Always blows my mind how little they care about bots and hackers in WoW. I've spent weeks implementing anticheat solutions for my cross-platform game, including mobile, because the moment a player sees a hacker their opinion of the game is forever tarnished. Server side authority is massively important. Buying hacks for my own game to figure out how they're doing it and patching the game. Randomizing stuff constantly. It's a battle that doesn't end, but after a certain point it's just not worthwhile for a hacker to put the effort in, and that's where you can win.
Former filthy goldseller here; there was a point in the games life where an American COULD make a living(I did) selling gold. It go so much worse once wod hit. See, I manually farmed(I didn't bot) and there is a point roughly around wods release to midpoint where doing it the old way no longer worked. However, If you botted or living in say india, it was actually a really solid job. All the wow token did was set a price minimum to beat and bots and rmt beat it easily.
gotta give it to the creator for diving deep into the wow token system and shedding light on its implications real talk though, while i get the argument about the wow token not being the solution, isn't it a step in the right direction? like, blizzard at least tried to provide a safer alternative to third-party gold sellers but yeah, bot farms and differing economies def mess with the whole system respect for putting in the effort to break it all down for the community might not agree on all points, but that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes
Also keep in mind that continuing support of carry ads in the group finder or the new trade chat channel normalizes the idea that paying for carries is a legitimately supported way of gearing up. It's also true that not long ago they made the claim that they had banned "100k bots". Color me skeptical that a single bot was banned. I don't have a whole lot of friends, but after I was permabanned for "using botting software", which I had never done, I was amazed how many of my casual friends said the same thing happened to them. I concluded that the only "investigation" they do on reports is they check to see if you're pushing end content. If not, they just ban you for being casual. All appeals are rejected. Meanwhile, players say that there are more bots than ever, but hardly any players to be seen. Gee, maybe they shouldn't have decided to ban people for being casuals.
Yeah I used to buy tokens personally, but now I just do key boosts when I need gold. It always amused me as well that they claim to care about enforcing their ToS but they could care less honestly, they're already making money given those tokens cost money to even exist, so it just further compounds the issue of their just too expensive for what their intended functionality is honestly. If they really wanted to have an impact they would sell the tokens for half the price money wise, but keep them the same gold wise. That would cut into the botters and sellers profits as they sell a slightly higher amount of gold than the token does, but if you reduce the token price it will mess with their values.
My account got hacked and someone created 2 characters in classic wotlk while I wasn't even playing for over 4 years. I came back the last month and my account gets closed forever for gold selling. They even said they done a throughout investigation to decide this kind of punishments. After like 3 or 4 bot responses they check it again and unbanned me and apologized. I even got the sha mount maybe as a consolation price for the mistake they made. The point is makes me wonder how i got my account info leaked. Maybe someone in blizzard that has the info sells this information of unactive accounts to the gold sellers to use when they give free days to everyone
Nah the system doesnt reduce RMT and never will, the only way to stop that is through bans honestly and even those are temp since there are work arounds. However, lets say you do go ban heavy like CCP did years ago with bots and RMT, fine...what will you do to replace the source of gold for game time? Gold selling is only one aspect of the token, for some its just a way to play the game and pay for their account without blowing cash on it and that may sound like it would be far easier to just get a job and throw money at it since you are spending less time making the same equivalency of money to pay for game time, the reality is that its all psychology. Its the same reason why marketing tactics still sale things for 9.99 instead of 10.00 even though if you ask the person how much it cost they will almost always just say 10.00 they know it, everyone does. Yet if you raise the price to 10.00 you will still sell less of it than at 9.99 because in our heads 9 < 10 and = better value...same with playing for game time as opposed to paying for it. For many people it may be less efficient but they will almost always still do it because it makes more sense to them initially. The token is fine, leaving it in and not taking action against RMT to reduce it and using the token as an excuse for why they arent banning is the problem.
Might I interest you in the word.. _'comrade'?_ But seriously, good on you for cutting through the bullsh•t facade these capitali- ... _companies.._ put on to deceptively moralize their weath concentrion. (Or.. 'business', as I hear it's called) Were we educated properly, there would be no need for videos like this, but I applaud you for doing your part.
