A version of WoW adapts its measures against boosting and real-money trading, launching the new direction with a comprehensive ban wave.
Which corporation and which WoW version is it about? The publisher NetEase is known to manage the Chinese version of World of Warcraft, which has been available again since August 2024. Here in the West, the large corporation from China does not enjoy a very good reputation:
- NetEase primarily focuses on heavily monetized free-to-play games (often for mobile devices).
- A particularly well-known example is Diablo Immortal, which NetEase developed in collaboration with Blizzard, representing a “best-of” almost all established monetization methods, including clear pay-to-win elements.
- Also, the new NetEase game for the originally popular Destiny franchise, Destiny: Rising, will be a mobile game with gacha mechanics.
- In November 2024, there was a scandal when 9 employees of the corporation, including executives, were arrested. The allegation: Money laundering and corruption.
- Although Marvel Rivals had a surprisingly strong release, shortly after the launch, there were layoffs (initiated by NetEase) to optimize development efficiency.
What measures has NetEase announced for WoW? In a comprehensive post on wow.blizzard.cn, the publisher has now announced a tightening of measures against violations of World of Warcraft’s terms of service regarding account sharing or boosting (which means being carried through content by other players).
The measures can be summarized as follows: increasingly harsher penalties for violations (for the entire account and all associated characters), revocation of all earned content, tracking across server boundaries (if someone tries to evade the punishment through a server transfer).
To underline the new measures, there was also a ban wave affecting 27,000 players from WoW.
“Boosting should not exist, period.”
How is the western community reacting to this? Many players celebrate the measures and wish for a comparable approach from Blizzard.
- Doodlefinger_it wonders on Reddit: “A rare victory for NetEase, who would have thought…”
- james_church wonders on Reddit: “I wonder if they will do something comparable in North America/Europe. Boosting is almost enabled by Blizzard at this point through the WoW Token and the service channel.”
- Thaeldis praises the measures on Reddit: “Good, boosting should not exist, period. You have no time to play and make progress? Then play something else or set lower goals.”
- DeliciousSquats also hopes on Reddit: “Boosting is such a crappy part of the game. I hope the western servers will follow suit.”
How likely is it that Blizzard will follow suit in the West? Since NetEase and Blizzard operate completely independently, the tightening of measures in China does not mean anything tangible for the western versions of WoW at this point.
On the contrary, Blizzard has tolerated boosting for many years as long as there are no indications of real-money trading in the game itself and the rules regarding in-game advertising are adhered to (via eu.support.blizzard.com). Real-money trading usually takes place outsourced through platforms like Discord channels.
What do you think of NetEase’s recent measures and Blizzard’s policy regarding boosting? We have already known that the Chinese operators of WoW have a completely different approach in the fight against cheaters since March 2025 when this news circulated: WoW punishes 12,000 cheaters and publicly names them
