[Classic Era] Exploitation of Free Transfers

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I’m posting to bring attention to exploitative behaviors observed on the less populated realms of Classic Era WoW, specifically with regards to the free transfers system.

A little background: I play Classic Era in the Eastern North American region on my native pvp realm Incendius. It is connected to 4 other realms in that region (Benediction, Faerlina, Heartseeker, and Netherwind). For over a year, Blizzard has allowed free transfers for Classic Era realms onto the pvp West realm of Whitemane (connected to 9 other Western pvp realms). The player population on pvp East has become smaller and smaller as a result of folks choosing to move West. Regardless there are still several, like myself, that choose to play on our home servers.

It is becomming increasingly apparent that some are taking advantage of this system.

Players (who used to play here in the pvp East) have knowingly left gatherer alts to continually harvest the uncontested resources of our depopulated realms. I suspect their goal is to mail these more easily-obtained goods over to a throwaway toon and then have it migrated via the free transfer system. While there is certainly nothing against ToS for simply gathering herbs/nodes, the use of these indefinite free transfers as a means to continually mule resources is exploitative.

It’s my hope that Blizzard acts quickly and implements safeguards against this type of exploit or, if oversight for such a task is unfeasible, reassess how the exploitation of my realm can be remedied. A suggestion for the latter would be to connect the Auction Houses of both the East and West Classic Era pvp realms.

13 Likes
2

They do not even do anything against people just buying gold and exploiting the economy via botted resources that run all day without getting banned…

I am sure the way they exploit era as you described it is a top priority for em. Good luck

1 Like
3

You may be right. I don’t know what type of metrics they use (if any) to detect exploiting. Still, it would be cowardly and negligent on my part to do nothing.

4

So they are picking your flowers and what? Moving them to a high pop realm?
I guess, if anything Blizz really needs to do a better job with the bots in general but after 18 years not expecting it anymore.

1 Like
5

Gathering materials isn’t what I’m reporting. Its the continual abuse of the free transfers to funnel one realm’s resources to another. I even suggest an alternative remedy if they dont want to actively patrol it.

1 Like
6

I only care if it’s automated. If someone wants to run around picking stuff them moving it to a different server whatever. I guess they could require transferring toons to be max level or something which might slow it down but I’m not seeing how what they are doing is hurting anything so long as they aren’t botting. People did the same thing with layering by switching layers to gather.

7

What are you not understanding? It’s exploiting the free transfer service. Do you truly not see how that creates an unfair dynamic between playing low/high population realms? Why bother leaving the megaserver if you can harvest all you want in the backwater, contribute nothing to their community, and only cement its further exploitation with infinite transfers off of it?

This isn’t the same at all. When a server splits into layers, its not splitting the toons into different servers with different auction houses. The toons are all still in the same realm community, but on different copies of the same zone. This free Xfer abuse involves more than just a single realm.

8

This is a great idea.

I can’t wait to further exploit this

2 Likes
9

There is quite a bit of “suspicious” behavior on East Coast 2 (Earthfury et al.), there has been an uptick of activity (more players) but no chatter or AH activity which one would expect with more legitimate play. It is reminiscent of the Black Lotus Mafia that ran Thalnos (a very dead server) pre- TBC. There are a bunch of lvl 60 hunters in DM and Mages in Zul’farrak at all hours with no stop.

None of these effects my play BUT I know it will eventually effect other, more populated servers.

1 Like
10

The repercussions can affect all Classic Era realms: the players receiving the exploited goods subvert their own realms’ economies and damage the chances for legitimate play to occur on the non-Xfer destinations.

Increased competition for resources is the natural impetus for players to not roll on a densely-populated realm. Once it reaches a threshold, player populations migrate to a new equilibrium. The players exploiting these sustained, unlimited, free transfers abolish that impetus and in doing so damage the Classic Era community as a whole.

2 Likes
11

You’d think they’d be hip to something like this. They used to monitor transfers Im pretty sure.

1 Like
12

Blizzard should do something about this.

1 Like
13

Further proof even era is on a timer.

14

It’s like this on Deviate Delight as well. It used to just be me when I would want to get away from the hustle and bustle of my 60s on Mankrik/Whitemane. Now I see a mage farming ZF almost constantly and lots of rogues farming herbs and a hunter in Dire Maul.

2 Likes
15

This type. You have some odd self of importance lingering on a dead realm and now have come up with a problem that isnt even really a problem to bring attention to yourself.

Weirdo.

2 Likes
16

Sounds like clever use of game mechanics. Quit the crying

17

I appreciate that the Community Council broached the topic of exploits in Classic with game devs during their recent session (WoW Community Council Live Chat - August 18). It would have been better if the scope of that discussion went beyond bots/boosts and mentioned the exploitable free transfers as well.

18

Nodes were already rare enough in classic/vanilla that I welcome the increase in resources.

19

If the players on non-connected realms were meant to freely access each other’s resources then their Auction Houses would be shared. This is exploiting the transfer service that was originally set up for when cloning was still available. That service was retired, this one should retire with it.

1 Like
20

Maybe auction houses should be shared. Sounds good to me. What’s the argument against it? From my extensive experience raiding in classic WoW, player driven economies are not a reason to not have shared AHs. Player driven economy sounds nice but it’s not a great thing in practice. Players can still influence the economy with shared AH anyway. Why keep them separate again?