So obviously advertising is not allowed in LFG. Its one of the main right click options “Report for Advertising”
However I have literally been reporting this same exact person for almost 2 years now. Today I just so happen to be in the right mood once I saw the same LFG reappear every time I logged into an alt.
So it begs the question, is reporting people completely useless? Or is this person making new accounts and abusing the system for 2 years?
Because without sharing any personal info, the LFG ad is in brackets and says [Selling 2.4k] or something like that. It’s obviously ADVERTISEMENT, I’m not reporting for trading real world currency, I’m simply reporting for advertisement in LFG like I SHOULD be doing, except nothing is happening?
Perhaps that they’re not breaking any rules if they are simply advertising that they are selling runs. If they are selling for real life money, that’s an issue. For gold, that’s okay.
In the past 2 years, the rules have also changed, so it really depends on the situation at hand. New rules can be found here:
Best thing for you to do is report and then move on understanding that if it is for real money, then these are typically run by very malicious third parties on stolen accounts who will stop at nothing to continue to steal player info, hack their accounts and steal gold.
the exact same message for 2 years? there’s no way? I mean at a certain point negligence is allowance, right? Blizzard, please, I’m a normal guy and I can tell. There are so many measures Blizzard can take to auto correc this person from seeing the EXACT SAME message every single day… 2 years, dont forget,
I’ll mention some stuff I’ve experienced. I spent close to a year manually reporting and logging the names, watching the trends, watching the various websites, company front ends and website re-directs, this all got bundled up and sent to Blizz regularly. It took time but a couple of things:
-All the RMT advertiser-bots disappeared over time. Blizz took care of them.
-Eventually operating costs went up enough that most RMT advertisers dropped out, really don’t see as many as before, and mostly for one or two websites.
-Occassionally an advertiser, who were not mentioning RMT (maybe they were, but they did not link to a clear RMT site), would be around awhile. But they eventually were removed as well.
I found that emailing hacks@blizzard.com with the information about length of life for problematic repeat offenders to be helpful.
Note: this is only what I saw for advertisers in LFG, which is not allowed (hence the added operating cost for the cheaters of having to have a phone on the account…which the big players can handle).
That was my experience here. LFG is much better now. Maybe, if you have data, an email to hacks@blizzard.com with length and names could be helpful. At the end of the day, though, you will not hear anything. But there is a certain satisfaction when the problem eventually disappears.
Good luck.
Edit: Don’t get frustrated. Don’t get angry. Report, maybe note it down, email if you feel you have good info, and move on.
If they are advertising RMT then they are part of a multi billion dollar industry that has infected every major mmo. They have been infected in wow since it launched and as long as your fellow players keep buying they are not going any where.
So please keep reporting them, it does work. But keep in mind you will still see them. Why for each account that gets banned they have 100’s more to replace the banned ones. All stolen accounts.
They can advertise carries runs etc. in services channel but op is claiming this is happening in lfg tool. This is not allowed and requires dual triple quadruple authentication to even edit a post. I guess its bad for token business if Blizzard gives carry sellers too much of a hard time.
They mentioned reporting for TWO years though. The rules have absolutely changed over the past two years. More specifically, in August of last year…not two years ago.
A decent “guess” sure, but I think it misses the mark by a long shot. They didn’t change the rules so that they could keep selling tokens.
You know, it was a bit of work. It wasn’t very organised and done on the side. I’m not too certain what good it did. It gave me some insight which could be applied to other areas I work in, which is part of the reason I did it.
The only reason I’ve brought it up a couple of times is to point out at that Blizz does work on this stuff, there are positive results, and sometimes, with data, maybe hacks@blizzard.com helps.
When you report, it removes the ad for that character, not for your entire account. Once you log to an alt, then the ad will be viewable by that alt, and any subsequent alts you log in to. Just to note, when you report it, it doesn’t get removed immediately, it just hides it for the duration of that specific character login. If you switch, it is no longer hidden. It also might not violate the rules, which is what it sounds like if you have been reporting the exact same ones for the past 2 years.
I’ve gotten messages saying that “Your report(s) resulted in …”
Not that I like to report anyone, it’s that doing nothing is worse in most cases. The early days of some young person in the 90s or early 2000s just trying to make a buck are long since past. The vast majority of these operations are well organized and networked.
Blizzard does something but like we said its a multi billion buissiness thats behind this stuff. Once the players stop looking for the easy way out u will see a drastic drop but untill the player base smartens up the cockroaches will always prey on the stupid.
Didn’t one of those huge carry selling groups catch massive bans because it turned out some of the higher ups were also doing RMT back either at the end of BFA or sometime at the start of Shadowlands? I can’t remember what they were called. Something based off of the goblin cartels.
Since 2018 no one is allowed to advertise selling any type of run in group finder. Your support article even says:
Selling items and services for gold is allowed but can only be advertised in-game through the Trade chat channel.
This used to be spelled out with the following afterwards, I’m not sure why they took it out:
Advertisements are not allowed in the Group Finder. The Group Finder is intended to help players find active groups that are being formed and advertisements make it difficult to find relevant groups.
This was the blue post on it originally:
I understand things change, but advertising in group finder still seems the same since 2018.
When you report a message…you put the person on a temp ignore. The message disappears. Only untill you log in the next time. The message is displayed again, because the person is no longer on you ignore list.
It is safe to delete the message.
Good luck have fun.