In a downright intriguing turn of events, it looks like real money trading (RMT) gold sellers—whose peddling of gold for actual cash is against World of Warcraft’s terms of service—have taken to the streets of WoW Classic Anniversary to advertise casino games as a way of raking in cash (thanks, WoWHead).
They are spending money to boost level 58 casino bots now 🤣🤣🤣 from r/classicwow
These bots, boosted to level 58 (presumably because doing so via the store gives you 25 gold to play around with—and to protect themselves from ganks, more on that later) have been standing on street corners in major cities and trying to lure players in with the promise of gambling. Which—and I write this with pride—has led to players devising new and inventive ways to kill them.
Take this example posted by Reddit user Purple_Resident2930, which suggests players travel to the Netherstorm, pick up a debuff that spawns a monster on expiration, Hearthstone back to the city and run at the casino bot in question. This is a little like voluntarily letting an Alien-style chest burster sit in your ribcage so you can sic it on a spam caller
This doesn’t work as well if they buy the aforementioned boosts, mind, but there are other ways of gambling-based murder—for example, kiting a level 60 elite over from Ashenvale to squish them.
Anyway—anti-casino arms races notwithstanding, Blizzard has marked, recognised, and promised to do something about these yapping slot machines. Tom Ellis, a senior game producer on World of Warcraft, writes via his personal X account:
“The casino thing that’s vogue right now. Just to confirm we’re aware, it’s still against policy to advertise a casino, so keep reporting them (or dropping infernals on them). Digging in, it looks like the RMT crowd (that’s gold sellers) have realized this is an easy way to make gold quickly and cheaply, which has driven an uptick in the behavior.
“You caught Watcher’s attention so we have a few folks looking into ideas on how we can make getting these people out of the game much faster so the activity is less lucrative and in turn, they will hopefully piss off.”
It’s a fascinating little development, all told—though it makes a certain kind of sense. Casinos in real life operate by tipping the odds in their favour, and drawing people in with the allure of being one of the rare lucky winners that makes it big (this is where the saying “the house always wins” comes from).
In other words, it’s absolutely a smart, albeit ToS-violating, strategy to encourage people to gamble with a game of chance because, writ large, it will make you more money than it loses you. Unless, of course, you get repeatedly murdered any time you try.
“Don’t expect any sort of big fanfare ‘Mission Accomplished!’ banner for this one,” Ellis adds, “This is one of the ones that you hopefully don’t even notice stopped happening if we get it right.”
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