I wasn’t particularly sad to see them go, even though I’d done some boosting (for gold) myself. However, the in-game advertisements are as bad as ever and they’re 90% sketchy websites with a few guilds scattered here and there.
All that the ban did was make it so that the ones who are really trying to RMT or even steal your account are the vast majority AND it’s even more lucrative for them since they have very little competition. Unless Blizzard is going to seriously crack down on boosting in ALL forms, they need to remove the restrictions on communities.
Interesting thread. I tend to agree here. When I used a couple of reputable communities, there was an overall sense of “safety” so to speak, where I was pretty confident there would be no scamming.
With the way things are currently, /5 (and /2, still) are full of level 1s and level 10s advertising. Even if these runs are legitimate, those sorts of people are not following the rules for advertising, which by itself already raises red flags. There is also no “word of mouth” reputation associated with most of these advertisers.
I’m not opposed to boosting communities returning. They were previously removed before /5 became a channel. I don’t see any real reason to keep them banned at this point, and bringing them back is a net positive in my view.
Of course, if any of the communities start advertising in /2, then those should be dealt with. Otherwise, if they follow the rules, I don’t see why they should be treated any differently at this stage.
I can confirm this. Pretty much all the posts in the trade services channel are by level 1 alts, which is against the ToS. I’ve never once seen a legitimate post from a character that would actually partake in the carry.
All this change did is drive people back underground to deal with the sketch carry services for IRL cash.
They are certainly few are far between. I managed to sniff out a couple of legitimate ones but it was a significant amount of effort and still had a “something’s not right here” feeling behind it, even though they did ultimately provide the service.
I hope that Blizzard decides to reverse course now that they have /5 in the game. Boosting communities ultimately provided a “safe space” for carries, which is something that has not existed since their collapse.
They are still there. You have to go to their designated trade channel, but they are there. What was banned was using proxies (low level alt) do sell a carry. It needs to be sold by a character doing the boost. Also, can only be for gold. Boosting for cash has always been against the TOS.
Some are, the ones mostly made up of CE raiders looking for some extra gold to fund their consumables or other raid expenses. The ones that are really trying to RMT are still around of course.
Right, and that’s the point. It’s much harder for regular players to organize them and most don’t bother. So the advertising hasn’t gone down at all, it’s just entirely places that give you a sketchy website to go to with an occasional guild every now and then.
They can keep banning but as long as there’s money to be made it will exist.
They need to find a way to reduce demand or make it so impractical to happen that it can’t really happen but they had never really the will to make changes like that.
Not by a long shot, they’re actually not too bad now, Blizz seems to have gotten much better about removing the groups and/or banning the people creating them. In Shadowlands the ads would stay up all week (it was common on a Monday to see ads that said “Created: 6 days ago”), but I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw one that had been up for more than ten minutes.
Trade for services, specifically things like boosts. It’s nothing but level 1 or 10 alts advertising for stuff they obviously cannot do and thus against the TOS. Many players simply turn it off which means it’s literally just there to prey on those who don’t know any better.
Reputable boosting communities provided a generally safe venue for buying carries. Boosting communities had a reputation to maintain and scamming is the last thing the reputable ones would want. They were certainly much safer to use than what we see advertised in today’s game.
Because it’s against the rules and no, boosting communities were not all on the up and up. Nothing is safe to use. Play the game yourself. Blizzard just needs to keep banning what’s against the rules and buckle down hard. This isn’t a business, it’s a game.
