Combating RMT & Bots (From a former Currency Seller)

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Introduction:

Before we kick this thing off, I’ll give a little bit of a background on myself. From the years of 2008-2018 I was a RMT(Real Money Transactions) Expert. I have sold currency and accounts on more than 20 different popular MMO(Massive-Multiplayer Online) and Action RPG(Role Playing Game) titles. I got into the business of RMT right after I graduated from high school, I was young and the idea of making money playing video games sounded fantastic. I am currently working on finishing my second Bachelor’s degree and have lost interest in playing World of Warcraft or any other MMORPG for that matter, not that I don’t enjoy them but I simply found more productive uses of my time.

That being said, let me first state that the idea of WoW having absolutely no RMT and no botting is not a realistic solution and never will be.

Grab yourself a drink because this is going to be a long one. Now, let’s begin.

The Three Amigos! ( Ideas):

  1. Control the price of gold on your game. This would be with the introduction of WoW Tokens.

Before everyone starts ranting and bickering about how bad WoW tokens would be for the game’s economy hear me out since I have a lot of personal experience when it comes to selling currency.

Yes, introducing WoW Tokens would just offer players an alternative method to paying real money for gold. HOWEVER, RMT already exists in WoW through third party vendors so not introducing WoW Tokens leaves you in the same boat. The introduction of WoW Tokens would allow blizzard to effectively set the price of gold in the RMT market. Currently the price of gold (according to a google search I just did while writing this) is 1000g for $40 USD. That is essencially $20 USD per hour for some of these gold farmers and possibly even $60 USD an hour for others. If Blizzard was to open up WoW tokens at a selling price of… lets say 300 gold per token. That means players will be giving up 200g for every $20 they would have spent on a third party website for the simple security of losing the risk of being banned.

“But Threatbolt? What is that going to solve?” Well thank you for asking, let me explain what happens behind the scenes when this takes place. The third party gold sellers now have to reduce their prices to compete with Blizzard. What happens when they reduce their pricing? Third party gold sellers get less profits. As an incentive for you to purchase gold on a third party webiste, gold sellers will now have to offer you more to get you to take that risk of being banned over purchasing safely from blizzard. This is how you kill the RMT third party market. It lets you take their job of making $20-60 per hour and cut it at the knees and knock it to below $10 an hour.

“But Threatbolt, $10 an hour to play a video game is still pretty good” Well yes, yes it is as a side income. But you see they aren’t actually making that $10 an hour now. Because they now have to sell to company who offloads their gold for them because order rates have plummeted. The typical return rate for selling to a third party website, to sell your gold for you, is about 40%. So that $10 an hour is now $4. Still interested in earning almost half of what the minimum wage is? The very reason as to why I spread my business across 20 different games is because when the profits tank in one market, you move to the next. That is exactly what would happen with the introduction of WoW Tokens. The profit margins for gold sellers will tank and they will move on to the next market. This takes most of the RMT third party sellers out of the game as well as most of the bots with it.

  1. Update your Terms of Service to punish Multi-boxing. Sure you can make arguments that multi-boxing is fun and it doesn’t affect your experience but the fact is that it does directly affect the experience of the player base.

The most common use of Multi-boxing is to power-level multiple accounts at the same time for the purpose of selling them. Not only does this mean new players now have to suffer the leveling process when a Multi-boxer runs through the questing area aoeing every single thing in it’s path forcing the player or party to now wait for re-spawns. You now have accounts being sold to fresh players at max level so when you form a party to enter a dungeon it’s a dice roll if the player has ever even seen their abilities or skills before. They will lack basic understandings of dungeon mechanics and you will suffer as you struggle to clear dungeons with said player causing multiple wipes. Remove Multi-boxing and you kill yet another third party market because leveling 1-60 in week is not profitable enough if you cant do 5 accounts at the same time.

  1. Update your red-flagging algorithm for red-flagging players who purchase gold from third parties.

Being that I know blizzard stores chat logs, a simple additional check to the algorithm to include a search in the chat logs if a player has ever communicated with the individual they received the gold from previously. Make that check date back an hour or so from the trade. You would also need a check that includes fair market pricing. Meaning, another check involving comparing the auction house price of an item and the gold received for the item in the trade +/- 20% or so. This of course would be used for gold trades of 500g and up for example.

Conclusion:

These are the three most influential points I wanted to mention that would actually affect change in the RMT/botting market that is affecting WoW Classic. From my own personal experience these changes would absolutely kill off the large majority of the problem. It puts a choke hold on their profit margins and they simply move to another game to try to make acceptable margins elsewhere.

That being said, I am fully aware openly admitting to being a RMT Currency seller in the past has it’s risks of being punished and I fully accept those consequences.

For any blizzard employee that has any other questions or would like any other input, you have my full permission to email me any questions or concerns at the provided email address linked to my account. I would be more than willing to provide any further feedback as WoW has provided me not only a form of income for several years but a lot of enjoyment for more than a third of my life.

-Thanks for taking the time to read all of this,
Threatbolt

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In retail RMT just moved from gold to achievements and items, it would be the same here too. Do you want players buying gold or gear and boosts for RM? Because that’s that happens in retail with the wow token.

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Achievements would not be a problem for Classic wow, I do agree that items being sold will continue to be a thing as it already is now. Power-leveling services will sky rocket in price making it less affordable for those considering it due to the removal of multi-boxing. Current power-levelers don’t power-level accounts one at a time. They multi-box multiple accounts together to get 2-3 orders done at the same time. Power-leveling one account to 60 for $250 isn’t worth their time considering it takes on average a week to do. (Yes you can do 1-60 in less than 3 days played time, but that is played time. the typical power-leveler plays 8-10 hours a day. so go ahead and more than double that played time for your actual time.)

This brings the value of their time agian to around a $4 per hour rate. not even including any fees they may be charged for the platform they choose to sell the account on.

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Interesting post. My only concern comes from the multi-boxing. My biggest issue is that like I tend to always say, “These kinds of things lump every multi-boxer under the same umbrella.”

That would be like someone saying, “Oh you were a currency seller eh? Doesn’t matter if you say you turned over a new leaf. You are a bad person and should be outright banned.”

Handle things on a case by case basis.

You brought up the point of multi-boxing and selling accounts. Couldn’t someone sell an account that they leveled up on their own? What about buying boosts and selling those accounts off? I think a more appropriate thing would be to be more active on dealing with people buying and selling accounts.

Multi-boxing using third party software? What about people that multi-box using non third party software? I multi-box using 2 laptops, 1 keyboard, 1 mouse, and a single macro.

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The statement does lump them all together, this is true. But the VERY large majority of multi-boxers do it to sell accounts. If you wanted me to throw a guesstimate on it I would say the average would look something along the lines of 10 out of every 100 multi-boxers do it simply because they have fun multi-boxing.

Regular players selling accounts will still be an issue, The selling of fresh accounts at 60 will go away over time simply because the week long investment is not worth the $250 going rate for a fresh level 60 right now. The difference of making $1250 a week vs making $1000 a month. Power-levelers will either double or triple in price causing fewer players to even want the service anymore, or it will just die out all together once the currently leveled accounts are already bought up or banned.

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Proof? Or are you just tossing impressive numbers out there to make your conclusion seem more attractive?

I know quite a few Multiboxers. I myself have been doing as such since EQ. I have never known a WoW MBer who has ever sold an account.

You see that because you associate with cheaters. So all you see is cheating. Try playing by the rules and being a decent person and maybe you will realize the world is bigger than your dark little corner.

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Blizzard can’t make rules to accommodate every player in the game. They must make rules for the good of the game that affect the least number of players negatively. Just as they decided to institute a 30 dungeon cap that they decided was for the good of the game that affected “only a handful” of legitimate players negatively.

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You are right, that statistic is anecdotal. However, if you run around the open world attempting to communicate with players you come across that are multi-boxing, they will more than likely ignore you and carry on with their business. You aren’t paying for their service therefore they don’t have time for you.

What you just counter argued with is your own version of “you will realize the world is bigger than your dark little corner.” You know a very few amount of multi-boxers. I have dealt with several hundreds across multiple gaming titles.

So yes, my shot in the dark statistic based on my own experience may not be 100% accurate, but it holds more merit than yours due to simple sample size.

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All I’m seeing is you making up numbers and then presuming to know better than everyone else. Self important much?

We could argue hyperbole all day. But unlike yourself, I don’t do that.

I’m all for cracking down on cheating, but let’s use actual facts to back up our strategies instead of fiction.

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either an account seller multi boxer or an account buyer.

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I have camped a few power leveling services on my server because I know that’s what the guys is doing. he plays hunters, and its easy to spot the guy because every week or so he’s got a new batch of hunters all with names that are the sort you would expect from a real player to have, except for the part where the names are always different but the play style, gear itemization, and methodology of play is the same. I report him, but since he’s not botting blizzard does not ban him, but its obvious he’s selling characters.

I agree that the gold token can slow the tide of gold sellers, but it has other RMT ramification that are rather unsavory that are equally bad. I thought about detailing why its bad but realized maybe I should not because then the method of how to use the gold token to make even more money would be out of the bag so to speak.

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I am using anecdotal statistics, because those are the only statistics that exist for the topic. So when you want to measure the validity of those statistics being that those are the only ones you have at the end of the day. You go by sample size, or go off the word of someone who has been a part of the business speaking out about how to make change.

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Then be honest about it. You admit to having no clue as to the actual numbers, but state that 90% of multiboxers are doing it simply to sell the accounts.

Again. If you are a cheater who hangs out with cheaters all you will see is cheating.

Saying that because some who multibox are breaking the eula so all multiboxers should be outlawed is akin to saying some players who trade gold do so for real money so all gold trading should be stopped. It is a ridiculous statement.

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WoW tokens wouldn’t remove RMT from the game, there is no way that any gaming company can completely remove RMT from their game. They can simply reduce the amount of currency being purchased by reducing the conversion rates to the point of killing off third party sellers. It would however reduce the amount of gold being purchased and put into alternate hands. Players would have to spend more for the same amount of gold or risk having their account banned for going to a third party seller. Someone spending $100 on a website for gold would effectively have to spend $150-$200 in WoW tokens. Blizzard could even implement a limit on WoW tokens purchased per week to gate that further. Combine that with updating the system that red-flags gold buyers and sellers, it knocks out those willing to risk their accounts to save the RMT third party market. (Yes, I know that’s not their goal when they purchase from a third party but that is what they would be doing.)

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We have no facts. We can either refuse to discuss the topic or attempt to judge what ever information that comes our way. Does the story seem plausible? Is it likely? Does it hang together as a coherent whole or are there obvious flaws at certain points? Hopefully we can use our best attempt at rational analysis and avoid confirmation bias. You need to read up on deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning.

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That would be contingent on Blizzard doing 2 things, First actually taking action against gold buyers again like they did years ago, and more aggressively banning bots, because bots will work for zero dollars an hour.

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Considering I stopped my RMT Transactions in 2018, as stated in the very first sentence of my post. Not ALL of my interactions with multi-boxers have been from a business setting.

Let me ask you this, Do you think guns should be allowed in schools? Do you think anyone with a carry license should be allowed to walk into a federal building uncontested? The reason that Gun Free zones exist isn’t because there are good people out there that can abide by the law and be rational human beings. The reason is because there are individuals who don’t and it is too hard to differentiate between the two simply by sight until the wrong doing takes place and it’s already too late.

Anyways, this is all besides the point. The point of the post wasn’t to argue my points. It was to have the eye of those who are actually in charge of making appropriate change.

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And the information that is available is that of the multiboxers he has come into contact, 90% are doing it for profit. And if stated as such there wouldn’t be an issue.

But to say that because most of the multiboxers he has associated with are selling accounts, that should translate to the greater whole is dishonest.

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Yes. If you can’t be trusted to not shoot up a playground or government building then you shouldn’t be trusted to have a firearm at all. Gun free zones have not stopped shooting at schools or anywhere else. They are an ineffective law.

Funny that you think you know more than Blizzard does.

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Apparently someone didn’t read the full post and missed the part stating this was from my own personal experience.