99.9% of messages in trade chat is people asking for gold to boost you.

[Tyris Flare]

I love the idea of calling them "criminals."

Boosting isn't against the ToS. Even if it was, violating the ToS in a game is not a real "crime" lol

[Couchpotato2013]

I'm actually very curious when boosting exploded like that and why exactly.

Yes it has absolutely been something since classic but like ... 100+times less, not even exaggerating.

People will explain away that it has always been a thing (not wrong), but what they fail to let people talk about is the extent of boosting services, the efficiency, and centralization of communities. Especially after the implementation of the wowtoken and the more recent trend from blizzard to use FOMO and seasonal play (aka fun new thing) to push player activity.

Boosting now and in bfa cannot and should not be compared to pre-token. You can argue MoP with CMs but even that was fractured on a per server basis mostly.

[DechCJC]

Idk what else trade could be used for nowadays really.

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

LOL @ the obvious upset boosters here.

How dare you challenge their sketchy behaviour OP!

[loras]

Does anyone like this kind of situation that has developed in the game in the past few years? I'm personally disgusted by this; it's pretty obvious most of those people are selling the gold to make real money; I'm pretty sure the majority of them are not hard core guilds in a real need to get more gold to progress in raiding.

Yeah, it's a bit disgusting.
But it looks like they've been trying to crack down on negative behaviour in recent years, what with their efforts against botters and multiboxxers being expanded.
I've some hope that they'll toll the bells for this practice soon enough.

[Asrialol]

You don't have to be "The Police" to not want criminals, or to not want the global trade channel be unusable.

That's literally the equivalent of saying: "why do you not want murderers here?"; "you're not the police".

They're not criminals. People selling gold for real world currency isn't criminals.

Do you think breaking a ToS makes you a criminal?

[SynDethroc]

Maybe that's what YOUR server's trade chat looks like. I play on Moon Guard, so...

[david0925]

Maybe that's what YOUR server's trade chat looks like. I play on Moon Guard, so...

Goldshire inn for 50 gold?

[Queen of Hamsters]

"Criminals"

Fucking spat my ice tea at that. TIL that selling boosts for in-game gold makes people C R I M I N A L ! ! ! 1 1



Since I can use Google, I've simply installed an addon which allows me to filter the boost messages. Easy.

[Kaykay]

It's the inevitable endpoint of a p2w game.

Buy a token, get anything you want in the game.

zero effort. hundreds of sellers, looking to both sell the gold you pay with, or guilds just saving up for inflated BoE's (boe's inflated because of the readily available token).

If gold wasnt instantly available for anyone with a creditcard, these people wouldnt have enough customers to spam every server a hundred times a second, hundreds of groups just running the same boss every 30 minutes.

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

I took a shot every time the OP wrote the word "criminals". I'm pretty drunk now.

[Jester Joe]

LOL @ the obvious upset boosters here.

How dare you challenge their sketchy behaviour OP!

Yep, sure got 'em, me and my sketchy behavior of buying hearthstone packs with WoW tokens.
Oh wait, I might have bought a race change with another? Can't remember.

[Cæli]

use badboy addon like everyone to filter trade chat

[epigramx]

Think you're gonna need more evidence that boosters are doing Real Money Transactions/Selling Gold than "it's obvious" because blizz notoriously bans people harshly for that

Why would you believe that? First of all: they personally profit from this; the boost-ees can pay money to the devs so that they get gold so that they can give it to boost-ers.
Secondly: the gold sellers may keep the gold for MONTHS before they sell it for real money so "they would be banned immediately" doesn't work.

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Lol, hardcore guilds are the ones buying illegal gold, remember the Scripe / Gallywix chat leak?

There would be no boosters / goldsellers if there were no boost buyers / gold buyers. Maybe you should be outraged at them instead.

Blizzard doesn't really bother. And ex-guildie of mine who went to play classic tbc boasted on discord how he bought illegal gold on classic from Chinese farmers and somehow he's not banned despite so-called "banwaves" for gold buying. Clearly Blizzard isn't very thorough. Another guy I know was temp banned on classic... for honor leeching in BGs. Certainly Blizzard has their priorities straight who's more ban-worthy.

From what I know, most people who boost need the gold themselves for subscription tokens, raid expenses, boes... If someone's selling illegal gold it's much more likely it's the heads of those "boosting communities" that take a cut form every boost and amass so much gold they have no idea what to do with it except sell for irl money (cue Gallywix case, but also a lot of smaller boosting communties, sometimes this ends with a ban / owner stealing the gold and disbanding the community, sometimes not).

Unfortunately the market became pseudo-monopolized by the boosting communities, small teams of boosters be it m+ teams, arena partners or raiding guilds don't stand a chance to attract customers when the "communities" outspam them and can easily attract buyers cross server and transport gold between servers easily.

It's a cartel system where the hoes get blamed, but the pimps run scot free, and the customers pretend to be upstanding citizens.

I don't give a shit about the boostees either. If they could both stop this nonsense it would be great.
Why the hell do the boostees think it's an achievement to pay to win anyway?

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the criminal thing doesn't make sense

but boosting is bad for the game but it's a vey profitable thing for both blizzard and boosters

it's also a huge f*** off to all the other players who don't want to be part of that system - who want to interact with people to play together rather than a transaction focus communication

and by the way if you don't like to interact with people you have nothing to do in a mmorpg

no wonder everyone is leaving for FF XIV

I mean what kind of game is that, where the meta is to buy tokens with real money to get a boost for content you don't want to do/ you're too bad to do, don't have time to do (why do even play then ?)

wish blizz would do something about it but at the same time why would they ruin they're cash flow ?

Don't they have pay to win schemes like this in ff14? I'd be surprised if they don't.

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So they're NOT criminals. Case closed.

"They probably, maybe, technically, might, possibly, not pay taxes" is not a reason to call someone a criminal, or we're all criminals.

Why are you all criminals? If you defraud Blizzard and then don't declare taxes you are. Not always.

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Not sure what your server is, but luckily I don't experience that on mine. As well, Blizzard has announced that they do not mind using Trade Chat for boosting advertisement, as it is against the rules to do it in the LFG tool. If you wish to be rid of it, of course, you can block it, and if it is too aggressive from one account, then you report them for spamming.

Pick any server with high population, especially those that have a top 20 guild in them. The spam is hilaaaaaariously high; what pisses me off is that they're not even from the guilds in the realm; they're almost always level 1 alts of people that have made it their job to boost others and keep spamming multiple servers.

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It’s a product of the token and its standardization of value for services across a region (aka metaphorical platinum).

Perhaps, however: I suspect it's also a product of people selling the gold for real money.
You might be very right though that the "legit" money of Bliz made it way worse.

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It's like complaining that most of traditional mail are adverts and taxes. People just use emails nowadays.

Same in this situation - group finder, modern auction house and tools outside game are just more convinient than trade chat. But many people have that turn on by default, which is used by boosting adverts.

It's not the same at all. In your regular mail you're not going to have 90% of it being level 1 alts of people that made it their job to spam 10-20 servers all day 24/7/365 without even being from those realms.

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I'm actually very curious when boosting exploded like that and why exactly.

Yes it has absolutely been something since classic but like ... 100+times less, not even exaggerating.

It's probably true that the token made it much worse. I bet people now try to buy EVERYTHING blizzard sells with gold.
If they keep spamming mounts and other microtransactions then boosters may multiply.

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I love the idea of calling them "criminals."

Boosting isn't against the ToS. Even if it was, violating the ToS in a game is not a real "crime" lol

I meant there those that sell the gold for real money, and obviously don't declare it for tax at all,
and if they do that systematically they are usually criminals.

[Lochton]

Pick any server with high population, especially those that have a top 20 guild in them. The spam is hilaaaaaariously high; what pisses me off is that they're not even from the guilds in the realm; they're almost always level 1 alts of people that have made it their job to boost others and keep spamming multiple servers.

Well. I am on a high population server, though. I guess it is more servers where there are trending guilds and streamers.

[epigramx]

People will explain away that it has always been a thing (not wrong), but what they fail to let people talk about is the extent of boosting services, the efficiency, and centralization of communities. Especially after the implementation of the wowtoken and the more recent trend from blizzard to use FOMO and seasonal play (aka fun new thing) to push player activity.

Boosting now and in bfa cannot and should not be compared to pre-token. You can argue MoP with CMs but even that was fractured on a per server basis mostly.

It probably became way worse with the pay to win systems. E.g. top 20 guilds give BILLIONS to get BOEs early with gold, and I bet a ton of legit players try to buy EVERYTHING from the Blizzard shop with gold and the only way to do that fast is to spam trade chats with boosting services.

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Idk what else trade could be used for nowadays really.

Communicating with your realm for a change. Don't guilds still need to be in the same realm?
They didn't make mythic region-wide: did they?

[Razion]

I've largely considered the global chat channels useless since Cata, although they've been filled with spam even before then (as if the legend of the Barren's chat wasn't evident enough) and the situation has never been fixed to a satisfactory degree.

It degrades all communication and socialization outside of your specific guilds or friends greatly and it results in a ton less of people actually interacting meaningfully not only because of people actively turning off these channels to avoid the spam and useless chaff, but also because those that even try to persist are eventually always and persistently overrun by the futility of it.

If it were just a random trade troll this would be different, they'd get a warning (well, eventually) and the problem would likely be over with an ignore barring that.

With things how they've developed, it's a complete degredation of the entire social experience in an MMO. This isn't social trade and free exchange of goods, it's a mockery of it - the demand for gold is endless and infinite. These aren't players after one goal that can be satisfied, it's an infinite demon that scales infinitely with the nature of why these runs exist - not only for competitive guilds where those gold demands keep inflating tier by tier, but any other guild looking to make spare bank for their normal needs.

The pace of demand has outscaled the community's ability to provide. Why? Boosting is done to progress one's power via gear to make the content easier, and for achievement clears to get into other groups in the first place.

We can draw the conclusion that partially this entire situation is to blame from raids and higher difficulties not having automatic matchmaking to allow queuing into content people are capable of, but also that the content requires that higher gear to be admissible at all. The latter being perpetuated by gear rarity with the drop of gear acquisition from M+ worsening the situation.

People wouldn't need boosts as much if there was satisfactory and easy catch-up to idealized gear levels and easy ways to match into the content, with the content being easier so people could reliably clear it. We saw this with LFR, but the rewards still continue to be undesirable in power and also unsuitable to resolving the issue of actually gearing people up. The challenge is a problem for people who want that too. Man, if only there was a way to automatically queue for an M+ version of raiding, that might solve perhaps some of this if the gear was good enough and the content easy enough. Well, maybe. In theory.

[epigramx]

Yep, sure got 'em, me and my sketchy behavior of buying hearthstone packs with WoW tokens.

I think a lot of people are disgusted by this even when the gold selling is done purely legitimately on the blizzard shop.
They just find it extremely lame that people don't play to win but pay to win; be it with gold or real money -> gold.
One could STRETCH it that gold can be farmed but it can be also bought and to be honest farming != skill.

[Kaykay]

I think a lot of people are disgusted by this even when the gold selling is done purely legitimately on the blizzard shop.
They just find it extremely lame that people don't play to win but pay to win; be it with gold or real money -> gold.
One could STRETCH it that gold can be farmed but it can be also bought and to be honest farming != skill.

It's not necesarily about skill, but effort.
Having to farm millions of gold without a token, actually requires some effort. And letting them use that to buy boosts or raid mounts whatever is not the same, as having to option spend an hour at work, and dump millions of gold that would take you days to farm ingame, from non-boosting services.

Farming a million through disenchanting, herbing, mining, skinning takes days. Most people can use tokens to cut that down to seconds.

It's been pay2win since the start.

[epigramx]

I've largely considered the global chat channels useless since Cata, although they've been filled with spam even before then (as if the legend of the Barren's chat wasn't evident enough) and the situation has never been fixed to a satisfactory degree.

It degrades all communication and socialization outside of your specific guilds or friends greatly and it results in a ton less of people actually interacting meaningfully not only because of people actively turning off these channels to avoid the spam and useless chaff, but also because those that even try to persist are eventually always and persistently overrun by the futility of it.

If it were just a random trade troll this would be different, they'd get a warning (well, eventually) and the problem would likely be over with an ignore barring that.

With things how they've developed, it's a complete degredation of the entire social experience in an MMO. This isn't social trade and free exchange of goods, it's a mockery of it - the demand for gold is endless and infinite. These aren't players after one goal that can be satisfied, it's an infinite demon that scales infinitely with the nature of why these runs exist - not only for competitive guilds where those gold demands keep inflating tier by tier, but any other guild looking to make spare bank for their normal needs.

The pace of demand has outscaled the community's ability to provide. Why? Boosting is done to progress one's power via gear to make the content easier, and for achievement clears to get into other groups in the first place.

We can draw the conclusion that partially this entire situation is to blame from raids and higher difficulties not having automatic matchmaking to allow queuing into content people are capable of, but also that the content requires that higher gear to be admissible at all. The latter being perpetuated by gear rarity with the drop of gear acquisition from M+ worsening the situation.

People wouldn't need boosts as much if there was satisfactory and easy catch-up to idealized gear levels and easy ways to match into the content, with the content being easier so people could reliably clear it. We saw this with LFR, but the rewards still continue to be undesirable in power and also unsuitable to resolving the issue of actually gearing people up. The challenge is a problem for people who want that too. Man, if only there was a way to automatically queue for an M+ version of raiding, that might solve perhaps some of this if the gear was good enough and the content easy enough. Well, maybe. In theory.

I don't think the problem here is that casuals don't get more gear easily (and that we need subsystems giving them gear easily to the point of them needing no groups or guilds etc.). Skill is skill and it should always play the main role on who succeeds (to not say the ONLY role).
The main disease here is that there is an ONLINE SHOP that sells gold and people inversely sell their in-game gold to get in-game rewards (before we even go to fraudulent activity of selling gold for real money which also happens but it's not required to have the problem).