Hello, I have a question pertaining to the Terms of Use EULA.
I have been lurking the forums for a awhile now and I’ve noticed there are many players reporting a mailbox scam. Where players you’ve interacted with negatively (Or not so negatively) can send you gold they bought from a website in order to have your account actioned. I myself reported an incident similar to this happening to me. (Since then it has been closed / resolved and honestly the things I said to the person in whispers who I assume sent me the gold probably warranted a perma-ban so I’ll sit the 14 days at this point)
However, my question is in reference to what specific part of the EULA covers being sent illegal gold by someone with mischievous intent ingame. (Obviously I understand that there isn’t something that would outright declare these instances as bannable.) I’ve read through the entire EULA multiple times at this point and the only section I’ve found that broadly touches on this is section iii. Prohibited Commercial Uses. specifically Section 1.B.v.3.); (ii) “gathering in-game currency, items, or resources for sale outside of the Platform or the Game”.
My confusion stems from the fact that a lot of these players (Including myself) did not personally take part in the trade of currency outside the platform for anything within the platform. The game is 20 years old and I would argue a large majority of players have created the habit of just auto-opening their entire mailbox.
I get the Boy who cried wolf stories exist. I also understand Blizzard stance is that I/The Player are responsible for the security of their own account but the flipside of that is opening my mailbox automatically is part of the game, has been part of the game for over a decade and unsuspecting players who have not been on the forums would not even know this was an issue until it was too late and the gold/items were in their bags.
This didn’t used to be a problem back in 2004, I was more concerned with how fast I could CLICK my spells but with new problems should come new solutions ? I would imagine a $74 billion dollar company has something planned to prevent this from continuing to happen.
That was damn near a rant and far from just a question so for that I apologize. I’ll wrap it up with thank you for your time and explanation on the specific EULA section that is being broken when this interaction happens in-game.
Edit; Just to save any time / confusion with this book of a post. - I am not requesting my account be unsuspended nor am I requesting it be looked into any further. The customer support team answering my ticket (albeit after 7 working days) did their job and for that I’m grateful.
I might add, this is also on an account with abysmal details - which in and of itself is against the rules. You might want to rectify that once this resolves.
Know who you are dealing with - don’t accept funds from mystery sources - especially low level ones.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. As I’ve said I’m not requesting my account be unsuspended nor looked further into.
My question is about the specific portion of the EULA that is defining this as an actionable infraction. “received gold from an illicit source” is not terminology I can find anywhere in the TOS EULA. The closest thing would be “gathering in-game currency, items, or resources for sale outside of the Platform or the Game”. Is this the portion of the EULA that is in reference to these mailbox incidents on the forums?
Orlyia, again I appreciate your time very much and I do not want to waste anymore of it than I already have. I’m just asking for someone from the Customer Support team to actually identify where in the EULA these incidents are covered. If you are mailed gold, traded gold, or you scammed a bonehead out of gold on the AH by manipulating the bid price while they’re auto buying silk cloth are all things that would traditionally be “part of the game” and not something that required the individual to trade currency off platform for currency on platform.
You’re not going to get an answer that exact; Blizzard want it vague because they don’t want folks to try to find wiggle room to rule lawyer it. They’re not going to list every last little thing because they think something is or isn’t against the rules because they didn’t see X phrase in there.
There isn’t some specific paragraph about the “being in possession of illegal gold”.
The cincher is that while there are things mentioned in the EULA, COC and TOS, none of them are meant to be exhaustive. They touch on the big issues, because there are so many nuances that can come into play at a later time - they can’t come up with every single scenario that is going to put people’s accounts in jeopardy. People are creative when it comes to finding ways to circumvent the rules.
As Orlyia pointed out, there are ways to protect ones’ self if they are mailed illegal gold. Another player ran into this issue earlier this week. They reported the incident, that their add-on removed the gold from the mailbox and it was not something they solicited or anything of the sort and wanted it to be removed. It’s not a guarantee that a sanction won’t happen, but it creates a “paper trail” and shows that you’re being proactive in dealing with it, rather than just keeping the gold or spending it before you can get dinged on it.
Thank you and Zenjy both. I marked your response as “Solution” I may just offer a possible suggestion, to revise the TOS, EULA , COC or even the Social Contract IOT provide some additional transparency. I understand not wanting to “provide a rule lawyer” cop out path but I would just argue paying a subscription to play the game warrants some level of rule transparency that is in black and white. Obviously the Blizzard COC,TOS, EULA are meant to be blanketed and vague but something a little more tailored to World of Warcraft specific and even expansion specific would be extremely helpful. - Thanks again everyone
You will want to make that suggestion either in General Discussion or through the in-game suggestion/feedback tool. Unfortunately, feedback isn’t collected here nor relayed along (this is literally the only forum where it’s not).
The thing is, it simply isn’t possible to compile an exhaustive list of every possible thing a player could do that might warrant an account penalty. The entirety of the EULA, the old Terms of Use, and the Code of Conduct are a handful of pages, and already most players don’t or won’t read them. Enumerating every shady thing that might make Blizzard silence, suspend, or terminate your account would fill volumes.
