Boosting/RMT advertising

Community WoW Community Council
1

I think trade chat and especially LFG is extremely plagued by advertising from either Boosts for gold/RMT or just money websites and while strangely this is something that is part of almost every game especially MMOs WoW seems to be the most stagnant in the issue. Everytime blizzard seems to implement a change it seems to just increase how the spammers get around them. The LFG tool is particularly spammed with tons and tons of people selling Mythic plus carries and Raid full clears and almost 99% of people absolutely hate this. PvP has also seen insane amounts of groups selling all kinds of carries and link different kinds of websites. While this may be something blizzard is not super inclined to crack down on it is seriously annoying to have it basically destroy finding certain groups or just general trade chatting

I think the easiest thing for blizzard to implement would be a captcha for LFG or maybe even Trade chat to push bots and spammers out of constantly bombarding everyone just trying to enjoy the game. Obviously this would be something that most people would be able to get around easy and it could even reward people just like 2 minutes of gametime for successfully completing it.

This is just an idea and a topic of conversation as I think personally not enough is being done about the sheer amount of bots and carries advertising in this game. Obviously running people for gold is bot illegal but I think the punishmebt for constantly adertising and spamming should be way higher.

82 Likes
2

I do wish Blizzard would give us something. A simple more defined word. This thread was ignored On boosting and I’m sure this one will be at this point because it’s so controversial alongside how much income the wow token must provide, which directly has an impact on boosting. $40 gets you a full heroic clear right now with a funnel. $20 gets you 2 aotc’s.

That being said, going after advertisers doesn’t matter much. If an advertiser has access to an account for even 1 day, and they spend that day advertising. They made their gold back that they spent and profit. Blizzard did help LFG advertisements, and I do believe adding more annoyances hurts the system itself.

If you want to stop boosting, you ban it. If you want to stop advertising, you ban boosting. I can promise after doing an unspeakable amount of boost this tier and last, the “half” approaches won’t do anything. Either support it or ban it.

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As of today, we will now prohibit organizations who offer boosting, matchmaking, escrow, or other non-traditional services, including those offered for gold. World of Warcraft accounts found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions. These actions can include warnings, account suspensions and, if necessary, permanent closure of the disruptive World of Warcraft account(s). Organizations operating across multiple realms and excessively advertising non-traditional in-game sales are contrary to the terms and conditions of the Blizzard End-User License Agreement (EULA).

50 Likes
4

Would love a reduction in the sheer cost of playing the game to go alongside this. These were the primary reason for boosting.

  • Cost of Legendaries
  • Cost of Potions/Flasks (Bring back Alchemy Procs)
  • Cost of Vantus Runes (This is tied to Alchemy due to the same materials being used)
38 Likes
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A few weeks ago some of my raiders and I did an estimate of the cost of 1 week of raiding on our server, based on AH prices. (Credit where it’s due, you know who you are)

    1. Remember these are estimates and I’ve adjusted most prices based on lower then average cost of mats. This is if we had crafters make everything and supply from base mats. 40x Armor Kit : 8,640g
      20x Sharpening Stone: 600g
      40x Oils: 880g
      20x Vantus Runes: 30,000g
      400x Augment Runes: 30,000g
      20x Feasts: 20,000g
      2x Cauldrons: 10,000g
      100x Str Pot: 7,500g (cheapest battle pot to make)
      200x Int Pot: 40,000g (most expensive battle pot to make)
      100x Agi Pot: 15,000g
      400x Healing Potion: 8,800g
      So 1 week of raiding costs the guild: 312,840g
      You can take maybe 20k off that since we typically only drop 1 cauldron a night due to alchemists in raid

This assumes 20 pulls/night with 20 raiders, using everything on every pull. We raid 2 nights a week.
Over 300,000 gold per week is a little insane.

25 Likes
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I guess I ate my own words. Very strong start.

I do have a question though. There is very vague wording but I assume if a guild wishes to partake in cross realm boosting, if a guild had advertisers spamming on and cross realm for their guild sales, that would be fine?

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It would be nice if we can now get a vendor like the blood vendor in legion + procs back at the very least :slight_smile:

Consumable prices are absolutely disgusting, in legion you at least had the incentive to run m0 for blood + get stacked on consumables for absolutely free.

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This is an amazing change really glad blizzard stepped it up for this

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9

That would not be fine.

To provide more clarity for those who have been wondering where the lines are drawn in this new policy, we’d like to summarize that part of it.

Advertising for gameplay activities should be done by a WoW player-character who intends to participate in the gameplay activities. This means there should be no cross-realm advertising, and there should be no advertising from non-participating players.

And as before, the only place that advertising a “for gold” activity is allowed is the Trade channel. Advertising in any other chat channel or the Group Finder makes the player subject to actions against their account.

39 Likes
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What about people who intend to boost but then due to funnel requirements end up getting benched for the actual boost? Basically, how do we verify/define “intent” here?

And what about private chat channels like in-game communities? (presumably ones where the players who made the community aren’t moderating the advertising away themselves)

9 Likes
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Can we get some more elaboration on this as for me at least it would seem you are trying to remove the level 1 spammers for actual people who would be offering the service. My understanding is to remove silent middle men who actual do nothing but collect gold for being advertisers which im good with.

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12

Good afternoon :slight_smile:

It has been a few weeks since the ban has been announced, yet the LFG system is still rotting with sales advertisements. Several individuals are also posting discord information in the Arena LFG queues to sell carries for real money. I have attempted to report several of these advertisements and advertisers, but I have not seen any action taken. Furthermore, due to the nature of RMT boosters conducting the business over another account (such as Discord), it’s difficult to provide hard evidence when reporting. I believe there needs to be some type of update to the “report” system and some swiftness in terms of responding. Just today I joined one of these RMT Discord servers for an hour and watched at least 10-12 people join the server to discuss purchasing. Perhaps an option to report RMT sellers so that Blizzard can investigate upon receiving enough reports?

3 Likes
13

Also, what about people using the group finder to advertise their Twitch channel? Is this considered legitimate, or should I be reporting these?

This tier, I tried out arenas for the first time and got hooked. (Hit 1800 rating for the first time this past week!) Mostly I do them with guildies, but occasionally when no one else is around I look for a partner in group finder, and I was surprised at the number of advertisements I saw offering free arena boosts in exchange for watching their twitch stream. I’ve been using the group finder for mythic+ for a long time and rarely saw this kind of advertisement there; it seems to be more of a pvp thing. It’s the same for rated battlegrounds, by the way. There were groups that would only accept people who joined their stream.

Incidentally, I find PvP boosting to be more of a problem than PvE boosting. If someone gets boosted through a mythic+ key or raid, that doesn’t really affect my player experience, except in the minor sense of I need to look closely at applicants to my own groups to make sure they really are capable of doing the content and didn’t just get boosted to where they are.

But in arenas, my newb guildies and I ran across boosting groups fairly often as opponents. It’s demoralizing to be one-shot by a ret paladin who is not only far more experienced but also wearing gladiator-level gear, when my team is in challenger gear. These groups would destroy us, and we’d lose rating, and it felt bad.

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14

Agreed its more of a PvP thing, but not unheard of in PvE.

I cannot speak for everyone who does this, but as someone who does “Viewer RBGs” while I’m streaming I can talk a little about it.

But first, I tiny bit of background. I’m not a big time streamer. When I go live for my guild raids I get maybe 3 viewers, when I do RBGs its closer to 10 because I do advertise my stream in group finder. But I don’t require people to talk in chat or follow my channel to be invited to the group, as some streamers do.
My reason for listing my stream is because it is a way to grow my channel, to just let people know “hey, i’m doing this, if you want to swing by and say hi, please do” But, I also don’t promote myself as a booster. I look for people at my similar CR and make a group to increase my own rating, so there is a difference there.

As for if it should be allowed, thats an interesting question. Any boosting service requires some sort of transaction / interaction. You have to pay X amount to hit Y rating, or kill Z number of bosses, etc.
With twitch advertising, the interaction is asking people to go to your channel, type a few words and click a follow button. No gold or cash has been exchanged.

Lets look at the actual quote:

The key here, IMO, is organizations.

The group finder is an in-game tool, and streamers are individuals, not organizations.

So, in my opinion, this does not restrict streamers from advertising their twitch channels, whether they are boosting people or gaining rating with them.

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The issue with Twitch advertisements in PvP is that many times they are hidden RMT sales. They tell individuals to join the Twitch for “Viewer RBGs” (your example) and then privately message them their sales rate to join the team and get rating. Obviously not every Twitch advertisement is guilty of this, but I have personally seen that occur. Again, the bigger issue is that it’s difficult to report these RMTs. I’ve contacted Blizzard Customer Support previously about it and they have literally told me Blizzard Customer Support does not handle it. They said all I can do it’s right click and report player (which does not provide an option for RMT sales) or to email Hacks@Blizzard.com. Unfortunately, these offenses become unreportable because the player has no tangible evidence “in-game.”

I would also like to comment on your statement of it impacting PvP more than PvE. I will concur with that statement; however, it also hurts the “achievement” morale of PvErs. For my personal example, my guild spent 265 attempts and approximately 50.5 hours working on Mythic N’Zoth for Cutting Edge. We were elated to get it! (And that’s not even counting all the time spent into getting to that point). Then one day in Dazar’alor, I see a druid on the Mythic N’Zoth mount. I looked him up and it was evidence he purchased the Mythic N’Zoth kill because M N’Zoth was his only Mythic kill, and he was EXTREMELY undergeared. I felt absolutely gutted, as if all my and my team’s effort acquiring Cutting Edge was for naught. I know there are some people who argue that they want those mythic rewards but do not have the time (or skill) to get them. Bluntly my stance is that if you can’t work for them, you don’t deserve them, as, afterall, they are “achievements.”. So RMTs do impact the PvE community in more ways than just having to research player’s history.

Circling back to PvP, I will concur that RMTs feel more directly impactful. I was queuing in the 1700 2s bracket yesterday helping coach some random players and was shocked over how many high MMR players were carrying lowbies. It made some games just disgusting. One game I was against a Gladiator Restoration shaman who was clearly carrying a Demonology Warlock, and the resto shaman basically one shotted my demon hunter partner behind a pillar. Whether that was a RMT or not I do not know, but I definitely felt the impact of that carry. I’ll be creating another thread on the topic of mains making alts of same spec/class for carries at a later time as to not derail this conversation. But there definitely needs to be a better method for players to report RMTs or unauthorized advertisements, and for devs to swiftly take action.

6 Likes