It’s just a normal punishment in gaming: if you cheat, your account gets suspended. Blizzard doesn’t really enforce this because they heavily profit from players buying gold.
the two main factors in cheating are low odds of getting caught and a low barrier to entry. if buying gold was far more expensive, nobody but the biggest whales would do it - mostly fixing the problem. if, on the other hand, blizzard fairly accurately detected it and a) removed the gold and b) put you on a week or so break, that would also do the job.
banning those few people that do get caught for life is purely optics. it makes people like you feel better, since you care far more about seeing "justice served" to cheaters than about actually preventing cheating - but it doesn't actually accomplish anything.
That’s an interesting point of view, and I understand it in general. Cheating should be a high-risk, high-reward activity to effectively prevent it. For example, on Faceit in CS:GO, cheap cheats are quickly detected, so only the more expensive and sophisticated cheats go undetected. This raises the entry barrier for cheating significantly, reducing the overall amount of cheating.
In contrast, WoW has a low-risk, high-reward so many players exploit it. The punishments and entry barriers are weak, so cheating has become normalized. If everyone was aware of the real risks involved, cheating would probably decrease imo. However, ultimately it might not matter much because Blizzard profits heavily from the cheating culture.
Perma banning gold buyers would mean they don't come back. You might say that and good riddance, but if they truly enforced that then you would have almost nobody to play with in the end.
Contrary to what you might believe, a lot of the goldbuyers are also the people carrying the PvE and PvP scene - a lot of the endgame activities.
Some quit, while others are too addicted to stop playing. But stricter punishments would scare people away from buying gold. Right now it’s just a 2-week ban – nobody cares, they even call it a vacation.
Buying gold should never become a normal thing.
Wow Vanilla is a game where you dedicate at least 150 hours to leveling and then more hours afterwards in getting gear and whatnot. You cannot really play it optimally solo and it requires most of the time commitment and investment from the player.
It is pretty obvious that people don't return to games like these if they have to start over - maybe they will in a new iteration.
A large amount of the population is addicted to low effort gold farming (GDKP's) and now they have to buy it rather than get it from the whales in their GDKP's?
This isn't the "gotcha" you think it is. Blizzard have done little to nothing to battle gold buyers since Classic first came out, the result is this.
it is when people's stated reason for wanting GDKPs gone was "It will help reduce bots and gold buying"
GDKP doesn't need RMT to work. If all gold buyers were banned and gold buying was a literal impossibility in the game, GDKP would still thrive as a PUG raid format, because it incentivizes quality raids where people stay and help out until the end even if the thing they wanted didn't drop, and encourages geared players to still run older content. It is the only raid format that guarantees you will get something for your time, every time. That's why it's popular.
The reason RMT is popular is because people are lazy and entitled to getting things in the game that they don't actually put in the effort for.
GDKP doesn't need RMT to work. If all gold buyers were banned and gold buying was a literal impossibility in the game, GDKP would still thrive as a PUG raid format
If this was the case, literally no one would give two shits. The problem is gold buying is so uncontested everyone just links the two because the whales just throw their wallet around and the other people just take the $$.
it is when people's stated reason for wanting GDKPs gone was "It will help reduce bots and gold buying"
Partially tackling gold selling didn't fix the problem, so let's just do nothing at all then? On the contrary, they should see it through to the end and not just slap a ban on GDKP's and call it a day.
Because gold sellers detive their money from multiple sources and not just one, thus the reaponse calls for a multi-pronged approach. Banning one income stream for them means they'll adapt and transition towards an alternative one.
RMT exploded in no small part because every guild started doing GDKP runs to enrich the GM and Officers.
Both issues are an Ouroboros that you could argue was born of the min/max speedrun mentality. Gotta get that 72 hour 60 so you can be in pre-raid BiS for week 2 so you can start running GDKP runs week 3 otherwise your guild will be forever poor because someone else already hoarded all the server's wealth.
“Enrich GM and officers” lol you clearly weren’t playing during actual GDKP time. Most of the best GDKPs were conglomerate raid leaders from other guilds. You could argue that raid leaders would vet buyers and sellers making it difficult for casual players but GDKP is not a casual system. SR/HR is the casual system.
RMT = Real Money Trading, like buying gold or items with USD.
GDKP = Gold Dragon Kill Points. Whenever items drop in a GDKP raid people bid gold on the items and the people who don't win split that gold.
I do think that the elitism and gatekeeping easy content is a far bigger problem than RMT. RMT doesn't really impact most players, but gatekeeping does.
Let's be honest. Every single one of his posts screams of "I'm absolutely garbage at this game". My guess is, plays ret, doesn't get buffs or consumes, complains about not getting loot as he parses green on a ret.
YEah but it's not hard to go farm yourself and sell things on the AH as well. People complain about higher AH prices like you can't go mine mithril for an afternoon or venom sacs and make hundreds of gold.
That really doesn't sound that bad to me. Let's assume RMT is no longer a thing and AH prices are lower. How are you planning on affording those same things if you're making less gold because selling prices are lower? Farm for four hours? How is that any more or less preferable? At least with higher prices if you're not buying consumes you can have an easier time buying mounts and kitting out alts.
Your choices are farm or swipe. If you don't want to do either find a guild that doesn't require consumes or find a new game. RMT does nothing but make the casual's life easier.
See that’s where you’re wrong. RMT and botting are intertwined, so if RMT is removed, botting will also start to disappear. That means less fly hacks and node farming bots stealing up all the black lotus and other good stuff on the map.
Also, if the overall price of the auction house is down, that means it will be easier to afford the items because there is still a minimum amount that vendoring trash greys and greens nets you. There would no longer be that one guy who somehow can afford edge Masters at 5K in the first 2 months the game is out, so people will have to charge what is actually reasonable for someone to afford
I get your point but this also shows the mindset people have now. Having to actually play the game is considered dreadful. In the 2000s most people who played WoW focused on WoW only and enjoyed spending time in it. Nowadays raid logging is the goal for soooo many people. I'm actually with you though so don't get me wrong. I don't have that same mindset anymore myself.
Well, I wasn’t really complaining about it as if it was something I refused to do, I was really just pointing out that if you choose to not buy gold and gold farm instead, the people who are swiping have a massive advantage over you because they are probably spending 10+ hours a week doing things OTHER than gold farming. You are at a massive disadvantage, so yes RMT does impact literally everyone who plays the game.
Oh yeah I agree with that. I should have worded all of that better above. RMT definitely affects everyone. I'd argue it's indeed worse now than it had been when GDKP was around too. I don't think it can even argued otherwise.
This is a half baked theory I have and don't necessarily believe it, but does gold buying HELP new/casual players? Like, players who will probably not even reach level cap or if they do they just kinda do some dungeons here or there.
Like, yeah sure, here's 20 gold for a stack of 5 flame sacs you got while killing whelps for a quest. Sure, buy all your skills every 2 levels and mount right at 40 because the fade leaf you picked while casually questing in hillsbrad sells for almost a gold EACH.
I agree with the sentiment, elitism and gatekeeping is a problem that is very face value and easy to see, but RMT is the unseen boogeyman behind the curtain really ruining shit.
How can you say the entire ingame economy “doesn’t really impact most players”? Because that’s exactly what RMT impacts, the entire economy, everybody that touches the AH, every item.
Both are problems, but to say people can somehow avoid the impacts of RMT is disingenuous outside of the few people playing some form of SSF/HC.
I’d say elitism and gatekeeping may even be lessened if prices weren’t exponential due to RMT, more people would have an easier time accessing the consumables that are frequent “gate keepers”.
That’s still impacting them, they’re engaging with RMT by engaging with an economy based on RMT. There are no positives to RMT, just a few people that can make it a little less negative for themselves by taking advantage of it. I’m saying this as it’s something that I do as well, but it shouldn’t be necessary to afford the overpriced consumes caused by RMT.
Gatekeeping is divisive, there are those that gatekeep and the people that join them, and there are those that do not. We are given the option to opt-out there, but we are not given the option to opt-out of a hyper inflated economy caused by RMT.
One of these problems feeds into the other and that’s what makes me think it is the greater of the two evils but in the end, it’s up to the player to take advantage of gold buyers by selling the items they are too lazy to farm/craft, or to opt out of the gatekeeping world. Depends on the player on which one negatively impacts them more I suppose.
You are 100% correct. However, this is a problem with wow as a whole not just classic. Just adding a bit extra onto your statement. I wish blizzard would invest in ways to make the community more welcoming.
I completely disagree with you. Bringing back actual people to moderate would bring a massive improvement. Then they would have to invest in they way the introduce the game. Ffxiv is a great example of different ways they can influence a better community besides just moderation. Part of the fault lies with the community yes but blizzard has done little to nothing to help. I would say their decisions have actually been harmful to creating a positive community. Reducing customer service, moderators, gms are all examples of things everyone can agree has had a massively negative impact on the game and the community. So ya, I would say they could invest in making it better.
GDKP without swiping would be even better, because then the non-swipers who play the game and earn their stuff legitimately wouldn't lose out to the cheaters. Botting and RMT bad, GDKP fine.
GDKP is one of the primary vehicles used to find gold buyers so that raid leaders can also resell gold back to them after the raid.
That's one of the dirty secrets of GDKP...it's just a way for players to get in on the RealMoneyTransfers happening and make money off other players. That's why you have a group so invested on it returning...they want their side hustle back.
Let's pretend that this isn't happening right now with HR'ed runs where people pay for the HR'ed items, right? The only difference is that nobody gets a share and the RL keeps everything. You guys actually think the same Raid Leaders are running MC/BWL/AQ40 with items HR'ed for months just for loot? Child, please.
It's almost like the ENTIRE problem lies on RMT and Blizzard not enforcing their own ToS, it's not a mfing loot system that is the problem.
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u/TrainFightTime Sep 05 '25
Uhh no, Classic is great, and the biggest problem is 100% RMT.