Blizzard Is Cracking Down On WoW Boosting Communities

Citing an “increasing disturbance to the gameplay experience,” Blizzard has updated World of Warcraft’s end-user license agreement to prohibit organizations who advertise and offer in-game boosting and other services.

Accounts found to be involved in organized boosting organizations, especially those operating across multiple servers, can now be suspended or permanently banned.

“We urge all such organizations to cease doing business in World of Warcraft immediately, in order to maintain uninterrupted access to the game,” WoW community manager Kaivax writes in an official post on the game’s forums.

While organized “boosting communities” are now bannable, the post makes clear that individuals or even in-game guilds can still use the game’s trade chat channel to buy or sell in-game services for gold.

Boosting has been a hot topic in the WoW community for a while now, with many players discussing whether or not the game is essentially “pay-to-win” since players can simply buy gold by purchasing and selling WoW tokens straight from Blizzard. That gold can then be used to purchase boosts from individuals or professional boosting services, which can include carries through endgame content like raids or higher difficulty Mythic+ dungeons.

It’s just the latest update to Blizzard’s MMO made to combat in-game advertisements for various services both in-game and out. In the game’s most recent patch 9.1.5, Blizzard made it so only accounts with a linked Blizzard authenticator could make custom listings in the game’s Group Finder tool, with the hope being that the new restriction would cut down on in-game advertisements.

Square Enix recently issued a similar change to Final Fantasy XIV’s terms of service, prohibiting players from selling in-game services like duty clears in addition to cracking down on accounts offering in-game goods or services in exchange for real money.