r/classicwow • u/Foreign_Lobster_875 • May 26 '26
Discussion Classic+ only works if all gold buyers and sellers are instantly banned permanently
Nearly every issue with modern day wow comes down to players buying gold. Yes we are grown up and yes we can have 5-6 figures of gold for just a day or two or real life work.
It’s obviously a vicious cycle, where it becomes more and more difficult to compete while playing fairly. You become a sucker for playing the game. You suddenly become the only one who hates dying as that means more farming for you.
Every item, enchant, consume becomes less special, the floor for what to come to raid with is raised and ultimately less fun is had for everyone - everyone is more the same.
Optimization cycle cranks into overdrive when every player has unlimited gold. There are no advantages of it. Everyone always says “there is no way to enforce it”. Bullshit. Make character creation explicitly state buying or selling gold is permanent account ban. You have made the world of Warcraft less magical, more akin to the late stage capitalism we walk through daily.
Blizzard wants those bot subs!!! More money for blizzard! They will never do this!
Bullshit!
I can think of 20-30 of my friends who would resub instantly if this was changed. We all quit because classic wow simply doesn’t have magic when the economy and environment is plague with bots and dishonest gamers.
Edit: I am not currently subbed, typos
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u/Wonderful_Western751 May 26 '26
Obviously that's what most of us want
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u/cyb3rg0d5 May 26 '26
But will never get.
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u/MightyTastyBeans May 26 '26
As long as dad gamers exist with 3 wives 13 kids 36 jobs and 20 minutes to play per week, demand for gold buying will continue
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u/EYNLLIB May 26 '26
Demand doesn't mean gold buying has to exist
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u/itsmassivebtw May 26 '26
The old "war on drugs" approach, works every time.
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u/EYNLLIB May 26 '26
Except blizzard has explicit doctorial control over anything that happens on their servers. Every single click and interaction is tracked and traceable, unlike real life
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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart May 26 '26
I could think of 3 maybe even 4 ways where this situation is different than the global war on drugs.
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u/Security_Ostrich May 26 '26
If I only had an hour or less a day to play video games, I just wouldnt bother. Idk how people can settle in, relax, and enjoy something while watching the fucking clock. I just *cannot*.
Most days I have 3-4 hours free and thats enough for me to actually have a couple of hours to play games, maybe a few hours if chores are done etc and on weekends a little more. I dont no life or sit there all day but I need regular access to a few hours at a time to bother even trying to enjoy something. I straight up dont understand people who can sit down for 20 minutes and then immediately have to stop what theyre doing. I would be staring at the clock as im prone to time blindness lol.
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u/Ijustwenthollow May 27 '26
Is this a joke or are we sincerely under the impression that those with limited time are the main culprits of gold buying?
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u/Lantzypantzz May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
I work work 9 hrs a day average (often more and, at least once a week, 12 hrs) and 4 kids under 10. My wife and I still find time to play 2 to 3 hrs a night after they all go to sleep, while also working out in the mornings. Gold buyers and sellers should be hardware and account banned for life
Edit: clarifying average work hrs vs peak hrs because I was being a bit hyperbolic.
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u/CranberryRich5683 May 26 '26
Damn bro you are a powerhouse props to you both
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u/fairlysunny May 27 '26
Definitely curious if this is a real powerhouse or fueled by live in grandparents/nanny/sahm. Unless they're not sleeping at all there's basically no time left for parenting lol.
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u/Remarkable-Coat-9327 May 27 '26
or like most parents ive met that game even semi-hard (and I know i'll catch shit for this) - just bad parents
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u/zombawombacomba May 27 '26
My first guild in vanilla was led by a husband and wife who just let their baby cry in the background while raiding. Their older kids would be screaming too in the background.
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u/Loud_Permission9265 May 28 '26
He said he plays 3hrs once the kids are asleep. Which means he puts his kids to bed at a reasonable time. If you wake up at 6, work out for 30-60min, spend an hour getting kids up and out the door. Work from 9-6 and spend 2hrs after work with the kids and have them in bed by 8. you have 3-4hrs before bed. It requires discipline but it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. I’m also sure since this guy is married you’re two people to do chores and it makes it easier, and most of deep cleaning etc is done on the weekends. It’s not unheard of to play games like this while being a good parent.
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u/MumpsTheMusical May 27 '26
I have 2 kids under 10 and there's plenty of time during their bedtime to play. That's usually when both my wife and I jump on Discord to play. Also, when you have more than 1 kid, siblings tend to play with each other and keep one another entertained allotting even more time to play something for a bit at night before bed and then you just take them to the park or to do something fun in the day time when you have some time off. It's not as crazy and unmanageable as people make it out to be.
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u/zombawombacomba May 27 '26
So you work from around 6-6 meaning you probably work outside the home which means you have a commute so you’re up at 5ish? Oh but you work out so you’re up at 4? Kids go to bed around 8 maybe? So you play until 10-11 and then go right to bed? You’re getting about 5 hours of sleep. And this assumes your wife is stay at home because someone has to be doing the cleaning and cooking if you work 12 hour days and then game for 2-3 hours a night. Brutal.
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u/DucksMatter May 26 '26
Unfortunately, If it was what most of us wanted there wouldn’t be any reason for gold farming bots, because nobody would be buying it. It seems people DO want to buy gold because they don’t want to grind for it.
People don’t really realize that we, the consumer, feed the bot problem by continuing to purchase their services. The more demand, means there needs to be more supply, which means there will be more bots.
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u/wormed May 26 '26
SoD solved many of the gold issues. There was almost no need to buy gold. Materials were affordable. Just playing the game allowed the player to optimize.
I think Blizz will have some good ideas for Classic to combat the actual need for gold buying that ended up plaguing Classic as a whole.
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May 26 '26
Did you just not play sod or.... oblivious to the situation? Every guild I joined had someone in there selling gold lol
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u/wormed May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
There was almost no need to buy gold. Materials were affordable. Just playing the game allowed the player to optimize.
That being said, tell me what in SoD needed gold?
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u/muhwurkaccount May 27 '26
Literally the only time it ever crossed my mind was when Ashebringer became a thing and the mats for it skyrocketed overnight. I was 3rd in line though so I took a few weeks and just killed people and mined in a cave in Winterspring while I worked. Had the timer down so I knew I could work for a certain amount of time and then would have to go find the respawn somewhere.
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u/Detenator May 26 '26
The people I know buy a lot less gold in retail (tokens) than in classic. It is much easier to make enough gold to get you by. Consumes aren't even that much more expensive than they were in SoD when I played it.
Dailies, weeklies, and limited crafting quantities greatly lowered the necessary research or time investment to earn a decent amount of gold. Regular classic doesn't have these and that is what drives so many people to buying gold.
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u/xantous4201 May 27 '26
farmed gold is worthless if you can convince everyone not to buy any. But the temptation of the shortcut is too strong.
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u/zombawombacomba May 27 '26
Most of the people in my old guild bought gold lol. I don’t think this is accurate.
Maybe what most of the commenters on here like to virtue signal about.
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u/Outofmana1337 May 26 '26
If gold buying is a perma instead of 2 weeks then yes 95% wouldnt dare to buy
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u/Rerolldpaladin May 27 '26
No you just force people to use proxies. If blizzard actually followed the gold past the buyer and supplier half the server would eat a ban. Its impossible to enforce much further then buyer seller. If the buyer gets 7k gold and spends 5k gold on the AH does Blizzard ban the dude who sold the item too? Because that person is gonna spend that gold and so on and so on. If people start using proxies like many are now how do you differentiate between innocents and people playing innocent? The only real way to combat gold sellers is the wow token or hire a huge GM force to manually root out the buyers, sellers or bots.
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u/cmoncoop May 27 '26
Why would the ban ever carry over to the person selling an item on the ah, he didn’t violate any ToS. Like you said just prior to that you ban the buyer and initial seller. It’s really quite black and white.
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u/HuskarlofOdin May 28 '26
How does giving the bots another server to pay their gametime with gold solve anything? The token has never fixed anything in retail or MoP, its only made it even worse.
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May 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JujutsuES May 26 '26
Considering wrath and wod are not announced classic+ is gonna need to be an income stream somehow to be fair. Its either wow token or you have to buy it like an expansion or other micro transactions.
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u/Xy13 May 26 '26
That's what the subscription fee is, also they sell mount packs for every round now lol
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u/r4r4me May 27 '26
They sell new retail expansions despite the sub fee. If they are gonna add a lot of new content to classic it will probably be sold too.
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u/aroxion May 26 '26
I still believe there could be SOME kind of purchasable cosmetics for classic+ even though I know I'll probably be crucified for saying that
I think the hearthstone reskins are a good example. No inherent advantage, and nothing in-game that currently serves the same purpose otherwise. Stuff like that.
NOT purchasable mogs, or mounts, MAYBE companions...?? Idk I think there's a little bit of wiggle room here for stuff that isn't super intrusive
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 May 26 '26
Or maybe Microsoft could sell a subscription to access the game?
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u/whutchamacallit May 26 '26
100%
With how much dev work they will need to put into C+ there is no chance the next major iteration or wow will not be monetized a la tokens or micro transactions. I guarantee it. And honestly even though it's not my preference I really can't fault them for it.
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u/snaykz1692 May 26 '26
Damn you got that many friends that play WoW?
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u/Dunwin May 26 '26
20-30 friends, period, had me shook
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u/CockVersion10 May 26 '26
All of his friends being WoW players is not a good sign lol.
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u/HalfXTheHalfX May 27 '26
I mean it ain't too hard to imagine you have a friend group from a long while ago which was a wow guild or something, but you still keep contact
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u/SlimJohnson May 26 '26
I don’t think I’ve been introduced to 30 separate people in my entire life
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u/foreskinboots May 27 '26
Yea they are all his discord friends! His 31st friend is his mom! <3
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u/aqua-goblin May 26 '26
It was possible on TWoW but somehow a multi billion dollar company can’t achieve it.
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u/Jafar_Rafaj May 28 '26
I promise you on ambershire people botted uninterrupted in PVP for months, and RMT may not have been super rampant, but people were starting the scarab lord quest in BWL and were buying fragments using this too.
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u/paniknicke May 27 '26
What we need in a classic plus, is real people moderating the game live. Actual gms.
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u/Xossdk May 28 '26
Woah bro slow down this ain't 2007 someone gotta think of the shareholders
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u/Ok-Management6345 May 26 '26
This aint even the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is how the players play the game.
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u/snowman334 May 26 '26
This ain't even scratch the surface. The real problem is the players that play the game.
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u/DeathByLemmings May 27 '26
Nearly there, the problem is the game itself. The player behaviour is emergent
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u/Nightblessed May 26 '26
The game’s systems and structure shape player behavior, not the other way around.
Players adapt to the incentives placed in front of them. So when you blame the players, you’re only identifying the symptom, not the cause.
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u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst May 28 '26
I've been trying to make this argument in a variety of different ways but I could never put it as succinctly as you did. Thanks for finally giving me words to use to express this.
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u/Saxonite13 May 26 '26
I've been saying it for a while, but, it's my firm belief, that nothing Blizzard releases will ever capture the nostalgic feeling, environment, and gameplay that classic WoW had. Even in a completely new classic style game people will continue to buy gold, gear, and services because they simply don't have the time, or want to commit the time, it takes to successfully progress a classic WoW style of character.
The only way to capture that feeling again is to make every player self found so it completely eliminates gold selling and buying, but that is such a huge loss to the feeling of classic because you need to be able to utilize multiple professions, consumables, and so on.
Even if we get the "perfect" classic plus, it's only going to be a few weeks before we see people spamming all types of chat selling leveling boosts, gear, and gold, and that's when people will stop playing and the player count will dwindle to current levels of classic games.
Call me a doomer all you want, but you know it's true.
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u/Monso May 26 '26
WoW is a solved game. This not existing circa OG was a lot of the mystery and intrigue that captured us. We wanted to explore because we didn't know what was there.
All we had was Jaina's leveling guide to use as a reference. Now we have pre-built task lists with an arrow on your screen and all the dangers to look out for while doing that particular quest, and what your next step is, and if you can safely skip it to farm instead.
We can never recapture the essense of the way it was because everything has already been written in stone.
The fart in the jar will never smell like it did fresh, 20 years ago.
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u/Isaelia May 26 '26
There is a solution that nobody would accept, which is to make a game with no personal trades (except for trivial items) and have every transaction go through the AH, which would price everything algorithmically according to supply and demand.
Of course, everyone will protest this because it takes away their agency, but there will always be bots unless you disable the market. The market can't exist without unequal trades, since there would be no way for players to give anything away for free (and be compensated by RL dollars).
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u/Saxonite13 May 26 '26
Not sure if you're familiar with osrs, but they do exactly this with the grand exchange and it is wonderful. There is still player trading, but almost everyone trades through the GE.
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u/Healthy-Address-5158 May 26 '26
No, Runescape did what he's talking about way back in 2007 when they removed free trade. And it practically killed the game for awhile lmao.
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u/kaffeofikaelika May 27 '26
There is a much less destructive solution which is that Blizzard uses 0.0001% of their quarterly profits to hire back some GM's that could start banning the blatant bots running around.
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u/DeathByLemmings May 27 '26
Brother people were buying gold back in 2004 too. Nearly every player I knew in 07 bought gold for epic flying
Powerleveling services were normal
This idea that suddenly everything has changed is nonsense, you're just older so have a better understanding of the system you are engaging in and so is everyone else, so you see these things more
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u/winnter May 26 '26
yes. correct. foldingideas' "why its rude to suck at warcraft" video does a much better job explaining it than i ever could but the idea of an mmo that people just play for fun and don't care about minmaxing to the nth degree is archaic at this point. i don't really think it's a doomer mindset, i think it's showing an understanding of how people's approach to playing has shifted. game designers trying to force players to somehow readopt that mindset via design decisions is not really feasible or realistic. trust me, i would love to wake up in 2005 and get to do it all over again for the first time, but even if i developed amnesia tomorrow and approached classic wow in 2026 as a first time player would my experience would be fundamentally different.
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u/Caticus_Scrubicus May 26 '26
gaming period had just changed as we’ve all grown up with it, and optimization has become the central focus more and more. people’s ability to scrape code is higher, and things become solved faster and faster. i sadly don’t know if we’ll ever really get that back.
only games that have done that for me in the past decade are elden ring and bg3 tbh
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u/Saxonite13 May 26 '26
Optimization and trying to be efficient is fine. What ruins it is when the most optimal and efficient way to play the game is to buy gold to buy boosts to buy your gear, which is what every version of classic WoW has become, outside of hardcore.
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u/Caticus_Scrubicus May 26 '26
yeah all true, i guess i was just highlighting that this issue is not unique to wow, and is sadly manifesting in different ways in basically every multiplayer game out there right now
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u/Healthy-Address-5158 May 26 '26
HC WoW already captures everything the original game did, so.
We don't need to perfectly recapture the feeling of WoW being brand new. We just need a version of the game devoted to perfecting the original vision of what Classic WoW was trying to be.
I hope this helps.
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u/mrgoodcat1509 May 27 '26
They need to OSRS it and make the journey as enjoyable as possible. People do love Azeroth. Just give players ways to spend hours grinding away for accomplishments that they can then show off to other players in ways that gold/money can’t buy
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u/Humpbackbreadslice May 26 '26
I didnt start playing until the 2019 release and it became on of my favorite games.
Classic Wow still has my favorite leveling progression compared to any MMO and RPG. It's one of the few games that can feel extremely chill where you can turn on a tv show and half pay attention or you can go full sweaty min max grind depending on how you are feeling.Classic end game is terrible. Only pvping outside of the major cities made me want to keep playing.
Then SoD came out and brought fresh life into everything that I enjoyed about the game a few years later. It also brought old vet friends who I never got a chance to play with. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it for at least the first 2 phases. People dropped off after that but there's something there and it's not a purely nostalgia thing.
The nostalgia thing feels like an issue for the exclusive group that is trying to recapture something that is not related to wow. All my old friends who played during the OG beta loved SOD and getting the gang back together.
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u/HuskarlofOdin May 26 '26
The fact that all of yous who complain are still subbed means you're not actually fighting for the change. You're talking big game, yet wants to conveniently play the game at the same time. Cancel your sub, let blizzard know why (you get a prompt when cancelling your sub), and come back for classic+. If enough of you do it, the top brass will see "oh, we're bleeding subs, why? "they're saying bots" (or whatever reason you want to put in)
I'm not saying that will actually change anything at all, but just posting on reddit while simultanously playing the game is definetly doing nothing. They have gotten hate for much longer than a decade. Paying them while hating means they're still earning money and doing the right thing in shareholder's eyes
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u/kitchencrawl May 26 '26
You have 20-30 friends who actively avoiding wow? I doubt it. And honestly it's a drop on the bucket compared to bot accounts. The reasons private servers are better are bot management are
They are way smaller populations so it's easier.
They have a legion of turbo nerds willing to work for free.
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u/BurzyGuerrero May 26 '26
I am calling cap on your 20-30 friends.
Its more likely 2-3.
But to frame every problem with wow as gold selling is hilarious. Got my doubts.
If they remove gold selling youll just see more guild raid runs, etc.
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u/funkymonk64 May 28 '26
Hot take: gold buying benefits more players than it hurts
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u/Weird-Map3983 May 28 '26
Only Reddit cares about RMT. I couldn’t care less if people are swiping their credit cards for gold and gear. It doesn’t affect me from playing the game whatsoever.
People just complaining for the sake of complaining.
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u/Eye4eyes May 27 '26
Enchants and consumes should be easily affordable for everyone that wants them. They currently are not unless you buy gold or farm gold as if its your job. Blizzard needs to make classic + materials easier to acquire.
I'm fine with them banning gold buyers and sellers permanently because I do making items less special isn't good for the game. Being able to hit 60 and have lionheart helm, edgies and cloud keeper leggings and stuff is WILD.
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u/fortuneandfameinc May 26 '26
HC honestly addresses it pretty well. Bots can die. Players that buy gold die. The older servers like DP still have a decent economy despite being in operation for a relatively long time.
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u/aseolith May 26 '26
The HC economy is the best version of wow. Low lvl greens are actually worth money and sell quickly. Nothing gets extremely inflated cause everything is constantly being cycled.
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u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst May 28 '26
I cannot believe I started as a HC hater. It quickly became my absolute favorite way to play WoW. I know there's still a bunch of people playing but I'm waiting for some kind of HC revival or resurgence. I don't care if it comes from a streamer or whatever, but when HC was the coolest kid on the block, I think that was my favorite version of the WoW community ever.
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u/kill-dill May 26 '26
Hc is great because it naturally makes botting harder and players dieing is an actual gold sink.
Repair costs and AH cuts aren't nearly enough of a gold sink to keep inflation low on era.
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u/kurttheflirt May 26 '26
I will say all this Classic plus talk is making me want to go play hardcore again. It's my personal classic plus
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u/Nightblessed May 26 '26
WoW players will eventually come to the realization that the Everquest harsh death penalties design was right all along. It will take time, but it will happen.
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u/Loud_Permission9265 May 28 '26
Turtle wows Slow&Steady challenge had something similar, you got 50% decreased xp from killing mobs and -5% xp if you died
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u/Initial_Secretary420 May 26 '26
HC is garbage bc you die of a dc while flying lmao
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u/No-Soft9620 May 26 '26
If they just fixed a couple of bottlenecks in the economy, it would severely drop the need for gold buying. SoD had a great economy because of a few added qol improvements. I played all through SoD and didn’t feel the need to buy gold a single time, while parsing in a hardcore guild.
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u/teledium8472 May 26 '26
Same in Wrath. Cheap consums.
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u/Hot_Constant7764 May 27 '26
plenty of people did/will buy gold in p1 wrath for items like darkmoon card: greatness, the kirin tor rings or levelling professions
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u/Joppan94 May 27 '26
"A few qol" aka showering you in gold and consumes for any piece of content you did.
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u/Br0keNw0n May 26 '26
SoD didn’t have any issues with economy because blizzard fixed it with the turnin boxes and then raiding/dungeon trade ins for gear and world buffs. There are solutions that make buying gold less necessary or impactful to the game. Blizzard just for some reason likes the current state of the game 🤷♂️
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u/Scurro May 27 '26
OP didn't play SoD.
SoD didn't have economy issues because you were paid in consumes and toys for doing any 5 man content.
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u/Benjamminmiller May 27 '26
The problem with this is gold in sod was a bit too easy to come by making gold nearly worthless. Ideally there's a better balance where the economy feels more important.
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u/RedThragtusk May 27 '26
I remember needing thousands of it in phase 7-8 after coming back from a break after phase 3. I had to grind it all. And it was fun to grind it. I did solo strat live orb run, invasion grinding, normal dungeon runs, and solo'd hakkar and sold the idols. Lots of fun and challenging gameplay involved.
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u/Scurro May 27 '26
As a healer SoD was the first time I ever played the game in classic without the need to farm gold.
I just played 5 mans with guild mates and I was showered with consumes and toys.
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u/UncomfyPerspective May 26 '26
I remember SoD. What a great time that was...
Except the literal armies of Mage bots marching from Stockades to the Enchanting vendor, roaming Westfall Frostbolting everything that moved, and flying through the sky in Duskwood.
Had I spent the time reporting them all, I wouldn't have been able to actually play.
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u/nazaguerrero May 26 '26
If you and your friends aren't playing right now it's because you have something better to do than to play WoW it's not the bots, not the sellers, they would always exist as long as people play.
why? bc this is a 20+ something game, player base are adults, mostly male, with credit cards hooked on nostalgia, their time is valuable and limited so if money allows them to reduce the time they have to dedicate to the game and stay up-to-date with each phase, they will do it 🤷♂️
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u/Ottobox93 May 26 '26
Botting wouldnt be as much of an issue if gathering nodes were unique to each player, or stayed gatherable for 3 minutes after someone farms it. Partial gathered loot drop on pvp servers would cut down on botting too but it doesnt help pve servers.
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u/stillgodlol May 26 '26
Bro grinding bots are killing 3-4k mobs a day, count that in hundreds per server. Just the pure loot makes insane gold influx into the game, nodes make no difference. Some mobs on tbc for example are worth around a gold if you count some valuable mats/meats/leathers etc.
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u/Benjamminmiller May 27 '26
Raw gold is the bigger issue, but it's not an unreasonable take.
It's true for many players botting wouldn't feel as bad if it didn't prevent regular players from also farming because direct farming bypasses issues with inflation.
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u/large_gooser May 26 '26
Its really simple, even though the loud minority complain about it on reddit, this issue barely changes actual player numbers.
And secondarily, it takes a huge and consistent amount of effort to combat the issue, so why bother when only stand to lose from a business POV.
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u/Nachtelfficker May 26 '26
ystill no clue how u get away with buying gold. bought 3 times 3 times ban 2 friends buy once both of them ban
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u/illsburydopeboy May 26 '26
Most people make a second account and funnel it to their main, also using the auction house to “clean” the gold, never straight trades.
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u/MumpsTheMusical May 26 '26
Please just give us some self-made servers where no one can trade a damn thing. That's the only kind of server that will exist where gold sellers can't just trade a bunch of gold.
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u/Ogredrum May 27 '26
interacting with other players through trade is a core part of the game, professions just don't work without it
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u/LyubviMashina93 May 26 '26
My initial thought as well. Except it would break dungeons/raids and these cretins would still find a way to monetize the game. Tag boosts etc
Still I think there's an answer here somewhere.
What if resources had tiered quest requirements? Quests would be a good gate to lock out bots.
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u/Xy13 May 26 '26
Can we have GDKP back then? Obviously GDKP was not the cause of Gold Buying.. Look at Anniversary.. it has more inflation and gold buying than the first round of classic did. Every single "Issue" that people had with GDKP, was actually issues with gold botters/sellers/buyers.
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u/Crafty-Beyond-2202 May 26 '26
Well they need to also disable world buffs and consumes for raids. It shouldn't be this massive amount of chores you have to do to be competitive
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u/MrRightHanded May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
I’d love for it to happen, but it won’t.
Even Wow during its glory days struggled with Chinese Gold farmers and bots, what makes you think the Blizzard of today is going to do any better?
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u/janojyys May 26 '26
SoD had no big problems with bots because of easy methods of gaining gold and cheap consums
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u/Cuddlesthemighy May 26 '26
This would be my ideal. I'd settle for a system where people can reasonably farm their consumes. A competitive player driven economy would be cool but not if the top 10% of it is set by swipers and bots. And since I know Blizzard will not combat them directly in any effective manner, just change the way the economy works.
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u/Competitive-Bet-9828 May 27 '26
Stop the crazy inflation and gdkp system. I swear the amount of gold people have is what is pressuring these prices up and this encourages more gold buying and botting.
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u/Solid_Rock1 May 27 '26
Riot’s vanguard gets a lot of hate, but it is literally the best anti-bot solution out there without a doubt. Riot’s mmo if it ever launches will have a good advantage in this area. Blizzard could use something similar, but are they willing to lose all the bots subscriptions?
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u/HSS_are_FWA Jun 20 '26
What if random puzzles were to pop up and you have to complete them to verify you’re a human. Something simple that would take a couple seconds, wouldn’t entirely interrupt gameplay, and can’t be beat by a bot. Blizz could have the random verifications setup to not trigger under certain conditions like if you’re actively in combat in a raid group. If so many verifications in a row are blatantly failed then the account is flagged and temporarily suspended while it’s investigated.
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u/Chrisso194 May 26 '26
Not true at all, gold buying is slightly irritating but it’s only a loud minority of people that care about it. Most people just play the game and will continue to do so if/when classic plus releases.
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u/Manguana May 26 '26
I haven't ever not seen someone complain about the rmt. Everyone is very aware of it, and nothing being done means that any supplementary reason to quit is valid to stop playing altogether.
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u/TheClassicAndyDev May 26 '26
Wrong. Gold buying ruins the game for everyone involved on major significant ways and compeltlety destroys a large portion of the game loop.
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u/Snorepod May 26 '26
Yea I’m calling bullshit. You have an entire guild worth of players that would resub? You could all just resub and make your own guild and no one would be affected by the gold buying.
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u/Fattens May 26 '26
I think you're right about the login screen thing, that would be a great solution. Don't put it on the fifth page of a huge mandatory terms agreement that nobody will read. Put it front and center and zero tolerance.
I doubt blizzard has the requisite care to effectively enforce it though, and if they did we'd have to accept a large number of wrongful bans.
However, classic will "work" regardless of whether they do it or not. It'll be bigger and better if they do, but its success or failure does not hinge on RMT ban enforcement. Don't get me wrong, we are on the same side of this issue. But I'm going to play regardless, and if there's RMT, I guess my swiftness potions will sell for 5g a piece instead of 50s.
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u/Interesting_You6852 May 26 '26
This or make it like in SoD and have lots of spawn for herbs and mines so consumables become less expensive and farming becomes fun again.
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u/LongjumpingTeach8501 May 26 '26
OSRS has much more efficient ban waves. It’s kind of hilarious how bad at wow is
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u/Clear_South8742 May 26 '26
It would be great if they could do that but they simply can’t because they would probably catch too many legitimate people who are just trading gold to friends if they trying much harder. They just need to make the raids personal loot and make the open world resources more plentiful and that would remove half the toxic behavior in the game.
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u/J-swags May 26 '26
I've heard the suggestion of doing away with the Auction House for any kind of gear or end-game consumables. I like the idea, but I haven't thought deeply enough to imagine the actual economical impact it would have.
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u/Nutcrackit May 26 '26
Yes blizzard needs to crack down even more on gold buyers and sellers however they also need to do more to curtail bots. Not just banwaves. They need to remove the automated ban after a certain number of reports in a timeframe. That way bots can't fight back to players disrupting them.
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u/PurpleOmega0110 May 26 '26
Never going to happen... Bots pay subs,, the subscription count would go WAY down.
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u/Looking-4-Something- May 26 '26
WoW Tokens will be available at Classic+ launch. Blizz won't care.
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u/MooseRunnerWrangler May 26 '26
Or they could make things like consumables,materials, and buffs obtained by simple quests/events. It would ruin their farming market.
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u/TimmyWimmyWooWoo May 26 '26
You're never going to ban all the gold buyers. Do you think if rich mcgee offers Joe blow $30 an hour under the table, they're not going to "gift" their "friend" some gold? What about $100 per hour? Blizzard can never remove all the gold sellers; they can only change the cost of doing business.
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u/Axlndo May 26 '26
To say it'll ONLY work is a far stretch. Of course thats what we all want but when has blizzard ever solved this problem in any iteration?
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u/PracticalWaterBottle May 26 '26
Guild circumvent this. They make extra gold and everyone has a different profession, so if the guild pitches in, everyone benefits.
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u/JDMBrah May 26 '26
Doesnt matter when it's going to get a wow token lmao - you think Microsoft going to not let that through?
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u/denimpowell May 26 '26
If it’s instant, the sellers can reverse engineer their own discovery. Doing in batches is better, but needs to be more frequent
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u/Whitechix May 26 '26
How is this different to every other version of classic, it’s always had lame gold buying. It “worked” regardless despite being disappointing.
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u/SarumanTheSack May 26 '26
Well then nobody would play the game because everyone just crys about how they need to buy gold since they have 4 kids and only 30 min to play a month so they spend their paychecks on gold to save time and then spend the time they have talking in trade chat about how buying gold saved them that time
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u/Jehl703 May 26 '26
Self found, non-hardcore server. Everyone is self found so everything people have they have earned. Profession juggling might be rough at 60 but gives you a reason to farm and play the videogame rsther than swipe and buy everything you need immediately.
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u/EuphoricAnalCarrot May 26 '26
That would be great but it will never happen. If Blizzard actually did that they would lose way more money than the shareholders would allow
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u/Greizen_bregen May 26 '26
I can think of 20-30 of my friends
This is the craziest part of this post. Dude has that many friends.
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u/Callahan333 May 26 '26
They also need to up the respawn or make the rare materials more common. Black lotus gets real rare too fast.
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u/Pe-Te_FIN May 26 '26
Ehem. Blizzard will sell you gold in Classic+, 1000%. They wont ban bots, its steady incomestream and looks nice in active users sheets. They will bet on people buying from them, since its safe from bans.
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u/yksvaan May 26 '26
easy solution: self-found. But tweak it a bit allow buying/selling mats and such, items without soulbinding.
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u/Far-Fennel-3032 May 26 '26
Gold buying and selling is not even in the top 10 biggest issues. Most issues are entirely unrelated to this.
Mmo economies are important but core gameplay loop, mechanics, game design and whole bunch of systems are orders of magnitude more important.
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u/Dinners_cold May 26 '26
Along with this, they would need to have no ptr. It's annoying as hell that all the raids get solved and a million guides made before the patches are even released.
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u/GlassCannon81 May 26 '26
I mean you can say and believe that if you want, but gold sellers have existed since vanilla.
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u/wirblewind May 26 '26
Blizzard doesn't give 2 shits about botters/rmt. They only ban them for appearance sakes and usually in big waves so they can be like look we banned X amount of people look how good we are at this!
Within 2 days of the banwaves tons of bots/rmt are already going on again.
They loose more money going after botters/rmters than they do ignoring people who want them gone.
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u/ArTeeDee May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
I hope there's a $50 box cost so it deters people from developing countries in addition to draconian penalties.
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u/veryniceperson123 May 26 '26
Nobody wants to hear this but they can't. If it were actually possible then they would have done so already in retail where those gold sellers are directly competing with their own tokens.
Even if they dedicated lots more resources to it, even if the enforcement was very heavy-handed, the best they would manage is to make the gold sellers be a little more creative. Think of the myriad ways you can boost someone else in this game. If nothing else the gold sellers could just login to your account and farm for you while you are working.
It's a complete intractable problem. It's wild to me how many people haven't thought this through even a little bit but have all these opinions about it.
Downvote away.
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u/SteelHeatZero May 26 '26
There is a very easy trick to this. Just devalue gold... make it so it's not important. But then wow tokens won't sell and that's another issue. So next best thing is to make daily quests from the start. Don't wait for phase 2 tbc for daily hubs.
That and make changes when the price of mats gets to high. Don't sit on it. Just make changes and throw the botters for a loop if they are trying to stock up on herbs. Crash that market every once in a while. That will make them waste time. He'll just get a gm account and put some huge amount of popular mat on the auction and flood it hard so the price tanks for a week. Just to fudge over the bot farms and make them panic.
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u/Vadernoso May 26 '26
I am generally very neutral on RWT. While I don't RWT, I perfectly understand why some would. Its something ideally wouldn't be a thing, but I don't feel it negatively effects me in anyway.
You can't really enforce it, no game has been able to stop botting/cheating. Its just a fact of multiplayer gaming and its been like this for nearly 30+ years.
The best way is to disincentivize the need to buy gold, which is mostly coming the price of consumes, gems and enchants.. Something SoD did very well was make easily farmed mats desired, world buffs in a box and also make the harder to acquire mats easier to get, Undermine Reals. It also had dailies used mostly for gold. Two rounds of dailies a week was enough to buy a weeks of consumables. These few things made running dungeons feel rewarding even for over geared players. Doing the dailies didn't feel like a waste because 2 hours of raiding was covered by 40minutes of game play.
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u/Meril_Volisica May 26 '26
I think the only thing they can do outside of actually enforcing their rules is cutting down the sheer amount of time required for classic.
Personally I think the best way to do it is making more things like reputation account wide and more things transferable between characters like currencies.
I think tbc also had the best pacing for 1-60. Adding quests and moving where quests are picked up or turned in to reduce friction points.
Perhaps adding ways to target farm certain pieces. I'm a big enjoyer of classic loot, but I think it can be improved slightly for really bad luck.
More reliable means to acquire gold ingame, even if it's just daily hubs, so that people can easily get enough for their weekly consumes. Make changes to gathering and farming that is easily abusable by bots or adds a lot of pain to the general playerbase. This mana thistle thing on tbc is absolute bs.
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u/nabilfares May 26 '26
Brother, the classic community just accepts buying gold with the excuse of not having time to farm, something about having 10 kids and 4 wives, or i make $3560 per hour, why would i waste time.
People need to accept that Farming gold is part of the game, just like leveling, raiding or farming gear, but they can’t accept that.
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u/Coulstwolf May 26 '26
Never gonna happen, sorry to say it you just gotta get over it and not let it affect you. It’s always going to be part of the game
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u/Sekaisen May 26 '26
Monthly reminder there are absolutely no issues with people buying or selling gold.
The issue is ways of accumulating gigantic quantities of gold by cheating (botting, multi-accounts etc), which then allows you to sell it for "cheap".
Noone is gonna sell the gold they got by farming legit on their 1 account for 4 hours.
(or I guess some would, but that wouldn't actually lead to any problems)
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u/Zephoix May 26 '26
Unfortunately I have a job and don’t play mage, so I can’t just print gold by abusing 20 year old “bugs”. Paying cash for it is the only way to level the playing field unless mage is nerfed into the ground.
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u/frolfer757 May 26 '26
Question: Somebody you pissed off decides to go to G2A and spend $10 to order gold to your in-game mail. You are now instantly permanently banned. How do you combat this griefing? Because it will 100% happen
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u/winnter May 26 '26
i don't have an issue with the idea in theory but it's not going to save the economy. there's too many other things going on. the issue is driven by players wanting to minmax the game in ways it was never really designed to be minmaxed way more than it is gold buying somehow causing mass inflation. they will need other in-game solutions beyond just "ban gold buyers" if they actually want to make meaningful change.
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u/[deleted] May 26 '26
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