Gold Transactions Must Be Direct

Community General Discussion
1

We’ve recently completed a round of actions taken against accounts that were found to have participated in spending real money on gold provided by a third party (RMT). Some of the accounts actioned purchased the illicit gold and had the seller deliver it to a different player who provided a service to the purchaser, such as a raid carry.

Please be reminded that gold received from an intermediate player has an extremely high likelihood of being illicit gold that was part of an RMT. To avoid actions such as account suspension and the removal of illicit gold, players should always directly transfer gold from the player buying the carry (or other activity) to the player providing the carry.

Guilds that provide carries to players, who pay for them with gold that comes from an intermediate, are at risk of seeing that gold removed by Blizzard.

Thank you very much!

5 Likes
3

We get it, you insist on your own cut, but what about the thousands of obvious transactions done for real money under the table? What reason would someone have to boost hundreds of players for 10 hours a day?

If they accept gold, obtained either through “approved” or illicit methods they accept IRL currency as well and this saves them time on monetizing their efforts, for which you might receive an even better deal.

Surely you must be equally as mad when you don’t receive a percentage. Why not ban them all and outlaw advertising? There will still be a demand and policing the black market is a futile effort, but at least we won’t drowning in spam.

4

I think it’s time devs looked at the reasons people want to boost in-game. My take is that boosting boils down to a few reasons:

  • “I don’t feel I’m good enough, or others don’t think I am, and FOMO.”

  • “I don’t have a lot of time to play.”

  • “I really do not want to boost another alt, farm all those crests, etc.”

Now, you can’t always fix reasons one and two, but the third one can be fixed almost overnight (I say overnight, but it’s probably next season). This could be done by making crests account-wide once they unlock, or allowing your alts to gain crests once your main is capped for the week. Hell, I’d even argue it could soften point two.

Say you have X main, and you’re capping out Mythic crests each week. You’re still doing keys because you like them (or hate yourself, whatever), and you can see your toon getting Hero crests, Champion crests, Veteran… Mar… you get it.

Having the option to send those Mythic crests to alts Y and Z would probably incentivise players to pick up alts. What sounds better for engagement?

Having an alt geared within 5–10 ilvls of your main fairly quickly, spending weeks catching up, or not bothering and going to play another game? I know commercially you don’t want the last choice, and I can confidently suggest option two is dull for players.

It’s dull because you rely on the goodwill of your guild, friends, or community. It’s dull because you spend time being rejected from keys you’re capable of doing. Or you buy boosts and get the gear, score, and crests in the most effective way. Which would you pick? Which would most of the player base pick?

You can further incentivise players by removing vault-looted items from bonus rolls. This season has rendered the game into bonus-roll resets for the most part. Don’t get me wrong: bonus rolls in week two, with the opportunity to roll higher-track loot (or 6/6 Mythic after a Mythic kill), feel great. The power spikes are fun, the kill feels worth it, but I wonder how many people opened the vault after their first Ula’tec kill, saw an item they wanted, and couldn’t take it in case they bonus-rolled it the week after? How crap, frankly, is that?

Boosting has its place in WoW… to a point. Right now, your game design is pushing people to buy boosts, boosters to boost alts, and everyone and his dog to try to boost for a steady gold stream.

Pull the ripcord. Open crests up to alts. Increase the discount on alts to further incentivise players to try a new class, a new role, without completely needing to start from scratch.

If the choice is between allowing those who are already playing to have a bit more fun, but play a week or two less because they have better loot options and alts are easier to get into shape, or having the game run into the ground by boosting and the advertising spam that goes with it, go with the first option. I think we’re already on the path to the latter.

I hope you enjoyed my mini TED Talk. I also hope others throw some ideas in, critique this, expand on it, whatever.

1 Like
5

Sure, people buy Mythic raid runs to farm crests :joy:

Well, at least one of the RU guilds that was involved in “services” was banned today :slightly_smiling_face:

6

Technically speaking, I have a hard time understanding why this is against the rules.

If (A) spends money and buys some gold from (B) on a website, and (B) delivers the gold to (C) in the game, and (C) provides a boost to (A) in a raid, what exactly has (A) done that violates the rules?

Because don’t get me wrong here, but on what basis are the rules extending beyond World of Warcraft?

(A) just receives a raid boost in the game. There is nothing in-game that ties (A) to any transfer of gold, so on what basis would his account be actioned?

(B) is a gold-seller. Take action against his account, fine.

(C) receives gold from (B) and provides a raid boost for (A). Why is the action of (C) against the rules?

So in summary: I don’t understand this. You’re outlining some action you’ve taken, but where’s the policy? Link your damn policy! “Gold Transactions Must Be Direct”. Okay, link the policy where it says so explicitly.
You wrote a bunch of words that is the equivalent of a story text. You wrote a story about something you’ve done as a company. Okay, cool, whatever. Link your policy that outlines in detail what is allowed and isn’t allowed as it pertains to gold-buying, trading, and player services.
Creating these random posts, of which this is just the latest among many, is ridiculous.

Stop with the story writing and just link your damn policy.

2 Likes
7

How about just not allowing boosting even for just gold then people wont buy gold for rmt either, and m+ can be about who is good instead of about who has the most money friends and so on…

8

Dear lord man. Rules are rules deal with it. Move on !

9

Yes

Bought a boost (for gold from tokens) this tier for gold simply because the Ulatek fight is so needlessly punishing. Same for Lura but managed to kill that normally. The last couple raid tiers have felt like the raid design has gone down hill and I don’t know why. Prior tiers have always felt rewarding but Ulatek and lura just felt punishing. And quite frankly is the reason I’m prob skipping s3 for forever which looks to actually be fun

10

It is stated clearly that purchasing GOLD for Real money on Third party websites is AGAINST blizzard rules !.. end of story !

11

Sure, and if Blizzard can find evidence within the game that proves that a player has done that, then they can ban him.

But in this case where the gold doesn’t go directly to the buyer, but instead goes to another person, you can’t ban the buyer, because there’s no evidence that he has bought any gold. Blizzard would only have evidence of that if they knew what the person was doing outside the game (for example on private Discord channels or Chinese gold-selling websites). But they’re not allowed to snoop into anyone’s business outside the game. That would be a gross violation of privacy.
So on what basis is the player getting banned?

12

guilds ..

RWF guild by any chance?
the same ones that advertise boosting and pilot play

13

They could probably fix the entire issue by making the bond worth more and have the price cheaper than Gold sellers but they won’t because they’re greedy.

They also want to be the manopoly holder on gold buying so they’re gonna target everyone including innocent bystandars.

14

You accept all these things when you install the game, they do not need a reason to ban you if they want to or think that you RMT etc.

15

First of all, I haven’t actually accepted anything related to this. As I said in my initial post – where’s the policy? Where are the specific policies pertaining to these matters written? Blizzard writing a random forum post doesn’t constitute in-game policy that anyone can navigate in with regards to their own gameplay experience. Nothing in Blizzard’s post actually says anything about what players are allowed to do and what they aren’t allowed to do.

Secondly, it is true that Blizzard reserves the right to take action against anyone for any reason whatsoever – and even for no reason at all. But the point of Blizzard’s post is surely not to establish themselves as an evil overlord who acts without reason or cause with regards to the playerbase. Having written policy that specifies what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, lets Blizzard ban players for a reason as opposed to no reason. And it allows them to ban players because they know they’ve done something that isn’t allowed, as opposed to banning them because they think or feel they’ve done something that isn’t to their liking.

Ergo, they should outline the in-game policy regarding these areas, so players know what’s up and down.
I don’t think anyone has a problem accepting Blizzard’s in-game policies – they just need to know what they are. And that would require that Blizzard actually writes them in the first place. Which they don’t seem to have gotten around to, hence why we get these ridiculous posts instead.

16

A is buying gold. B is the gold seller. C is the booster. Normally A would buy the gold from B then A would spend it on boosting and trade the gold to C. But A thinks himself smart so tells B to give the gold to C. C loses the gold, B gets banned, A keeps his boost without it removed even he had used real money to buy the gold. So A is the most evil in this scenario. But A couldn’t get away this time.

17

But why not?

Technically, we are guessing that (A) has bought gold, but we actually don’t know that for a fact. And Blizzard don’t know it either. (A) never receives any gold in the game, and Blizzard sure as hell shouldn’t be spying on (A) to see what he does on the internet (i.e. visiting gold-selling websites or Discord channels).
So on Blizzard’s side, all that (A) has done, is to partake in a boost. And that’s not against the rules.
So what’s he getting banned for? Are Blizzard banning people because they’re guessing that they’ve done something bad? They got a hunch? Their spider sense is tinkling? Is that where we’re at now? Because it feels like that’s where we’re at.

18

They don’t need to spy him. Oh, god it’s ridiculous Jito. Tracking gold is enough. In this case I belive boosters might have appealed because they boosted A but their gold was deleted because gold seller traded the gold directly to boosters. So they must have mentioned they boosted A in their appeal so A got also actioned. A would be actioned no matter what because A is buying gold for real money from 3th party which is aganist the rules.

19

In a court, this would be called hearsay and would be dismissed immediately.
If Blizzard are banning (C) and (C) appeals on the basis that (A) is a culprit, then Blizzard needs evidence to verify the statement of (C). But they don’t have any way of verifying. So like I said before, they’re guessing that what (C) says is right.

But the way Blizzard knows that people are buying gold, is because they can see the transfer of gold from (B) to (A). And when they investigate, they can see that (B) has transferred a lot of gold to a lot of people. So Blizzard deems (B) a gold-seller and everyone he sends gold to are gold-buyers.

But in this case, (A) isn’t receiving any gold, so how can Blizzard ban him for buying gold? They don’t have any awareness that (A) has spent money on a random website. All they know is that (A) is partaking in a boost with (C) who has received gold. That makes (C) susceptible to a ban, but not (A). Unless Blizzard are guessing…

Which is sort of my hunch here. Because I remember by the end of Season 1 that Blizzard took action against a lot of accounts and also removed mounts that people had acquired through boosts, and the response to that was player confusion. Even among the people who got banned or lost their mounts there was confusion as to why, because they swore they hadn’t bought gold or anything. And given the volume of that response, it lends itself to the conclusion that the way Blizzard are taking action against accounts is by association. Which is what the blue post above also hints at. If you are associated with RMT then you are possibly also complicit, and Blizzard will likely take action against you. That approach results in false positives, which is problematic.

Blizzard are guessing what they can’t prove, and sometimes they guess wrong.

And by Blizzard, it’s obviously not humans who are doing these investigations on a case-by-case basis. They got an AI program (evolved Warden program) that basically seeks out players that fall into these parameters with high probability – and evidently, even by Blizzard’s own language, it doesn’t need to be 100%.

And that’s also why there’s no policy that outlines these areas with regards to what’s allowed and isn’t allowed. It’s very vague, because then Blizzard can act with impunity, which they clearly do.

I’m starting to rant now, and I think I’ve said enough, so I’ll leave it at that and go on my merry way, whilst still being highly critical of Blizzard’s approach on these matters.

20

I don’t know what you don’t understand. Blizzard has access to ingame files, chats,transactions. He must have told his name-realmname to boosters and told that someone else would pay for him to boosters so it’s all in game files once boosters appeal it’s obvious that “A” violated the rules. Person who wants to buy boost needs to tell his name-realmname so that he gets invited.

Problem is that there is no direct transaction and only transaction is done is related to RMT on behalf of boost buyer. Now boost buyer can claim he did nothing wrong but does anyone do boost for charity? No, so he had to pay gold but he didn’t trade any and boosters claim X person traded gold for him, then he had the boost. If there are ingame chats, he is certainly guilty. Even if the chats were in Discord, he didn’t pay anything directly and boosters say X person traded gold for him then they boosted him. You see, boosted doesn’t have anything to defend himself here, he didn’t pay but he had boost only claim he can make is that one which is not logical :smiley:

Still this is one scenario of many possibilities, so Blizzard putting trades stay between 2 parties to ensure not engage with much weirder scenarios in future.