5400 Banned from World of Warcraft, 10,700 Suspended

[bapenguin]

From the WoW forums (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=7874451&p=1&tmp=1#post7874451):

In keeping with Blizzard’s aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we have since patch 1.10 banned over 5400 accounts and suspended 10700 more for participating in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.
I wonder if they used the homo-erotic banhammer for this?

[Skjef]

I wonder if they used the homo-erotic banhammer for this?Is there any other kind?

[joruussuun]

Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

[absolut taco]

What was their crime? Did they not pay for the horse armor? Oh wait, wrong game...

[gzsfrk]

What strikes me is that they are supposedly only banning those who use tools to farm for in-game gold, rather than those that are SELLING the gold (or even buying), which is a blatant violation of the game TOS.

I mean, it would be the easiest thing in the world to query their global database for all users who have received greater than 500g from a non-alt player, and then compile both those who are receiving the gold and those who are sending it a big watch list, and then analyze from there which ones appear to be working commercially.

The fact is, Blizz only does a token gesture like banning these accounts every so often to avoid being accused of overt tolerance of cheating in their game. All they really care about is keeping as many people paying $14.95/mo. as possible; they don't give a crap about in-game economics, except to the extent that they don't want items to become so cheap that it allows players to trivialize and more quickly burn through their content.

I lost all respect for Blizz's efforts in WoW a long time ago. (Nevermind me losing respect for them Re: The Starcraft: Ghost fiasco.)

[GrinR]

I have a "friend" who buys gold constantly. Literally hundreds of dollars worth of gold over the past year. I'd say he's probably had about 3,000-5000 gold mailed to various alts. I wondered why Blizzard never noticed these HUGE influxes of cash. Then I thought about it from an admin perspective. To start cracking down on that would force gold buyers/sellers to simply send smaller increments over time. That would increase the amount of transactions through the already crap mail system and barely scratch the problem. Not a good solution.

Personally, I hope this "problem" (lol) never goes away.

[jacktion]

Blizzard policing is a joke. They make money off gold-farmers just like they make money off you and me. Blizzard knows that each person they ban is money lost. They are only going to do the minimum amount necessary to look like they are doing something. When you look at the numbers you will see what I mean. Wow has millions of people in the game and only 10000 of them are criminals? Either people playing Wow are the most honest decent people ever or Blizzard sucks at policing. You decide.

[ddbrown30]

I mean, it would be the easiest thing in the world to query their global database for all users who have received greater than 500g from a non-alt player, and then compile both those who are receiving the gold and those who are sending it a big watch list, and then analyze from there which ones appear to be working commercially.

Yeah, complicated database queries and tracking are like a press of a button. Especially considering the 6 million active accounts over however many servers. There are probably 100 million transactions every day.

I'll tell you what, since you seem to be a whiz at this, give Blizzard a call and offer them your services. I'm sure they'd be glad to have someone who can solve their problems so quickly. I'd stop posting on forums, though. You wouldn't want your secret to get out.

[DirtyChimp]

Those poor chinese gold farmers....

[Wyrm]

Every MMOs economy is ruined less than a year after release because of the gold selling. No one is willing to do anything about them.

[Wyrm]

Plus, what do you care if someone else buys 1000 gold so that they can buy 3 epic items? So it makes their e-penis bigger. So what? Some people work for a living, and dont have time to spend 10 hours a day in an instance farming 1 stupid piece of gear. If someone wants to spend some hard earned cash and get some gear that way, I dont really have a problem with that.

[joruussuun]

The only way to get rid of the gold farmers is for Blizzard to sell gold themselves, for cheaper, and HEY! LOOK! it could make them MORE money...

[emyln]

At least WOW has most of the highly sought after items Bound on Pickup. That limits the usefulness of gold some what.

Even though I don't buy gold I don't think its a good idea to ban accounts because people do. Think about it from a business perspecive, Blizzard's aim is to sell as many game subscriptions as possible. To do this they need an active economy which means money. Long time players like myself can't be bothered to constantly farm gold ALL the time. But by allowing the gold farmers a certain period ... say 3-6 months to get lvl 60 characters and farm tons of gold then closing the accounts it requires the farmers to purchase several hundred/thousand more copies of WOW. Not to mention keeping the AH active as these farmers farm resources while leveling again.

This keeps people who buy gold happy, Blizzard is happy cos they sell more subscriptions and keep most of the user-base happy, Farmers are making money and so will continue to do this, game economy is constantly moving because of the farmers.

Who suffers? Long time players who don't buy gold. >.< 800g for a Libram of Focus is DUMB!!! But I'm probably a minority right?

[Whodaknown]

Where is this ruined economy that everyone keeps talking about? Can I please get some real examples of how the game is totally altered because of these farmers? From my perspective, I don't see that it has a major effect on anything. And before you start in on the Econ 101 lecture..I've taken the class. I'm interested in how it has directly affected WoW.

[net7runner]

My new server (Balnazzar) has one of the largets gold-buying populations yet. When you see stacks of 20 copper bars going for ~3 gold, you know something's wrong. Although, it *is* nice to have over 100 gold at level 30...silly gold buyers.

[gzsfrk]

Yeah, complicated database queries and tracking are like a press of a button. Especially considering the 6 million active accounts over however many servers. There are probably 100 million transactions every day.

I'll tell you what, since you seem to be a whiz at this, give Blizzard a call and offer them your services. I'm sure they'd be glad to have someone who can solve their problems so quickly. I'd stop posting on forums, though. You wouldn't want your secret to get out.

SQL much?

Seriously... querying databases is NOT a complicated process. It's part of what I do for a living. And just so I can say I did my part in educating the ignorant masses today, here's a brief lesson:

1. The size of the database only affects the amount of time it takes to parse a request, not how complicated or difficult it is to craft the query.

2. Distributed database queries--you should look up the term; fun and educational reading. Despite my cynicism regarding Blizz's technical abilities after 1 1/2 years of being unable to meet the technical demands of their MMO, I'd be quite shocked if they didn't have this functionality implemented in their system. Besides, it's possible (and I seem to recall reading at some point) that they use some IBM Big Iron to host a centralized database at either the regional or global level. If such is the case, then the need for distributed querying doesn't even exist.

3. Rounhouse kick to the face.

If you don't understand data modeling or queries, that's fine. But try not to be so naive as to assume that just because you're ignorant of something, that means it's automatically complicated beyond comprehension.

[Roc Ingersol]

You kinda know they're going to turn a blind eye to gold sales from the start.

The game is designed around the provably broken faucet/sink economy. It's a stupid idea. The simple fact that they're trying to make faucet/sink work is an admission that they don't really care about out-of-game sales.

[gzsfrk]

This keeps people who buy gold happy, Blizzard is happy cos they sell more subscriptions and keep most of the user-base happy, Farmers are making money and so will continue to do this, game economy is constantly moving because of the farmers.

Who suffers? Long time players who don't buy gold. >.< 800g for a Libram of Focus is DUMB!!! But I'm probably a minority right?

The problem with your statement above saying that most of the user-base is kept happy is that you're assuming that most players are happy with the ability to buy unearned gold in the game. That's possible, but I doubt it. I think most people who play WoW want to play a fair game. Buying gold is cheating, plain and simple. And it does have a detrimental effect on the in-game economy for players who refuse to buy gold in that as the pool of disposable gold grows higher, demand increases, and thus suppliers are able to charge more for goods and services. This boosts prices in individual trades, the auction house, and the prices charged for enchants. This hurts casual players who do not buy gold because, even though the cost of goods and services increases, their avenues for income (questing, farming mobs) do not keep pace with the inflation, thus requiring them to invest more time to accumulate the needed gold for purchasing needed goods and services.

Easy enough?

[gzsfrk]

My new server (Balnazzar) has one of the largets gold-buying populations yet. When you see stacks of 20 copper bars going for ~3 gold, you know something's wrong. Although, it *is* nice to have over 100 gold at level 30...silly gold buyers.

Jeepers... that's insane. When I used to play on Doomhammer up until March 2005, I would mine copper and sell stacks for 45s. That's some crazy inflation right there.

[emyln]

Where is this ruined economy that everyone keeps talking about? Can I please get some real examples of how the game is totally altered because of these farmers? From my perspective, I don't see that it has a major effect on anything. And before you start in on the Econ 101 lecture..I've taken the class. I'm interested in how it has directly affected WoW.
The inflation here is price of highly sought after items. Have you checked the prices of items like Libram of Focus or Dreamfoil or Fire Pots at the AH? What about prices of BoE Epics?

Since people buy gold with money instead of spending time farming the gold themselves it causes gold to be "cheap". On my server Dreamfoils go for 20-30g a stack. Libram of Focus goes for 900g. Seriously there are only 2 ways to afford these prices. (1) Constant Farming (2) Buy gold. I unhappily accept option 3 which is to do without.

[vivafletcher]

Economically speaking, it makes perfect sense. If someone's time is worth more than they money they'll spend (plus the "fun" of doing it themselves), buying gold is a good idea for them. I'm not sure why anyone else cares what they do.

I'll admit that I don't play WoW, but my friends who do all seem obsessed by the game-playing of OTHER people-- people they don't know and will never meet. They don't want people doing this or doing that.

I don't understand why it matters to them. Can someone explain? Is there a "class envy" engine built into the game or something?

[Drinking_Buddy]

The fact is, Blizz only does a token gesture like banning these accounts every so often to avoid being accused of overt tolerance of cheating in their game. All they really care about is keeping as many people paying $14.95/mo. as possible; they don't give a crap about in-game economics, except to the extent that they don't want items to become so cheap that it allows players to trivialize and more quickly burn through their content.



What the hell is wrong with some of you people? They just banned 5400 accounts and susspended 10700 attentional accounts. Thats 16,100 accounts in three days, thats an average of 5366 accounts a day!

I got tired of WoW and quit playing and there were things that I didn't like about blizzards managment, but those are exceptable numbers, esspically for three days.

[gzsfrk]

Economically speaking, it makes perfect sense. If someone's time is worth more than they money they'll spend (plus the "fun" of doing it themselves), buying gold is a good idea for them. I'm not sure why anyone else cares what they do.

I'll admit that I don't play WoW, but my friends who do all seem obsessed by the game-playing of OTHER people-- people they don't know and will never meet. They don't want people doing this or doing that.

I don't understand why it matters to them. Can someone explain? Is there a "class envy" engine built into the game or something?

Bother to take the time to read any of the above posts regarding the effects of inflation, primarily on players who refuse to buy gold outside the game, and you should see all the explanation you need.

And... not that it seems anyone cares about this anymore than they do steroids in baseball... IT'S FRIGGIN' CHEATING!!! Isn't that enough?

[gzsfrk]

What the hell is wrong with some of you people? They just banned 5400 accounts and susspended 10700 attentional accounts. Thats 16,100 accounts in three days, thats an average of 5366 accounts a day!

I got tired of WoW and quit playing and there were things that I didn't like about blizzards managment, but those are exceptable numbers, esspically for three days.

And this only happens--what, once every 3 months at most?

Doesn't even put a respectable dent in the commercial gold farmers operations.

[GrinR]

The inflation here is price of highly sought after items. Have you checked the prices of items like Libram of Focus or Dreamfoil or Fire Pots at the AH? What about prices of BoE Epics?

Since people buy gold with money instead of spending time farming the gold themselves it causes gold to be "cheap". On my server Dreamfoils go for 20-30g a stack. Libram of Focus goes for 900g. Seriously there are only 2 ways to afford these prices. (1) Constant Farming (2) Buy gold. I unhappily accept option 3 which is to do without.

Nonsense. The source of materials is always the same - free. You don't need to "constantly" farm, you can simply farm as usual and sell your mats. I've played on 3 different servers with varying economies and the inflation has almost never had any effect on my play experience. If anything, it makes less-sought after items easier to buy.

[Drinking_Buddy]

And this only happens--what, once every 3 months at most?

Doesn't even put a respectable dent in the commercial gold farmers operations.

How do you know that blizzard only banns once every 3 months? Just because they dont tell you, doesnt not mean that it does not happen.

[gzsfrk]

How do you know that blizzard only banns once every 3 months? Just because they dont tell you, doesnt not mean that it does not happen.

I don't know the frequency of their banhammer, but I amable to extrapolate its impotence. Go see how long it takes you to find 10 major websites from which you can buy WoW gold. WoW gold-selling is a thriving industry; if Blizz's means of combatting it were effective, this would not be so.

[gzsfrk]

Nonsense. The source of materials is always the same - free. You don't need to "constantly" farm, you can simply farm as usual and sell your mats. I've played on 3 different servers with varying economies and the inflation has almost never had any effect on my play experience. If anything, it makes less-sought after items easier to buy.

While it's possible to play the game without ever having to buy anything from other players (never had to purchase reagents, major pots, or enchants?), that kind of defeats the purpose of playing an MMO such as WoW as opposed to an online-capable RPG like D2, doesn't it? Just because it didn't affect the way you chose to play the game doesn't mean that it isn't a major issue to players who are trying to enjoy the game the way it was designed (i.e. using the Auction House, buying enchants, pots, etc. from other players, et. al.).

As for it making "less sought after" items easier to get, unless you're talking about things like those broken goblin electro-lanterns in STV, I don't see how this is the case. Inflation affects the economy at ALL levels, and it particularly affects lower levels in WoW due to the demand for the best equipment available to the lower level PvP tiers in battlegrounds. (i.e. Twinked out 19s, 29s, 39s, etc.)

[Librum]

Economically speaking, it makes perfect sense. If someone's time is worth more than they money they'll spend (plus the "fun" of doing it themselves), buying gold is a good idea for them. I'm not sure why anyone else cares what they do.

I'll admit that I don't play WoW, but my friends who do all seem obsessed by the game-playing of OTHER people-- people they don't know and will never meet. They don't want people doing this or doing that.

I don't understand why it matters to them. Can someone explain? Is there a "class envy" engine built into the game or something?

The premise is pretty basic, really. You've got people cheating (since it is unquestionably against the rules as written), and the people who don't cheat don't like it. A lot of people would be happy to pitch in a few extra bucks for some spending money in the game, but they're worried about getting banned for it, so they don't. When nothing happens to the people who flagrantly engage in such behavior, those who follow the rules become frustrated. And the people who can't or won't spend additional cash, for whatever reason, to buy in-game currency get especially peeved over that behavior.

The general opinion is that they should either crack down on the buyers and sellers so as to better level the playing field and punish violators, or make it not a violation of the terms and let people churn as much cash into the game as they want, though I think many people would not prefer the latter.

Regardless of their actual ability to enforce the terms of service, there is definitely a perception of them being unable to do so.

[Ultima Thulian]

Maybe blizz should make farming for gold actually enjoyable. :D

Seriously, cheating sucks, it can ruin (or at least hurt) an online game. It is unfair to players who wish to play by the rules.

[Busted_Astromech]

How do you know that blizzard only banns once every 3 months? Just because they dont tell you, doesnt not mean that it does not happen.

You're right. Logic like that is unassailable. I bow to your greatness, Drinking_Buddy.

*bow*

[absolut taco]

WTF?
Maybe I'm getting old, but anyone that uses their Real Life money to buy an advantage in a computer game, online or not, has some fucking issues.

[Citizen Philip]

I've found the most adamant people against goldbuying are:

Kids not going to their college classes, forming little co-dependancy groups in their various dorms: grinding away 10 hours a day, feeding their purple addiction.

Hey jackass: Running the same instance x15 a day to collect 100 gold is not fun.

And yes I do means kids. Because only a kid is going to spend an unhealthy amount of time playing a game. As someone mentioned: If the time to gather gold is more tedious than fun, some will be willing the gathering for you. For a price.

[Citizen Philip]

WTF?
Maybe I'm getting old, but anyone that uses their Real Life money to buy an advantage in a computer game, online or not, has some fucking issues.

I guess will exclude those who buy better controllers, computer components, HDTVs, etc as "creditable" activies to spend their money. The money you spend on your virtual money probably has a value of some kind for maybe 2-4 years and it fluctuates in an inflating market, until no one plays and it is useless: your new console/computer/entertainment will be outdated in less than 10.

Who cares, they are spending money. Different things, but it's still being 'wasted' on entertainment.

[Lexicon]

Speaking from past experience when I ran my online business. Blizzard is one of the most lax MMO companies in going after gold sellers (which was good for me at the time). You want a company that goes all out to stop sellers look at Ragnarok Online. Gravity took some intense steps to make sure I would stop selling their zeny.

[gzsfrk]

Who cares, they are spending money. Different things, but it's still being 'wasted' on entertainment.

<sigh>... And yet again, utter disregard for the fact that it the players who engage in gold buying/selling are blatantly cheating. Does that mean nothing anymore? "Hey, if I can get away with it, it must not be wrong."

Sorry... I guess my moral relativism isn't quite so relative anymore.

[ddbrown30]

SQL much?

Seriously... querying databases is NOT a complicated process. It's part of what I do for a living. And just so I can say I did my part in educating the ignorant masses today, here's a brief lesson:

1. The size of the database only affects the amount of time it takes to parse a request, not how complicated or difficult it is to craft the query.

2. Distributed database queries--you should look up the term; fun and educational reading. Despite my cynicism regarding Blizz's technical abilities after 1 1/2 years of being unable to meet the technical demands of their MMO, I'd be quite shocked if they didn't have this functionality implemented in their system. Besides, it's possible (and I seem to recall reading at some point) that they use some IBM Big Iron to host a centralized database at either the regional or global level. If such is the case, then the need for distributed querying doesn't even exist.

3. Rounhouse kick to the face.

If you don't understand data modeling or queries, that's fine. But try not to be so naive as to assume that just because you're ignorant of something, that means it's automatically complicated beyond comprehension.

I'm not talking just about the technical side of things. You can't wildly swing a banhammer without doing some research. If all you do is a simple query for large transfers from alts (I believe that was your example), then you're going to ban a lot of innocent players. For example, when I used to play, I did all my money making on my alts. Quite often, I would send large amounts of money to my main or to my girlfriends account.

The issue arrises after getting the data. It needs to be analyzed and properly researched. On top of that, if that's the only stipulation, people will just start selling in smaller amounts or sending in smaller amounts. It's really not as easy as you make it out to be.

[Citizen Philip]

<sigh>... And yet again, utter disregard for the fact that it the players who engage in gold buying/selling are blatantly cheating. Does that mean nothing anymore? "Hey, if I can get away with it, it must not be wrong."

Sorry... I guess my moral relativism isn't quite so relative anymore.

I buy a game. I agree to pay per month. I don't care to run the same pointless instances or 'grind mobs' to get imaginary money, so an arm-chair economist/programmer can tell me how great his virtual economy is. I go to work to grind away my time, I'm not going to do it, and pay someone for the privildge.

Break the rules? Bullocks. People don't want to waste their goddam time, doing pointless things.

Of course, I've never bought gold and I played WoW for a year. I don't have a problem with people buying to avoid the tedious crap that is common to all MMORPG.

[YoungAlCapone]

Break the rules? Bullocks. People don't want to waste their goddam time doing pointless things.



That is what I am hearing. Granted I do not play WoW, and I understand why people are against it, but Time = Money.

[gzsfrk]

Break the rules? Bullocks. People don't want to waste their goddam time, doing pointless things.

Then what are they doing playing an MMO in the first place? Duh...

[Citizen Philip]

Then what are they doing playing an MMO in the first place? Duh...

Trying to enjoy themselves in a self-confessed casual MMO, trying not to waste their 10 hours of gametime per week in pointless grinds?

[YoungAlCapone]

Then what are they doing playing an MMO in the first place? Duh...

Don't be ridiculous.

They are "wasting" their time playing an MMO because they get some sort of enjoyment out of it. They play MMOs for the same reason you play your genre of choice. If I enjoy a game but happen to think that various aspects are tedious I want to skip them to get back to the sections I enjoy.

The exception here is that it is a "community" of sorts where people must interact with one another, and deal with the consequences of not only thier actions but others as well.

[Soap]

So 5400 were banned from over 5 MILLION accounts? Doing some basic division leads us to the conclusion that blizzard lost:

.00108% of their customer base.

That's gotta hurt the bottom line.

[MojoJojo]

Maybe blizz should make farming for gold actually enjoyable. :D

Seriously, cheating sucks, it can ruin (or at least hurt) an online game. It is unfair to players who wish to play by the rules.
Well... you hit the nail on the head in your first sentence.

It's not called a "grind" if people are having fun. People buying gold aren't doing it because they want to show their rods by showing how rich they are... they're wanting to buy equipment rather than grind/farm for it. (though, that could be just to show how cool they are)

I understand the MMO "carrot-stick" revenue model of delayed gratification, but there are apparently folks who don't have the patience. I'm one of those folks... but I voted with my wallet by leaving the game, rather than gaming the system or outright cheating.

FWIW.

[Royal Fool]

"We're not selling gold. We're selling you an advantage, an extension of your life.

We're selling you fucking time itself. We're like motherfucking timekeepers or something."

[CptTripps]

So 5400 were banned from over 5 MILLION accounts? Doing some basic division leads us to the conclusion that blizzard lost:

.00108% of their customer base.

That's gotta hurt the bottom line.

LOL indeed!

I'm for it for one reason, family time.

At $35 an hour one can buy 1000 gold for 1.5 hours of work. For me to farm 1000 gold would take a extremely long time. So... waste a few bucks and spend time with the family after some casual questing\pvp sessions, or spend weeks straight of 8 hours a night farming while also pissing off the woman that gives me sex.

I'm sorry if I cause grief for the people who can't\won't but gold, but family life is more important to me than a binary economy.

[Phanto]

What FUCKING economy?!? When you buy or sell something from a NPC the money goes to nowhere if the game have a truly ecnomy NPC would have Gold too a example of this is Morrowind and Oblivion NPC have their own money, they don't have infinite money.

I have to go in favor of people that just farm and gather gold just to sell it in real world is their own account many people just "play the game" that way I know that sound weird but is their own life and account so let them do what they want they are paying for something.. ;)

[Crabby]

What FUCKING economy?!? When you buy or sell something from a NPC the money goes to nowhere if the game have a truly ecnomy NPC would have Gold too a example of this is Morrowind and Oblivion NPC have their own money, they don't have infinite money.

I have to go in favor of people that just farm and gather gold just to sell it in real world is their own account many people just "play the game" that way I know that sound weird but is their own life and account so let them do what they want they are paying for something.. ;)


No, they actually have infinite funds but a cap on single purchases. :D

[f1sh3r]

My new server (Balnazzar) has one of the largets gold-buying populations yet. When you see stacks of 20 copper bars going for ~3 gold, you know something's wrong. Although, it *is* nice to have over 100 gold at level 30...silly gold buyers.

how does this translate to people buying gold?

[f1sh3r]

The problem with your statement above saying that most of the user-base is kept happy is that you're assuming that most players are happy with the ability to buy unearned gold in the game. That's possible, but I doubt it. I think most people who play WoW want to play a fair game. Buying gold is cheating, plain and simple. And it does have a detrimental effect on the in-game economy for players who refuse to buy gold in that as the pool of disposable gold grows higher, demand increases, and thus suppliers are able to charge more for goods and services. This boosts prices in individual trades, the auction house, and the prices charged for enchants. This hurts casual players who do not buy gold because, even though the cost of goods and services increases, their avenues for income (questing, farming mobs) do not keep pace with the inflation, thus requiring them to invest more time to accumulate the needed gold for purchasing needed goods and services.

Easy enough?

can you explain how buying gold is cheating? i hear this a lot but no one ever has any reasons. against the TOS? yes. enforced? no. but cheating? it's not a hack, you still have to kill mobs to level. i think it's because i wasn't so wound up in the game that it took place of my real life that i don't care if folks buy gold. hack the game and i'll scream. glitch in the BGs and i'll stand right beside you in a rage. but this doesn't give you much of an advantage other than you don't spend 14 hours a day playing. some people do live outside the game. honestly i wish blizzard would just start selling gold like they do time cards, i dunno why they don't. you're still going to have the same junkies playing the game and complaining about people buying gold with new reasons because the "cheating" card won't fly anymore.

the casual player is the person buying gold because they don't have the time to farm gold to keep up with the regular price of things (ie repair bills). it has nothing to do with prices going up. people raising the prices of things is greed, not gold farming. no one is forced to put mana potions on the AH for absurd prices. it takes the same time to farm the mats, so the price shouldn't go up. the price of an epic mount doesn't go up, nor do repair prices. all the top EQ is BoP. what am i missing here?

[f1sh3r]

The inflation here is price of highly sought after items. Have you checked the prices of items like Libram of Focus or Dreamfoil or Fire Pots at the AH? What about prices of BoE Epics?

Since people buy gold with money instead of spending time farming the gold themselves it causes gold to be "cheap". On my server Dreamfoils go for 20-30g a stack. Libram of Focus goes for 900g. Seriously there are only 2 ways to afford these prices. (1) Constant Farming (2) Buy gold. I unhappily accept option 3 which is to do without.

that's called greed. if you want cheap dreamfoil farm it like the people selling it on the AH. it has nothing to do with buying gold, it has to do with laziness. you don't want to take the time, so you blame people who buy gold for causing you to have to pay more for whatever it is you want. want a libram of focus? go farm one like everyone else. the fact is that people don't want to take the time so they buy them off the AH. the people putting them up can set the price, and since they are greedy the price goes up.

[Heretic Machine]

If the players of WoW so overwhelmingly agree that they don't need to respect the funeral of a fellow player, I don't see why they should worry about you not being able to keep up with their gold mongering.

[Qoz]

I can't believe some of you people. It is so obvious how gold sellers are ruining the game.

I left for this very reason. I didn't have enough time to farm for the objects I wanted. The game is designed to make time=money=better gear=superior character.
I lost to newbies in PvP that I could easily beat if I had the same tier of equipment as they had. That just sucked. And I refused to buy gold, because the premise of the game, was that this was not allowed or supported. I would have never joined this MMORPG if I knew you could buy ingame assets for real money. This just ruins everything and makes it about who spends more money and I sure will not (and cannot) do this.

Some MMORPGS out there allow users to purchase houses, furniture, weapons etc. for real money. You people that see no problem in WOW goldselling should join these instead. I don't have a problem with these games, but they are not for me.

I joined WOW and hoped the better man would win in PvP and versus monsters. It turned out WOW was a huge timesink and those who invest time will recieve items and glory in PvP. And some people skip the timesink and buy gold, which I find silly. I skipped the game alltogether after 4 months, when I reached lvl60. And I'm really glad I did.

[ElectricMonk]

You kinda know they're going to turn a blind eye to gold sales from the start.

The game is designed around the provably broken faucet/sink economy. It's a stupid idea. The simple fact that they're trying to make faucet/sink work is an admission that they don't really care about out-of-game sales.

there really isn't any other kind of economy that would work in an mmo and remain fun.

if you limited the amount of gold and items on a server, eventually the farmers would own it all and you would be forced to pay for anything which would be far worse.

also i wonder how much the value of all of the in-game items was liquidated when the accounts were banned. probably close to $500k worth of assets. if blizzard does this every 3 months then that makes it really difficult for gold farming organizations to maintain a profit.

[ElectricMonk]

i just had another thought. could blizzard just put a restriction on how much gold can be sent/recieved per week? like say 30 gold or so. this would trump the way gold farming would operate and make it way harder for them to keep track of accounts to shuffle all of this money around.

they may be able to switch to using items as currency but that would complicate things greatly.

[derjester]

Wish I could find the article that examined the impact or lack there of, but that's besides the point. These were bans for using teleport and speed hacks. "participating in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items." Third party programs screams teleport hacks.
They just tossed in the "farm gold and items" to say "hey, see, they were bad people."
Just a side note, it's against the TOU to sell in game stuff for realworld currency. It doesn't say anything about purchasing.

[thegameguru]

I can't believe some of you people. It is so obvious how gold sellers are ruining the game.

I left for this very reason. I didn't have enough time to farm for the objects I wanted. The game is designed to make time=money=better gear=superior character.
I lost to newbies in PvP that I could easily beat if I had the same tier of equipment as they had. That just sucked. And I refused to buy gold, because the premise of the game, was that this was not allowed or supported. I would have never joined this MMORPG if I knew you could buy ingame assets for real money. This just ruins everything and makes it about who spends more money and I sure will not (and cannot) do this.

Some MMORPGS out there allow users to purchase houses, furniture, weapons etc. for real money. You people that see no problem in WOW goldselling should join these instead. I don't have a problem with these games, but they are not for me.

I joined WOW and hoped the better man would win in PvP and versus monsters. It turned out WOW was a huge timesink and those who invest time will recieve items and glory in PvP. And some people skip the timesink and buy gold, which I find silly. I skipped the game alltogether after 4 months, when I reached lvl60. And I'm really glad I did.

makes no sense.. the level of purple world drops is markedly inferior to the drops you have to earn by actually playing.. sure gold and squating the AH will eventually net you a decently geared character but eventually you'll actually have to play to get MC level and up gear.

Let alone faction reward gear..I love it when people sit down to play MMORPG's and are shocked that they have to invest time in the game to "get good"

Are these the same people that expect to sit down to an online FPS game like say Enemy Territory and immediatly beat the best players in the game that have previously played every night for several hours a night "practicing"?

hey wait.....