So what is RMT? At the most basic level, real money trading is the exchange of virtual goods, including in-game currency, and services for real world currency.
When I first heard of boosting services and communities in World of Warcraft, I first thought of real money trading. After all, how much different is running a character through a dungeon to get loot from the leveling services offered to get a character from level 1 to the maximum level of a game? Wait, you thought the evil game companies thought up character boosts were thought up by a bunch of greedy suits? Ha! The practice has been a staple of grey/black market sites for years.
An article in PC Gaming described the practice.
These boosting communities have a surprisingly elaborate process. They hire players to advertise their services on various servers. A buyer contacts them and pays them gold that is then paid to a "bank", or representatives of the boosting community. From there, boosters, who are paid with in-game gold from that bank, take on the job of getting players what they're after. All of this happens across multiple servers and is reported back to a centralized Discord server. This way, players who, for whatever reason, can't perform a tough raid or get a fancy mount, can either buy WoW Tokens for gold or pay the gold they already have for a group to help them. The advertisers, boosters, and other admins get to take that gold and continue their subscription or turn it into Blizzard bucks, if they want.
The only question was how much and how long Blizzard would tolerate the practice. The PC Gamer article makes the practice sound like everyone follows the rules. Hardly. Given the long history of WoW players violating Blizzard's rules, why would anyone think ToS violating activity was not occurring. Instead of buying WoW tokens for the gold to give the raiders offering the services, they could instead choose to either buy gold off the secondary markets or pay the groups directly using PayPal. Also, with that much gold floating around, some of the gold would inevitably find its way onto the secondary markets for sale.
On Monday, a blue post appeared on the WoW forums declaring changes to what Blizzard would allow in the future.
As the conditions change by which various entities operate in World of Warcraft, we are compelled to update our policies to further our goal of making the gameplay experience as fair and welcoming as possible. Since we last updated our policies, we have found that an increasing disturbance of the gameplay experience has been caused by organizations excessively advertising various non-traditional services in-game.
As of today, we will now prohibit organizations who offer boosting, matchmaking, escrow, or other non-traditional services, including those offered for gold. World of Warcraft accounts found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions. These actions can include warnings, account suspensions and, if necessary, permanent closure of the disruptive World of Warcraft account(s). Organizations operating across multiple realms and excessively advertising non-traditional in-game sales are contrary to the terms and conditions of the Blizzard End-User License Agreement (EULA).
This policy update does not restrict individuals or guilds from using the provided in-game tools (“trade channel” chat) to buy or sell in-game items or activities for in-game currency. However, “boosting communities”, especially those who operate across multiple realms, are no longer permitted.
We urge all such organizations to cease doing business in World of Warcraft immediately, in order to maintain uninterrupted access to the game.
I haven't played WoW since Vanilla, but I have written about real money trading activity for over 10 years. Unless the developers on WoW change the game mechanics that produced the demand for boosting services, a change in the rules won't stop the practice. At best, the boosting services will go underground, although on a smaller scale. For the short term though, perhaps the ban on boosting communities is the best Blizzard can do. Hopefully Blizzard will come up with a long term solution in the next expansion.
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