In-Game Advertising Policy

As part of our ongoing efforts to crack down on in-game advertising, we’ll be implementing some policy changes with how we handle moderation for advertisements made through the in-game Group Finder, and wanted to give you a heads up before these policies are put into place.

Beginning Monday, July 2nd, we will no longer allow any advertisements in the Group Finder for in-game services such as carries or boosts, including those being offered in exchange for in-game gold. The Group Finder is intended for -- as the name suggests -- finding groups, and these advertisements make it difficult to find active groups that are currently being formed. Additionally, these are often used as a cover for real-money sales, particularly given that in-game gold cannot be transferred cross-realm.

Note that this does not change our policy on selling things such as raid carries for in-game gold. Those are still allowed, but should be advertised through realm-specific methods such as trade chat.

We’ll be adding an “advertisement” option to the Group Finder’s right-click reporting function with Patch 8.0, but in the meantime, they can be reported using the “spam” option. Thank you for your understanding, and for helping us keep the Group Finder clear of unwanted advertisements.

Just wanted to add an additional note here on this thread about how this affects forum posts.

Advertisements for carries are to only be placed in your realm forum (standard spam rules apply for bumping the thread). Any posts outside of that or on realms that are not your own will be treated under the advertisement rules and subject to deletion.

For reiteration this means you have two places to place advertisements for carries for in game gold only, those are Trade Chat and your realm forum. Please keep in mind carries are still not supported by Customer Support, if something goes wrong CS will be unable to recover any losses. Note: They still may investigate and take action on verified scams.

07/10/2018 02:07 PMPosted by Norpsela

Seems rather petty and I expected more from blizzard support. Every experience I have had with them has been extremely helpful and courteous and now you are telling me I'm SOL if I was to be scammed.

This isn't a new ruling CS wise. The stance has nearly always been in place for unsupported transactions. I'm just restating it to go with the update to how we handle the forums as well. The idea is that in situations where someone is scamming other players by selling runs, taking the gold, and not providing the carry, we will do what we can to verify reports of a scam and apply appropriate penalties based on what is found, including removing any of the ill gotten gains. We otherwise do not assist in recovering any lost gold/materials though because an unsupported transaction is just that, unsupported. If you decide to engage in a trade that our systems do not support you do so at your own risk.

07/10/2018 02:11 PMPosted by Shinrael

How are we defining "My realm"?

I think it's pretty easily defined as posting from a character that is used on that realm, this includes Connected Realms. I think it would be pretty obvious if you're posting from a level 1. This is something that the moderators can easily check to see if you're just doing it on realms that you don't play. We're not gonna restrict it by level of the poster because it will be very obvious to us on the back end. However, if you make these post on a level 1 character then you should expect to be reported and looked into to see if you actually play on that realm. The same goes for even having a level capped character but nothing else on that realm, so just going around putting leveled/boosted characters on realms doesn't work either.