Lots of good discussion! Trying to set personal opinions aside, this should reduce demand for gold, and therefore botting.
Bots add gold and mats to the economy. I don’t know how much of either, but probably significant amounts of both. A decline in the amount of bot-farmed gold will reduce prices. A decline in the number of bot-farmed mats will increase prices on those particular mats.
If GDKP enjoyers raid less and farm more, that would reduce the price of mats on both supply and demand side. As their raiding turns into farming, PVP servers may see better-geared players controlling farming spots, instead of bots. Less raiding would also mean gear is generally worse, and worse gear is more competitive.
We’ll see what happens! Since you read this far, I’ll say my two cents: GDKPs amplify the gambling aspect of a gambling game. Everything happens at the end, and it’s all added up, and you see the big pile of treasure you all just won together. And you know that every item in there is worth something to you. I play era and just hit 60 and there are more 2xsr runs than GDKP. I have done two gdkp and most items went for reasonable prices. I have done 10+ 2xsr and the GDKPs are more fun. I made money on both, even as a less geared player, getting Azuresong Mageblade and passing on lots of other items but getting paid. Vanity pieces/BiS til Naxx do go for absurd amounts. It feels a lot better to lose when it’s for more than I would’ve paid for it.
If you have a gambling addiction, please seek help. WoW is not helping, and definitely don’t do a gdkp.
Finally, I hope that banning GDKPs isn’t blizzards first step toward the token. I believe it could be, because the token + allowing gdkp would be too p2w for even a company which has shown it is happy to monetize anything.
Most bots (I’d say 80%+) are dungeon farming bots who are farming mainly to vendor loot for raw gold per hour (GPH). This is for a few reasons, mainly as they are slower to get banned due to lack of players reporting but also because it’s more consistent and you don’t need to rely on other players buying your stuff to get your gold. If you have a bot that’s farming herbs you need to not only list that on the AH and wait for it to sell, but also hope you don’t get banned during the time you are doing that. There’s a lot more risk involved in open world material farms.
I doubt this happens either as a GDKP carry or buyer. Buyers were getting their gold from a variety of means including of course RMT, but also things like playing the AH and doing carries on their carry mains and funneling to their buyer alts. Very few people that I knew of as buyers were going in as buyers with gold they had earned by just farming raw materials as it is typically not very good GPH. And as far as carries go, now they just have no incentive to continue raiding after they are geared outside of guild / friend raids but this means they won’t be in PuG groups anymore.
They allow GDKP’s in Wrath and there’s a token there, so I doubt that would be the reasoning behind it. If anything it would be smarter for Blizzard to allow GDKP’s as this would drive more people to purchase the token for gold to spend in said GDKP’s.
Players who engage in RMT will still buy gold. There are lots of other things you can purchase with it. High-end BoEs, consumables and mounts spring immediately to mind.
Botters will continue even if demand goes down. The simple economics is that botting is still a good investment for somebody living in a poorer country where you would otherwise earn $4 a day working in a sweatshop.
Only time will tell what impact the GDKP ban will actually have. The only thing for certain is that it won’t be enough of one, and people will be back here within days of phase 2 launching complaining about bots and whatever the new hot thing for gold is, and demanding it be banned too while failing to realize they’re doing nothing to address the actual issue…
Correct there are plenty of other reasons people buy gold. But GDKP is the largest contributing factor to gold buying. All of the other things you mentioned are related directly to the health of the economy (except the mount). If overall prices are down due to less circulation then the buyers don’t “need” to buy as much. Instead of buying 1,000 they buy 100. (Example numbers ofc)
Which brings me to my next point. Just as gold buying won’t go away, neither will gold sellers. We all know, Blizzard included that botting is a never ending battle that will never go away. It will always exist.
But what can go down is the volume in which it is done.
If demand takes a massive hit then revenue takes a hit. And you counter lost revenue by reducing operating costs. Now a bot farm that had 100 bots only has 10. (Again, example numbers only). They’re still there, and are still botting, but are doing so in smaller numbers.
0 bots will never happen, but 10 bots is better than 100.
The biggest problem is making this change mid season - after gold inflation has already hit ridiculous numbers due to botting until now. If SoD launched with this ban, botting would have been smaller scale from the beginning.
funny… most gear in a raid goes for about 5… meanwhile AH BiS greens/BoEs/can FAR exceed that… the AH is actually the biggest contributing factor for swiping, i think we need to convince blizzard to ban the AH to help curb RMT. lets be consistent here with out logic shall we?
Sounds like you didn’t do gdkps at the start of the Season before everyone was geared. When there was actual loot competition and 7/10 people weren’t full BiS items went for more, which due to less overall gold at the time, was worth more.
BoEs are so expensive quite literally because there is so much gold in circulation due to botting and RMT which is fueled by GDKP
i like this idea of yours, so we shouldnt stop and just banning GDKPS… lets ban BoE/BiS Greens/Consumes/Profession mats/Boosts/mounts/the entirety of the AH… sure there will be some collateral damage and casualties of the innocent… but this community has shown they are ok with that by alienating the vast majority of innocent GDKPers… lets be consistent and take this battle to the next logical step since we dont want to stamp out the real issue and ban RMT and leave everything else alone
The amount of high end BoEs 's very much fewer than BiS BoP. Consumables demand 's always there, with or without GDKP. So we can expect the demand for gold to decrease significantly.
Botting 's not free, it also requires depreciation of hardware and electricity costs. So if there 's less gold demand, or less profit for bot, they 'll reduce the number of bots to jump to another game to RMT. Wow is not the only game where RMT exists
RMT is already against the rules. I just don’t think the deterrents are high enough. It’ll be the same with GDKP I’d assume, the wording “suspension and up to account closure” is the same wording as the original RMT ToS. The softly softly approach to giving very temporary bans to gold buyers has lead us to where we are today.
You are just saying “hey cheater who has been cheating for 5 years, stop cheating, you’ll definitely get caught this time”
bans need to mean something, if you want to ban gdkp then sure, go ahead, but if you actually want people to stop doing it, hit them with a ban that hurts
i disagree, if they can catch and ban people doing underground with their GDKPs, they should re invest those resources to deal with the root issue IE RMT… rather than fighting one outlet some people have to RMT while ignoring the many others while ALSO destorying and ripping away a pref raid style of innocent people that want it… another worlds… the collateral damage to stamp out a few embers is gross negligence thus this is far from an easy pill to swallow by those that help pay to keep this game going.
if you agree then stop talking about banning GDKPs with the rest of the antti GDKP people out there… instead we can all push back on bliz as a united front to push them to ban the RMT players/botters
we will get more accomplished if we work together rather than fight eachother over a symptom
i disagree, if they can catch and ban people doing underground with their GDKPs, they should re invest those resources to deal with the root issue IE RMT…
not incorrect, but they have likely calculated this would cost them more in losing players to permabans than a gdkp ban does. so they take the path of least resistance, which is just banning gdkps instead of gold buyers.
if you agree then stop talking about banning GDKPs with the rest of the antti GDKP people out there… instead we can all push back on bliz as a united front to push them to ban the RMT players/botters
i do not believe blizz will ever be that heavy handed with buyers which is extremely unfortunate. this is the best solution we will get.
Not everyone plays how you play. Some people play to farm and sell mats and it’s impossible to keep up with bots. If you’re a raider, you’ve been benefiting from cheaters. If you like this and promote it, then you are a cheater. Nothing else needs to be said.
so they arnt after the RMT but to simply reduce it a bit… i would argue ban the AH then as it would have a greater effect
its not a solution though… RMT is the issue and this doesnt solve it… it will continue to run rampant… everyone is just using RMT as a platform to stand on to take out what they actually hate and that is GDKP… they dont REALLY mind RMT as is show by the actions of this community… and sadly you have people not seeing whats really going on and fighting on a united front… this falls under the category of " diminishing returns" you wont get much out of this other than the collateral damage
so they arnt after the RMT but to simply reduce it a bit…
basically, i think blizz has 100% done the math on which would cost them more money, permabans for gold buyers or just band aid solutions like this, and the band aid always seems to win.