There appears to be a confusion from Blizzards side regarding their own TOS and version of World of Warcraft.
There is a trend in the Classic community to report things that are commonly disliked in Trade chat, i.e. boosting and GDKPs. Tons of people are getting banned due to this, and there’s now even a reddit thread about it with near 500 comments.
Here’s the real stinker though - it is not appealable. Blizzard is taking a stance saying that services belong in the Trade services channel. Fair, you would think. The problem is however that this channel does not exist in Classic WoW, it’s a retail channel.
I have tried contacting Blizzard about this issue. Anyone that has previously been in contact with Customer service probably has an idea of the response - an automated message sending me the TOS. Thank you for that, I’ve read it 8 times now. I’m pretty certain I know it better than the GMs sending it to me.
Since custom service is a joke, I’ll try to post here instead. Blizzard, do you know yourself where these posts belong and where they should be? Because it sure seems that you don’t.
If you have suggestions about the TOS you may give that through the ingame suggestions box as GM’s will not enter into discussion with you about it. Especially with third parties for account actions.
Magical Suggestion Box
Recently this subject about GDKP advertising has surfaced on the US CS forums and each step was clarified.
If its the reddit thread I’m looking at, I think they may have already tripped over Clause 1/1a. The player in question has already appealed atleast 3 times as they’ve received 3 GM responses with a final decision having been made.
It’s not so much about giving any suggestions, it’s more about Blizzard being unaware of either their own TOS or what channels that their current client provides (in this case, the trade services channel vs. trade chat)
I’ll admit I’ve been reporting “things I dont like” more and more, mainly because I’ve been getting Blizzard mail notifying of the action taken.
Here’s the deal, I use the global ignore addon, I have all the basic options turned on to block “gdkp” and “boost” etc. I generally see very little of them but some do get round.
If you want justification it’s because I feel these things could potentially be linked to other questionable dealings. There are players who go to work, life and then login and play the game having no negative impact on their environment, the old fashion MMO enjoyer you could say. Then there are others who every moment logged into their accounts has a parasitic effect. Sure there are people who like to use their mages to boost dungeons that you could consider the former, but those players have a higher chance of either being involved directly or indirectly to RMT even without them knowing or acknowledging it. I also don’t appreciate the fact that they remove players from the pool of lowbie dungeons, yes we’ve all done them a million times but there’s retail for speed.
I report:
All Boosts posters
All GDKP posters
All “WTT my wotlk gold…” posters
I may or may not be doing this on multiple accounts in SW etc.
Yes it could be seen as selfish but that’s exactly what boosting and GDKP are, they have a long term negative effect on the ecosystem of which they are consuming.
What’s likely happening is that there are others (many) like me who report these types of posts and it’s the mass report triggering the bans.
Remember, I’m using an addon to block these posts and people are still using “bost” and various channels to try post them. That’s 4 reports from me alone for trying to to be clever.
Clearly not, when I’m getting thank you mail from the Developers…
I believe it only goes “communication” → “advertisement” when reporting…an…advertisement. At worse you could say I misunderstood or “got it wrong” but after receiving ‘thank you’ emails from Blizzard this conversation is over.
Also, Blizzard might see /2 (trade) as the same thing as the retail channel. So any posts in general, “LFG”, “Local Defence” etc might be where they acknowledge the issue.
If there’s literally addons to fix booster/GDKP spam, then its quite likely that a significant number of the population (paying customers) could have an issue with. every. single. channel. being. boost spam… maybe?
They don’t see trade as trade services, that is the problem. They are using articles from retail, not classic - believing that there exists a channel that is for services.
When you are reporting these advertisements in the trade channel, you are falsely reporting them, which can get you banned.
“While we encourage you to report players that are behaving in a disrespectful manner, falsely reporting another player with the sole intent of restricting their gameplay is also unacceptable, and will result in penalties to your account.”
So perhaps don’t report the things that are allowed, since you are not only wasting these player’s time but also Blizzard for having to deal with your false reports, thank you.
Yes but you are both failing to understand that when the appeal is being read, the person on the other end, sees the word TRADE
retail: Trade services
classic: Trade channel
They are either unaware (as you say, but still see the word trade) or are very much aware and the article hasn’t been changed or updated for classic (this can happen).
Either way, they seem to be banning people for posting outside of “trade”.
Your scare tactics of me being banned for reporting parasites holds no water with me I’m afraid. Blizzard have thanked me and likely will continue to do so when I report these vermin over multiple accounts.
My problem with the entire situation is that the decisions seem very arbitrary.
I suspect even Blizzard (and CS) doesn’t know, what they want.
I removed the rest because too long, slightly off topic, whoever has read it, great.
In short, I believe that Blizzard wants RMT, for which GDKP is a proxy and Trade is its space. It’s nothing new, certainly well discussed.