Boosting Communities Deleted from Discord, Remote FollowUnit Script to be Disabled

[Lumy]

WoW Boosting Communities Deleted from Discord
Today, several months after the Policy Update for Organized In-Game Services, a few boosting communities in Europe got their discord server deleted.

Servers affected by this include Dawn, Nova, Oblivion, Sylvanas and Twilight. The owners of these servers also had their Discord account suspended and received the following message: "Your account participated in selling, promoting, or distributing cheats, hacks, or cracked accounts."

According to multiple sources, this is not a mass report on the discord servers. This is more likely a follow-up from Blizzard's risk team since communities simply ignored the new policy update from January and continued to offer escrow services.


Remote FollowUnit Script to be Disabled in Dragonflight and Wrath Classic

So, Blizzard has recently issued heavy-handed anti-boosting measures. However, addons are still able to accept a remote /follow command from another player. This makes boosting services more attractive as boostees can then be fully AFK for a very long time. This is (or was) a common practice for boosting on Faerlina.

How this looks in practice: A booster advertises that they are doing slave pens boosts, and that they have the auto-follow weakaura. 1-4 boostees join, and then the booster shares a weakaura with them that will accept a remote /follow command. Now after they pay the booster they can just go AFK for 30 minutes, since the booster can just type a command in party chat and the boostee characters will automatically follow the booster out of an old instance ID and into a fresh one without them even being at the keyboard.

If the above doesn’t give you an idea of what this would look like, just look at the first 10 seconds of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6voUtTiLz0

I don’t see how the ability to remotely issue a /follow command meaningfully benefits anyone except multiboxers and people selling a service that allows someone to AFK for exp/gear, and Blizzard have now shown that they don’t really appreciate either of these gameplay styles, so I’m wondering why it’s still in the game. While boosting has taken a heavy hit, there do appear to be some boosting options still available albeit not as accessible as before, so in my mind it makes sense to make whatever’s left as inconvenient as possible.

I reached out to our UI and accessibility teams and we’re investigating this.

In general, we agree that accessibility is important, but that doesn’t mean that every effort to stop automation or botting is an attack on accessibility. There are lots of game functions that the game requires a hardware event for, and it makes sense for /follow to be added to that list, based on the behavior Kruffzz suggested. We’re targeting that change for both Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and Dragonflight releases.

Before making decisions like this, we reach out to gamers with disabilities. To be clear, the change we’re planning will still allow a disabled player to follow a guide, including through the use of a Macro or UI Mod to issue the follow command. The behavior it prevents is for UI Mods to initiate a follow on their own based on receiving a message from another source, such as a message from another player.

Thanks for the suggestion, Kruffzz!

[SinR]

Well that's interesting. Surprised Discord stepped in and did anything.

[Cæli]

reminder that discord is a service and will never replace websites

[supermany2]

Good

10 characters

[Myth]

Well that's interesting. Surprised Discord stepped in and did anything.

Really? Discord is owned by MS. It actually doesn’t surprise me one bit given recent news with MS and Blizzard.

[Xilurm]

Really? Discord is owned by MS. It actually doesn’t surprise me one bit given recent news with MS and Blizzard.

They don't own Discord. The deal failed.

[Julmara]

yeet that boosting trash where it belongs

[VoidSeeker199X]

Holy based

[Zenfoldor]

Assuming none of these bannable offenses are illegal...I miss when programs like these were communication tools and not social scoring systems.

Just to clarify this for myself...they are investigating people to verify that they are cheating in World of Warcraft, and banning them, but they do not make nor are associated with World of Warcraft, is that correct?

[Soikona]

They don't own Discord. The deal failed.

But they are working closely since discord is coming to console. I doubt it’s related, but still.

[Orby]

Ladies and gentleman... we got'em

[Accendor]

Holy shit, what dystopian virtual nightmare is that? What the fuck has Discord to do with it?
If Blizzard wants to crack down on them, ban their accounts in-game! Shame on Discord for actually participating in this.

I am totally against botting and that kind of boosting myself (because let's be honest, I know it's a fine line, but that's literally botting with extra steps)
The goal does not justify the means tho

[OrangeJuice]

I will bet my left testicle that LFG is still full of "WTS xxxxx".

[rhorle]

Holy shit, what dystopian virtual nightmare is that? What the fuck has Discord to do with it?
If Blizzard wants to crack down on them, ban their accounts in-game! Shame on Discord for actually participating in this.

It is against the Discord ToS to do certain things. It is no different then when MMO-Champion bans people for talking about hacks/stuff. It isn't a dystopian nightmare but simply things not existing in their own bubbles and ToU/ToS being enforced when requested.

https://discord.com/guidelines
"Do not distribute or provide access to content involving the hacking, cracking, or distribution of stolen goods, pirated content, or accounts. This includes sharing or selling game cheats or hacks."

[Abysmo3420]

Holy shit, what dystopian virtual nightmare is that? What the fuck has Discord to do with it?
If Blizzard wants to crack down on them, ban their accounts in-game! Shame on Discord for actually participating in this.

I am totally against botting and that kind of boosting myself (because let's be honest, I know it's a fine line, but that's literally botting with extra steps)
The goal does not justify the means tho

You realize blizzard has to ability to do this with any website or service that uses their content? Its the reason twitch bans streamers from private servers and YouTube must take down private server videos if they request a copystrike. Just because its on a discord server doesn't allow discord to not follow blizzard rules. Its blizzard's content that they allow to be used by third party platforms.

[Cæli]

You realize blizzard has to ability to do this with any website or service that uses their content? Its the reason twitch bans streamers from private servers and YouTube must take down private server videos if they request a copystrike. Just because its on a discord server doesn't allow discord to not follow blizzard rules. Its blizzard's content that they allow to be used by third party platforms.

blizzard doesn't control the world, blizzard cannot do anything against many websites and especially if it's a website hosted outside the us. I mean...

[Somic]

blizzard doesn't control the world, blizzard cannot do anything against many websites and especially if it's a website hosted outside the us. I mean...

They most certainly can. In fact this exact thing happened where blizzard sued a German company named honor buddy for something like $10 million dollars specifically because they proved in court that their products or practices infringed on the experience of blizzards playerbase and that they were ruining blizzard reputation so they shut them down and they had to pay big big big bucks.

You can argue whether or not blizzard should do something or how hard it would be, but that’s besides the point. They most certainly COULD do something if they wanted to. They have done it before.

[Talon8669]

blizzard doesn't control the world, blizzard cannot do anything against many websites and especially if it's a website hosted outside the us. I mean...

NA dude this is Bobby's world and we just get to hang out. He controls everything!

[Puri]

They most certainly can. In fact this exact thing happened where blizzard sued a German company named honor buddy for something like $10 million dollars specifically because they proved in court that their products or practices infringed on the experience of blizzards playerbase and that they were ruining blizzard reputation so they shut them down and they had to pay big big big bucks.

You can argue whether or not blizzard should do something or how hard it would be, but that’s besides the point. They most certainly COULD do something if they wanted to. They have done it before.

I mean the comparison is completely off, because honor buddy was a bot that directly interfered with the wow client and was not some unaffiliated third party web site, but just to stay in that example: In 2017 Blizzard won in US court and Bossland (the manufacturer of Honor Bot) was made to pay 8.6 million dollards, but in 2018 a german court ruled that (as there are no punitive damages in most civil law countries) Bossland does not have to pay. So they could only seize assets that were in the US, but there were none. So there was nothing to gain for Blizzard (but they effectively shut down Honor bot, which obviously also is a victory).

[Unholyground]

Good now they just need to remove the token as I've been saying and I know it's coming so don't QQ when it happens.