I do not agree with blanket bans that also hurt those playing within the rules. It sounds like, to me at least, that you are lumping all of the communities into one group and labeling everyone as “bad.” That’s not a very constructive way to look at things in my view.
I never said it was all of them. Note I used the words “reputable,” “generally,” etc. It was certainly far less riskier back then than it is now. When boosting communities were banned, a superbly large void was opened that allowed a breadth of scammers to infiltrate the market. Boosting communities at least could hold those types at bay.
Correct. Unreputable communities aren’t good. As I said though, the reputable ones (that is, the ones with a good reputation) took care of its customers.
I think you’re missing the point of this thread. Again, I recognize that if you never actually participated in a transaction with a boosting community before, then it is really difficult to understand just how different it is now than it was then.
I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here. No amount of reporting is going to completely eliminate scammers, just as no amount of reporting will completely eliminate bots. They just pop back up on a new account. Also, as I said before, you’re making the assumption that all communities “broke the rules” and are again applying a blanket statement, even to those that did not break the rules.
I do enjoy a constructive civil discussion though and appreciate it.
There’s no such thing as a “blanket ban.” There are “'ban waves,” which is not the same thing. If those communities were banned, then they were banned for breaking the rules. If someone was banned wrongly and they didn’t appeal it… then that’s kind of on them. But appeals do work. And if they did appeal and they didn’t break the rules, then they would be unbanned and still selling legitimately.
Nope. Just the ones who were banned. That’s it, that’s all. Entirely different than those who still sell carries legitimately without breaking the rules. Those people are fine and good and do their thing without issue.
Then there was nothing to argue about?
So moot argument?
Neither is unbanning those who broke the rules. That just promotes more people to break the rules. Not the best route to take.
Nope. Just the ones who were banned. I have never voiced any issue with anyone who sells boosting or gets boosted.
I do promote playing the game yourself only because it’s unsupported and I hate seeing people get scammed by those who aren’t reputable— but I never said that was everyone.
You seem to be misunderstanding me and focusing on a point that doesn’t even exist. So let’s nix the “I hate all boosters” theory, please, because it doesn’t exist and is not part of this.
My point is simple: you don’t unban people who were banned, because they broke the rules. That’s all there is to it.
I’m going to disregard the rest of your post temporarily because it sounds like you don’t understand what is being discussed. I want to make sure you actually understand what is being discussed before going further.
Boosting communities were blanket-banned. That is indisputable. I encourage you to read the thread regarding it, which is still stickied on this forum a year and a half later:
You literally ignored what I quoted you in that same article and cherry picked at sentence without reading the details.
I think we’re done. There’s certainly an incorrect bias on your end and there’s really no reason to continue with what is a circular conversation that you’re not understanding, because you want to see them as victims, instead of what the EULA states.
I realized when you started talking about banwaves and appeals that you weren’t tracking what the thread was about. I can understand why you aren’t understanding the purpose of the thread.
Bliz spells out different rules for different types of advertising. A GROUP is not allowed to sell services, even for in game gold. An individual is, following their spelled out rules (only in trade services, poster must participate in the run, etc.).
My biggest issue is not that Bliz allows these, but I’ve known plenty of people that watch the trade services channel just to report valid runs as “spam”, hoping to silence them, or even get them banned. If you don’t like what’s being offered on that channel, don’t watch it. Sure, some of the spam reports are quite valid. But enough people bragging about reporting it to make it go away completely makes me wish Bliz had a more firm definition of ‘spam’ instead of only letting the server community decide. Some of them think once is too many.
I have seen people “brag” about that too. It’s a shame that people try to get others punished for using a chat channel as intended. Now, I can understand excessive messages, but I have seen people say they report anything and everything that smells like “boost” to them, regardless of where it’s posted.
Going back to the boosting community ban: The justification given back then was:
This was before the Trade (Services) channel existed. I think a few months after the boosting community ban is when they decided to create the separate chat channel. Since that chat channel now exists, the original issue should no longer exist.
Boosting was not banned. Boosting for real-life money was ALWAYS against the rules. Boosting for in-game gold was ALWAYS unsupported and continues to be so today. Details on the Advertising policy can be found HERE
As long as the boosting group follows those rules, they can continue boosting for gold.
I want to remind people to right-click and report spam in the Trade channel and recommend they do so frequently. This accomplishes two key things:
It helps lead the poster’s account to a squelch and later a silence affecting the entire battle.net account. This forces these elicit sellers (for real-life money) to move to another account.
It helps Blizzard to detect hacked accounts as these ads tend to be done on stolen accounts.
Lastly, I don’t see how allowing legitimate boosting posts (for gold by a person participating in the run) to be in the trade channel will help reduce spam. If anything, it would increase it.
Great post, but I want to be sure you’re aware that the subject of the thread is boosting communities and not boosting in general. Boosting communities were banned January 2022.
Communities? I thought it was still peachy to purchase things like a raid boss kill or whatever from guilds as long as it’s done with in game gold. Did these communities get banned? A lot of people I know bought their immortal runs from guilds.
Not banned, hence the quotes around the word “ban”. But heavily discouraged since you cannot simply have a few people taking care of the logistics while others do the actual run.
This was supposed to reduce things like trade spam but the channel they created to advertise such services is almost entirely level 1s or 10s telling you to go to an external website, so a good chance of being straight up scams. And of course since Blizzard can’t keep up with the bans, it doesn’t matter how much it’s against the TOS.
So, legit in game services by guilds or friends is allowed, but they were trying to remove the sketchy third party boosting services or RMT? See I did notice that, trade and services are both filled with sketchy level 10’s spamming third parties and I do report what I can for that. The frustrating part is with me for example, I want the black proto drake but I missed the opportunity to obtain it with random groups. No one is doing it anymore so I am worried the only way to get it now is to have to pay for a guild run.
I realized when you started talking about banwaves and appeals that you weren’t tracking what the thread was about. I can understand why you aren’t understanding the purpose of the thread.