Boosting/RMT advertising

WoW Community Council

#1 - Jan. 24, 2022, 7:40 p.m.

I think trade chat and especially LFG is extremely plagued by advertising from either Boosts for gold/RMT or just money websites and while strangely this is something that is part of almost every game especially MMOs WoW seems to be the most stagnant in the issue. Everytime blizzard seems to implement a change it seems to just increase how the spammers get around them. The LFG tool is particularly spammed with tons and tons of people selling Mythic plus carries and Raid full clears and almost 99% of people absolutely hate this. PvP has also seen insane amounts of groups selling all kinds of carries and link different kinds of websites. While this may be something blizzard is not super inclined to crack down on it is seriously annoying to have it basically destroy finding certain groups or just general trade chatting

I think the easiest thing for blizzard to implement would be a captcha for LFG or maybe even Trade chat to push bots and spammers out of constantly bombarding everyone just trying to enjoy the game. Obviously this would be something that most people would be able to get around easy and it could even reward people just like 2 minutes of gametime for successfully completing it.

This is just an idea and a topic of conversation as I think personally not enough is being done about the sheer amount of bots and carries advertising in this game. Obviously running people for gold is bot illegal but I think the punishmebt for constantly adertising and spamming should be way higher.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#3 - Jan. 31, 2022, 4:37 p.m.

As of today, we will now prohibit organizations who offer boosting, matchmaking, escrow, or other non-traditional services, including those offered for gold. World of Warcraft accounts found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions. These actions can include warnings, account suspensions and, if necessary, permanent closure of the disruptive World of Warcraft account(s). Organizations operating across multiple realms and excessively advertising non-traditional in-game sales are contrary to the terms and conditions of the Blizzard End-User License Agreement (EULA).

Kaivax

Community Manager

#9 - Feb. 3, 2022, 11:12 p.m.

That would not be fine.

To provide more clarity for those who have been wondering where the lines are drawn in this new policy, we’d like to summarize that part of it.

Advertising for gameplay activities should be done by a WoW player-character who intends to participate in the gameplay activities. This means there should be no cross-realm advertising, and there should be no advertising from non-participating players.

And as before, the only place that advertising a “for gold” activity is allowed is the Trade channel. Advertising in any other chat channel or the Group Finder makes the player subject to actions against their account.