Boosting could soon be banned, at least on a large scale, in World of Warcraft. At least, a rumor is doing the rounds right now …
Update 18:30: World of Warcraft has really banned “boosting communities”. The confirmation just came from Blizzard.
Original message
On most realms in World of Warcraft, the Trade Channel is used for one thing in particular: Advertising boosting services. These are often larger groupings that operate across realms and provide certain services in exchange for payment of gold coins. This can be increasing the PvP rating in the arena, but also completing raids or dungeons on a high difficulty level.
Now a rumor is circulating through the WoW community and seems to be stalling at least some boosting groups: Boosting could be banned.
What is the current status on boosting?
Currently, boosting is explicitly allowed in World of Warcraft as long as it is services for gold. Players are free to decide which in-game service they want to pay money for. There are numerous boosting groups that pull paying teammates through dungeons and raids on a fixed schedule to earn them achievements or loot, for example.
Only the advertising of such boost groups in the LFG tool is forbidden and can also be reported by other players. In the trade channel, however, promoting such activities has been allowed so far – even across your own home server.
Boosting offers against real money – i.e. payment with real money like Euros or Dollars – on the other hand are already forbidden and lead to sanctions, both for the sellers and the buyers.
What happened?
A few posts surfaced in the World of Warcraft subreddit last night regarding a screenshot of a message that was apparently shared on some of World of Warcraft’s Discord servers. Supposedly, the message is from developers or community managers and is preparing for something that will become active later today (January 31, 2022). In it you can read:
Effective immediately, we are banning groupings that provide boosting, matchmaking, or other non-traditional services, including those that do so for gold. World of Warcraft accounts that break this rule will be subject to sanctions. These sanctions may include warnings, temporary suspensions, and, if necessary, permanent account closures. Groupings that operate across multiple realms and massively advertise their non-traditional in-game sales are against the terms of the End User Agreement (EULA).
This updated rule does not restrict individuals or guilds from using available in-game tools (“trade chat”) to buy or sell items or activities with in-game currency. But “boosting communities”, especially those that operate across multiple realms, are no longer allowed. […]
In short, this would mean: Boosting communities that offer their services across multiple servers are against the terms of use in the future and can result in account penalties up to permanent bans.
That alone would still be quite easy to fake, after all anyone can write such a message. In addition, the choice of words and the use of language is rather not Blizzard’s typical way. So it could be at most a first draft of the message or just a private message of a confidant.
However, several boosting communities and guilds seem to take this message seriously. For example, some well-known communities have not announced any boost runs for the coming days, and several players confirm that some boosting communities are in the process of disbanding or restructuring.
Some are even posting pictures on Reddit of the dates of the boosting groups – which in many cases spontaneously ended today. So it seems quite likely that the news is considered “real” by several outlets.
How likely is that?
Blizzard doing something about the boosting spam in the chat channels should be quite likely. On many realms, the trade chat is virtually unusable, with dozens of boosting groups all just advertising their services, often from other realms. For most players, this is annoying more than anything else, and it’s likely to scare newcomers away even more.
What is also clear, however, is that “providing services in exchange for gold” has always been an integral part of World of Warcraft. Enchanters and other craftsmen get paid for their services, some mages charge a small fee for bread and water in Classic, and even “moving through dungeons” is often sold. After all, this is the return for invested time.
The next days will show if this rumor is true – it would probably drastically reduce the spam in the trade channel of many realms and make one or the other WoW player happy.
By the way, most of you think boosting is okay – as long as it’s against gold.
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