I see prize money put up by players (not sure of the actual source) in a tournament of any kind as probably something Blizzard doesn’t need to involve themselves with. The same sort of thing happens in Starcraft all the time, especially overseas.
To me it seems like any other individual sport where you have the concept of a Jackpot where people can compete in a competitor run tournament to place in the money.
This would be very different from say, paying someone real money for getting Rank 14 or full Naxx gear. Both are allowed under the ToS as I understand it in game currency (gold).
You can go back with a game 15 years but you can’t go back to the environment surrounding the game.
Times have changed. Games are monetized. Whales are the cash cows.
The long game for the company is stock price.
Goldman thinks Blizzard games are under monetized.
That is true to an extent when you look at other games.
So I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this after the game launches.
This is the first time, to my knowledge, that there was an in game event with real life money as the prize.
I’m sure Blizzard was watching and gathering data.
What company wouldn’t ?
just the mere addition of RL currency changes the game - that’s the point I’m trying to convey - and for that reason Blizzard correctly prohibited it during Vanilla WoW
that’s what I am afraid of to be honest…
they did a cash tournament on the demo last fall as well - which I reported for breaking ToS - only to find out that Blizzard is ok with now lol
Limited to things like that with well established rules, which they were, I don’t see a problem with it. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this I think.
that’s fine - I just find that the cash influx monetization is one of the many reasons why retail wow became its own killer
remember how for years and years we kept hearing about the ultimate WoW killer?
in the end, it was WoW itself
To paraphrase Kevin Jordan (original WoW class designer), “Thematics matter and over time Blizzard lost sight of that which led to the gradual degradation of the game from its original spirit…”
Are you upset they crowdfunded a prize pool and held an event? They are more entertaining than blizzards arena tournaments. At least we don’t have to keep hearing one of the casters say SHAYMAN instead of shaman all the time now. Plus the community cares a lot more of pvp than blizzard.
A dueling tournament with a cash prize is not an exchange of in game service for out of game currency. Now if someone paid someone for the service of grinding honor (carry), leveling, or raid loot, that would be against TOS and bannable if you could prove it.
Also, it may be considered against TOS if I were to pay a streamer to host an in game tournament, since that is a service exchange. Though again, hard to prove and enforce.
exactly my point - as you can see from this response earlier in the thread here
you’re missing the point - yes it literally was against the ORIGINAL Warcraft ToS and strictly prohibited:
Nevalistis Community Manager
6534 posts
Dec 10, 2010 Such a situation would be considered the exchange of in-game services for out of game currency or goods, Averybighug. That would fall under a policy we have a pretty clear “no” on.
The PvP community is what is keeping PvP alive. Let’s be honest here. It’s mainly a PvE game and that is fine. If it weren’t for these tournaments being done PvP would die faster than it was and has been.
Is this literally the first one you have seen? They have a lot of these even on retail and it has been fine. In other online games people stream their own tourneys in games when the game devs themselves fail to provide much of one. It’s always welcomed. W/e keeps it alive. Idk why this upsets you so much you need a post. Do you think Blizzard will ban players for it? Pretty quick way to kill off the pvp community more I guess.
PvP was a lot more active during LK when Blizzard had over 12 million active subs - which was years before Twitch and years before they changed their ToS to allow this kind of stuff to occur…
I am sure it was. It was fun in LK. People still had Tourneys in that time frame Ever heard of Vanguard? He used to always set them up. So your point is what?
Still not sure why this matters to you. When arenajunkies was an active site vanguard would host these all the time. In Retail. Around LK times as well. So again, is your goal to try and apply pressure to get these active people in the PvP banned or something? I can promise you they won’t care. It’s good for them and has been around way before twitch.
Times are changing, I’m not surprised. As with many things, Blizzard seems to have changed their stance, as I’m sure lots of potentially TOS breaking things will be ignored. If you look hard enough twitch streaming a game is against the TOS somehow, but Blizz isn’t going to stop that.
Could be considered profiting off of the game, some sort of advertising clauses, etc.
Vanguard had cash prize pools. If you do a quick Google of arena junkies prize pools there are some old post about it. The downside is arena junkies closed down so pages aren’t loading. Just some cached metadata.
Still, again. The point? Is it because you can’t get into these tournaments yourself?
“If you look hard enough twitch streaming a game is against the TOS somehow”
Pretty quick way to kill the game as well. All games unless in a closed beta allows for streaming so get their game out there more. It’s free advertisement. I am sincrely confused why all this matters.
You are all acting like they are literally selling glad titles for real life money. But trust me…I know that does happen still, the selling of glad titles.
it wouldn’t have been possible under Blizzard’s ToS during LK
I’m not even on the beta nor am I a streamer - just a fan of the game who has seen the money creep affect WoW in very detrimental ways…
I think we should all take Kevin Jordan’s warning to heart - retail WoW died as the result of 1000 cuts by decisions such as this - while good intended at the time, it led to bad things happening down the road
do you not find it ironic that private servers strictly prohibit this kind of activity whereas Blizzard has jumped the shark?
![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Ever heard of Vanguard? He used to always set them up. So your point is what?