Blizzard has to act regarding the economy

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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We’re just one month into the life of the new anniversary realms and inflation is already through the roof, it’s completely unsustainable.

Everyone keeps talking about bots and how they’re to blame, and while that is partly true, part of the blame also falls on those who buy the gold. If the gold generated by bots wasn’t being bought at such alarming rates, there wouldn’t be as many bots.

Attacking the problem from just one angles clearly isn’t working however, so it’s time to start looking for additional angles of attack.

The problem is that there is no risk involved in buying gold, at all. In 2019 classic I knew people who bought tens of thousands of gold and never got more than a 7 day suspension, like once. Most of the time it goes completely unpunished. Sodapoppin set an example with the first iteration of OnlyFangs, admitting to buying tons of gold, and nothing happened.

A lot of people who buy gold aren’t even afraid to admit doing so, because there just aren’t any consequences.

If people who buy gold actually started receiving meaningful punishments, at a much higher rate, as in like, a 30 day suspension for a first time offense, and 6 months for repeat offenses, and actually enforcing it, I can guarantee, gold buying, and as a result, botting, would be much less common.

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Actually his gold and items were removed. That was not edited into the first video, but shown later when he was butt naked.

Anyway, the current day first time penalty is 14 days and removal of gold and/or items. The next times can ramp up very fast in suspension times, up to a permanent ban.

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Alright, my bad, but as far as I know, there was no suspension? Which immediately disproves this:

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The current day, which is different from past days.

I am not informed if he did get a suspension or not, but I agree he should’ve if he didn’t back then. I don’t think streamers should get (any) preferential treatment either.

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Give him 14 day ban too. Just like everyone else if they do it. Would be funny for the guild. On his guild meeting the attendees were outside some having sex, being filmed nude a few seconds. Nothing done either. If we did that, we would get perm ban. Whole stream was yelling ERP.

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Yea the thing is I did see some streamers get very short duration suspensions but they tend to switch to license WoW2, 3 and so on.

Blizzard can’t do anything off-platform, but I did notice Twitch gives A LOT of leeway to their top streamers since they bring in so many views too. And if someone has an accidental slip you get a perma ban, they get a perma ban everyone gets a perma ban Ophrah Style.

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I 100% agree with this post.

Folks are literally boasting about buying gold. It’s completely out of control how this is allowed to go on.

They should be at least enforcing temporary 1,2 week and monthly bans on accounts of players that are also buying to deter future activity.

We need active, human GMs back who are seeking out and deleting gold farmers, responding to players identifying them as well. Why can’t they employ a couple of people to engage in this? It would probably be one of the most effective solutions.

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Is not, as it’s one of the most time consumingly ones - with counterparts in Vanguard/Riot Games explaining why as one of the anti-cheating teams. Blizzard has a dedicated anti-hacks team though instead of regular GM’s who deals with cheaters.

Typically what happens is when you instant ban a botter (let’s assume, you’re 99% right) then what occurs is the bot workshops gets signals that their bots are getting taken down and they will have instant data available to what takes it down usually, modifying it quickly around the clock until they are satisfied they won’t get taken down as fast.

Other games like Valorant/League suffering from cheating and their countermeasures explained in detail

https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/

An ex-dev that worked at Blizz about the efficiency of banwaves

http://youtube.com/shorts/cADaFm__ApQ

I see often that people suggest that Blizzard profit off bots (Credit Fraud/Stolen accounts etc)

Do other games like Runescape or CSGO also “benefit” from allowing (aim)bots, using them for inflating sub counts or purchases?

Some accounts also get stolen with phishing methods or used with fraudulent credit cards, that incur chargeback merchant fees for Blizzard. The “paid” amount plus penalty costing Blizzard a lot more not to mention the damage the botters do ingame.

But wait “credit card fraud doesnt exist for games!!” Some people forget, that Visa stopped processing payments for Runescape because the occuring fraud was just that extreme at a certain point in history.

One of their last public numbers revealed close to 271k banned in December 2023 alone. I don’t think it was even the majority of them.

Better solutions?

There’s no game so far on a similar scale that has a solution. This problem is literally everywhere and anti-cheat development has yet to outpace the illegal bot development.

Kaivax statement on countermeasures against botting

Source.

If you have any good ideas don’t forget to submit them through the ingame suggestion box!

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Only one thing can fix the bot problem, and that is, massive amounts of players quitting over it.

Why? Easy to figure it out.

Until then, bots and RMTs are the LAW OF THE LAND.

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What are people doing with all that gold anyway? Blizz said it was going to GDKP, well that’s not in game so where is the gold going?

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No, thats not enought. EVERYONE should quit. Otherwise from blizzard perspective there is literally no reason to do anything. People complain but still buy subs, transfers and everything else that shops allow depending on your server type. If people complain but still give money then it means what blizzard is doing is right in their eyes as long as complains have no influence on their income.
To stop this - everyone should unsub at the same day. Literally EVERYONE. And demand firing of people responsible. But lets be realistic, this is impossible.

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The first couple weeks I saved some copper by buying water on the AH.
Yesterday I wanted to buy some level 25 drinks only to find 2 listed, for 100 gold 13 copper each.

Should we all just report those? Are they tracked automatically?
It’s fairly obvious gold transfer. (Or malice. Thus guilty until proven innocent.)
On the neutral AH you can at least argue about the possibility of rerolling

I would have to ask over there, but is botting and RMT an issue in GW2?

In the past you could trade gems and gold (any quantity), and the daily reward system (particularly in the last year) hands out a fair amount of gold for anyone, you just have to click exchange. (You get 83 silver for logging in. A creature drops 2 copper.)

Also, there is an abundance of everything on the AH, crafting mats in particular. Average Joe (Jane) has no need to buy gold.

Point is, maybe WoW economy is too much on the scarcity side.

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There are raids/guilds charging thousands of Euros for full MC loot. Hundreds of Euros for one raid full loot.

After a couple of weeks you will see players with full BiS.

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So much for “GDKP is the reason for people buying gold”… where there are players and bots, there are players buying gold regardless. GDKP was never the issue, bottling and cheaters was.

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You’re obscuring the problem. Even IF you were to ban 30% of buyers, prices would simply fall and others would pick up the slack. A new equilibrium will be reached and gold will keep flowing into the economy

The only solution is to ban bots, idk how many times you kids need to be told this. Blizzard has both the resources and the technology to identify bots and to ban them.

They choose not to. There really isn’t more to this discussion.

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:joy: True, but impossible as you say.

It all boils down to RMT powering WoW.

Battling bots effectively in the name of the game’s integrity equals resources and costs. It is a net business cost.

Now ask yourself, for what? For integrity?

On the other hand, bots produce gold which enable RMT, which is a huge business opportunity for all those who partake in it. It is a net source of revenue.

Will players stop playing if bots are in place? It seems obvious that this is NOT the case.

Hence, what path should Blizzard take - The net cost, or the juicy revenue stream?

Case closed.

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Path “why do anything if you complain but still pay and consume whatever we give to you?”

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Not true at all ppl who buy gold take the risk of being hacked by scammers and having the credit details stolen.

Its also why gdkp needs to be perma ban offenses on any version of wow.

Nobody should be able to buy the end game sets via gdkp runs via rmt gold buying enmasse via credit and bank transfers.

If you dont have the skills to earn gear then practise and git gud thats the end of rly, problem is ppl want things for nothing.

Does killing raggy in fl mean anything if you buy it ? Nope not rly bc IF you get a run you wont know what your doing and your gnna be xposed as a bs player.

That’s just one instance ofc there are many versions of wow.

I agree it needs to stop but those buying the gold can have their personal info sold by professional hackers to the dark web if they"re not careful.

I cannot stress enough how much danger they put their rl finances in if the wrong bad actor gets their details.

They can and will steal your entire life ! Any info all info is worth money to them.
I could list many different ways theyd take you to the cleaners by gaining info such as email laddresses linked to email addresses as recovery ones and such but suffice to say its not worth the risk when your card email name address phone numbers and so on is linked to your bnet and associated email adress.

Yh your bnet might be authenticated but is your email ??? nothing is bomb proof when it comes to hackers.

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Not really. They can use standard online payments.

But sadly people are and Blizzard doesn’t know if RMT happened outside of the game. On retail they move raids to personal loot which has some disadvantages.

If someone can’t basic security then maybe, but on average it can be plain paypal or other quick payment that is secure. For FFXIV the “services” are advertised throug ads systems on game related third party sites and it can be pretty high quality shop with all the safe checkout options.

Someone asked like 1-2 weeks ago on PvP realm why do people RMT and like 99% of answers was one form of FOMO or another. People can’t cope with the “speed” and they really need all the lockdowns and all the BiS.

Anniversary can be 15-16 months but people see 12 months. It’s obvious most mages and warrior won’t get their BiS before next raid shows up, more so with Naxx/TBC yet they are in panic.

GDKP was used to get the gear someone wanted “fast” and without months of commitment. Will be different now :wink: and less 60 alts as it also was used to gear up alts on current tier.

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Ok first to be hacked you dont need to be hacked directly its not required to be YOU who is the prime target …

You go on gold site A maybe 50 times and its fine 51st time its been targeted by an attack with malicious code on its web page.

You get a dl on your pc maybe ur antivirus misses it bc its not updated yet maybe its a zero day vunreability on a CVE there was recently a hack that used the print spooler service as a backdoor … ok w/e its somthing that if ur not like me, reaaalylllllly into security you wont know about.

And so you login to your different sites as usual then suddenly your locked out… thats bc the dite you went on had an injected code put into it.

Its not the site creators themselves ok.

Its some crafty clever hacker from wherever injecting code into a site.

Orrrr same site gets a full on hack attack but wait they kept your details … even though you deleted them when you sign up or made your account or maybe they did it with no consent …you get terms yada yada they keep your email for x amount of time your cookies etc is sold on the darkweb after some time your targeted for a phising scam its aimed directly at stuff you think is important that you have account on.

This can happen to anyone dont say it can’t not everyone is on the ball here …
Maybe yhey use a relation or freinds email thats spoofed to fool you.

Lets say you dont mouse over the link to see where its going.

The only medium immune to fake links being signed differently is mobile phones and im sure sooner or later it’ll change.

Each and every day these scams get more advanced as do the ways in which you can be infected.

So rudamentary knowledge yh ok,

Nothing is 100% Nothing! not even an authenticator is 100% just recently the microsoft authenticator had a vunerability fixed that allowed infinite tries to crack a 6 digit number with no cooldown… it took 15 mins to break it… its now been fixed thankfully but as you can see even the providers have weaknesses so having a security consious mind is good but not everyone does.

If a hacker gets your authentication token (Cookie) by using a mitm attack as you login to a site/ Service they can bypass EVERY 2FA authentication you set up including passwords authenticators and text messages to phones and emails warning you about logins.

Security is no joke so please dont insult or downplay that we all know this stuff, most peeps are if it works then idc til it dosnt.

I mean honestly the stuff i know about how an AI can replicate your voice print with only 5 seconds of recording is insanity and thats now… imagine in 5 yrs ok.

Most ppl will be oh its just one account but its not is it.

How big is your online footprint how secure is it ?

Anyone who is arrogant enough to think they’re secure is asking for a hack seriously… dont go thinking im having a go here bc im not but you tried and failed, to pick apart my security warning.

I know at least 20 way a hacker can get 99.9% of ppls credentals even an airgapped system isnt safe …

As we move forwards so does cybercrime.

This christmas theres been over 5 million people’s credentials stolen as they shopped did you know that ??

Probably from the infected site followed by phishing from said site to email they think its legit bc they used it and boom hacked…

How many digits are your passwords can they be bruteforced easily, ill give you a hint ok freebie here.

If possible you want 28 digits on your passwords if poss.
Currently the time it takes to brute force a 28 digit password is a few billion years, ofc thats gnna change as we go forwards but rn thats your golden number.

I really can go on and on here but i wont this is not a hacked persons forum lol.

The fact is you don’t know what you don’t know werevall different and if anything ive posted here helps somone then all the better :slight_smile:

As you probably guessed ive done some extensive research on this and i keep up on current trends.

Heres a brand new one for you… the lockbit dev just got arrested in israel, yesterday they posted a warning that on jan 2025 they were gnna go launch a mass malware attack across the board.

Oh and the big mama vpn service actually sells your data which a hacker can buy…

As for gdkp it absolutly should be a bannable offense its wrong and its a form of cheating to get ahead.

I love earning my gear saying to myself i did that and thats that.

Anyway lets not fo this again :slight_smile: i can gp for hours about security ive literally only just got started.

Bis ive no illusions that rn my warrior in cata which is a tank wontnbe getting its fl bis kit b4 dragonsoul but thats ok idm bc i play the game with my guild freinds and we all have a giggle when we lol wipe.

Also of some random guy ingame is traded lets say 21k gold in classic is that not enough for blizz to raise an eyebrow ?? Yh they dont know bout rmt but maybe ask or use a system to detect this sort of thing ignorance is no excuse whatsoever and thats a fact.

Ppl who cheat in any capacity need stopping.