized to me for answering late by 30 min since i made ticket in patch day for a mistake from my side, i still remember how amazing customer service was in classic pre-cata era
when was last time a GM gave a fuck about answering player now? Heck last time i made ticket because my paladin got stuck and can't login it took them 3 fucking days to answer and unstuck him in whatever status he was, with zero apology of any sort, i can just go fuck myself for 3 days lost because they are busy selling tokens

They never followed the gsme outside of monitoring specific events/situations. GMs were around to respond to players that initiated the process. Blizzard has een very upfront about players policing themselves through blacklisting back in the days before easy name, faction, and server changes. But even then there was a report system.

Just like today, if you see something wrong going on, if no one bothers to report it, Blizzard will be unaware of the issues, until it becomes something widely talked about where they put out a comment like posted above. But as players it's still up to us to police ourselves and report these things.

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It isn't an effective system for combating this.. The account more then pays for itself before action is taken.

Roughly 4 runs pays for it.

But even then what is the alternative, have multiple people monitoring single chat channels 24/7? Not exactly the best option.

[rhorle]

If you don't have an agenda you will never be heard, If I didn't love WoW I wouldn't still be on the forums. If you look at WoW objectively as someone who has played it for near 2 decades you can see the game has changed in many ways that are akin to mobile game design philosophy where you are put on a treadmill that they have made slower and slower and consistently taken away class power and reintroduced it as though it was something new, and now they literally have a season pass in the game that they call covenants. It is no longer an RPG that is for damn sure. Mark my words they will add a season pass to WoW on top of the sub fee (which is absurdly priced for what you get) and then all hell will break loose.

Covenants are not any where near a season pass and you contradict yourself anyways. They can't add a season pass if covenants are literally a season pass. We get that you currently don't like the game but there is no reason to make up BS about it just because you don't like it. WoW is not designed like a mobile game. Power has always been relative to the expansion since gear, stat weighting, etc would always change with the new expansion.

It hasn't been an RPG game since launch because everyone who doesn't like that game uses that is a token response. You don't love WoW anymore by the post you just made yet here you still are. Weird right? You are not looking at the game objectively by any means.

[Unholyground]

Covenants are not any where near a season pass and you contradict yourself anyways. They can't add a season pass if covenants are literally a season pass. We get that you currently don't like the game but there is no reason to make up BS about it just because you don't like it. WoW is not designed like a mobile game. Power has always been relative to the expansion since gear, stat weighting, etc would always change with the new expansion.

It hasn't been an RPG game since launch because everyone who doesn't like that game uses that is a token response. You don't love WoW anymore by the post you just made yet here you still are. Weird right? You are not looking at the game objectively by any means.

I have played many more games, probably more than most people on these forums over the last 30 years and I can tell you, they have been sneaking in mobile design slowly, trying things out here and there. Covenants are indeed a season pass style of content, it isn't paid yet but it will be down the road. They already did it with recruit a friend so it is just a matter of time.

[Ssateneth]

Yes. Every WoW token that was sold to a player was originally bought by a player. What, you think blizz just gives away game time for some imaginary currency for free?

Blizz sets the gold price for wow tokens based on supply/demand and lowers/raises the price if tokens stagnate or sell out. A player must buy a token from blizzard store and put it on AH, and the redeemable token must be bought by a different player.

[arkanon]

Well thank god you can't do it... here i thought group finder devolved into a cesspool of boosters spamming their wares but thankfully they can't advertise

Someone claimed it was allowed, and a correction was made - your reply seems very misguided.

[sam86]

They never followed the gsme outside of monitoring specific events/situations. GMs were around to respond to players that initiated the process. Blizzard has een very upfront about players policing themselves through blacklisting back in the days before easy name, faction, and server changes. But even then there was a report system.

Just like today, if you see something wrong going on, if no one bothers to report it, Blizzard will be unaware of the issues, until it becomes something widely talked about where they put out a comment like posted above. But as players it's still up to us to police ourselves and report these things.

we talking about boosters selling in LFG, that doesn't need report, that needs only an active gm player to see it, in old times wow creators were playing it (i think GC was playing a priest or paladin, and a CM was playing rogue, and another playing shaman etc), now Equinox before he left wow was flat out refusing to play wow in first place, and he was a CM if i remember right, the guy who left mid-bfa
NO, it isn't a customer fault a game has problem, unless they changed rules of customer service in entire world and companies are allowed to sell unfinished bugged products and then blame the customer for it too
We aren't even asking them to monitor whisper - which they can and did before back when selling gold was 'illegal' and they ban ppl who buy it because bobby kodick wasn't getting any of that cash, we are here asking for them to monitor general chat channels, something that even just stand afk in orgrimmar for 1 day and follow chat will full ur list of ppl to ban, if u give a fuck

[rhorle]

I have played many more games, probably more than most people on these forums over the last 30 years and I can tell you, they have been sneaking in mobile design slowly, trying things out here and there. Covenants are indeed a season pass style of content, it isn't paid yet but it will be down the road. They already did it with recruit a friend so it is just a matter of time.

Your time playing games is irrelevant. They have not been sneaking in mobile game design elements. Even then that is a weird thing to complain about since game boy and game gear from back in the day were mobile game platforms. Switch is a mobile game platform. Then you have ports like Stardew Valley to android/apple, minecraft, and the like. But you only mean it in the negative context of phones because you aren't looking at things objectively like you keep trying to claim.

Covenants are not a season pass. They are just the same old reputation grind for perks but instead of reputation it is Renown and Anima.

[anon5123]

They don't even ban botters, why would they ban boost spammers?

[Beefhammer]

we talking about boosters selling in LFG, that doesn't need report, that needs only an active gm player to see it, in old times wow creators were playing it (i think GC was playing a priest or paladin, and a CM was playing rogue, and another playing shaman etc), now Equinox before he left wow was flat out refusing to play wow in first place, and he was a CM if i remember right, the guy who left mid-bfa
NO, it isn't a customer fault a game has problem, unless they changed rules of customer service in entire world and companies are allowed to sell unfinished bugged products and then blame the customer for it too
We aren't even asking them to monitor whisper - which they can and did before back when selling gold was 'illegal' and they ban ppl who buy it because bobby kodick wasn't getting any of that cash, we are here asking for them to monitor general chat channels, something that even just stand afk in orgrimmar for 1 day and follow chat will full ur list of ppl to ban, if u give a fuck

Not a good use of time or money IMO. They really should just implement hardware bans. After reporting, boom. Account banned and the players have to but new equipment each time.

[sam86]

-snip-

what?
blizz NEVER reversed punish back in old days, maybe now since Kodick value $ over any form of morality (he needs to keep his hobby of increase his yearly bonus and fire staff) but in classic era they never did
If u bought gold or boost u r fucked, and since they can and do keep all chat and whispers in-game u can't even claim u are victim and blizz is evil because they can and will and did release the whisper chat u did with gold seller (which happened to someone i even knew personally in-game way back in classic), they aren't afraid of any form of bad PR u can do when u broke the law and bought illegal gold or boost
at best u have ur account totally naked as happened to my rl friend, enjoy it, at worst they can just flat out ban it, and blizz back then had morals, remember they banned the gm shirt item guy permanently and never reversed it, even if most ppl agree it was way too harsh punish