Hi there.
I can understand the point of combating RMT by restricting trading access for new users, however I do not understand how I am considered in the same category as a new bot - since this account is both old and has several older games manually signed by physical disc keys (Diablo 2, Warcraft 3/Frozen, Diablo 3).
There is no mention of this on the payment page either, so every player has the right to get their money back if they feel they would not buy it if the auction house was unavailable. This is fine by me, but I can believe if this is Blizzard intention of hiding behind anti-botting measures to take more from the wallets.
I cannot trade, send items to other players, or receive items by mail from other players for payment. However, I can certainly
- Receive items from other players for free.
- Sell items on the auction house
2.1) Sell items to another player, bypassing the restriction and forcing me to take extra steps to trade.
Ignoring all the obvious bots I am constantly reporting, I have never tried to play World of Warcraft before. My friend played hardcore and it certainly sounds interesting compared to the conventional experience—it is fun and close to level 25. However, can anyone give a rational explanation as to how exactly these measures will counteract the bots and not just force new players to pay for additional time to use an essential feature. Seems like it hurts new players a lot and I will most certainly not recommend it to anyone else? I can still sell items to my friend for cheap, if I want to give him some, while he can also just mail me the items for free. It seems so poorly implemented, I had to wonder if I just saw it from a wrong perspective and there is some logic to this madness?
The two changes could be implemented to minimize these changes on new players with no intention of botting (further could be brainstormed):
- A greater variety of conditional checks for all new players. These could be the account age in combination with earlier history of gaming and/or total value of assets in their library. I do no believe bots use old, library-rich accounts.
- Insert a WARNING to all new players, if they will be affected by these changes. By not doing so, each and every player can and should get their money back, if they feel the delivered product does not match their the marketed product. Honestly, this is one of those reason I have suspicion of Blizzard using this to get a higher subscription time from new players. They COULD implement it, but they actively choose not to.
TLDR; I can get items from my friend with post (for free) and I can give him items by using the Auction House, while he snipes them. So I can give/get and my friend can give/get—while the restriction just makes this conditional, it does not make it impossible, just annoying?
Sincerely,
limiting new players in any way is stupid and counterproductive if you want to get new players into the game. It’s not stopping bots, it’s only hurting legitimate players as far as I’m concerned
As far as I have seen, Blizzard uses generic arguments relating to combating RMT to suppress any arguments towards their anti-player behavior. I would sincerely like to hear relaxed arguments towards the implementations as I mentioned earlier, but sadly, I see there is a low chance of that happening.
I guess I will attempt reporting them to the authorities in EU for falsely selling a product, which does not match the marketed product—I have some money to burn anyway, so will get someone to look deeper into it. If they feel forced to implement a notification to inform players of their limitations in the first 30-days of gametime, then they will probably remove it (or a chance of it).
There was a time I had love for Blizzard, but as of now, they only exist in name and whatever Faustian beast exist inside Blizzard now, will only try to camouflage as something authentic. I also feel sad for any of the moderators and developers feeling forced to have this attitude as the greedy entity. They’re probably good people.
It´s probably written down in their T&C´s somewhere.
I tried searching for it—both on the official page and inside their launcher. There is none and they do not care. You should not assume these reasons, since it is Blizzards job to openly communicate their own service to the consumer. There is a reason in EU, they cannot enforce a document no one reads and they should instead implement a force pop-up for the user informing them of the limited service for the first thirty gametime.
I have reported this practice to the European Consumer Centre (ECC) and the National Consumer Protection Authority incl. Advertising Standards Authority. Awaiting their replies. Thankfully it is easy to pay someone else to do the paperwork and lawyers are happy to take my money.
Well it is not Blizzard but Microsoft. It seems they wanted to find out how many paying customers there really are, so the limited auction house for thouse who payed only with WoW token gained for their gold on AH.
What you are saying is just completely false…
Oh I see, I thought this is about limitation to buy wow token https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/restriction-on-purchase-of-wow-token-–-november-2023/1714609
But if this is about HC, why is he describes limitations for new accounts (those that didn’t had subscription for real money for far too long)? If he can do some AH operations then he isn’t in SSF mode then? Is this post about HC or SoD or are SoD limitations working in HC as well?
This is about the fact that people with a new account or an account that was inactive for a certain period can’t mail items for gold both ways (so sending or receiving) or cant trade items for gold or vice versa. They can receive items for free and sell stuff on the ah