A lot of you are missing the point. It’s not about raw gold trades. It’s tracking all the trades bots make. Everyone in that chain of gold trades originating from a confirmed bot should also be banned.
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I transfer gold to my alts here and there so they can unlock bag slots or buy big ticket items on my main’s dime. I’m not going to support a system that can get me caught up in that net. Sure, I’m not doing anything wrong per se, but I have to suffer with an unjust ban until support can come in and see that my gold transfers were legitimate. And I’m not the only one that has a bank alt or twinks. So imagine how many false-flags this will bring.
tl;dr - horrible idea
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Again, you aren’t getting it. This system would be used in tandem with their bot reporting system. It won’t care that you’re transferring gold around on your characters. Once they confirm a character is botting, THEN they use this to look up all the trades made from that confirmed bot that they are going to ban anyway.
People trading gold amongst themselves would be irrelevant data.
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They already monitor the in-game mails, but there’s probably millions of them per day across each server. What they need to do is watch logon / logoff of ip address, from said sellers account. Match those accounts to the same window of log on/off, back and forth, so they can find the bulk of the ill-gained gold which is being sold, and ban them too. As far as I know, they’ve only been watching the sellers to see who buys gold off them. But they may very well be taking other steps.
Problem is, every one they remove, more seem to spring up. Its like weeding a garden, that’s constantly growing. I think they need a better solution, than just that.
Gold sellers counter this by mailing every player 1 gold with their constant onslaught of spam promoting their website, and now every player they mail is attached to their accounts and because its only tracking gold transactions and not specific gold transactions now everyone is at risk even those that don’t buy. Classic will end soon and blizz knows it, the only people playing classic beyond a single Naxx clear are people that want to have the best of the best equipment, and that pool is smaller than you’d think.
They have made no promises for TBC here is to hoping they add the token so everyone can buy gold.
Who cares?
Obviously blizzard doesn’t care so why should you?
Ok so, let me add a perspective. For this, I ask the basic question… why do people buy gold? ;:>… If in any market, say bottled water IRL, there are 50 sellers competing to keep prices low. Then, one company decides to buy all the stock from all the stores and then sell them for 300 times the going rate and people are forced to buy through the reseller or hope they can catch a bottle before the reseller gets it. Well, since water is kinda important and desired, there will be people that do illicit things to attain the money to buy an overpriced bottle. If there was a cap put on the prices that water can be sold at, so that the average person can afford it without robbing a bank or his friends, the illicit behavior will be reduced. I see a HUGE problem with the Auction houses on realms with resellers mass buying and reposting for insane amounts that would force people to either farm themselves (a huge timesink for people with limited daily or weekly playtime) or buy gold from blizzard or outside sources to manage their limited playable time. The prices that tokens sell for sometimes rarely compete to the prices gold sellers offer and here is where things get messy. Does Blizzard try and police the Auction house and curb peoples needs to buy gold but at the same time thwart legitimate people trying to make gold in game by farming and selling items and goods on the AH? Honestly, I understand the “free market capitalism” stand and peoples rights to make insane amounts of gold but I also understand the need to obtain certain Best in Slot items, raid or pvp carries in order to compete effectively in certain situations along with limited time or desire to farm and wanting to buy things instead, but… when the prices are way more than the AH can offer tokens for without spending 1/2 your paycheck, the idea of getting (estimated example) a million gold for $100 compared to $166 for a million from tokens?? Hmmmm $66 can buy some people a carton of smokes or some food, pay a phone bill, or the monthly Gym membership. I believe that’s some incentive. Maybe increase the amount of Token gold as the market demands, by checking the gold sites average gold prices, to compete with the illegal sellers while also using deterrent methods suggested above like the taking of the gold and a temp ban with warning. Either way, this is not an easy position to control on Blizzard’s part, it is like saying, imprison drug users indefinitely and drug dealers will go out of business… easy peezy, right? Just know that Blizzard is doing everything it can without impeding on consumers rights and enjoyment of the game while trying to solve this age old problem that will not go away anytime soon because there is no “one size fits all” solution here, just as there isn’t with drugs or any other illicit, illegal, immoral or corrupt activities. It is more of a long term damage mitigation situation and picking their battles wisely. I wish you luck Blizzard. Suffer well Brothers and Sisters of Azeroth! <3
I remember on ER in vanilla, no one would openly say they bought gold. It was very small on that server, but when it did occur, usually the player was gkicked and shamed in trade chat.
Now, it seems acceptable to most. I imagine that is the reason for GDKP runs.
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Paragraphs man. No one’s gonna read that.
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…my guys, this is nearly a year old thread. Who TF thinks necroing year old threads on a Blizzard gaming forum is a great way to spend their Friday night…?
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Just ban everyone over 30k gold. They are most likely buying gold or mage boosting. Either way it’s a win win.
just take their gold
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= Dead servers and fewer players
Although I agree its completely ruined the game, at this point I can see Bobby Kotic has zero plans to address botting like they used to back in the old days.
I used to use HB and farm gold because I got tired of fighting them when farming mats back in MoP and WoD.
It seems they support gold buying 100% or they would have done something by now
Except its not the gold buyers that are violating the terms of service, as much as the gold sellers.
The gold sellers, are profiting directly with real cash, by selling a trademarked item within a game, that is owned by the game. Bliz has digital rights to everything in this game, and those gold sellers are the ones profiting off of it. In effect, they are stealing from blizzard.
If they would sue the websites owners for selling gold, they could easily shut down all the gold sellers and likely the bots attached to it.
So, if a gold seller then mails everyone on the server 50 gold, everyone gets banned?
The best solution is actually to legitimatize gold buying via blizzard services. It solves nearly all problems and has very few downsides. BUT, people like you tend to live in a bubble and refuse to see the benefits of legitimate gold buying and selling. Instead you’d prefer black markets to exist.
Except someone legitimately pays someone else 5k for DFT from a GDKP (I know, what a steal) and uses mail to send the gold, or another dozen reasons I could think of, and they get banned?
Or someone sends a guild mate 2k of their legit gold for flasks or other guild stuff, they get banned?
Not so simple.
the community itself is very responsible for contributing to this as well. the rise of GDKPs, and the leveling boost meta, GBID runs, its not just on Blizzards end.
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Used to run a guild that fell apart, we sold off everything in the gbank and mailed to everyone who still played a cut. Oh no gold selling!
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