After reading Mirasol’s answer to a player regarding illicit gold trading/payment, I am prompted to give the following examples of my own possible violation and maybe get a ruling so I don’t have to worry about doing it in the future and maybe being forgiven that I did in the past.
About 5-6 years ago, it was a lot of fun to play “trivia” in SW. I’d ask the question and the first person through (no googling!) with the correct answer, got 500 of my G’s. Legal/illegal?
In my early days, I used to pay for transport on a double-seated dino. Sometimes a very kind player would give me a free ride. Other times, they took the gold. Legal/Illegal?
Lastly, one remembers seeing “will tip” for portal transport by a mage. Legal (now)/Illegal?
You are free to trade gold with any player as you wish. How ever, if the gold was obtained in illicit ways, than penalties will be taken towards everyone who has got that gold, whether it was given to another player or not through trading.
It is a risk. Yes, you can offer someone or someone can offer you gold for a trivia or a tip for a mage portal. But if the gold is illicitly obtained, than actions will be taken against such accounts.
Your first scenario is the only one that tiptoes a little into some red area, but only if there was public advertising involved. But five years ago or so I don’t believe there’s any cause for concern, maybe also a good chance the new advertising policy wasn’t in place then.
Tipping for dual-seat lifts is a non-issue.
Receiving tips for mage portals runs the same risk of receiving illicit gold as other activity, but is otherwise also a non-issue.
If bought the gold through 3rd party sites, or Real Money Trading as it would actually be called, then yes, there could be a problem. If purchase the gold through the WoW Token, then your safe.
How does the so-called “boosting” fit into this? Same rules? Wasn’t there a period when it was “allowed” and weren’t there numerous adverts running on channel 2 during that time?
Has that been outlawed as well? Real money changes hands, right?
Sorry if this seems repetitious to some of you, but I was on “auto-pilot” for a number of months, and if nothing else, maybe we all could pretend this is a refresher? Thanks.
Boosting is allowed, but same rules. No real money, unsupported, you run the risk of being scammed. Booster might receive tainted gold, boostie might get scammed and not get a completed run.
They banned the advertisements of the large organizations that used to advertise. Before you would see low level spamming adds. Now, the only people doing the advertising should be the one doing the run itself.
So first, no advice given to you on this forum would be any sort of “shield” if you are caught by the sweeps that are run to identify then take action on those who are either knowingly or unknowingly participating in the RMT trade, and it doesn’t matter who gives the advice, so anything you see in regards to your question, should be taken as pure advice and suggestions.
Looking at your scenarios though:
If your just giving away gold, that isn’t going to be a problem, it would only be accepting gold where you would run into problems, that said I think the TOS does prohibit gambling, so trivia games could run afoul of that, especially if your wagering high values and if you got reported, this of course would assume people are paying you to play, if your just giving away cash, then you would be fine.
Paying for a ride also probably wouldn’t get you into trouble, similar to paying for a port, that said, if your the one selling the “port/ride” make sure you only do it in the services channel, as people are simply tired of things like LFG being filled with people selling services, and depending on the server, advertising in the wrong channel can get you into trouble.
Ultimately most times people get into trouble it revolves around large amounts of gold, and grey areas. Avoid things like buying/selling gold between servers, for high value items. be careful of sales/purchases not on the AH, if in doubt buy/sell everything off the AH, and make sure the price would be considered reasonable. For things like boosting, if your paying someone else, as long as they aren’t using exploits your probably fine, however if your boosting others, and accepting “bad” gold, then you could be at risk.
I do not think trivia would fall under as gambling, though I could be wrong on this, someone could correct me if I am wrong. But difference between gambling and trivia is with gambling, you’re either placing a bet or a stake on the currency, in this case for WoW, Gold. Trivia’s, you don’t bet or put stakes on with the gold. It is basically, “answer the correct answer, receive a reward.”
Though with trivia’s, it is best to keep it within a close circle, such as with friends, or the guild.
Biggest risk these days with a trivia game, if it’s otherwise legit, is probably getting reported for spam. I wouldn’t report someone using /say in the trade district to do trivia, probably. Maybe if they were doing it too often. Don’t spam /yell.
Personally, I prefer to err on the side of caution.
While it may not be in the same vein of being a game of chance as doing /deathroll or a casino, it is still a game involving gold changing hands.
Also, just like the rules about casinos and /deathrolls, it isn’t the act that is against the rules, but rather the advertising of such in public channels.
while on one of my lvl 11 toons i use for ez clapping legacy/timewalking dungeons, i had someone whisper me in game that i should be aware of boosting because of potentially getting actioned for it. confused i asked the person what they meant, and theres apparently a thing where the booster ie lvl 11 toon for instance, along with whoever the person they are supposedly boosting either for sake of time or leveling the opposite party’s character up, where one or both sides will continually queue for a dungeon, then drop and requeue again til they get paired up into the same instance as a means of bypassing the level 10/11 characters xp debuff for having exp off.
according to what that person told me, doing such as described above is supposedly actionable, under what means i wouldnt know, my guess cheating be closest match.