My First Ever "Gold Swap" in World of Warcraft (WoW Market Discord)

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I’ve made over 3 million gold profit in WotLK, and have made over 2,000g profit in SoD so far…

And I just got hit with a 14 day ban, with an automated reply, for what I can only assume was my gold swap (from WotLK > SoD) a few weeks ago… Literally the first gold swap I’ve ever done between game versions. I joined the WoW Market Discord about a month ago, I found a highly reputable person willing to swap 330g SoD for my 65k WotLK, We organized everything in Discord, met up in game, typed out IN CHAT “I am trading 65k WotLK gold for 330g in Season of Discovery” in both game versions, we parted ways, and I thought that was that…

But apparently, Blizzard’s automated system flagged that. I spent an hour beforehand making sure it was Kosher, making sure everything was above board and allowed. I fully understood that it wasn’t a “supported trade” and that had I gotten scammed, I would’ve had no recourse…

But this is literally worse… I would’ve rather been scammed, and lost 65k of my current 2.9 million gold in WotLK than get an unjustified 2 week ban at the START of Phase 2…

Not cool Blizzard… If you’re going to ban people for taking their hard work in 1 version of the game, and transferring some of that “hard-earned wealth” to another version of the game… Why don’t you just ban Gold Swaps between Game Versions? Why allow it if you’re just going to turn around and ban honest players?

I appreciate the Bot bans, I appreciate the RMT bans, it’s unhealthy for the game, it inflates the economy, and puts alot of pressure on “casual Mom and Pop Guilds" to either raid without consumes, or… Buy gold to be able to afford those consumes, especially in Classic where consumes are so powerful.

I saw the effect gold buying had firsthand in Season of Mastery, and the effect that GDKP’s had in ‘distributing that gold’ to a large number of players, which hyper-accelerated consumable/reagent/resource inflation on the server. By the time Season of Mastery ended, I was supplying over half our 40man raid will flasks and full consumes for Naxx, because if I didn’t, they’d either show up to raid without consumes, or succumb to the cheaters, and purchase gold. I didn’t want my raiders coming unprepared, and I definitely didn’t want them to go and get themselves banned, and being able to dip into my vast fortune (I ended Season of Mastery with over 120k gold) to make that possible was a very rewarding experience for me. It feels good to be helpful.

As someone who LOVES farming gold in this game, being able to then take that gold and wave it around to get whatever I want, I love it, it’s such a fun aspect of this game. I also love being able to use the gold I’ve farmed to help guildies and friends who I know don’t have the same amount of time to camp the AH as I can, and who would be forced to either buy gold, or go without consumes to raid. I love that I can just hand them the consumes and not even notice a dent in my fortune. So while I understand the GDKP ban, I do wish you would’ve just banned gold buyers and cheaters instead of removing a system of raiding that, to me, was extremely fun.

But again… Why allow gold swaps if you’re just going to ban us for them?

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Because you have no clue where the gold came from in SoD so in fact you contributed to the gold buyers.

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Blizzard never ‘allowed’ them, they’re unsupported. If something were to happened, they’re not going to come in and fix it. And with how folks get this gold to ‘trade’, that’d be seen as a form of trying to ‘clean’ gold. If you don’t know the person, like a close friend, I wouldn’t do it. You have zero idea where they got their gold from.

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Understandable, and even though it was my first time, I went out of my way to find a highly reputable trader with tons of trade history & reviews.

But I don’t understand how the solution is banning me and not the Gold Buyers/Sellers.

I get it’s an unsupported trade, I went into it knowing that, had I gotten scammed, I would’ve been SOL up the creek without a paddle, and was willing to take that risk. But I also went into it knowing that it didn’t go against Blizzard’s TOS.

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You can be sanctioned at any given time. The start of a phase, expansion, major patch, a random Tuesday. It doesn’t matter. Sanctions can come down at any given time. It just hurts a lot more when a lesson is learned the hard way and you’re left missing out on the initial rush.

Says you. As was pointed out - you don’t know where the gold from. Heck, the one who traded you the gold might not have realized they received tainted gold from their source. And just because someone hasn’t gotten sanctioned yet, doesn’t mean that they’re not being investigated themselves.

Why not keep your gameplay to the iteration you’re playing in. No one made you do this unsupported and unsanctioned practice. You, and all the rest who’ve been hit recently made that choice all by yourself.

I will add though, that I too agree that they absolutely should ban trading currency between the game iterations. But much like people are still running GDKPs already, people will still do what they’re told not to do.

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IRL laws are more ‘common sense’ than Blizzard’s practices on this… If someone steals a motorcycle, and then sells that motorcycle to you, providing all the appropriate paperwork, title, and bill of sale, but then the cops come knocking a week later, informing you that you bought a stolen vehicle, they don’t arrest you… They take the stolen property, return it to it’s owner, and go after the criminal that stole the bike. They don’t throw the innocent party in jail for 2 weeks because they didn’t have the omnipotent power to see that the bike they thought they were legally purchasing, was actually stolen.

100% agree

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You don’t know that, so best not to point at someone else in calss and act like they’re gotten away with something. Blizzard NEVER tell 3rd party about account actions. And folks tend to, more often then not, lie about anything happening to them.

Yeah, about that, it kind of is. You have no idea where the gold came from. Blizzard does. They can track where it came from, who gotten it and how often someone got X from Y in Z amount on how many times overall.

Blizzard doesn’t mind if you know them and they have gold they’ve made themselves. But it run against the rules when someone get gold from someone who don’t know where the gold came from. As someone else said:

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Problem is there is a good chance you got stolen gold. Gold sellers will try to use these trades to launder gold. Since you do not know where the gold came from these transactions are very risky since blizzard is really cracking down hard.

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That’s why it’s Blizzard’s playground. They are the judge, jury and the executioner, as it were.

Please do appeal if you don’t agree with the sanction. You are allowed to appeal and appeal again up until the time that you are warned that no more appeals will be accepted. I do wish you luck with them.

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You do know that people create fake reviews to make it seem they are trustworthy, right? These are criminals who are trying to steal your info, credit card, wow accounts, and they have no scruples as to how they achieve it.

See, they tried that. Gold buyers have unlimited accounts to continue using, while the buyers continue to give them a market because there are no consequences.

If buyers know they will get punished, the gold sellers’ market will shrink.

The RMT industry is very much against the rules. Intended or not, you entered that market.

Good. Missing out on the start of something new is a powerful motivator to follow the rules.

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Because all these people want it now and don’t want to put in the work is why we cannot have nice things. I and my friends have all earned our gold in the game we were playing because we have integrity. We don’t want to be a part of the gold buying/selling game. I have dropped people from my guild as well as from my friends list for participating in this stuff because I know how damaging and far reaching this issue is on legitimate players.

Point in fact, you were not banned but suspended. I think you are lucky you only got the suspension because I think people who do this should be outright banned with no recourses. That is a warning to wake up to the possibility that getting it the old fashioned way is what most players want everyone who plays the game to do.

I do hope you understand why you were suspended and what you may have done to contribute to the gold buyers/sellers economy within the game.

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I succumbed to “FOMO”… My competitors on the AH were bragging to me about how much they had swapped from Retail/Wrath to SoD, and the advantage it gave them early on in sniping cheap recipes/mats/ect.

But yes, I completely agree that Gold Swaps should be banned, ESPECIALLY for fresh servers, I was 100% trying to give myself an advantage. This was the first (and likely the last after this experience) time I’ve ever swapped gold between game versions, everything I had researched about it made it seem like it was a safe route, and your only risk was getting scammed out of your gold, and that Blizzard would not help you recover that gold.

I completely understand that… But what doesn’t make sense is their response. Shouldn’t the goal be to ban the person who stole the gold? If that means im SOL on the 65k and/or the 330g, so be it… In my previous example, if I bought a stolen motorcycle, the cops would take the bike I had paid for (meaning I’d lose the bike, and the money I spent buying it), return it to it’s rightful owner, and then go after the criminal who stole it and then sold it to me.

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They do go after the people who steal gold! Problem is they have loads and loads of stolen accounts and stolen credit cards. So they have to target those who buy the gold and those who in one way or another aide them. So now anyone getting stolen gold in this way will have their accounts at great risk.

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Yes, and they do. Problem is, they can only ban accounts and these criminals have thousands at their disposal.

The only reason they have these accounts at their disposal, and the only reason it’s worth their while to do this…is because players keep using their services. So it seems Blizzard is attacking this issue from that vector: decimate their market and they might shrivel and die with customers drying up.

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Applying accounts that brought the gold is to give the message to not do it. If they don’t, they’d get the idea they can keep supplying those folks with gold to try to scam folks is fine and they won’t get action. It’s a two front to try to stem the flow of this.

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In your previous example you described a situation where you could provide to police proof you did not know the motorcycle was stolen, however, here you cannot. Blizzard only goes by game logs and nothing that happens outside out game or even screenshots from inside the game.

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The problem is how do you stop it? It is literally just giving someone gold… for nothing in return (on a specific server), there is nothing about that that can be prevented, so there is no way to “Ban” it. If you don’t know where the gold comes from, don’t do it.
In short, it is not possible to prevent “gold swapping” as a practice.

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I completely agree, and that’s just another reason why Gold Swaps should be explicitly banned.

If they’re gonna ban GDKP’s because they promote/reward gold buying (which they absolutely do), that same logic should be applied to Gold Swaps.

Wouldn’t a stronger message be to just ban Gold Swapping outright? The same way they did GDKPs (which again, I loved GDKP’s, they’re what allowed me to buy a 2nd Valanyr in Wotlk and all my Shadowmourne goodies, I never would’ve gotten those in main raid/pugs) but if they see it as the only way to clamp down on rampant inflation (which is especially damaging in lvl 60 Classic), then so be it. The rules are the rules and we all have to play by them.

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I’ll put it this way:

Blizzard made it clear botting was against the rules: People still did it.
Blizzard made it clear using 3rd party apps to play/interact wit the game isn’t allowed: People still do it.
Blizzard made it clear that cursing and misbehaving is against the rules: People still do it.
Blizzard made it clear not to abuse bugs or glitches in game to get an upper hand: People still did it.

It doesn’t matter if Blizzard bans something, or made it clear not to do something; folks can and will do it if they made up mind and their personal reason is ‘sound and right’.

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100% absolutely, but If I had seen anything in the Terms of Use that even remotely eluded to Gold Swaps being banned/being against the rules, I never would’ve done it.

Officially banning something at least helps the legitimate players know what they can and can’t do.