As a long-time player of World of Warcraft, I’ve witnessed the evolution of the game from its inception. Upon my return, I’ve observed a concerning trend: the prevalence of run-selling for gold and real currency. This practice seems to undermine the very essence of the game we cherished, where achievements were earned through skill and dedication.
While WoW tokens are a commendable innovation, allowing players to exchange their in-game gold for game time or Blizzard products, the rampant selling and purchasing of in-game accomplishments pose a significant fairness issue. It diminishes the value of genuine effort and the sense of pride that comes with it.
The persistence of botting in battlegrounds and during profession gathering raises questions about the enforcement of Blizzard’s policies. The sale of runs for monetary gain further blurs the lines of what is permissible within the game’s ecosystem.
I am reaching out for feedback from Blizzard Entertainment, as I believe these concerns resonate with many in the community. We yearn for decisive action to preserve the integrity of World of Warcraft and maintain a fair and rewarding gaming experience.
Thank you for considering our collective voice and for your commitment to the World of Warcraft community.
Share your concerns and unfortunately the ship has sailed.
From what I can tell the bots tend to infest whatever Classic content is most popular at the time. You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to understand that bots are just there to meet demand from players purchasing gold. Purchasing runs for gear is well within their ability as well. GDKP strongly incentivizes gold buying and indirectly causes massive inflation. People who buy gold habitually don’t care what items cost so it goes into a tailspin from there.
Core problem here though is that the Blizzard who made these games is not the Blizzard running them now. The current devs are probably nice people and like the game they work on, but almost certainly don’t have the same marching orders as the original team.
Players have changed a lot. You probably couldn’t get into a decent guild on my original Vanilla/TBC server as a known gold/carry buyer. That was radioactive, and made people who worked hard for their stuff mad. I don’t think it carries remotely the same stigma and shame now. People spend over the gold cap on items and many apparently don’t question it or view it negatively .
The bright spot is that you can play the game without doing those things as a personal choice and find like minded people. From what I can tell that’s just how the game is now but at least some people prefer the right way so that’s cool.
Man that is the truth; the knowledge increased, the thinking on consumes changed and the willingness to be cheaters seems to be acceptable now, tho one thing has not changed, the skill level has not improved as a collective.
I saw this First hand in a private net WSG tournament we had hosted a little over a year back where no addons were possible due to our neutered private server… It was kinda eye opening to see just how carried some players are by 3rd party addons like WA and similar stuff.
It was like seeing players you formerly thought of as delta force operators reduced to crayon eating derps.
Until blizzard decides to hand out actual heavy punishment for RMT then there is nothing to do. Jagex hands out perma bans for RMT all the time in OSRS, deleting accounts with thousands of hours like it’s nothing, yet Blizzard is afraid of doing the same for characters that take a week of in-game time to max.
Its the only way you can have a latency free competition for bragging rights; blizzard basically does the same thing for Arena at Blizzcon (rip blizzcon)
Blizzard probably does not have the same feeling you seem to have for “private servers”. In fact I’d hazard a guess that they feel that folk that play pirate have
because theft is theft.
That’s what I found disappointing. Feels bad man.
Lets not tavel that road because if we do blizzard will get clapped by GW in a harsh way. Heck that’s only one of the apples in the cart, after that can of worms everyone will demand their pound of flesh from the last 20+ years and wow will die.
We’re humans, greed is in our blood. We see any chance to take an edge over others or gain fame/fortune we take it.
This happened even before WoW with EQ1 and Star Wars Galaxies. You have any ingame currency, the real world currencies will be placed alongside it. People will optimize for max profits to get profits irl.
This only gets worse with the progression of the internet. The only reason we had limited exposure to this in the 90’s was because having a PC capable of gaming and opening your email was for the rich early on. The early 2000’s had a breakthrough cheap option for desktop PC’s and it was the beginning of the end right around 2003-4.
Now we have PC’s capable of so much and backend networks so fast we can process and search/post things at rapid paces. Info gets around easier. Tools are easier to create to profit in game using bots instead of playing. Back in the day in 05 you had to manually grind gold and then sell it yourself on whatever site you find or between friends.
TLDR: This will never change, it can only get worse. How worse depends on the progress of tech and humans at the core. This isn’t fixable unless we limit the game down to every system to the point it isn’t an MMORPG anymore.
The token was a small part of the problem. It only made the issue easier to see. Gold is the main issue. Money is the next. Humans is the ultimate issue. We’d have to change how humans think to make something better.
Takes 5 minutes of reddit scrolling subjects on the token or game balance to know how jaded and confused we can get on what we think is right/wrong with the game. We just blame whatever the shiny is plastered on thumbnails or ads.
Its the principal of the thing, not so much the disregard for caring about IP but that because none of it is truly original work and its almost entirely borrowed from others and sources far older than any of us; I consider it unwise to push the IP thing because if that were to come to pass then we’re giving corporate ownership of stories, ideas and concepts that are FAR older than any of us or any of these companies. Doing so will destroy RPG Fantasy gaming almost certainly giving a monopoly to some trash tier corporation for certain who will either sit on it and do nothing, or will push garbage because they have a monopoly and refuse to innovate.
I am thinking far far deeper than the individual corporate level; and remember its Microsoft that owns it all now, kinda ikky.
