Gold Sellers and Buyers are about to have a field day

WoW Classic
1

Gold-Buyers are at more of an advantage than ever in SoD, and Gold-Sellers are acting quickly to seize profits.

I have waited years with bated breath for Blizzard to announce a Classic+ and now that it is here my worst fears have been realized. It is now time for gold buyers and sellers to ruin another version of WoW and it is ripe for the picking. The economy is already inflating, while gold-making methods crash to new lows, in-demand items are skyrocketing to unseen heights.

It is time to crack down and BAN GDKP/BOOST/BOT/GOLDBUYERS+SELLERS. With the return of Chris Metzen and introduction of Classic+ it is now time more than ever for a return to values.

In this phase, and all phases to follow many if not all BiS equipment comes from BoEs. This means gold-buyers have more of an advantage than ever. Able to grief endlessly in WPvP, streamroll WSG, get into the BEST/FIRST Progression groups and STAY ahead. This is a lifestyle they have already grown very comfortable with in Retail/Era because nothing is being done.

The competitive side of WoW has now become who can buy the most gold. It is PAY-TO-WIN. Not only that, but the attitudes these people bring with them, they boost to max, instantly BiS and then turn around and act like elitist douchebags to players that actually PLAY the game. It is to the point that you have to follow suit to stay competitive. There are already plenty of streamers, and RWF players confirmed to buy gold. If we fix this problem WoW competition and achievements can be about true sportsmanship again. It has become a vain mockery of sport. Anyone wanting true competition would surely look elsewhere.

We are already beginning to see GDKP BFD runs, HUGE Bot Farms springing up, economy in ruins and people running around with full RMT Gear. People who actually PLAY the game have been waiting for Classic+ because we wanted WoW before greed and poor choices took over. Before the token, and shop and GDKP madness. We wanted to see original dream of WoW continued and expanded upon.

This not only ruins the economy, but the community. We have to do something. Sooner or later another MMO will come that DOES solve this issue and players will leave WoW like a sinking ship, myself included. Then all the gold farmers and buyers can sit and cry about a game THEY ruined for profit. Goodbye Cash Cow!

Once again, BAN GDKP/BOOST/BOT/GOLDBUYERS+SELLERS and ENFORCE IT.

BUT HOW?! I see many ideas about how; the funny thing is that’s it’s already possible with existing systems. Invest in expanding them. Introduce AI. If they can find a way to bot, we can make a bot to ban them. Let alone players with the REPORT SYSTEM. It is nowhere near as an unwinnable war as the supporters have you believe. Lastly, petition legal action. Sue them. There are million dollar companies profiting from destroying WoW. Surely something can be done.

Mad Season’s Documentary

World of Warcraft - Pandora’s Box - YouTube

Meta Goblin’s Wonderful Investigative Work

The Gold Selling Underworld of Classic WoW is Terrible
 - YouTube

[SIDE NOTE: FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON THIS WOULDN’T POST IN SEASON OF DISCOVERY]

4 Likes
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Nobody said it was. But here is some inside information as to why (to be clear not an ex blizz but former game dev for another company) we ban in 3-6 month intervals instead of consistently.

Player gets bot software that cost $. Bot developer gets $. This happens X amount of times as more people get the software then we do a banwave. Players complain oh this in unfair we never cheated and we drink those tears and laugh at them. Those players then go to the bot developer and go hey your bot got me banned and they paypal charge back as paypal allows this in a you guessed it 3-6 month window. So now that bot developer is having a real bad week as all those charge backs are coming threw at once.

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While I appreciate the response and information, due to current state of things I no longer believe that that is enough. They are thriving. 3-6 Months is a long time when it takes mere weeks to begin ruining the economy and community. More needs to be done. Blizzard needs to take legal action. I’m pretty sure they have in the past, I need to find the article.

4

They have in regards to ddos, information leaks and even in regards to protection of the IP. Bot software is not possible to do so and here is why

  1. Bot software can be used for a multitude of reasons many of which are perfectly legal so advertising bot software or selling it breaks no laws. How is this relevant? Well you could sell knives but if someone buys your knife and stabs someone with it that doesn’t make you liable unless you could prove knowledge of intent.
5

Well it’s time for this smol indie company to lobby for legislative action against using 3rd party bot software, or against ‘malicious businesses profiting through interruption of their product/customer base’.

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Ok lets say the gaming companies get together and do this. (Side note we do work together on allot of things). Then what? That will only affect the U.S. and that’s a very small % of where bot software is developed and distributed. The more based in reality reason it won’t happen is

This is used almost everywhere, even by the government so they wouldn’t want to stop this.

Free market and they key word here is “malicious”. We have to prove intent of it being malicious and as its the products customer base that uses this software its impossible to do so as if it was then they wouldn’t use it then would they?

Long and short more/less can be done in regards to being active in banning bots. I just let you know why we choose to do 3-6 month ban waves and the logic behind it from our perspective (light slaps every day vs one big punch to hopefully keep them down). Are we aware it only takes a few days to ruin a games economy? Yes. Do we know that makes a negative experience to some players? Also yes. Does this bother us? A great deal, we don’t enjoy watching people ruin something we spend years working on.

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Add a detection algorithm that flags(not bans) all transations of more than a fixed amount of gold(I was thinking 100g or 1000g, and adjust from there), another one for repeated transations with the same account holder(so if you have 3 accounts and you buy 100g for characters on all 3, it’ll get picked up).

They have logs of all transations(gold, items) and chat logs.
It’d be easy enough for a real human(or trained AI) to verify that the transation was legit.
Like if someone is trading another person a Silverleaf for 3000g the Person is gonna know what’s up.

They also have chat logs.
So if someone gets handed 10g from 30 characters and there was no interaction, or it was all the same responses(“Hey man here’s that 10g I owe you.”),

No system is perfect and some gold buyers would get through, but to dissuade people from trying and to restore the integrity of the game they should have a 1 strike rule with gold buying. You buy gold you get banned, that’s it.

You bot, you get banned.
You intentionally exploit(Abusing layers to farm dungeon bosses like what happened in early classic) or cheat in any way you get banned.

8

They’ve been doing this since Vanilla.
Clearly it’s a winning strategy look at how few cheaters there are.
There aren’t even any gold buyers!

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I’m not sure what point you are trying to make that has any relevance to what I said. Cause I don’t recall saying its a winning strategy did I? I didn’t even comment on gold buying at all did I? So maybe instead of shouting whatever random nonsense at someone having a conversation with someone else you sit quietly and pay attention or mind your own business and do something else/

10

It has everything to do with what you said.

You said blizzard does banwaves to cost bot makers money.

I sarcasitcally replied that it works(it doesn’t) because that’s the strategy that they’ve been using since Vanilla and we still have botters and it’s worse than it’s ever been.

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Go back and slowly read what I said and then show me where I said that?

Also where did I say it was a strat to stop botting? I explained why we do it that way and that was not the reason.

So again relevance is where now?

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GDKP’s are just a better way to raid, you can pick a raid time, everyones there for a reason and playing to their best and gold is just server wide dkp. The only soultion to gold farming is literally just blocking countries these bot farms are coming from and undoing any anti-farm changes theyve made. more changes they make to harder for real players to get gold the more likly they will go and just buy it because it isnt worth thier time. an hour of work is about 8 hours of none stop farming in game

13

Right here:
“Player gets bot software that cost $. Bot developer gets $. This happens X amount of times as more people get the software then we do a banwave. Players complain oh this in unfair we never cheated and we drink those tears and laugh at them. Those players then go to the bot developer and go hey your bot got me banned and they paypal charge back as paypal allows this in a you guessed it 3-6 month window. So now that bot developer is having a real bad week as all those charge backs are coming threw at once.”

You don’t have to say it’s a strategy because that’s what it is.
it’s a strategy to stop bots.

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and where in that is the word Blizzard? Exactly, nowhere? That’s what I thought as I was talking from experience as a game dev on the topic not blizzard. I actually made it clear that I was not employed by blizz at any point so could not speak directly for them but only as a game dev and the professional circle we keep.

Again no. If you paid attention or could put 2 cents together you would realize that’s not to stop the bots its to give the 1 guy selling the bot a real bad week.

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You are talking about botting on WoW, you don’t have to specifically mention blizzard.

But yes, get loud and angry that means you’re right.

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No I wasn’t

Try reading

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This whole thread is literally about bots and botting in wow.
Do you even know where you are or what you’re arguing about?

How many fingers am I holding up?

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its clearly not as me and op ventured into a different avenue of conversation. One that you seem to not be able to distinguish from the point you are trying to make that has 0 correlation to what we were talking about. But instead you came in here saying I said stuff I never said and clearly tried to connect dots that didn’t exist in the first place.

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I repeated what you said back to you chief.

Just because you’re wrong doesn’t mean I don’'t understand what you’re saying.
Edit: For clarity
What you’re saying is the current approach.
It doesn’t work though.
As evidenced by the horde of bots on every server.

20

No you didn’t cause I never said

Also don’t recall ever saying it did, did I?

Infact I was very clear about that fact right here

What I was offering was insight as to why us game devs do so again right here

You came in talking about nothing of relevance to our conversation and making claims things were said that never were.