r/classicwow • u/PingPong141 • 3d ago
Forever Beta Feedback RMT crack down should effect streamers?
Blizzard mentioned that people caught buying gold will receive a ban. So the first step to attempt to circumvent it would be. Buy gold on a level 1 fresh account and send/trade to a different account.
So if blizz flags that as well, which they obviously should, would that also flag streamers?
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u/Bungulator69 3d ago
Anyone remember when soda got banned for gold buying? Bro admitted it and they gave him 2 weeks.
If they care, they would be giving the harshest punishments to streamers to set an example but let’s be real…
None of these guys are getting banned long term lol. It just ain’t gonna happen.
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u/padwani 3d ago
He didn't get banned.
They just took the gold away.
He was the face if hardcore that's why they didn't ban him if it wasn't for sida hardcore would have never been as popular as it was.
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u/CreamdedCorns 3d ago
I've bought gold several times and been caught, they just remove your gold.
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u/Eyelemon 3d ago
That’s what they used to do. This time around they’re making noises that they’re going to be banning buyers. We’ll see, I suppose.
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u/handiman87 3d ago
They might ban buyers but they will never ban soda. He could openly do it on stream and blizz will find an excuse
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u/buddhistredneck 3d ago
That’s not entirely true. I bought gold during anniversary, and they straight up banned my account for 30 days.
Maybe because they couldn’t take the gold? I already purchased cloudkeeper legs and lion heart helm for my warrior, and mailed the items to my bank alt. (Same account)
After the ban, I still had the items too.
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u/Imprettystrong 3d ago
I think most of us would love to see a hardline drawn by Blizz but I won't hold my breath. Maybe they will make a statement on it soon for release day in November and they are just getting a pass because its beta. We will see.
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u/its_Vask 2d ago
They already made 2 statements. They can talk about it all day but until they take action, it's all bs PR talk.
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u/Great_White_Samurai 3d ago
Streamers are free advertisement for Blizzard they won't do shit
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u/daniel_trm 2d ago
Exactly! they might slap one on the wrist but won't really do anything
That's why I don't think ban on gold buying makes sense. ban sellers and bots, everything will be fine.
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u/Lordofthereef 3d ago
I mean, seeing popular streams get banned on live stream would do a hell of a lot in terms of showing they mean business. Blizzard would obviously need to come to terms with banning some of the people they employ (directly or indirectly) though.
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u/KanadianBacon80 3d ago
Ban them 5 mins before their tourney match. Bonus points if its on stream when the ban windows comes up.
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u/pwhyler 3d ago
There's a clip of Ziqo from yesterday being traded 380 gold for the tournament and asking the guy trading it if it's "natty?"
Streamers are very anti-gold buying but are glad to receive the benefits of gold buyers.
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u/MathematicianOk7653 3d ago
Bottom feeder react influencer virtue signaling a popular opinion to feign morality. Water also found to be wet.
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u/Coycington 3d ago
where do you get the impression that streamers are against gold buying? soda openly admits to it a lot during OF1 and the other streamers just say they are against it because they can just have their viewers buy it for them. not really understand how this social structure works because the viewer is always losing in this scenario, but i guess having parasocial relationships does that to you.
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u/EPIC_RAPTOR 2d ago
It's plausible deniability. "he told me it was all good how was I supposed to know?"
Blizzard should ban anyone who accepts RWT gold. Don't know if the gold is legit? Don't accept it.
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u/Calm-Inevitable3341 3d ago
Ban the streamers
Ban the streamers
Ban the streamers
Ban the streamers
Ban the streamers
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
Bro they invited the streamers to test the game
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u/JYB1337 3d ago
Bro they also mentioned that gold buyers will be banned
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
Streamers don't need to buy gold. They can just take donations which are not against the rules. Unless blizzard starta banning people giving free gold it's tough to police. You don't want to make the mistake RuneScape made a couple decades ago and ban free trade
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u/FizzyBeverage 3d ago
That’s easily amended if for any reason they believe streamers are costing them subs.
Because it doesn’t (typically), they mostly look the other way.
It’s a business. If streamers sell more subscriptions they mostly leave them be.
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u/Coycington 3d ago
they still participate in the RMT trade if they accept these gold donations. the streamers know it, we know it, blizzard knows it. getting hung up on a technicality is not going to make the environment better for any of us
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
So you want blizzard to just ban people based off of an assumption?
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u/EPIC_RAPTOR 2d ago
If blizzard bans people buying gold, then they know who is buying gold. It's not that far of a stretch that they can see if that gold is being traded to anyone. Don't know if the gold was obtained legitimately? Don't accept it. Ban anyone engaging in RWT.
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u/Coycington 3d ago
off of information and research if it wasn't obvious. no one buys grey items in a neutral AH for thousands of gold if the peoples account have never interacted before and you trying to say otherwise is helping RMT.
we can disagree on this, but my solution would actually be one whereas what's your solution to the issue? let it run rampant like it does now?
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
No one buys gold using greys on a neutral AH.
The solution is being heavy handed on gold buyers at the first point. But if someone manages to buy gold and gift it to someone then it's too late.
Just like the real world, if someone criminally gains 10k you don't then go and punish every shop that person spent the 10k in.
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u/Coycington 3d ago
look up guilty by association, you might learn something about crime.
people can get charged for murder even if they didn't do any murdering.
you do realize the world doesn't work in absolutes right?
it's pretty simple: if a viewer donated gold that the viewer bought with RMT to a streamer, the trade is reverted and if the money cannot be transferred off the streamer again because they spend it already then either reset his character (if possible) or give him a warning ban of like a day or so.
if they repeatedly indulge in the self created issues where they accept knowingly RMT gold the punishments can go up up to perma bans imo.
this way the streamers have more than enough time to ask themselves if the risks are worth it and be disincentivized to do so.
is it perfect or even fair? no, but neither is RMT.
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
Brother you think Walmart is going to get charged because a drug dealer spent some cash there?
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u/Exxige20 2d ago
Every single time a large "donation" is sent to a streamer, the gold should have it's source investigated. This is an easily closed loophole that should not be allowed to propagate. Harsh and immediate action is the only thing that stands a chance of stopping this behavior.
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u/thevokplusminus 3d ago
I think this is too easy to abuse. You can buy gold for other people, have it show up in their mail box and they can get banned.
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u/MyageEDH 3d ago
I assume taking the gold would be the key point.
They could add a confirmation box if it isn’t from a known send (friends list or AH).
So streamers would be at risk taking gold from randoms.
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u/idkmanfiller 2d ago
Gonna be honest man if I randomly had a bunch of gold in my mailbox I'm not thinking twice about it.
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u/MyageEDH 2d ago
What would you do if the disposed king of Nigeria e-mailed you directly asking for help?
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u/itsaaronnotaaron 3d ago
Never automatically opening all my mail again then lol.
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u/MyageEDH 3d ago
That’s why I’m saying an “unknown” sender should give a prompt. “This person isn’t on your friends list. Are you sure you want to open this mail?”
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u/fohpo02 3d ago
There’s a return button
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u/TROGDOR_X69 3d ago
oops didnt manually check all my mail and now im perm banned
thanks blizz
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u/PaPa_ZeuS 3d ago edited 3d ago
Then you open a ticket saying "Hey I accidentally recieved a large sum of gold from an unknown person". Nobody would buy gold then self report themselves. If the gold is discovered to be coming from a gold seller than its deducted from your character.
Edit: Apparently the gold sellers/buyer don't like the idea that theres a way for innocent people to not get caught in a false ban and they lose their meat shields.
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u/Glorfindorf 3d ago
Blizz would def still ban this self report. Looks like person who bought it and got cold feet scared for a ban
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u/Mage_Girl_91_ 3d ago
help i accidentally clicked through 17 confirmation windows and accepted rwt gold that was mailed to me for some reason
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u/Ashleynn 3d ago
There is an open all button that gives zero notifications. Just spam opens everything and takes all the item and gold out of the mail.
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u/Darkanddogwater 3d ago
17 confirmation windows? Have you ever even played the game you speak of? People usually just use an open all mail button to grab all the sold/unsold items. There is literally no confirmation, not even one lol.
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u/Aggressive-Stand-585 3d ago
Have you ever actually opened the mailbox? Where the hell do you get 17 confirmation windows from? Lmao.
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u/RancidVagYogurt1776 3d ago
I would legit pay $10 to get the dude with the obnoxious hillbilly accent in my raid banned.
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u/ConniesCurse 3d ago
They don't need to ban streamers who receive bought gold from fans, if they're banning buyers generally fans won't be sending gold because they don't wanna get banned. Like this happens so often in the first place because buyers don't get punished. If they start banning buying for real then the amount that this happens will go wayyyyy way down. Might still happen occasionally but it won't be anything close to how it has been in the past.
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u/Ghunkli 3d ago
At that point all you are doing is just making gold buying slightly more expensive, if you can just avoid the ban by having a middle man account that takes RMT gold and trades it over to your main account.
Anyone obviously accepting RMT gold should be banned. There is obviously some leeway so you don't get banned for doing an enchanting service or something like that.
But if you accept 100's of gold from a level 1 character then that's on you to verify the source of it
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u/StomachPast1235 3d ago
The punishment is losing your long term account.
If they buy gold on their new lvl 1 account, all they're losing is $15 sub and the $$$ it costs to buy the gold.
And then they can send the gold to their favorite parasocial roach.
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u/BoomZhakaLaka 2d ago
Blizzard didn't say they would ban in such a situation, they said there may be consequences if they knew or should have known
Which is why this policy won't last long at all, if they even make a show of implementing it at all. That'd require a constant staff of GMs looking through logs. Blizzard won't go for it long term.
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u/Ok-Magician325 3d ago
Maybe if someone sends you 1k gold in the mail you don't take it?
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u/Zeko10 3d ago
I do lots of selling and trading in AH talking about inbox getting full multiple times a day. I like to click open all dont have time to open and loot each mail
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u/No_Sale_8117 3d ago
Sure but all they have to add is a “are you sure you want to accept these goods mailed directly to you” you can even slap a warning on there “accepting goods that can be linked to stolen accounts can lead to account termination” or some shit.
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u/citramonk 3d ago
gold can be traced, gold can be tainted, it's not a problem
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u/thevokplusminus 3d ago
So what if I buy $50 of gold and send it to your character?
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u/PugLife2026 2d ago
As long as they don't take it and spend it, it's not a problem. If you take it, and spend it, then you knew what you were doing.
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u/StomachPast1235 3d ago
As long as mAIcrosoft continues handling reports through Grok, then nefarious players will always find avenues to screw players over.
Banning people by sending them unsolicited gold is a great tactic to slow competing guilds from winning progression races/ranking grinds.
Even if the ban gets manually lifted, that's still lost time for the targeted player.
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u/jjflipped 3d ago
Donations to streamers are fine outside the game. Not inside it. Ban em.
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u/Zeko10 3d ago
Giving gold to streamers not ok but if i gave my friend 100-200g a year down the line when they start playing, we would get banned for that? I mean at that point delete trading and the AH
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u/Salty_Assignment_826 3d ago
i totally didnt see this coming from a mile away >.>
they literally wont ever ban gold sellers because its a fundamental part of the game now. always was and always will be.
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u/citramonk 3d ago
Bro I hate the idea that someone is more special than others. We have enough examples in real world to tolerate it in game. Ban these mfs, I don't care. I like Ziqo, he's hilarious and a food player, but no mf is allowed to buy gold if I can't do it.
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u/XgogurtX 3d ago
Honestly if blizzard can 100% confirm the gold was purchased via RMT, they absolutely need to ban just for the visibility to get the word out that they are serious about it. Nothing would get better visibility than a bunch of huge streamers getting banned for RMT. I think a lot of people would start thinking twice about buying gold once the regular game launches.
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u/TwoHearted_ 3d ago
Sorry if another commenter already called this out, but the correct spelling is "affect"
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u/MapleBreakfastMeat 3d ago
Streamers, world first guilds and speedrunners should all get banned for RMT just like GDKP.
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u/abs0lutelyharam 2d ago
I'm absolutely okay with them copping a perma if they're going to treat everyone the same. But I'd also be fine with them giving every single one of their bnet accounts a 3 month ban and evading the ban results in a permanent ban. Make them miss one of the biggest wow release in recent history. Sitting on the sidelines not being able to do anything is way better imo.
I guarantee you that if they wear something like that they will be a good advertisement and most probably help blizzard in the advocation towards not buying gold to their viewers.
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u/xxShathanxx 3d ago
Gold is laundered through the auction house not direct transfers. Blizzard could start capping auction house purchases or reversing them to get rid of that method, but I believe it’s the primary issue. Direct transfers are probably low.
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
As someone who raided in a guild with a lot of gold buyers in 2019 classic through tbc. No, most people just get it sent to them. AH takes a cut and also advertises who is buying the gold when X item is listed for 6k next to their name
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u/TROGDOR_X69 3d ago
people in my guild new personal farmers that would meet with them
most were mage boosters LOL
ud trade them some random blues or greens (low value but high lvl) they would have a fake chat like OMG wow thanks for that blue my alt will really need that!
i was shocked at it and honestly left the guild. people gotta grow up and not be cheater
hoping bliz actually does it and bans the cheater
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
The trick is stopping it early before the economy goes out of control. Consumes for naxx would be 200g+ and force people to rmt if they couldn't farm gold themselves
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u/FunkyFurmur 3d ago
bro u make lvl 1 go to AH list the item then delete the acc nobody cares about names lmao
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u/PPLifter 3d ago
You underestimate how lazy gold buyers are after the first few times they buy gold with no consequences
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u/_The_Farting_Baboon_ 3d ago
Gold is sent fine by mail too. They say they will ban gold buyers but they cant defeat the system. There will be way too many false bans if they set it up to ban everyone getting gold above a thresh hold in mail, trade or AH.
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u/pilkyton 3d ago edited 3d ago
Are you saying gold buyers list an item for a huge price and the gold seller buys it?
If so, that won't work in forever. It works like retail:
- Seller names on auctions are invisible.
- You CANNOT BROWSE AUCTIONS. You just pick an item name, and you see a list of different per-unit prices and how many are available for each, so there's like "Copper Ore: 1g/each = 8009 units, 1g 19s/each = 238 units" etc. You click any of them, say exactly how many you wanna buy (like "3") and it pulls that many. You don't need to buy full stacks. There are no stacks on this AH.
- If you wanna post an auction, you put in the item, it tells you all the existing unit price tiers and how many units are available at each tier, and you can click any of them to sell yours for that price, or type a custom price.
- You don't need auction house addons anymore, since the old, terrible AH with the endless pages of "1 linen cloth for 1g" before you reach the "20 linen cloth for 1g19s" is no longer doable in the game. The bellends putting up linen cloth for 1g per unit will just end up in their own tier of "1g/unit linen cloth" lol.
- Blizzard has a web API that provides all that price data outside the game, which addons like TSM use to build their database of mean/median prices. So it's nice to install TSM to know what items are overpriced or underpriced.
PS: Since I noticed how much confusion there is about auctions, as a bonus I'll also mention The Black Market Auction House which has been discussed lately with a lot of love and hate. It's a Blizzard-run special auction house where players can bid on cosmetic vanity items. The price rises automatically for each bid and it ends at a specific time. It's a brilliant method to drain gold from the economy and avoid gold inflation. The gold gets deleted from the game when players buy something from the black market.
So in short, Blizzard:
- Monitors gold transactions and bans gold buyers (they announced this at Blizzcon).
- When items are sold at way above average market value, the transaction is flagged as potential gold transactions. Which will lead to bans if it's obvious, like "1 linen cloth for 9999g".
- Uses retail Auction House which defends against market manipulation and gold buying by hiding all seller names and separating items into price-tiers to avoid getting scammed. You no longer need auction addons or slow, tedious "price database scanning".
- Defends against gold inflation by having an infinite gold sink (Black Market Auction House).
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u/itsmehobnob 3d ago
Couldn’t you just list a linen cloth for some specific amount? 123446g 12silver 76 copper
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u/BlandSandHamwich 3d ago
Why wouldn’t it? They would just post an item at a specific price that only the buyer and seller know. You don’t need names
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u/akadiablo 3d ago
Why do you need seller name? Do you think there would be a lot of junk with exact same high price on auction?
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u/oowop 3d ago
Yeah but if every piece of light leather is 1s and there's one for 100g you know who's listing is 100g
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u/FishingWithPaddy 3d ago
People also just list things at high prices hoping people miss read the amount
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u/SpinachSignal8915 3d ago
That is hardly going to stop anyone who thinks about the issue for more than 30 seconds.
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u/Nososs 3d ago
Real ones know, You have account X list the item, Gold Seller buys X item, Character Y comes along and lists things multiple things on the AH at market value. Character X buys Character Ys items that aren't skyrocketed and thus now you have washed the money and Character Y was the intended character for the gold anyways.
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u/TROGDOR_X69 3d ago
so you find an item with very low or no volume?
put a specific amount in the silver and copper
69s 67c
something like that.
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u/RealBiasedGaming 2d ago
oooooh so part of the reason for the move to the retail AH is to add this bit of RMT fighting to WOWF.
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u/ultraboomkin 3d ago
Seller names on Forever are invisible?? Are you serious?? Why?! I love looking up sellers and whispering them to haggle a better bargain.
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u/AlgaeSpirited2966 3d ago
Most of my gold buying is just dudes trading it to me directly. No one uses the AH to do it.
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u/TesticularConcussion 3d ago
Yeah this was how it worked, twenty years ago.
If you try buying gold through the auction house you will be banned. Sometimes even between ban waves. It’s just so easy to detect
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u/Shneckos 3d ago
Now with guild banks, gold sellers can just invite you to their guild, set your rank, and let you withdraw X amount from their gbank
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u/LuckyLukse 3d ago
AH. Traded. Guild banks. It’s easily traceable but they won’t ban any streamers. Not during the most hype portion of the games release.
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u/diac13 3d ago
I bought gold for 20 years through mailbox and transfers, never got banned.
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u/FizzyBeverage 3d ago
Rarely if ever did buyers get banned. I’ve done it from time to time too. In practice many people have or there wouldn’t be an ecosystem for it.
Much like buying drugs. They look for the dealer well before the customer. Even if the latter creates the former.
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u/ElectricRinku 3d ago
Unfortunately Blizzard not giving streamers special treatment is something that will never happen.
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u/Derailed94 3d ago
Replace Blizzard with any company ever. They are not going to ban their advertizers.
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u/handiman87 3d ago
Blizzard will never ban their free advertisements. Soda, xar, etc will literally never get banned no matter what they do.
Soda bought tons of gold during HC and nothing happened.
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u/LogoMyEggo 3d ago
It should be affecting the streamers the most if Blizzard want to show they're serious this time...
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u/ReverberatingSound 3d ago
I love that I can pay $15 to ban whoever i want now. Thanks blizz, target the buyers, not the sellers!
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u/unnone 3d ago
It should
But streamers are massive free advertising for blizzard.
Just like bots are sub revenue, so they do ban waves every few months instead of just banning them outright. They gotta let sellers make profit so they keep coming back. Then they just hit a few obvious buyers and keep the image that they’re trying.
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u/TeaspoonWrites 3d ago
You'd think so, but streamers like Sodapoppin have gotten away with buying gold on stream before, never mind all the worse shit some of them do. There's no accountability, even if people on the Classic team wanted to ban them the higher-ups would have them reverted because popular streamers playing WoW makes Blizzard and Microsoft money.
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u/MasahikoKobe 3d ago
Banning them from the beta would be a good step no real loss to blizzard and its sens a message to everyone.
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u/ziboo7890 3d ago
They're not going to ban streamers - free press and all those lovely subs!
They should ban them, but the bottom line is way more important than breaking the ToC or CoC.
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u/Flaky-Bus-1988 3d ago
I have bought gold in games since 2008. I have only ever been banned once - on a private server, where they actually went through currency and trade logs. Believe me when I tell you that big cooperations don’t care about RMT at all. To think Blizzard of all companies are going to do anything is a joke.
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u/Necrosaynt 3d ago
My guess is blizzard will take tough stance against at the beginning but will give up halfway through their second phase.
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u/TheYoonz 3d ago
Blizzard has capability of tracking where gold comes from and where it went. It doesnt matter how many characters you put between the streamer and the gold buyer, they know where it comes from.
What I mean by this: Yes, streamers 1000% should be banned for at least 6 months for gold buying.
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u/untaggedpacket 2d ago
This is a blizzard Psyop. Give third party blessing to hold big dueling tournament, let people buy the gold then mass permaban them all before it comes out
/copium
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u/MountainMeringue3655 2d ago
Remember when people made fun of the beta botters? Who would buy gold in a beta? Now we know...
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u/Rare-Industry-504 2d ago
Wake the fuck up, Blizzard.
It's time to start banning RMT streamers or they will absolutely ruin the game's economy on launch by buying gold en masse and then emptying out the AH of every kind of gear and materials in the game, driving up prices for a good long while.
An artificially inflated economy is going to make a lot of people quit really fucking fast.
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u/Thoromega 2d ago
So can I troll somone I don’t like but buying gold and having it mailed to them over and over?
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u/Kreaetor 2d ago
Blizzard will lose a lot of respect if they allow these streamers who are blatantly RMTing and let them compete for the dueling tournament.
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u/blueguy211 3d ago
if they wont ban asmonbald for being toxic what makes you think theyll ban streamers for RMT lmao
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u/BarbsFPV 3d ago
Nothing gets Redditors aroused more than the thought of banning someone.
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u/PingPong141 3d ago
My question was more around i can't see how they would distinguish between streamer and people who rmt. If they have a automated system to catch rmt it will flag streamer who get gold from donations.
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u/King_Kthulhu 3d ago
Yeah it false flags all the time, at least in retail. For instance echo and Liquid both have a "gold" guy that handles all their gold transactions and boosting and that guy gets auto-banned all the time according and unbanned when blizzard takes a look at the issue
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u/Opening_Tea_9459 3d ago
In reality what would these streamers do, get an actual job? Doubt it. They'd just remake an account and continue playing/streaming.
Zero downside for Bliz to ban them.
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u/XgogurtX 3d ago
It would send a good message to people that if you buy gold you are in fact getting banned.
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u/FixBlackLotusBlizz 3d ago
i would love to say oo its just a beta blizz isnt gonna crack down or waste time
but we all know it will be the same come nov 4th launch
they do the bare min on bots rmt bans
lets see if aggrend is telling the truth in cracking down on it at blizzcon
time will tell
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u/TesticularConcussion 3d ago
I’m pretty confident that blizzard will address this and put down the foot somehow.
It’s not a good look and now they can adress it during beta without necessarily banning streamers etc
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u/SendWoundPicsPls 3d ago
I really need to stress that the mafia among others launders money through gold selling in mmos. I have to imagine some c suite or sys lead gets a kickback to keep it open.
It has been 20 years now. If they wanted it to stop it would be stopped
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u/WashedWashingMachine 2d ago
If u give money to streamer imo its the same as gold selling , same punishment should be applied
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u/-Amplify 3d ago
I mean in the beta who cares but I hope they’re taking notes and catch them right away on live.
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u/Coycington 3d ago
for a $50k open tournament anyone who wanted to participate with legitimate means cares. everyone who would wanted to watch an honest tournament like me cares.
i am sick and tired of this "its just a beta" tirade. you guys have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
i probably will still watch the tournament, but i am pretty salty about it already
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u/Big_Crazy_SSBM 3d ago
Everyone is buying gold for that dueling tournament, the time to set expectations is now with perma bans. Doesn't matter if they are a streamer or not.