After Blizzard finally launched the Time Badge system on World of Warcraft's European and American servers, a large-scale boycott broke out in the outfit community, which intensified, forcing Blizzard to come forward and publish a long blog post to defend himself.
Screenshot of part of the blog post:
The Time Badge binds gold coins to the monthly card (real money), players can exchange gold coins for time, or use money to buy gold coins, this system was once a "special supply" for Warcraft National Uniform, and was later introduced by Asian Service Nostalgia.
The fiercest player opposition, and currently the hottest, is ZeldenGM, who has been a moderator for Reddit Warcraft for a long time. He strongly criticized the Time Badge system, calling it an official greedy RMT (real money transaction) behavior, and he wanted to clean up the environment, changed the forum rules, said that Warcraft official suits are dead, and will completely open discussions about private servers, after which he resigned from his position as moderator.
RMT is a taboo for European and American players, and there are active fundamentalists who have no worries about food and clothing, and many people side with ZeldenGM. This also led Blizzard to publish an extra-long blue post defense on May 26, and the following is a summary of the content:
First of all, Blizzard once again emphasized its anti-RMT stance against the inclusion of any form of tokens in nostalgic clothing, especially American and European suits that serve as reservations. But gold does play an important role in World of Warcraft, and they can't reduce player demand in this regard. The entire Warcraft underground industry revolves around buying and selling gold coins, with scripted bots fueling the waves, as well as number theft, credit card fraud, in-game fraud, etc., and some illegal third-party applications have also become tools to promote RMT trade.
Blizzard said it heard complaints from players, but players didn't see official efforts. Bots are endless, and officials ban tens of thousands of scripts every week. Blizzard also listed the last two weeks' ban data, including 248,105 Battle.net and 73,057 Warcraft accounts.
Blizzard called RMT Studios' fight a never-ending arms race, "an unwinnable war" because these people won't leave as long as there's a profit, as it has been in the gaming industry for 25 years.
Blizzard says that the Time Badge is one of many options for fighting illegal RMTs and fighting studios, and they believe that most players don't need to spend money, so the system won't affect regular players.
Blizzard admits that the time system is still imperfect, and the bad guys are good at exploiting loopholes, and they come in a different way each time.
Finally, in the editor's opinion, Blizzard finally failed to understand the real anger of American players, that is, they thought that Blizzard came out of the Time Badge to make money!