WoW: The most famous guild in the world is said to be involved in illegal activities

In World of Warcraft there are allegations against Method, probably the most well-known guild in WoW. Though now banned, Method is said to be doing cross-server boosting to earn enough gold to fund their expensive Race to World First attempts. In the current raid, Method came in second – hence the thorny issue.

What kind of guild is this?

• Method was founded in 2005 by Scott “Sco” McMillian. The guild is based in London: In WoW, e-sports consists primarily of raiding the “world first” kills of bosses. The race is extremely strenuous and demands a lot from the participants. In this “Race to World First” (RWF) Method was the leader for years.
• However, the guild experienced a crash in 2020: It came out that allegations of rape had been made against one of its players, but the guild management did not pursue them with the necessary vigour. This caused many to distance themselves from Method and the guild broke up.
• However, it didn’t stay that way for long, before Shadowlands Method regrouped and once again became a successful raid guild.

Method is said to have continued to boost despite the ban

What should Method have done? As reported by a user on reddit (via. reddit), Method should continue to offer so-called “boosting runs” across servers by working with a boosting community.

The user has pursued his suspicions with detective zeal, gathering evidence and screenshots to support his allegations (via google.doc).

In a “boosting run,” a well-rehearsed team takes a “passenger” on a raid and cobbles together rewards that they wouldn’t normally get. “The passenger” pays for this with gold in World of Warcraft – or maybe with real money, rumor has it.

The allegation is that Method continues to work with a well-known booster community, even though Blizzard has specifically banned those communities. Although “boosting” is still allowed in WoW, it can no longer take place across servers, so it must not be operated on a large scale, but more as a hobby.

It is rumored that this “booster community” advanced Method’s massive gold spend on the last “Race to World First” and the guild now has to repay its debt by boosting people.

WoW will soon have a new add-on – it should lead the MMORPG back to old heights:

Blizzard banned that in January 2022

What is the problem? A heated discussion at WoW in recent months has explicitly revolved around such “cross-server boosting communities.” They were ultimately specifically banned by Blizzard in January 2022, also because they flooded the trade channels with their spam.

These communities are under serious suspicion that it is not about gaming, but about tangible commercial interests.

If the allegations against Method are true, then they have violated Blizzard’s ban by collaborating with such a community:

• The annoying thing is that it seems like Blizzard is a “toothless tiger” that makes rules, but doesn’t enforce them.
• On the other hand, it would be the case if the allegations are true that the guild has gained a significant advantage in the “World First” race by doing something that is actually forbidden. That would distort competition. Because Method would earn its gold more efficiently than competitors, who would then have to invest more time because they follow the rules.

Guilds go into debt in races for World First

Why are they doing that? A “World First” race is extremely expensive for a guild because they have to be optimally prepared for every attempt in the raids, they need potions and the perfect items to perhaps optimally equip several twinks. According to reports, Method spent about 480 million gold. That corresponds to €37,000 if you were to buy the gold for real gold.

All of this eats up huge amounts of gold. The “strong guilds” then apparently use such boosting runs to get the money. Ultimately, if they do this using cross-server communities, it would be against Blizzard’s rules, which other guilds adhere to.

What’s the question now? The real question is whether Blizzard really has a problem with these communities or whether Blizzard “only” wanted to stop spam in WoW’s public channels. Because the “boosting communities” just seem to continue to be active, they just moved their advertising from the “Trade Channel in WoW” to the Discord server.

The example of Liquid shows how expensive the race for World First is:

WoW: Pro guild spends the equivalent of €85,000 in gold, loses “World First” race