Some players have started to encounter our latest weapon in our efforts against the Real Money Trade (RMT) aka gold buying. If your account is suspected of being involved in RMT, either the selling or receiving of illicit gains, you may find your account subject to a Temporary Economy Hold. You will have restricted use of trade, mail, guild banks and the Auction House while this economic hold is in place.
Our aim with this new system is to aggressively shut down the flow of suspicious gold before it has been transferred or put into circulation into the economy, while providing us the time needed to investigate more thoroughly.
If you are just playing the game normally, it is unlikely you will ever see this restriction applied to your account. If this restriction is applied to your account, it will be either automatically removed when the actions that triggered it have been investigated and found false, or you will receive account actions if found to have been involved in RMT.
This system is new. There may be false positives while things are fine tuned, but merely having a Temporary Economy Hold will leave no permanent strikes against your account unless also later proven to be RMT motivated.
Thank you for joining us! We remain committed to ensure that WoW Forever is not marred by the Real Money Trade, and all of these systems will also be deployed to all versions of World of Warcraft if proven successful.
Great news to finally see some action targeting the RMT!
I really hope this works, and if it works can you please restore the changes you made to mages? So the game can feel like actual classic for mages too?
Please Restore permafrost, improved blizzard, cone of cold, rank 1 fishing as they were in classic please. Those are the core of what a classic mage should be
There so many legit aoe farmers out there that like doing it more than anything else in the game
and please Restore the XP gained in dungeons please, some people like the open world, some people like running dungeons, give players a choice like in classic please
Please let this be the classic plus game for every class in stead of classic minus
What if you’re legitimately making gold through the Auction House on a second account? By crafting stuff on your main, and selling it on the alt for example. Could transferring gold between your own accounts trigger a flag as well, or can your system recognize that both accounts are being played from the same PC?
This sounds like a huge win, but I always have more than 1 account paid and I send stuff from 1 to another to sell on ah etc. I assume gold moved between the same battle net accounts won’t cause issues?
Your log ins are tied to an IP which will be shared by both account logs, so probably no flag there. Also if you Made the Gold legit there isn’t even a reason the Gold itself will be flagged at all.
Thats exactly what I feel aswell, but I have learned to not trust automated ban mechanics over the years. My bank alt was banned for a month during SoD and it was only using TSM, so please forgive me for being extra cautios this time around
And what about trading for professions? For example if you want an enchant on bracers, do you not tip? Or should you expect the enchant for free (if you have your own mats) or if you don’t have the mats the Enchant is free? Or a Mage Portal, again the Mage has to purchase mats to give you a portal, do they just suck it up that they lose money for this? Or would it be reasonable to expect a tip? These are not items you can put on the Auction House.
I am all for Blizzard trying to stop RMT, but I don’t think they are thinking this through and recognising how it may impact players who don’t RMT, but may be caught up in this. I mean as a Mage, how can I vet everyone who asks for a portal and gives a tip to see if their gold/silver has genuinely been earned from game play and not RMT?
Or am I over thinking the problem? Does nobody else see this as having an impact?
in hindsight, all the people who posted about their “auction house restriction” and “unable to trade” ‘bugs’ 3-4 days ago, are now incredibly hilarious to read.
these andies actually outed themselves for RMT and they didn’t even realize it.
note down their names and hand out the bans blizzard.
True, but the combination of automated bans and automated appeal system is what scares me. Put an actual human on the other end of the appeal process, and it should be easy enough to prove if you’re innocent The auto responses however is a big middle finger to those who are falsely punished.
Good effort but it’s concerning that the time lock is not time bound, it should last no longer than say 48hours and if there’s no confirmed positive then it’s unlocked. Otherwise this might lead to people having gameplay restrictions with no compensation, unless you are planning to give them sub time as compensation…
Also while I fully support the RMT crackdown I don’t get why you haven’t started with this and if it didnt work then went on to gameplay altering things like mage changes or GDKP..
This happening to WoW Forever beta Accounts only as this is in the WoW: Forever Forum.
Because I think it should happen throughout all of WoW.
But then I also would think it is quite hypocrite as Blizzard is clearly promoting the selling and buying of gold.
Through all of the countless and countless of ridiculous promotions that are getting out of hand, there is barely a period anymore where there is not an ongoing promotion.
Stuff being given away if you buy stuff on the Gearshop for example.
Any other promotion given away by codes, such as Trolli, Gummi etc. in the past, tons more to mention.
Or even at the latest Blizzcon, giving away codes to people for three new pets.
Have you seen what these sells for on the WoW Market Discords?
Perhaps you should completely stop with ALL of these promotions for a healthy game, noone likes micro transactions.
Same thing as the in-game shop, it’s WAY too much. Yes, you can say, it’s a choice to buy it.
But we all know and so does Blizzard that for a lot of people it’s not a choice. They are collectors.
Just make everything obtainable through in-game methods! Stop promotions with codes that can be resold.
Stop giving away stuff by buying your items on the gearshop (IMO if that is your way to sell products you just have bad products, quality wise, price wise, shipping fee wise)
In one of those wow forever podcasts (episode 1 I think), one of the devs clearly said they are getting really good at idenitifying legitimate and RMT trades. He stated that a small tip you get for an enchant will not get you in trouble.
This sounded reassuring, but…
This bluepost hints at an automated system. We don’t, and we won’t, know what exactly triggers the restrictions, i.e. what amounts of gold, how often trades are made, whether it has changed hands several times, etc.
If you are a dedicated enchanter who sells a lot of enchants every day, you might want to be very careful. An unfortunate trade involving RMT gold might restrict your account to the point of being unplayable. And they didn’t even tell us how long the system will take to investigate
Personally, as a precautionary measure until things settle down, I am not going to enchant anyone but my guildies. I do this free of charge anyway, so I hope at least this won’t trigger any account restrictions.
This more than anything is the red flag for me, like you say small tips I would hope would not trigger any restrictions, unfortunately my faith in Blizzard implementing this as they say they will is not high.
I think also this can backfire on the social side, Mages expect a tip for portals, at the very least to cover the material costs, if people are worried about triggering any restrictions, then I see less portals being available. Although I do appreciate that you offer free enchants for guildies, we must also appreciate that a lot of players do expect to earn from the work they put into profs
The auto responses however is a big middle finger to those who are falsely punished.
