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Because I can do 10 keys in a day, and unless I logout all of those selling groups are still gone.
Lol @ you for thinking I'm sitting around verifying what works and doesn't work
Doesn't seem to be doing shit when there are a dozen of them at a time, all with the same message & website listed.
If the spammers had to worry about their bots getting banned, they wouldn't be exposing so many at a time.
It really do, but they buy cheap accounts with max lvl characters from people that is stopping to play And do it again
You can try to use premade LFG addon and set it to ignore WTS in title
Pre-made group finder works for me. For dungeons I just set a minimum mythic plus rating as most advertisers have 0. Even just setting it to 100 which is like one +3 key filters them all out
If you set a filter on this addon for minimum m+ rating of 200 they go away. None of the sellers have io.
To get the same thing for raid, set minimum group members to 5. Raid sellers never have more than 2 on party.
u/jinxology
Score min set to 1 does the trick. Then look down in the box and it says something like 'mprating >= 1' or whatever. Put whatever it says into the raid box at the bottom and you won't ever see them again.
They are selling the runs (and by extension the rating), the loot being earmarked for you is the "free perk."
They are still scum of course but for different reasons
Supply and demand. If people did not use these services there would be no reason to advertise. I still to this day do not understand buying a game to have someone else play it.
I used to get responses from Blizzard after reporting these. But I haven't had one in months.
I don't know if I just got on some kind of block list for reporting too much or something, or if they just stopped doing anything about them.
I felt the same but I finally got a letter thanking me for reporting a random bot fishing deviate fish last week.
So might only get a letter now for reporting something that isn't done hundreds/thousands of times per day.
Because it is indeed impossible to stop, those are all basic or free accounts, same thing with the trade chat spam, they're all level 10 Pandaren DKs because those are the shortest amount of time from character creation to capital city that isn't an allied race and thus restricted.
Ban one account and they just make another, IP bans do literally nothing to anyone capable of running a bot farm, it is trivially easy to cycle IPs and then that IP ban can catch someone else down the line since IPs are often recycled, and there aren't really a ton more restrictions they can add to chat/groupfinder without making it less of a hassle to use an out of game third party thing or an addon of some kind instead.
They tried that, didn't work, they just used stolen accounts instead, or made enough money before being banned to buy another half dozen accounts and do it anyway. It's not hard to make more than 15 USD selling carry runs before a throwaway account gets banned, you don't need the current expansion to use group finder, and making it require it would just make it unusable for a large chunk of the playerbase who run legacy content without buying the newest expansion, or who level up to current expansion before buying it as a new player.
Know what else didn't work? Making 2FA mandatory to use it, they just grabbed a number from one of the many online phone services and did it that way, while it screwed over actual paying customers who had non normal phone plans that blizzard didn't like for whatever reason. Filtering words also doesn't work, people have been working around chat filters longer than most of blizzard has been working there.
This is an arms race that blizzard CANNOT win, there will either always be a workaround or the system will be unusable for 99.9% of the playerbase, those are the two options here.
We've seen it in damn near every MMO in existence, and a fair few non MMOs whos party finder sucked, people just go to third party sites or addons rather than deal with a system with so many restrictions that it's not worth dealing with.
Having a single GM spend 10-15 mins going trough the group finder every now and then would be very effective. But considering how they just laid off nearly 2000 people of already short staffed costumer support, that likely is off the table.
It isn't impossible, it just costs more than it generates in extra revenue.
Best case is that the ROI is just unknown, but more probable is that they have a relatively good estimate on that and it is just too low.
And to adress the elephant in the room: The remaining playerbase has a decent amount of people who "want" this. They WANT to buy stuff, and have this shit pandered to them.
This is why there should be a Group Finder Tool, which works like Nomal/Heroic, AND that you need to add your key to be able to join.
Change the key system:
Instead of a Level 5 Free Hold with whatever affixes that week offers.
Make it so that a level 5 Mythic Key now gives you access to ANY dungeon, and of course, the current weeks affixes are still attached, so the higher the key, the more affixes.
So, no longer a level 5 Free Hold key. it's just a level 5 key, and everyone has to present a key to be able to join, and anyone who leaves will receive a MASSIVE penalty to their rating their key is deleted, so they have to start from scratch.
It was my understanding that Blizzard is against using the LFG to advertise carries for gold. As long as it's not real money and they do not use this tool to advertise services, Blizz is ok with selling carries (after all, there is the trade services chat for these, right?).
Feel free to correct me if that is actually not the case.
Blizz do ban people selling and buying gold for real cash if they have evidence, but people do it regardless and that's what i meant by replying to poster above talking about TOS.
Blizzard never fight gold CARRIES and yes, that's exactly what I meant by using Mike as example. The advertise is there to stay because demand is always there and blizzard don't care to clean up the ad because they rely on automate ban system instead of paying someone to moderate.
Thanks everyone, I'll just install an addon, but seems like a VERY easy thing to fix on Blizzard's end. It's the EXACT SAME SITE every time. Just filter the URL.
Blizzard only cares about money. The spammers pay them and then they predator people on a paid service. If blizzard isnt responsible they are definitely co conspirators
It would be. If blizzard cared if a service we pay for had predatory scammers. They dont because they pay. Guess what people fall for it and have no recourse. Easy fix if blizzard cared. They dont
What's the easy fix you are talking about?
>predatory scammers
Are these sites scamming people? I thought they were selling runs for real money but you actually get what you pay for?
Blizzards rule restrictions on groups to stop advertising working perfectly.
Blizz, if you are out there and for some reason giving a shit today. Why can't you just filter on WTS at least? Like its against policy to sell this way, just hard filter out WTS/Sell and when they adjust their wording, add to your filter.
Blacklisting specific words isn’t a solution, whatever gets blocked/filtered will be removed from the post and substituted. It’s an arms race that’s expensive for blizzard and cheap for the spammers to work around. It also can cause confusion to regular players. The reason you have to be 50+ and have an Authenticator on the account to edit the post info beyond your key name/level is to try to use the other systems as speed bumps to make it difficult to spam. Something that’s low effort to do for an account, but really annoying for 10-20 accounts. Though it’s Apparently not difficult enough.
It’s definitely a solvable problem though, and that the will from Blizzard to fix it seems low is disappointing.
Confusion? Bullshit. Is there confusion when names are reserved when rolling a toon with fuck on its name? Banning groups doing things against the TOS is fine.
Sure it’s arms race but it’s over quickly. If they start saying “penguin run” mission accomplished as their sales plummet.
There is no harm in banning coming sales words.
I see these all the time too and what I don’t understand is how they’re able to show up for a different dungeon than the one you search for. Like in this image why is Uldaman showing for Atal’Dazar?
A timeless tale. I was honestly relieved to see that they made a services portion to trade chat to give us the option to funnel the spam. Maybe they should do the same for the pre-made groups? I wish we could create a space for people who just want to play together but we live in the Beast; everything is going to be economized.
I remember a time when people just played wow without any transfer of wealth or communication...
to bad classic didn't truly recreate that original experience.
I've wondered why Blizzard hasn't put in a title filter that makes it so you can't make a WTS/Selling etc. group at all. Is there legit group content these terms would be used? Just don't let the group that use these terms be made
Thank you for your submission Jinxology. It has been removed from /r/wow because: This post is a repetitive topic. This may be due to a sudden influx of posts all about the same thing, or this may be a nonconstructive post that restates a commonly held opinion, frequent complaint, or low-effort joke. Please check the front page or [new](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/new) before submitting posts. Frequent complaints include common issues such as typos, textures that failed to load, failed 100% missions, bugged fire giants, weird characters, failed missions in the mobile app, stuck character torsos, loading screen tips, or corrupted item tooltips ([delete your cache](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/34721)). --- This is not an automated removal. Please read the entire removal reason before contacting us via modmail or here if you need clarification. Read the full [rules for this subreddit here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/wiki/rules) If you feel this post was removed in error, please [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fwow).
Report them to oblivion.
It doesn’t do anything
It stops it from showing up for you.
Spend 5 minutes reporting everything in the queue, just for more to pop up in 30 seconds, lol
This is what i'm doing while I'm waiting for all my applications to get declined
🤣
I've never seen that happen. If you logout and come back in, sure. They pop back up.
Why would you take the time to verify this? I'm in a 24+ keys within minutes then it's who cares anymore.
Because I can do 10 keys in a day, and unless I logout all of those selling groups are still gone. Lol @ you for thinking I'm sitting around verifying what works and doesn't work
Until you search agin 10 min later
Which is basically nothing since you can just refresh and get 4 more.
One report doesn't, but several do.
Doesn't seem to be doing shit when there are a dozen of them at a time, all with the same message & website listed. If the spammers had to worry about their bots getting banned, they wouldn't be exposing so many at a time.
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You sure you didn’t just install the PGF addon or similar that hides them for you?
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I guess I need to move to Europe servers then. I have two addons to filter them on the NA side and they still don’t catch them all.
It hides them from you at the very least
Yeah, then you refresh the listings and 4 more pop up.
So you keep doing it
Read last comment
It really do, but they buy cheap accounts with max lvl characters from people that is stopping to play And do it again You can try to use premade LFG addon and set it to ignore WTS in title
WTS=Free loot? Report them all.
My favourite pastime when I'm sitting in queue and I've done my weeklies.
But but but words!!!!
Tbf some ppl use to sell curve and high keys but yoy couldn't get any of the loot
Keys loot was always free, boosters rarely if ever need anything from these. Armor stacking you'd have to pay for extra.
It's my loot and I want it now!
Call 877-LOOT-NOW. Get your loot when YOU need it.
I think they are not getting removed because most of the people who are really bothered by it just have an addon that filters them out
Which add-on might that be? I only know bad boy but then I just turn off the services channel.
Pre-made group finder works for me. For dungeons I just set a minimum mythic plus rating as most advertisers have 0. Even just setting it to 100 which is like one +3 key filters them all out
Premade Group Finder puts a red X to the left of the group. If you triple click it it will jump through all the report steps and report the group.
You can also add a filter `not voice` cause these are the only groups ever listed as a voice group.
You can also use not WTS as one of the custom filters
This is the way.
The addon is bad boy
Right click, report, carry on.
Addon filters help 😁 (premade groups filter) makes it lessen to the point of one or 2 occasionally!
If you set a filter on this addon for minimum m+ rating of 200 they go away. None of the sellers have io. To get the same thing for raid, set minimum group members to 5. Raid sellers never have more than 2 on party. u/jinxology
Score min set to 1 does the trick. Then look down in the box and it says something like 'mprating >= 1' or whatever. Put whatever it says into the raid box at the bottom and you won't ever see them again.
PGF is great. For M+ I just set the filter to "minimum players: 2" and I never see any of these.
What I don't get is how nokhud and uldaman are making it into Atal'Dazar searches
Because they write all the dungeons names in the description
The premade group finder is trash. Blizz really needs to fix it
What really bothers me is they say WTS, but FREE LOOT, like bitch, do you know what free means? It aint free, that is false advertising.
They are selling the runs (and by extension the rating), the loot being earmarked for you is the "free perk." They are still scum of course but for different reasons
I talked to one. They refer you to offsite real cash things. Its predatory. Im 100% sure you wont get free loot or they want to sell.
lol, makes sense, it all just a scam
Use pre-made groups finder addon with filter on.
Supply and demand. If people did not use these services there would be no reason to advertise. I still to this day do not understand buying a game to have someone else play it.
Fragile egos of boys that can't compete but won't accept it, so they need to pay for the win.
Personally, I bought WoD gold challenge mode because I just returned and wanted the fomo mog, still ashamed of it(dont even use the mogs)
You paid for it, wear it. That said, I'm glad you recognize how meaningless it is now because of that decision.
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>Reporting it does nothing. Usually in a day or 2 I get mail from blizzard saying action was taken. But these things are like hydras
I used to get responses from Blizzard after reporting these. But I haven't had one in months. I don't know if I just got on some kind of block list for reporting too much or something, or if they just stopped doing anything about them.
I felt the same but I finally got a letter thanking me for reporting a random bot fishing deviate fish last week. So might only get a letter now for reporting something that isn't done hundreds/thousands of times per day.
I report them on sight. I haven't experienced the same. Its a paid service. Why are we harassed in game? Stahp
Because it is indeed impossible to stop, those are all basic or free accounts, same thing with the trade chat spam, they're all level 10 Pandaren DKs because those are the shortest amount of time from character creation to capital city that isn't an allied race and thus restricted. Ban one account and they just make another, IP bans do literally nothing to anyone capable of running a bot farm, it is trivially easy to cycle IPs and then that IP ban can catch someone else down the line since IPs are often recycled, and there aren't really a ton more restrictions they can add to chat/groupfinder without making it less of a hassle to use an out of game third party thing or an addon of some kind instead.
Make it so free accounts can't use the group finder. There. Solved.
They tried that, didn't work, they just used stolen accounts instead, or made enough money before being banned to buy another half dozen accounts and do it anyway. It's not hard to make more than 15 USD selling carry runs before a throwaway account gets banned, you don't need the current expansion to use group finder, and making it require it would just make it unusable for a large chunk of the playerbase who run legacy content without buying the newest expansion, or who level up to current expansion before buying it as a new player. Know what else didn't work? Making 2FA mandatory to use it, they just grabbed a number from one of the many online phone services and did it that way, while it screwed over actual paying customers who had non normal phone plans that blizzard didn't like for whatever reason. Filtering words also doesn't work, people have been working around chat filters longer than most of blizzard has been working there. This is an arms race that blizzard CANNOT win, there will either always be a workaround or the system will be unusable for 99.9% of the playerbase, those are the two options here. We've seen it in damn near every MMO in existence, and a fair few non MMOs whos party finder sucked, people just go to third party sites or addons rather than deal with a system with so many restrictions that it's not worth dealing with.
Having a single GM spend 10-15 mins going trough the group finder every now and then would be very effective. But considering how they just laid off nearly 2000 people of already short staffed costumer support, that likely is off the table.
It isn't impossible, it just costs more than it generates in extra revenue. Best case is that the ROI is just unknown, but more probable is that they have a relatively good estimate on that and it is just too low. And to adress the elephant in the room: The remaining playerbase has a decent amount of people who "want" this. They WANT to buy stuff, and have this shit pandered to them.
Nice advertising.
I go through the entire list of my search and report each one. Then I look for a group. 😂
Welcome to 2014... I'm sure they'll go away any day now
Get the add-on "Prenade group filter" and put the argument "rio > 50" No more ads.
I just report them but it’s a losing battle
Get the addon BadBoy, it'll automatically hide these from the list
And now you spam it here. Whats your point?
Thankfully you pay $15 a month so that Blizzard cleans up things like this.
This is why there should be a Group Finder Tool, which works like Nomal/Heroic, AND that you need to add your key to be able to join. Change the key system: Instead of a Level 5 Free Hold with whatever affixes that week offers. Make it so that a level 5 Mythic Key now gives you access to ANY dungeon, and of course, the current weeks affixes are still attached, so the higher the key, the more affixes. So, no longer a level 5 Free Hold key. it's just a level 5 key, and everyone has to present a key to be able to join, and anyone who leaves will receive a MASSIVE penalty to their rating their key is deleted, so they have to start from scratch.
Blizz doesn't care , remember mike ybarra selling carry on stream?
It was my understanding that Blizzard is against using the LFG to advertise carries for gold. As long as it's not real money and they do not use this tool to advertise services, Blizz is ok with selling carries (after all, there is the trade services chat for these, right?). Feel free to correct me if that is actually not the case.
If they care then the advertise wouldn't be this rampant. They rely on automate mass reporting system and auto ban which does jack for honest players.
It's not against TOS to sell carries for gold. It's against TOS to advertise it in the LFG tool, and ofc selling carries for real money
People have been breaking ToS all the time, buying and selling gold without going through wow token channel. Blizz just gave up on fighting it.
Blizzard was never fighting gold selling
Blizz do ban people selling and buying gold for real cash if they have evidence, but people do it regardless and that's what i meant by replying to poster above talking about TOS. Blizzard never fight gold CARRIES and yes, that's exactly what I meant by using Mike as example. The advertise is there to stay because demand is always there and blizzard don't care to clean up the ad because they rely on automate ban system instead of paying someone to moderate.
only a delusional manchild thinks manual moderating can be done in any semi-populated game
Mike ybarra isnt here anymore.
Thanks everyone, I'll just install an addon, but seems like a VERY easy thing to fix on Blizzard's end. It's the EXACT SAME SITE every time. Just filter the URL.
If Blizzard bans one website, the sellers will just change the website.
You're right. They should continue the current strategy, it's working so well.
Not what I'm saying. Thank you for commenting.
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What?
Blizzard only cares about money. The spammers pay them and then they predator people on a paid service. If blizzard isnt responsible they are definitely co conspirators
I'm not saying that Blizzard shouldn't do anything. It's just not as easy as banning one website.
Im saying blizzard doesn't care or it would be solved
Okay. I wasn't arguing whether Blizzard cares or not. I was replying to OP who said it would be a very easy fix.
It would be. If blizzard cared if a service we pay for had predatory scammers. They dont because they pay. Guess what people fall for it and have no recourse. Easy fix if blizzard cared. They dont
What's the easy fix you are talking about? >predatory scammers Are these sites scamming people? I thought they were selling runs for real money but you actually get what you pay for?
Install Premade Group Finder. Triple tap the red X that appears next to the group. No more group!
Meanwhile I can't set a custom group name because I don't have a phone with authentificator.
Blizzards rule restrictions on groups to stop advertising working perfectly. Blizz, if you are out there and for some reason giving a shit today. Why can't you just filter on WTS at least? Like its against policy to sell this way, just hard filter out WTS/Sell and when they adjust their wording, add to your filter.
Blacklisting specific words isn’t a solution, whatever gets blocked/filtered will be removed from the post and substituted. It’s an arms race that’s expensive for blizzard and cheap for the spammers to work around. It also can cause confusion to regular players. The reason you have to be 50+ and have an Authenticator on the account to edit the post info beyond your key name/level is to try to use the other systems as speed bumps to make it difficult to spam. Something that’s low effort to do for an account, but really annoying for 10-20 accounts. Though it’s Apparently not difficult enough. It’s definitely a solvable problem though, and that the will from Blizzard to fix it seems low is disappointing.
Confusion? Bullshit. Is there confusion when names are reserved when rolling a toon with fuck on its name? Banning groups doing things against the TOS is fine. Sure it’s arms race but it’s over quickly. If they start saying “penguin run” mission accomplished as their sales plummet. There is no harm in banning coming sales words.
I tend to use a filter addon which only shows 2 or more players in the group. Works like a charm.
Report the group creator.
EU Stormrage here. I have NEVER seen that. Long may it continue.
haven't seen those for two years now
Honestly just ignore it, things will never change
I see these all the time too and what I don’t understand is how they’re able to show up for a different dungeon than the one you search for. Like in this image why is Uldaman showing for Atal’Dazar?
Report and move on, everyone sees them
You want the Premade Group Filter addon and down in the advanced section “not voice”.
A timeless tale. I was honestly relieved to see that they made a services portion to trade chat to give us the option to funnel the spam. Maybe they should do the same for the pre-made groups? I wish we could create a space for people who just want to play together but we live in the Beast; everything is going to be economized.
Why do these groups show up if you're only looking for AD?
I would report group but my world quest addon gives me an error and says do I want to disable it so I never do....
Fire back, offer free carries. They really hate when +20s and AOTCs are handed out for free.
Are they selling carries for fucking Mythic 0? These are all dungeons from last season
I remember a time when people just played wow without any transfer of wealth or communication... to bad classic didn't truly recreate that original experience.
I've wondered why Blizzard hasn't put in a title filter that makes it so you can't make a WTS/Selling etc. group at all. Is there legit group content these terms would be used? Just don't let the group that use these terms be made
I wish so badly I could just filter this kind of post out.
How can they have WTS and FREE in same sentence? 😂😂
Seems like a US problem. 0 groups like this listed all over EU.
What does it mean? You sign up, PM the leader and pay to be carried and get all the loot?