Would Blizzard make more money banning all the paid bot accounts and instituting a WoW token, or allowing the paid bot accounts to continue and turn a blind eye on gold sales?
You’re assuming that Blizzard is getting $$$ from bot accounts.
I’ve just assumed that bot accounts are flowing a % of illegally obtained gold into tokens to fund subs. Net result is zero actual money spent.
You have to had paid for a sub with actual money before you can start using tokens. Tokens still give blizzard money as well so even using a token still gives them money.
I have a big tin foil hate theory on this that I can’t prove but I think they have their bot banning rotations down to a science where they ban bots frequently enough to make money off of them but not so frequent to where the botters don’t find it worth their time anymore
2 Likes
that’s a lot of faith in bot accounts. I’d be surprised if they were actually legitimately opened accounts.
Myself, I have zero faith in these accounts. I suspect they are stolen/hacked accounts that again, just have some gold flowing through them, buying tokens. Hence why banning the accounts seem to be the best course of action.
Banned account = lost gold and token access to the botter.
Again, speculating, as we all are. I just can’t see any part of this process to be above board at all.
I think they are actually just opened accounts. Granted they are probably paid for with stolen credit cards but I don’t really think the “hacked” accounts is really much of a thing anymore. On top of almost everyone having to have a 2fa in order to play the game effectively, blizzard has also made a ton of things to instant suspend/ban/lock accounts if they are playing from a different IP address. It’s been awhile but I remember I forgot to turn my vpn off once and after trying to login my account got instantly locked and I had to go through a recovery process to unlock it.