Isn't trading for bnet cards a bannable offense?

[Noxiish]

I've been looking into it on the WoW forums lately, lots that have been resolved by blue posts explaining. I'll try to track down the links in a moment.

Basically it breaks down to this.

In game money for in game items is okay.
Real money for physical real life items, like TCG, is okay.
But paying real money for items in game is against Blizzard's ToU that you agree to follow when you join.
Even if its in Bnet cards, its still trading real money for pixels.

They may not always go after the people but its still against the rules and technically a bannable offense.
It's like people who buy in game gold from outsides websites, but substitute gold in that sentence for an in game only pet.
Like Hatespark, Darkmoon Rabbits, etc.

Obviously its trade at your own risk but I'm pretty surprised that WarcraftPets has actually allowed it, especially for this long.
Just wanted to point this out.

[Sibi]

We're all (or at least most of us) are aware that if we trade for Bnet Balance it is or may be an actionable offense.
Blizzard also doesn't support leveling other people's pets for gold and if you get cheated out of your pets or the gold for your services rendered you have zero recourse.
These are risks we take.
I'm thinking around about a year agothe mods of these forums sat down and hashed it out about Battle.Net Balance for pets and they chose to allow these trades to continue on the contingency that all trades include some sort of pet or pet related service.


Are there specific instances of people being banned for trading Bnet for in game items? I would think this would end up being a bit of a grey area for Blizzard being as that in the end we can only use the Bnet balance to pay for Blizzard items. It doesn't seem to me that it would be that much different than going to the Blizzard store and buying a mount with my own money or a friend gifting me a mount as I've had happen for birthday gifts, just this way it just so happens someone gave me the money to buy the mount I wanted and I gave them a pet in return.

**Edit: The pet trading guidelines were update this past November so it wasn't a year ago.

[Peanutty]

The last I heard it's considered an "unsupported transaction" - that is, if you get screwed out of a deal involving game time, balance, store items, etc, Blizzard will not do anything to help you. You engaged in that deal at your own risk.

The trade forum here operates under the same rule - trades are done at your own risk and mods don't get involved (and as Sibi noted, trades here must include pets too).

I'm pretty sure that Blizzard is fully aware of what goes on here and if they had any real concern with it they would've either had the site admins shut it down or gone through and blanket banned all the traders.

[Noxiish]

So basically you're saying that the WarcraftPets admins are fully in support of real money transactions for pixels.
Which for one is illegal, and absolutely not an 'unsupported transaction', since all content exclusively within WoW is owned by Blizzard.
You are physically selling their pixels for money in the 'real world'.

So in that sense, disregarding the collection based aspect of the site, how is this different from gold for money sites? Or any place that sells BoE gear for actual money?
Its the exact same thing, just with pets and a 'legit' site. Other than the fact that its player to player and not anonymous.
You are still getting a purely in game benefit for real life cash.
That's pretty messed up in the long term, even as a collector. Basically means you don't give a crap about the game/rules, as long as you can have some particular pet for a few bucks. Good to know.
I hate a lot of Blizzard's rules and whatever, I'm not a rule junky in any sense. But its is getting ridiculous on here.
It doesn't matter if Blizzard knows or not, seriously. Just says a lot about 'them' as players, mostly.

How many players lately want to trade a Hatespark, etc outright? And how many just want Bnet cards? Straight up.

There is a pretty big difference between unsupported transactions and 'illegal' ones. Unsupported are more the in game transactions when they can't help if you get screwed, like in game help for gold, whatever. Real life money involves possible credit card scams, and so much more. Considering you are selling Blizzard's "property" in that sense, whether you see it that way or not. Plus with the distinction that buying anything in game item for real life money is bannable, doesn't matter the item/use/etc, and isn't considered an 'unsupported transaction' in any sense. Look it up. Pets would fall under that category.

Anyone willing to buy their way into certain battle pets can do so themselves if they can't work towards it, TCG and CE excluded. That's your call.
I don't care if you guys can get what you want under the table. Again, congrats. Says a lot about those players in general.
More just seriously amazed that the admins of this site are letting themselves be the equivalent of any site that sells gold or gear for real life money, just with pets as the tag line.

[Kendrah]

Blizzard also doesn't support leveling other people's pets for gold and if you get cheated out of your pets or the gold for your services rendered you have zero recourse.

Why? This doesn't make any sense. You can buy them on the AH at any level. What's the different, to Bliz, between leveling up someones pets for gold and buying the essences to level up for gear for gold? I'm confused as to the difference.

[Noxiish]

That in itself would be considered an 'unsupported transaction'. Basically you make a deal with another player via chat etc, usually for in game services for in game payment, like in a situation where you'd pay someone to level your pets. If they take your cash / pets in the aftermath, Blizz can't help since it is something you personally agreed to in game. They usually just wouldn't put the effort to help whoever was scammed that way since it was their personal doing and was by choice. Trading in game pets for real life money is an entirely different scenario.

[Sibi]

The Bnet Balance can only be used for Blizzard items so I'm not seeing what the problem is really other than a gripe that some people just outright buy their collections. If they possess the means to do that, then so be it. I see them the same as I see people who pay tons of gold to someone to farm their mats for them. If you have the means to do it, more power to you.

I'm also not finding any specific instance where Blizzard says they're going to ban us for such transactions. Out of 43 instances of Battle.net Balance being specifically referenced in the ToU no such reference is made. I also didn't find it in the 42 specific Battle.net Balance references in the EULA. Google did not return any search results of people claiming to have been banned over these transactions, although that could be user error on my part.

Most, perhaps not all, but most of us do trade outright for pets. I recently outright traded Hatespark for a handful of other pets. I get the irritation of people only seeking Battle.net Balance for their trades but that is their choice. It isn't any different than the person that wants to trade for CEs, store mounts, store transmog. Or for that matter it isn't any different than someone that only wants to trade their hard to get pets for other hard to get pets or gold on certain servers or in game mounts or CM carries ect. ect. People are simply going to trade their items for things they need or want.

Considering Blizzard frequently references this website, I'm positive they know what we're doing here (as Peanutty said). I would like to think if trading for Bnet Balance were a violation they would either spend the time to track down the accounts of the people making these transactions and sanction us accordingly or they would contact the site administration and tell them to make us stop. I'm sure if Blizzard sent out a cease and desist letter to the site admins we would be promptly notified and all threads looking to make such trades would be locked.

All that being said, Blizzard recently made it possible for us to go to their site and pay our Real Life Money to buy a token that can be listed on the In Game Auction House to be sold for In Game Currency, that would make it seem like they really don't care we're trading pets for Bnet Balance, again, specifically considering that said balance can ONLY be used on Blizzard items.

As for paying someone to level your pets being an "unsupported transaction". I forget what the GM said exactly, but there was an instance a few months back where several people lost pets to a particular person who had offered to level the pets for them. When the players contacted Blizzard GMs about the issue it boiled down to "sorry about your luck".

[Breanni]

Another user brought similar concerns up last fall, which prompted us to fully review all sides of the issue. I even posed a question specifically about B.net currency to one of my contacts at Blizzard -- twice. Unfortunately, I did not receive a reply to clarify the issue. This left us to determine our own official stance -- one that we felt would work best for all involved.

Shortly thereafter, we updated our trading policy as follows:

Trading for real-world money (such as PayPal) is strictly prohibited. Only digital transactions are permitted. This may include any of the following:
- Gold
- Pets redeemed in-game
- Pet-related services (such as pet leveling)*
- In-game items
- Blizzard Store pets*
- B.net currency*
- Digital Deluxes/CEs*
- RAF transactions*

*CAUTION: Trading Blizzard Store Pets, Digital Deluxes/CEs, RAF transactions, pet-related services and B.net balance cards are conducted solely at your own risk. If scams do happen as a result of such trades, Blizzard will NOT assist in the recovery of gold and/or lost or stolen items.

We also clarified that all trades must involve pets, to eliminate any traders who would use our forums solely as a B.net currency trading venue.

------

We clearly note that transactions involving the (*) items are entirely at the risk of the trader. As Sibi noted, the difference between trading real life money for pets (something that we outright condone) versus the items noted above is that those items all involve pre-transactions that put money in the pocket of Blizzard. That, in turn, supports our favorite game developer. That's the difference.

We've monitored trades on our forums since this policy change. It appears to be working for the vast majority of our users, allowing many of them to obtain pets that they'd otherwise have a very hard time obtaining. And that, at its heart, is the entire purpose of our trading forms.

Should Blizzard ever contact us and ask that we revise our policy, we would absolutely comply. From our standpoint, this is still a gray area -- and one that isn't harming anyone involved, including Blizzard.

Until we hear otherwise from Blizzard, that's our stance on the matter. I consider the discussion settled.