There are literal farms/warehouses of people with who knows how many accounts used for shady transactions like this. As long as people keep utilizing these services, the industry, such as it is, isn’t going anywhere.
Seeing how we can’t see how much gold a random level 1 has and GMs aren’t going to investigate every single one that pops up it’s really hard to stop.
Ultimately the only way to stop it is to stop using these gold farmer services. Which despite the many, many, many real life security risks you take utilizing them, some people want the fast way to riches.
Anyway, as for the OP, gotta agree it’s not likely to be overturned. All I can suggest is in the future don’t do it, or stick with the WoW Tokens.
Thank you for the response. Am sure you’ve read my appeal then. Have put in more details there as you know.
I am still talking to the guildie who transferred it to me, doesn’t look like he has been banned at all. Maybe it wasn’t related to his his main account (I dont know).
As for level one accounts and gold, before the whole war band thing “AH toons” and stuff were/are done on level 1 toons and pretty common. Hell I even had a few level ones for the sole purpose of AH stuff.
Anyway thank you for response. As you know, more details were in the appeal. Sucks for the 3 week ban but well what to do.
The thing is, I keep hearing about this “getting gold from an exploitive account” and for obvious reasons I recognize getting handed large amounts of gold by a lv1 should be expected to be sus.
However, it’s really given me worries about other gold-involved activities which might “look” like a problem to a computer. Like sending my own gold from one of my characters to one of my alts. I’m too scared to do that anymore.
Also, I have traditionally been the officer to sell the raid drop BoEs for my guild and I’ve been wondering if I should say I won’t anymore. If some “exploitive account” buys the BoEs I list from the auction house, does that put my account in danger? Even though I have ZERO way to tell anything at all about who is buying them?
Same for toy pets. I’ve stopped putting them on the AH for the same reason as above – fears that I’m going to get blamed if they get bought with gold from an account involved with RMT, even though that had nothing to do with me.
I am beyond hyper-protective of my account. It’s locked down with an authenticator. Before authenticators existed, I kept it locked with the parental controls during hours I would be at work or asleep. I do not share the password. I do not even access the email account associated with my WoW account from the same computer on which I play the game and that computer is kept shut off and offline. If anyone in any group I’m in does anything REMOTELY exploitive or in a way I feel isn’t what was intended, I immediately leave the group. (Goodbye “this is fun!” and “creative use of game mechanics”.) I’ve even started worrying about even talking to people in game, honestly, because of the way the automated systems will respond to flash mob mass reports. (For lack of anything better to call them.)
I am 100% sure most bans are legit, but the word “most” only means there are some completely innocent accounts which become collateral damage and there seems to be no way to assure mine won’t be one of them. Which makes me very stressed, as a player, if I’m being completely honest.
No. Doing normal business using the AH is 100% fine. Posting items in the realm of their realistic gold value is fine.
What is not fine is listing vendor/low quality junk for large amounts and having that mysteriously bought. Posting pets or transmog for their actual value to avoid suspicion then maybe having those items returned to you, or relisted cheap so you can buy them back quickly.
Blizzard isn’t dumb, no matter what some people think. It’s not hard to tell who is just doing normal business and who is laundering. No, they will never tell you how they catch someone doing it. And no, the people caught will almost never admit, they will just continue to play dumb.
That one you can relax about. As long as the gold is legit, it is not an issue. The system certainly can see which account is sending to which account. Sending things to yourself is easily recorded. People move gold around for tokens, mounts, and other things all the time.
This is slightly more problematic but you are using the AH which is smart! As long as the item is not
Priced way above similar items as a way to target and move gold
Bought by account/s that are exploitive multiple times. Not saying once could not get you in trouble, but it is unlikely for an honest trader. Having exploitive accounts buy multiple listed items on the other hand…looks sus.
That’s not really a transfer, though, is it? Character to character, it never leaves the WoW license. Even in the case of multiple licenses, it stays on the Battle.net account (unless you have multiple of those for whatever reason). There are extremely limited circumstances where trading gold to yourself is going to raise red flags.
This is part of the thing, though. I list for whatever the cheapest price is (the guild just wants these things moved) or possibly undercut by 5-10 thousand gold if I’ve been sitting on something too long. I can’t control who picks to buy that thing. Even if I magically had a list of all exploitive accounts and KNEW who they all were, I have no way to stop them from buying my auction.
Also, the BoEs drop to individual players. We try to run a tight guild and know what our guildies are up about, but no one is going to come out and say “yeah, I exploit the economy all the time!!” What if a BoE drops to someone who did RMT? I have no way to know. They hand it off to me, per our guild’s raid loot rules, and now I’ve taken an expensive item from someone involved in RMT and I sell it for a lot of gold… all completely legit from anything I am able to tell, yet I worry that would get my account in trouble if it actually happened.
This is exactly why I’m worried. Even though I should not be at all.
Selling an item at market value will not get you in trouble.
There is nothing suspicious about that.
Selling it for vastly more money. Selling it at market value then getting the item returned in the mail. Selling the item at market value then buying it (or something similar) back for a remarkably good low bottom barrel price. Those, and obviously others, are the habits that would get you in trouble.
Participating in the game in the manner it is meant to be in will not get you in trouble.
Here’s your problem: you still think this automated by a computer for some ridiculous reason. I don’t know to say this any plainer: no punishment is ever placed on an account without a GM. None.
Well I am talking with him on discord and he claims to have no knowledge of a ban on his end or any character and I can see he is still online on WoW (through battlenet and discord), probably uses another account for alts I assume. As I said earlier in the full appeal I only traded with the level one alt as I thought he was my guildies alt.
Guild officers and others compensate assigned people who take care of pre raid tasks weekly. They trade with and compensate with people amounts to go make this much stuff for next raid etc. And this is not the first time they’ve done it with me or other people. Maybe first time involving this much of an amount as we are about to hit mythics and I was assigned to make a lot more stuff for raid. (even this can be verified if further looked at)
Anyway I’ve fully detailed it and even asked the CS to took look at the conversation log after the trade as I even thanked him for helping me with M+ earlier that day. (all that is there if logs are checked)
But then again decision is done and I am guessing this convo isn’t going any further, feels like I got an automated response from the appeal. So I might as well just wait till suspension time is over. I only asked my convo logs be looked at further to verify my end of things in my appeal. A lighter ban would have been ok since conversation logs and stuff that was done is there to check (but it’s my fault I traded with a level 1 as you said). I’ll take the L and wait it out. No point going further arguing with a system like this.
They can see all the logs and who traded what to whom. What Orlyia is trying to tell you is that either your guildmate is lying to you and uses throwaway accounts to buy gold and trade it to the guild through “alts”, or you thought you were trading with your guildmate when it was really someone else.
I can pretty much assure that they went through all of the logs and chat before they did the account action and almost guarantee that they were reviewed when you appealed. Orlyia was looking at your appeal and can see the research done on it. That is why she was able to tell you what she did. Quite honestly I’m surprised she told you that much, usually that is way more information then they share.
Gms will never discuss this in game they never have nor will they they go by other means then hey u made a mistake i demand u talk to me ingame so i can berate u into unbanning me.
When have apeals ever taken place inagame your tose tinted glasses are on too tight thats never how apeals work gms cover every blizzard game not just wow. The reality is they have more important things to do then babysit players.
Correct. Long, long ago. When the game was much smaller, much less complicated, and had a much smaller playerbase. Years ago it was feasible. Today it is not. Their general job has not changed, only their permissions as the game grew larger. The tools they had created by developers allowed them to continue that work without having to waste time in game as we see today.
Objectively false, evidenced by threads that were started even today, not to mention practically every other day.
Also false. Criticism is welcomed on the forums, and is often encouraged even by the staff. How you put it to words will determine the outcome of that post, however. Your methods meet criteria for removal where they are not appropriate for public consumption.
The game is far too big, spread across many realms and regions and multiple expansions. It’s pretty much impossible for the GM’s to be everywhere “in-game” watching - which is a reason for the reactive stance (responding to tickets and reports from players).
During their duties assisting a player with an issue, they may log into that players account to investigate something , move a character around, but you’d never know it’s a GM.
The game is a lot different to how it was in vanilla - when it was new and GM’s have been known to make in-game appearances etc. But as the game grew, and the player base grew, the demand for such things of the GM’s gave way to appeasing the ever-louder cries to reduce ticket response times which eventually drove the current triage ticket system as we know it.
Back then, the criminal elements behind the bots, hackers, gold selling weren’t as big as they are now.
Blizzard learned very early on that if they banned a bot, the bot makers would begin to make changes to avoid further detection. Hence they are banned in waves to give them no warning and to do as much impact into their criminal enterprise as possible.
