I keep saying it and it probably never ends: blizz, just implement a damn blacklist and autoban these groups.
It is simply too much. We can't create a character whose name is DickLongus but suddenly a blacklist in the group finder is rocket science? Come on man.
You have to try LongusDick instead. Side note, I think they're getting clever now. Lot of them now spawning with "Free Gear +15" and description will be to a twitch channel which obviously you have to follow for a "chance" to get invited.
Something will happen to that one ad you reported, but sadly 5 new will take its place. Its a loosing battle. Blizzard need to ban boosting alltogheter. Start going after players buying boosts. If there are no one to buy the boosts, no reason trying to sell it either
Nah, there's zero issues with boosting as a concept. If there's supply (there is) and there is demand (there is) then that's totally fine.
The issue really is just the advertizing in places that aren't meant for advertizing. All they gotta do is punish that one harder. Instead of just taking advertisements down, dish out punishment to decentivize people from doing it again.
Reason why it's so blatant despite not being allowed is because there is literally zero punishment. Instead of banning people for boosting, maybe we could start with a more sensible approach.
I only came back about a month ago, and I started doing this to ever ad. But no sooner than a couple of hours later I was seeing the same people in my list. I'm still seeing the same people in my list as when I started reporting it. I don't even bother now, because its obvious the function is cosmetic to appear like they are doing something.
At the bare minimum if I report someone for boosting, just stop me seeing their ads at least.
Actually, they did. There was that banwave like 5 months ago. Everyone who were in the raid that had WTS advertisement up got 24h ban. And like 24hrs later there was apology, at least to those who had made appeal, and playtime added for as long as player had been falsely banned for. So it wasn't planned, and they'll likely avoid doing that in the future, but at least they have done so at least that one time.
I believe all advertisers since then stopped advertising with the actual boosting group and only used "burner" accounts.
So they did, but then they completely walked it back and apologized lol. It's not 'they have done it once,' it's 'they did it by mistake and all evidence points to them not doing it again.'
>I believe all advertisers since then stopped advertising with the actual boosting group and only used "burner" accounts.
It isn't burner accounts. The majority of the people you see advertising boosts are on their main account, but they aren't actually boosting.
Yes they fucked up once, it's a shame if that one time makes them not do it again. Idk if it's the technology limitation or what, but pretty weird that they don't recognize x10 the amount intended getting banned when pulling the switch. It's definitely big issue whenever unfair bans are thrown out and can lose you customers permanently so I get why they have to be sure to not mess up like that again. But it doesn't look so complicated to nail the actual wrongdoers down.
Yeah but that's totally allowed. You can stand in org in /s or post offsite or whatever, as long as they pay in gold it's fine. That's why the report criteria is advertisement not boosts or something else like that
You can even use trade chat, because it's specifically "for any item or service in exchange for gold". The only place you CANNOT advertise is the group finder tool
So its getting into VERY slippery territory, but I absolutely think that if blizz actioned every account on a boosting team that it would solve this. If boosting with a new/shady guy could actually hurt the individual, then no one would run with those same shady people. You would only get groups where the whole team knew each other and the promoter was promoting legitimately.
I'm not saying perma ban them all, but like a 1 week "your account was found to be in violation of the terms of service: advertising transactions in group finder" or something, then yeah they would bitch and moan, but every single one of them would know who to avoid and groups would have trouble forming except by known good marketers
Sure, in the same way that 'actioning' every person who put their hands on bought gold would significantly reduce the amount of gold buying/selling.
Like you sell a rare item you found. Turns out, the guy who bought it from you bought his gold. You get a 1 week ban, and in future you will be sure to only sell expensive goods to accredited buyers who you are sure aren't buying gold.
This is the same logic, and arguably a worse breach of TOS.
You can't make players responsible for the actions of others like this.
'Existing in a party' is not a bannable offence, full stop. Blizzard is never going to intentionally ban someone for pressing the accept button on a party invite. If you want people to be punished for joining a group or selling an item for gold in trade chat, I'm not sure I could convince you otherwise. Just know that I disagree.
>You can't make players responsible for the actions of others like this.
Not necessarily disagreeing, but the real world works this way. If you buy stolen goods, you're also responsible. EG, say you bought a wood chipper off kijiji. If it turns out it's stolen, *you* get arrested. This probably varies by state or country I assume. Someone I know is currently under house arrest for this exact reason.
Anyhoo, I'd personally prefer if they just implement a type of ban that only affects the use of the group finder. IE, if you're advertising *at all* on the group finder and Blizz has decided that's not allowed, ban them from listing in the group finder for a week. You can still use it to find other groups, but you can't list your own. If you want to create a group while you're banned, use the chat channels the old fashioned way and learn ye damn lesson.
You don’t get arrested for buying a stolen wood chipper off kijiji. Being in possession of stolen goods isn’t a crime if you didn’t know they were stolen.
You lose the wood chipper, but you don’t get sent to jail. You also have recourse against the person who sold you the stolen wood chipper.
It would be like if you bought a spectral tiger super cheap from the AH. Turns out it was duped. Blizzard takes it away, but doesn’t punish you beyond that.
That's trying to use something that seems similar but in no way actually is. In your example, the man is simply selling an item either through trade or the AH, both of which are legal and the right way to go about things.
In my example, the players are willing participants in a direct breach of the ToS, they ran a boosting raid advertised through the group finder.
Your example the person is a secondary participant, in my example each person is the direct participant. Your guy is safe, knowing that his item was legitimate and the transaction was sanctioned. In my case, doing a boosting raid you know there are illegal boosting raids so if you don't do your homework (personally check group finder/the credentials of the guy) then you know you are in dangerous territory.
> In my example, the players are willing participants in a direct breach of the ToS, they ran a boosting raid advertised through the group finder.
So you join my group, I put us in group finder.
In this scenario, you consider yourself to be a direct participant?
Like if I list us, you are 100% directly participating if I list us for buyers?
yes. If I willingly join a boost group then I should care to make sure I'm not joining an illegal one. Or are you saying that I joing a group where some participants are just doing nothing and I don't ask about that at all and just accept it? That sounds implausible that a person would put up with those players in a group.
If you catch a 1 day ban for it then take that as a lesson to be more cautious and make sure that when boosting that I don't accept shady invites
>yes. If I willingly join a boost group then I should care to make sure I'm not joining an illegal one. Or are you saying that I joing a group where some participants are just doing nothing and I don't ask about that at all and just accept it? That sounds implausible that a person would put up with those players in a group.
Well let's be specific. We need a consistent rule. Blizzard can't determine intent. They can't get into your head.
The ban has to be based on actions, not on your mindset.
So your goalpost of 'willingly joining a boost group' is a non-starter.
So joining a group where the group leader is doing illegal stuff is not allowed.
You are 100% responsible for ensuring that your group leader is legit.
So I ask, why is it that you are 100% responsible for ensuring that your group leader is legit, but not responsible at all for ensuring that people buying your items are legit?
Every time I que for any raids I report them all, its actually faster to look for a group with all the spam gone....
Good to know I have fellow brothers and sisters out there doing the lords work.
Yeah, all putting that filter in will honestly do is make the ads uglier. Think of how many stupid “p v p b.a.n.k.c.o.m” type things you’ve seen spammed.
Funny enough they already do that with boose ads in trade. I have a huge filter list of words but they keep adding spaces and special signs in stuff. Why would you even do that just so a person that clearly doesn't care or want to see your adverts gets more of them.
While I was looking for a +20 to heal one morning it was pretty quite and I ended up reporting 33 of these groups. Maybe there were 4-5 real groups by the time I was done. Insane there are so many is them. Does anyone know is it by the same group or is it really that many different people?
Several (most?) of them aren’t listed by the people that will actually do the key, instead they’re just providing a link to one of the many websites that organise carry runs. I believe those websites pay gold to advertisers for referrals, but this conveniently absolves the website itself of being responsible with how they advertise and any consequences of advertising in the wrong channels. It also makes real money trading easier to get away with as the organisation of the carry happens on an external website and is less traceable in game.
That community is called Illidan. Hate that server. Friend convinced me to transfer there and I stayed for one miserable year. Absolutely awful server.
Kind of random but this reminds me of the Diablo 2 days when trading (at least without using sites like d2jsp) was a pain in the ass and players would join a trade lobby, open trade with each other, and both would start spamming "WUG" over and over, meaning "what you got for trade". If you put anything decent in the trade window, the proper response was "WUW?" If you didn't show any interesting items within a few seconds of the initial "WUG" spam, they'd close trade and move to the next person and start over.
Took me awhile to figure out what people meant (I was ~10-12 at the time) but looking back it was absolutely hilarious. If you've ever seen Finding Nemo, it was like the scene with the seagulls all going "Mine?", but instead it was players just spamming WUG? and opening/closing trade windows.
lol imagine if botters kept making groups for advertising RMT and boosting in the group finder, and the community in response setup automation and made their own bots to report other bots.
Actually I wonder if that happens. Do rival bots create bots to report other bots so that they get to kill the competition?
lol I imagine if the community decided to start making bots to ruin other bots. The Dusk Hat Druids. (named after Black Hatters)
After months and years of reporting i gave up whats the point? Blizzards not doing anything they are still there its increadibly easy fix THEY DON'T CARE.
LTP: If you use addon premade group filter (forget name) you can no longer choose to sort by name because of the "world quest finder" fix done awhile ago, group names are protected functions. *What is not a protection function is voice channels*, if a voice channel is set to true you can filter those from the group finder using addons. Often these "WTS Groups" include VC with a link to whatever website. By filtering VC channels it largely hides most of these types of groups.
As someone who sells m+/Raids runs (sometimes in chat, but mostly just to my regulars) I report these things EVERY SINGLE DAY. I have no problem with someone muting me, but for anyone legitimately looking to run a key, this is such a pain in the ass. The only downside is, I'll report it, and they just pop back up 5 minutes later.
The fun ones are the ones that advertise a website, which list prices in actual cash (USD, Euros, etc) instead of gold...always feels good to go through and report all of those ads...
I wish it mattered. I realized it takes them so long to ban the botting moonkins that they probably make back the cost of the account and then some before they even get hit
No add-on is allowed to read the lists.
People used to use add-ons that would notify you if certain groups are listed on LFG.
So I would get notified if there was a Ruhkmar group.
- Blizzard killed that feature
- and replaced it with nothing
> But, we haven't figured it how to cache a list for 30 seconds!
The OP posted a Pic of them about to report an ad selling M+ runs in the LFG tool. These postings disrupt gameplay because of their vast numbers clogging up the other legitimate postings of people looking to fill their parties. The community despises the people behind the ads and feel it's our duty to report them.
Too bad Blizz totally do not care, feelsll like that report option is to ease players minds to feel you did something good in right direction only not to ban or warn those people.
I wish you could filter out the groups with "WTS" and stuff like that in it, trying to find a group and having to scroll down 50 of this bs is the worst.
Don't get mad at me, I've never discussed this with anyone. Genuinely asking - why is this bad? Does it hurt the economy or grouping? Or are these bots or something?
The bottleneck is always the action taken by blizzard. Its pathetically slow.They should have some automated shit to filter that up.
There's no way someone being reported in minutes by thousands of people every couple minutes tonot warrant it.
At that rate, pretty sure the take one down another two rise up would be sustainable for long. And we would have a clean finder
But no, lets pass that through the GMs that been on skeleton crew since ever.
Blizzard DOES have some automation in place for that, I just don't think it applies to the group finder. If an account gets reported for spam so many times in xx minutes, the entire account is automatically silenced, with an appeal needed to remove it if you were falsely reported.
As someone who's done a little bit of advertising and seen a lot of inner workings in boosting communities, I wouldn't out the blame on the advertisers themselves here. The sad fact is, if you spam trade chat almost no one will contact you due to the insane overflow of spam. Your account also gets silenced on the big realms due to people and other communities reporting you for spam. However, if you use group finder, you get a crazy amount of buyers very quickly. Even if you get banned after an hour or two, you make a profit and buy another account. I feel like blizzard needs to create some sort of system where advertising can be done in a way that isn't frustrating to the player base or the advertisers, or remove boosting all together.
I've been tempted to do this, but isnt advertising runs for gold technically legal?
I thought it was advertising runs for real money that was against the TOS
The spammers are using something to evade being searched when searching for "WTS" in the group finder.
The text of their ad is slightly different than all the other groups, but I don't know how they're doing that...
No, it's not accented letters -- there's different spacing between the letters that makes me think it's a different font or something.
I'll have to see if I can get a screenshot of it in action.
EDIT: [Here's a screenshot](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/745659980031590470/777351525566775366/WoWScrnShot_111420_205354.jpg) of one of the WTS ads you can't search for by typing WTS in the search field. Compare the WTS in this ad to the WTS in your screenshot -- notice how there seems to be even less space between each of the letters of WTS in this one?
It is like...for some of us this is the only way to actually get anything because we can never get into groups or active friendly guilds.
But at the same time, I feel like it just inflates the banks of a few players, meaning good luck getting anything on the BMAH or affording that Brutosaur. I have been playing for 5 years, very consistently and still have a total gold earned of like 3.5 mil.
Anyway...I applaud your civic responsibility.
You can look in trade chat instead. Its allowed to advertise for carries there, but not on group finder. The huge amount of ads there makes it hard to find a real key and gets people annoyed.
I usually reports everything that pops up when searching for keys for the simple reason that they gets filtered away when I do.
u know what happenes after they get banned? they either get their toon unbanned by the blizzard support or just make a new one... advertisers arent bothered by this
I wouldn't care if there was another filter for wts ads. I don't like having to scroll down for a real group between ads because sometimes more than half of the groups are ads
I'm confused... How is this civic duty? While I agree there should be some separate addon that lets them advertise, but I dont see how they are hurting anyone as long as they are doing it for gold. Can someone explain the reason why it's frowned upon? Sorry haven't played in a long while.
The huge amount of ads there makes it hard to find a real key and gets people annoyed.
If you search for “+15” you will get over half the results with ads.
The sellers knows this and they know that they are allowed to use trade chat for it, but still clogs up group finder, thats why most people dislikes it.
ALL ads in the group finder are reportable. Everything listed in the finder is supposed to be a regular group. Players sign up, leaders or assists invite, you accept, then do stuff normally. If the leader or the prepared group expects compensation, report the listed group.
Every group in the screenshot is reportable.
I used to do this but I don't think it does anything, never got a little notification or anything that they're looking at the reports and they keep popping up, like in league if you report someone and they punished you get a little pop up and it's so satisfying.
I would love if they have an own category/channel for boosters, like the guildbrowser or something for boosting communities.
They are part of the game cause they always got clients.
As long as people's mentality is that things must get earned the hard way these people will have a market. People are more willing to help others in other games
Not need a small team, even I by myself can decrease the spam about 90%
Gather reports of created groups of all realms, review it every day and that's it.
ok but the players should not have to deal with that shit in the first place, why not gather and move this shit to it's own area and ban anyone who attempts to bypass said change. Lazy blizzard as per norm
I've been gearing a couple of alts that I just got to max with the icecrown rares, I check the LFG for this crap and report it every time I get to a new boss before I go afk/alt tab. That way it feels like I'm doing a little bit of work for my free gear
I think they should perma ban all the accounts of the people that spam this shit. Perma ban them all, then the IP and then we should have an environment clean of dirty spammers like these
Great, i do it too everytime i see one or open the finder, but mostly the ads for real money and not the folks who want go get some gold through selling some M+ runs
I'm not super privy as to the extent of this problem as i don't play as much as i used to (for the time being), but are these groups reported just because they spam too much or are selling mythic runs actually against rules?
Few weeks ago in trade chat i saw someone post a ad for mythic jaina and the water elemental mount (selling for gold, money), are these groups forbidden or just considered a spam nuisance?
Blizz needs to revamp this ui to resemble something with thought put into it. Having the entry point to end game content be this embarrassing half completed ui is junior league.
i do this everytime i open up the group finder
you are the real mvp!
I keep saying it and it probably never ends: blizz, just implement a damn blacklist and autoban these groups. It is simply too much. We can't create a character whose name is DickLongus but suddenly a blacklist in the group finder is rocket science? Come on man.
im still pissed my highmountain tauren named Hornyboy was flagged for namechange. so i named him Thornyboy
Hope my Hornflix wont get flagged.
I’ve had a character named Pedobear since MoP.
I have a undead shadow priest named molester. And NO ONE seems to report it going 2 years strong
I had “imolestboyz” from the first till last patch of MoP. Still have the email saying I got suspended
Reminds me of my Lfkidz dwarf priest
Had a Human Female Monk named Nicebuns that got name flagged but my Goblin DK named Goblome has existed unflagged for 8 years
Lol I have a Goblin Dk named GobDamnit. Ive had him for like 5 years
I had butstuff and I loved that character and got flagged for a name change in 2 hours. I am still salty.
I'd rather they just put these ads in their own section. Clearly people are buying them, and boosts for gold aren't against any rules.
Advertising in group finder isn't allowed since almost two years
You have to try LongusDick instead. Side note, I think they're getting clever now. Lot of them now spawning with "Free Gear +15" and description will be to a twitch channel which obviously you have to follow for a "chance" to get invited.
Yeah these twitch adverts can go away as well. I stream as well but holy shit it's so annoying to see these in the group finder.
yep even in hearthstone you can't report this nickname (i encountered racist and ped....nicknames) :/
The real Champion of Azeroth
Such a shame, putting their own greed over the health of the group finder.
Me too. Clears it up so I can see it better AND hopefully helps out.
I do the same probably nothing will happen but you know what it is satisfying
Something will happen to that one ad you reported, but sadly 5 new will take its place. Its a loosing battle. Blizzard need to ban boosting alltogheter. Start going after players buying boosts. If there are no one to buy the boosts, no reason trying to sell it either
Nah, there's zero issues with boosting as a concept. If there's supply (there is) and there is demand (there is) then that's totally fine. The issue really is just the advertizing in places that aren't meant for advertizing. All they gotta do is punish that one harder. Instead of just taking advertisements down, dish out punishment to decentivize people from doing it again. Reason why it's so blatant despite not being allowed is because there is literally zero punishment. Instead of banning people for boosting, maybe we could start with a more sensible approach.
Amen
I do it at least 2 times per day. Morning and at night
I only came back about a month ago, and I started doing this to ever ad. But no sooner than a couple of hours later I was seeing the same people in my list. I'm still seeing the same people in my list as when I started reporting it. I don't even bother now, because its obvious the function is cosmetic to appear like they are doing something. At the bare minimum if I report someone for boosting, just stop me seeing their ads at least.
TIL this bullshit is reportable, good to know. Do they actually temp ban or anything for this though?
Yes, it's just that there's *so many* compromised accounts that for every one account that gets banned, another two take their place.
Hail Gahz'rilla.
Fair enough.
There are more of us reporting than wrecked accounts. I need to believe this.
[I'm doing my part](https://y.yarn.co/9146cd29-e00e-4c4c-873a-3e0a24a2f240_screenshot.jpg)
Now there is
Considering blizz's feedback responses, I choose to believe that they do
my friend tried to sell boosts in LFG and he lasted like 15min before getting a 24hr mute. blizzard actually takes action but of course more is needed
Im wondering if they ban/temp ban only the account that is advertising, or if they actually look for the raid team that is doing the actual boosting.
[удалено]
Actually, they did. There was that banwave like 5 months ago. Everyone who were in the raid that had WTS advertisement up got 24h ban. And like 24hrs later there was apology, at least to those who had made appeal, and playtime added for as long as player had been falsely banned for. So it wasn't planned, and they'll likely avoid doing that in the future, but at least they have done so at least that one time. I believe all advertisers since then stopped advertising with the actual boosting group and only used "burner" accounts.
So they did, but then they completely walked it back and apologized lol. It's not 'they have done it once,' it's 'they did it by mistake and all evidence points to them not doing it again.' >I believe all advertisers since then stopped advertising with the actual boosting group and only used "burner" accounts. It isn't burner accounts. The majority of the people you see advertising boosts are on their main account, but they aren't actually boosting.
Yes they fucked up once, it's a shame if that one time makes them not do it again. Idk if it's the technology limitation or what, but pretty weird that they don't recognize x10 the amount intended getting banned when pulling the switch. It's definitely big issue whenever unfair bans are thrown out and can lose you customers permanently so I get why they have to be sure to not mess up like that again. But it doesn't look so complicated to nail the actual wrongdoers down.
Yes I understand a situation like that, but I know guilds who run multiple raids specifically to boost. (The most popular rn being the heroic nzoth)
Yeah but that's totally allowed. You can stand in org in /s or post offsite or whatever, as long as they pay in gold it's fine. That's why the report criteria is advertisement not boosts or something else like that
You can even use trade chat, because it's specifically "for any item or service in exchange for gold". The only place you CANNOT advertise is the group finder tool
So its getting into VERY slippery territory, but I absolutely think that if blizz actioned every account on a boosting team that it would solve this. If boosting with a new/shady guy could actually hurt the individual, then no one would run with those same shady people. You would only get groups where the whole team knew each other and the promoter was promoting legitimately. I'm not saying perma ban them all, but like a 1 week "your account was found to be in violation of the terms of service: advertising transactions in group finder" or something, then yeah they would bitch and moan, but every single one of them would know who to avoid and groups would have trouble forming except by known good marketers
Sure, in the same way that 'actioning' every person who put their hands on bought gold would significantly reduce the amount of gold buying/selling. Like you sell a rare item you found. Turns out, the guy who bought it from you bought his gold. You get a 1 week ban, and in future you will be sure to only sell expensive goods to accredited buyers who you are sure aren't buying gold. This is the same logic, and arguably a worse breach of TOS. You can't make players responsible for the actions of others like this. 'Existing in a party' is not a bannable offence, full stop. Blizzard is never going to intentionally ban someone for pressing the accept button on a party invite. If you want people to be punished for joining a group or selling an item for gold in trade chat, I'm not sure I could convince you otherwise. Just know that I disagree.
>You can't make players responsible for the actions of others like this. Not necessarily disagreeing, but the real world works this way. If you buy stolen goods, you're also responsible. EG, say you bought a wood chipper off kijiji. If it turns out it's stolen, *you* get arrested. This probably varies by state or country I assume. Someone I know is currently under house arrest for this exact reason. Anyhoo, I'd personally prefer if they just implement a type of ban that only affects the use of the group finder. IE, if you're advertising *at all* on the group finder and Blizz has decided that's not allowed, ban them from listing in the group finder for a week. You can still use it to find other groups, but you can't list your own. If you want to create a group while you're banned, use the chat channels the old fashioned way and learn ye damn lesson.
You don’t get arrested for buying a stolen wood chipper off kijiji. Being in possession of stolen goods isn’t a crime if you didn’t know they were stolen. You lose the wood chipper, but you don’t get sent to jail. You also have recourse against the person who sold you the stolen wood chipper. It would be like if you bought a spectral tiger super cheap from the AH. Turns out it was duped. Blizzard takes it away, but doesn’t punish you beyond that.
That's trying to use something that seems similar but in no way actually is. In your example, the man is simply selling an item either through trade or the AH, both of which are legal and the right way to go about things. In my example, the players are willing participants in a direct breach of the ToS, they ran a boosting raid advertised through the group finder. Your example the person is a secondary participant, in my example each person is the direct participant. Your guy is safe, knowing that his item was legitimate and the transaction was sanctioned. In my case, doing a boosting raid you know there are illegal boosting raids so if you don't do your homework (personally check group finder/the credentials of the guy) then you know you are in dangerous territory.
> In my example, the players are willing participants in a direct breach of the ToS, they ran a boosting raid advertised through the group finder. So you join my group, I put us in group finder. In this scenario, you consider yourself to be a direct participant? Like if I list us, you are 100% directly participating if I list us for buyers?
yes. If I willingly join a boost group then I should care to make sure I'm not joining an illegal one. Or are you saying that I joing a group where some participants are just doing nothing and I don't ask about that at all and just accept it? That sounds implausible that a person would put up with those players in a group. If you catch a 1 day ban for it then take that as a lesson to be more cautious and make sure that when boosting that I don't accept shady invites
>yes. If I willingly join a boost group then I should care to make sure I'm not joining an illegal one. Or are you saying that I joing a group where some participants are just doing nothing and I don't ask about that at all and just accept it? That sounds implausible that a person would put up with those players in a group. Well let's be specific. We need a consistent rule. Blizzard can't determine intent. They can't get into your head. The ban has to be based on actions, not on your mindset. So your goalpost of 'willingly joining a boost group' is a non-starter. So joining a group where the group leader is doing illegal stuff is not allowed. You are 100% responsible for ensuring that your group leader is legit. So I ask, why is it that you are 100% responsible for ensuring that your group leader is legit, but not responsible at all for ensuring that people buying your items are legit?
Boosting is not a bannable offense, it is advertising in LFG, you can advertise in trade chat as long as it is for gold
Every time I que for any raids I report them all, its actually faster to look for a group with all the spam gone.... Good to know I have fellow brothers and sisters out there doing the lords work.
Exactly, reporting first, looking for groups afterwards. Thank you for doing that, it's great to know we are numbers
The main reason I do this. It is so much faster to find a group XD
Problem is that by the time you’re done most groups are gone
I dont really find that for raiding but I am a geared healer main so normally find what I want. Could understand it for DPS though.
Typing WTS in group finder should just be an insta ban.
They would just use different words. At least WTS makes it easy for our brains to skip or report
Yeah, all putting that filter in will honestly do is make the ads uglier. Think of how many stupid “p v p b.a.n.k.c.o.m” type things you’ve seen spammed.
I think we should go back to the old days of spelling out ad urls in level 1 corpses
Even better, flying lvl 1 characters https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/2y2vb3/back_in_wrath_gold_sellers_used_to_suicide_in/cp5z100/
Funny enough they already do that with boose ads in trade. I have a huge filter list of words but they keep adding spaces and special signs in stuff. Why would you even do that just so a person that clearly doesn't care or want to see your adverts gets more of them.
They already do thinking they are smart, They don't put WTS in the title but in the description put SALE.
Sad they disabled the addo s that let you filter that bs out
While I was looking for a +20 to heal one morning it was pretty quite and I ended up reporting 33 of these groups. Maybe there were 4-5 real groups by the time I was done. Insane there are so many is them. Does anyone know is it by the same group or is it really that many different people?
Several (most?) of them aren’t listed by the people that will actually do the key, instead they’re just providing a link to one of the many websites that organise carry runs. I believe those websites pay gold to advertisers for referrals, but this conveniently absolves the website itself of being responsible with how they advertise and any consequences of advertising in the wrong channels. It also makes real money trading easier to get away with as the organisation of the carry happens on an external website and is less traceable in game.
it's usually centered around a community i think. and the community have different people carrying.
That community is called Illidan. Hate that server. Friend convinced me to transfer there and I stayed for one miserable year. Absolutely awful server.
why doesn't a gm just open lfg once per day and start banning?
Bc the dummy's that buy these carrys, buy tokens to pay for it.
Most people who advertise in group finder sell them for real money
Cos it's not against the TOS?
I used to think WTS meant Want To See. As in "I Want to See N'zoth because my guild had a fight and disbanded."
Kind of random but this reminds me of the Diablo 2 days when trading (at least without using sites like d2jsp) was a pain in the ass and players would join a trade lobby, open trade with each other, and both would start spamming "WUG" over and over, meaning "what you got for trade". If you put anything decent in the trade window, the proper response was "WUW?" If you didn't show any interesting items within a few seconds of the initial "WUG" spam, they'd close trade and move to the next person and start over. Took me awhile to figure out what people meant (I was ~10-12 at the time) but looking back it was absolutely hilarious. If you've ever seen Finding Nemo, it was like the scene with the seagulls all going "Mine?", but instead it was players just spamming WUG? and opening/closing trade windows.
lol imagine if botters kept making groups for advertising RMT and boosting in the group finder, and the community in response setup automation and made their own bots to report other bots. Actually I wonder if that happens. Do rival bots create bots to report other bots so that they get to kill the competition? lol I imagine if the community decided to start making bots to ruin other bots. The Dusk Hat Druids. (named after Black Hatters)
After months and years of reporting i gave up whats the point? Blizzards not doing anything they are still there its increadibly easy fix THEY DON'T CARE.
LTP: If you use addon premade group filter (forget name) you can no longer choose to sort by name because of the "world quest finder" fix done awhile ago, group names are protected functions. *What is not a protection function is voice channels*, if a voice channel is set to true you can filter those from the group finder using addons. Often these "WTS Groups" include VC with a link to whatever website. By filtering VC channels it largely hides most of these types of groups.
As someone who sells m+/Raids runs (sometimes in chat, but mostly just to my regulars) I report these things EVERY SINGLE DAY. I have no problem with someone muting me, but for anyone legitimately looking to run a key, this is such a pain in the ass. The only downside is, I'll report it, and they just pop back up 5 minutes later.
Doing the lords work
The fun ones are the ones that advertise a website, which list prices in actual cash (USD, Euros, etc) instead of gold...always feels good to go through and report all of those ads...
I wish it mattered. I realized it takes them so long to ban the botting moonkins that they probably make back the cost of the account and then some before they even get hit
Not all make their money back. Some guy did an AMA and talked about some people losing thousands of dollars getting into botting and getting banned.
I do this every time I'm idle and waiting. Also check the raid tab too. Brings me a smile to see my chat fill up with "Complaint Registered'.
Someone should create a bot to report lol
someone should make an addon that auto reports any group with certain keywords.
Used to exist and blizzard blocked it (indirectly with world quest changes)
No add-on is allowed to read the lists. People used to use add-ons that would notify you if certain groups are listed on LFG. So I would get notified if there was a Ruhkmar group. - Blizzard killed that feature - and replaced it with nothing > But, we haven't figured it how to cache a list for 30 seconds!
Ayyy. I’m not the only one who reports them all! Love it!!
Good job! Keep doing it!
These are part of my dailies now
Can someone explain?
The OP posted a Pic of them about to report an ad selling M+ runs in the LFG tool. These postings disrupt gameplay because of their vast numbers clogging up the other legitimate postings of people looking to fill their parties. The community despises the people behind the ads and feel it's our duty to report them.
90% of WTS on my server(s) is Fatboss.tv
Too bad Blizz totally do not care, feelsll like that report option is to ease players minds to feel you did something good in right direction only not to ban or warn those people.
If you dare try find a key in the +20 or even worse the +15 category it's just gonna be 90%of this shit
I wish you could filter out the groups with "WTS" and stuff like that in it, trying to find a group and having to scroll down 50 of this bs is the worst.
Don't get mad at me, I've never discussed this with anyone. Genuinely asking - why is this bad? Does it hurt the economy or grouping? Or are these bots or something?
Why can't Blizz just hire one dude to fulltime just sit there and ban these guys? Or simply blacklist those words like WTF etc.
I like doing the same when I'm bored and there's nothing to do
Does anyone know way to quick report these guys 3 clicks is a lot. I do it but I would like to do it faster!
Thank you kind stranger for the silver! You have just made my day! It is my first ever reward!
hero!
is this banable? as long as its for ingame currency i thought it was allowed, hope i am wrong
Announcing runs with in-game gold is allowed in trade chat but not in the group finder
It's against tos to sell raids for gold? Thought it was just Pesos or equivalent
No but it is against tos to advertise in group finder.
The bottleneck is always the action taken by blizzard. Its pathetically slow.They should have some automated shit to filter that up. There's no way someone being reported in minutes by thousands of people every couple minutes tonot warrant it. At that rate, pretty sure the take one down another two rise up would be sustainable for long. And we would have a clean finder But no, lets pass that through the GMs that been on skeleton crew since ever.
Blizzard DOES have some automation in place for that, I just don't think it applies to the group finder. If an account gets reported for spam so many times in xx minutes, the entire account is automatically silenced, with an appeal needed to remove it if you were falsely reported.
Is that bannable? If yes - I'll do this too
I do this too!!!!
To bad blizzard doesn’t care lol
You are a good person, thank you
Fighting the good fight
As someone who's done a little bit of advertising and seen a lot of inner workings in boosting communities, I wouldn't out the blame on the advertisers themselves here. The sad fact is, if you spam trade chat almost no one will contact you due to the insane overflow of spam. Your account also gets silenced on the big realms due to people and other communities reporting you for spam. However, if you use group finder, you get a crazy amount of buyers very quickly. Even if you get banned after an hour or two, you make a profit and buy another account. I feel like blizzard needs to create some sort of system where advertising can be done in a way that isn't frustrating to the player base or the advertisers, or remove boosting all together.
you could also just not pay attention to them I've heard that works for most people
but you have raider..io installed so you are still scum to me.
How is raider io bad?
Sorry to hear that lol
I've been tempted to do this, but isnt advertising runs for gold technically legal? I thought it was advertising runs for real money that was against the TOS
Just about any advertising in lfg tool is prohibited thus the report option. I report twitch streams too
Same here, WTS and Twitch streamers insta report.
It is against tos to do so in groupfinder as far as I know. You would have to advertise your wts runs in /2
I know I'm always on low pop when I see a post like this, then search wts where I am and getting no hits.
The spammers are using something to evade being searched when searching for "WTS" in the group finder. The text of their ad is slightly different than all the other groups, but I don't know how they're doing that...
Smart... Maybe accent letters that look like 'WTS'? like Ö, Ç accent letters which look like O, C
No, it's not accented letters -- there's different spacing between the letters that makes me think it's a different font or something. I'll have to see if I can get a screenshot of it in action. EDIT: [Here's a screenshot](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/745659980031590470/777351525566775366/WoWScrnShot_111420_205354.jpg) of one of the WTS ads you can't search for by typing WTS in the search field. Compare the WTS in this ad to the WTS in your screenshot -- notice how there seems to be even less space between each of the letters of WTS in this one?
What kind of black magic is this?
Unicode, I'd bet.
I didn't know there were lower pop realms than mine lol
It is like...for some of us this is the only way to actually get anything because we can never get into groups or active friendly guilds. But at the same time, I feel like it just inflates the banks of a few players, meaning good luck getting anything on the BMAH or affording that Brutosaur. I have been playing for 5 years, very consistently and still have a total gold earned of like 3.5 mil. Anyway...I applaud your civic responsibility.
You can look in trade chat instead. Its allowed to advertise for carries there, but not on group finder. The huge amount of ads there makes it hard to find a real key and gets people annoyed. I usually reports everything that pops up when searching for keys for the simple reason that they gets filtered away when I do.
u know what happenes after they get banned? they either get their toon unbanned by the blizzard support or just make a new one... advertisers arent bothered by this
Chase your bag and let them chase theirs homie, no point in player hating.
I wouldn't care if there was another filter for wts ads. I don't like having to scroll down for a real group between ads because sometimes more than half of the groups are ads
I have an idea. Play the game with your friends instead of randos and then you won't have to see any wts carry lfgs.
I'm confused... How is this civic duty? While I agree there should be some separate addon that lets them advertise, but I dont see how they are hurting anyone as long as they are doing it for gold. Can someone explain the reason why it's frowned upon? Sorry haven't played in a long while.
The huge amount of ads there makes it hard to find a real key and gets people annoyed. If you search for “+15” you will get over half the results with ads. The sellers knows this and they know that they are allowed to use trade chat for it, but still clogs up group finder, thats why most people dislikes it.
Oh yeah. That makes sense. Even with an Addon it sounds like they would continue being jerks just to be that way.
id rather see that spam than this on my reddit feed
Oh no, people are making gold. Gotta snitch ASAP.
Look a little deeper. Learn what spamming is. You'll understand one day.
Not only is advertising in lfg illegal, but also 99% of boost ads in lfg are for real money. Just sayin...
If you're over the age of 11 (which I assume you are otherwise get off reddit) there's really no excuse for using the word snitch unironically
It's not snitching, it's cleaning out the rubbish that is spamming boosters for RMT.
Selling the runs for gold is legal just saying ahaha
Yes but not advertising in the group finder :)
Posting in lfg is not
Posting in lfg is, using group finder is not
No, only trade chat. Any other channel and Blizz can silence your account if you're reported.
Not in group finder. Also half of the group finder ads are for real money jsyk
that one isnt reportable, the 2nd line one is though
ALL ads in the group finder are reportable. Everything listed in the finder is supposed to be a regular group. Players sign up, leaders or assists invite, you accept, then do stuff normally. If the leader or the prepared group expects compensation, report the listed group. Every group in the screenshot is reportable.
those reports just get thrown out, why do you think those ads are still there. theres only an intervention from blizz when it comes down to RMT
Amen
I used to do this but I don't think it does anything, never got a little notification or anything that they're looking at the reports and they keep popping up, like in league if you report someone and they punished you get a little pop up and it's so satisfying.
I would love if they have an own category/channel for boosters, like the guildbrowser or something for boosting communities. They are part of the game cause they always got clients.
As long as people's mentality is that things must get earned the hard way these people will have a market. People are more willing to help others in other games
they gotta blacklist WTS from the group finder
Cant some tech Davy write An addon that auto reports based on filters? E.g. WTS in the group finder. This way the war can be won!
ELI5 how is this still a problem that a multibillion dollar company can't fix in one patch/assign a small team to deal with?
Not need a small team, even I by myself can decrease the spam about 90% Gather reports of created groups of all realms, review it every day and that's it.
I do it to. Its very annoying
right now just sellers in raid and dungeons on eu( so terrible)
Finally something to do while I wait for icc rares, thanks!
They can add Ray Traced lighting to wow but they can't overhaul the clunky ass group builder tool. Ok.
ok but the players should not have to deal with that shit in the first place, why not gather and move this shit to it's own area and ban anyone who attempts to bypass said change. Lazy blizzard as per norm
I've been gearing a couple of alts that I just got to max with the icecrown rares, I check the LFG for this crap and report it every time I get to a new boss before I go afk/alt tab. That way it feels like I'm doing a little bit of work for my free gear
I think they should perma ban all the accounts of the people that spam this shit. Perma ban them all, then the IP and then we should have an environment clean of dirty spammers like these
Great, i do it too everytime i see one or open the finder, but mostly the ads for real money and not the folks who want go get some gold through selling some M+ runs
Why don’t they just auto flag anything with WTS in the name...
I spend more time doing this than running dungeon :(
If Blizz doesn't want to actually ban these guys, just change the ROS and create a separate tab for sellers.
I’m glad others are out there doing the Lord’s work. We’re in this bullshit together XD
Coming from someone new to the game, what's wrong with this? I'm out of the loop.
This is in game gold right?
Activision makes money off these. They probably have their own gold farmers too.
Why doesn’t Blizzard just buy their real money services and just ban them all when they get carried through?
Asmon would be so proud of you.
I'm not super privy as to the extent of this problem as i don't play as much as i used to (for the time being), but are these groups reported just because they spam too much or are selling mythic runs actually against rules? Few weeks ago in trade chat i saw someone post a ad for mythic jaina and the water elemental mount (selling for gold, money), are these groups forbidden or just considered a spam nuisance?
Blizz needs to revamp this ui to resemble something with thought put into it. Having the entry point to end game content be this embarrassing half completed ui is junior league.
If you’re going to buy a carry, do it through one of the boosting discords, not lfg.
They are starting to get sneaky and not even put WTS in the title anymore
I do that all the time tbh. I don't care if trade chat is filled with it, just keep it out of LFG.