Figured someone should post this for those who don’t use twitter.
TL;DR: He’s calling the people who claimed they got banned incorrectly liars. And also Blizzard’s new measures are working as far as they’re concerned.
https://twitter.com/AggrendWoW/status/1762177416083214821
I think it’s safe to say at this point that this fear is something of a boogeyman, likely created by those who claim to have been banned unfairly but left out a key detail in their anecdote, or is fabricated by those who don’t like this particular policy change and want to rally support against it by creating fear from nothing (not like anything like this has ever happened on the internet…)
Is it possible to catch an incorrect ban? Maybe. Anything is possible, but in the vast majority of cases we’ve reviewed of folks who claim “to have only traded gold with a friend” or “We had a rare item drop and split the profits” or something similar, the ban has been justified and something else illicit actually occurred. The majority is so far in the favor of legitimate bans, that any false positives are not numerous enough for statistical significance.
There reality is if you play the game, interact with the trading and AH systems in place, don’t accept large sums of gold from total strangers (i.e. if you see 1k gold pop up in your mailbox from someone you don’t know, you should return it), and don’t buy gold or buy/sell items in a dungeon/raid, you will likely be fine. We can’t give you exact specifics and guidelines for every edge case interaction between players.
Re: Cross-game trading specifically, I’ll reiterate that we do not in any way support cross-game trading. Is it against the rules? That answer is nuanced but if you arrange a trade with a stranger across games and that stranger has been involved in gold selling (a huge number are) then you could get a suspension for that as it looks like you bought that gold. If its a good friend you know and trust, that is safer and that’s the scenario we don’t want to outright forbid, but these types of transactions are not supported by us for a reason. They are another great way to obfuscate bad behavior and are more often than not used that way. You are ultimately responsible to ensure you know and trust the people you are dealing with. If you can’t verify that or be sure of it, it’s safer not to do it.
This was a lot of words to say that the actions we are taking are effective. Some folks have gotten away with buying gold in the past. Now fewer are getting away with it and its being felt. We will never win the war on RMT, at least not fully, but the things we can do is focus on ways to make it less profitable and more painful for bad actors to conduct this business. Going after buyers and cracking down on exploits in these murky grey areas is one of the things are we are doing. My advice is don’t let misinformation distract you. The fact that there is this much noise around this means that the paradigm has changed and for the most part, that is a good thing.
who think we shouldn’t have laws because they aren’t enforced perfectly.