59k More WoW Accounts Banned

[HeisinDC]

I know this is always reported and someone's already on it, but this is the largest mass-ban (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=9241678&p=1&tmp=1#post9241678) yet:

As part of our efforts to eliminate cheating from World of Warcraft, we recently banned approximately 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts in the month of June, and with that removed well over 22 million gold from the total economy across all realms. While we regret having to take such extreme action, these accounts were participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such behavior not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately. We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and our players from the harmful effects of cheating.
Liq's Note: Only in WoW is this both economically feasible and communally remedial. Only WoW.

[Sloth]

blizzard can ban them, but they know those accounts will be back plus more revenue from sold boxes as the farmers simply buy new accounts. Its actually win win win win for blizzard all around. They get more money, the community thinks gold farmers are out of business, and they get publicity for banning a whopping 59K accounts

[TrackZero]

I wonder if these include deactivated accounts? I mean, I bought gold from a gold farmer when I was playing. I'd assume they'd ban my account (if I got caught in this net), yet my account is not currently active. I'd assume they wouldn't want me reactivating it days afterwards....or would they prefer to get my real-world money and allow it?

[The-Builder]

Not really alot of gold considering the number of accounts banned. Only around 372gold per account.

[TrackZero]

Not really alot of gold considering the number of accounts banned. Only around 372gold per account.

Prehaps money shuffled between "mule" accounts? Or ones they level and sell off for real world cash later?

[net7runner]

Yay, the game is still boring unless you raid for 6 hours a day. Rawr.

[captainstrombosis]

Honestly, so many people buy gold in WoW that I don't even know why they put on this show. Just implement a system to legitimize it and get it over with.

[Roc Ingersol]

They only ban sellers.

[Buddha Lotus]

.. Blizzard dosent ban the BUYERS of gold..

That would do allot to kill this..

[Lekon]

59,000 Subscribers? Damn... they banned all the remaining SWG players?

[The Continental]

Honestly, so many people buy gold in WoW that I don't even know why they put on this show. Just implement a system to legitimize it and get it over with.

Right you are, and honestly gold buying isn't really a big deal in WoW seeing as how your gear progression at 60 stops unless you raid. Once you buy your epic mount and some shitty auction house epics that are easily outclassed by ZG/MC gear, there isn't much else to do with the money. Nothing that will give you an advantage over players that don't buy gold at least.

[Johan]

Isn't this really a losing battle, though? Not a reason to give up on banning players who cheat, but as long as people, and not robots, are involved, there will be cheating (that's cynical, but it is, sadly, true). For example, a number of games on Live have become unplayable in multiplayer, unless you enjoy getting raped repeatedly by uber-cheaters.

It gets old...whether it's WoW or Halo 2 or whatever.

[Lactose]

The Continental: I dunno how good the non-caster AD rewards are, but the epic caster reward (Trinket of Ascendance) is pretty awesome and worth the 500 or so gold in mats. That and enchants and Hide of the Wild are the only really great uses of money I've seen so far.

[The Continental]

You left out the part about having to grind AD faction endlessly. Obtaining the neccesary faction will more than likely provide you with well over 500 gold in itself.

[Ernst_Jager]

Twinking 10-19, 20-29,30-29 toons is where gold is used.

[easi]

59,000 chinamen are now out of a job.

[captainstrombosis]

Twinking 10-19, 20-29,30-29 toons is where gold is used.

Thank you Commander Obvious /salute.

You can get out of all of those level ranges. Without twinking or help in less than a week.

[easi]

If you play all day and eat ramen while smelling of cat piss.

Note: needlessly offensive and/or racist comments will not be tolerated on Evil Avatar - fitbabits

[SexualChoc]

This won't stop them. Do a search for people in Dire Maul, and I'll wager most are Hunters. Compdenium on Dragonslaying and what not.

[GrinR]

If you play all day and eat ramen while smelling of cat piss.

QFT !

[captainstrombosis]

If you can't level that fast just 3-4 hours a day for a week or 2. You are just slow. WoW is exceptionally easy to level in.

[Demo_Boy]

umm. I think this may be BS lip service to make players think Blizzard is looking out for them.

59000? Why does noone ever read opinion bits about someone being banned?

No posts, no editorials...

even if they are 99.5% accurate that's still 300 innocent users banned. And noone is screaming bloody murder?

[Demize99]

Thank you Commander Obvious /salute.

You can get out of all of those level ranges. Without twinking or help in less than a week.

Except, leveling past those level ranges is not the point at all. They are twink characters specifically kept low to WTF pwn in lowbie PVP battlegrounds while you wait for raid time to show up.

[GrinR]

If you can't level that fast just 3-4 hours a day for a week or 2. You are just slow. WoW is exceptionally easy to level in.

Whoops! We just slipped from "under a week" to "a week or two".

Wanna go for three weeks? :D

[captainstrombosis]

Yes I know why they are there. However on just quest gear the lowbie battlegrounds were not a problem. I really don't see what the problem is with twinking when you have caps on the level of your items. So I don't see the problem with gold buying/selling. Especially when the games PvP is a joke to begin with.

*edit* I was being short sighted. Gold buying/selling could actually hit crafting very hard. I never really crafted with anything I didn't find. But for those that buy their stuff with in game currency, if they had to pay inflated prices. That would be a real problem.

[Zeal]

Just made a new Orc Warlock on Lothar.

Gotta get ready for the Burning Crusade...

[captainstrombosis]

Whoops! We just slipped from "under a week" to "a week or two".

Wanna go for three weeks? :D

Actually I said you COULD do it in less than a week. And I then said that if you CAN'T do it in a week or 2 your slow. That's not contradicting myself.

[Speed_D]

even if they are 99.5% accurate that's still 300 innocent users banned. And noone is screaming bloody murder?
Oh I'm sure people ARE screaming bloody murder. And they'll probably get their accounts reactivated after a month of fighting with Blizzard's customer support. Blizzard knows that the real gold sellers will just open up new accounts as it is far more efficient than contesting their customer service department.

Edit: here go check out some of the monetary "values" for various time investments in the game:

http://www.gamepal.com/gamepowerleveling/?game=wow

[Hemalin]

Yes I know why they are there. However on just quest gear the lowbie battlegrounds were not a problem. I really don't see what the problem is with twinking when you have caps on the level of your items. So I don't see the problem with gold buying/selling. Especially when the games PvP is a joke to begin with.
Items have levels but there is no level cap on enchantments. Fiery weapon or 100 health at level 19 can be kind of big.

[captainstrombosis]

That's true. Bleh I stopped playing WoW a while ago. This is making me want to level a druid to 60 again. Gonna leave before I get confused and resubscribe!

[Steele Johnson]

They only banned the bots, so it's not like they're real people or anything. Doh! :eek:

[ProfPuppet]

This won't stop them. Do a search for people in Dire Maul, and I'll wager most are Hunters. Compdenium on Dragonslaying and what not.

I remember them swearing up and down that people weren't farming Dire Maul when it was obvious that they were. Doing a search for people in the zone and hey, 30 people with very odd names that are there 24/7, popping in and out.

I think it's funny that they banned more people than the total number of active subscribers to something like Auto Assault.

[Phanto]

Honestly, so many people buy gold in WoW that I don't even know why they put on this show. Just implement a system to legitimize it and get it over with.

Agree.
They can close farmers accounts but they will continue buying others account for farming & people will still continue buying gold from sites like eBAY.

[Lexicon]

Having worked in the gold business, these bans just a pr quote they dont have any real effect. The ONLY company to really take it seriously when they say dont see their money is Gravity Games with Ragnarok Online. Those guys are zealots.

[drakkarim]

big deal, all they did is force 59k to buy additional copies of wow media for the new registration codes. they'll be back and making money for another year until blizzy repeats the process and pretends its doing something.

[Amalor]

Well alot of people are saying this is not going to change anything etc etc, Well what _would_ make a differance? They are doing something at least. I ask everyone who compalins : What's your idea to stop cheating/gold selling? Personally I'm curious if you can simply not allow asian IPs acess to American servers. Anyone in the biz know if this is possible?

-Cheers
-Amalor

[captainstrombosis]

Most people havn't complained about shit. They have simply said it's a dance just to appease the idiots who think the thousands of dollars made off that one account will somehow stop the farmers from simply buying another $50 game.

You will never stop the farming. Simply legitimize it, create an ingame service for the transfer of gold and money, skim some off the top as a "fee" for doing business, sit back and watch how much money you make because everyone is buying gold anyway.

In WoW, gold isn't a huge deal. It will not stop you from getting the best stuff. So it's not a game breaker. I know it could be horrible for people that craft. But You don't need gold farmers for that. You just need a few overly rich people to corner the ingame market...which happens anyway.

[Uncle Ben]

Well alot of people are saying this is not going to change anything etc etc, Well what _would_ make a differance? They are doing something at least. I ask everyone who compalins : What's your idea to stop cheating/gold selling? Personally I'm curious if you can simply not allow asian IPs acess to American servers. Anyone in the biz know if this is possible?

-Cheers
-Amalor


That is very possible, and very ridiculous. You're making the assumption that every gold farmer is Asian and that every Asian is a gold farmer. I'm pretty sure doing that would be a really big PR mess for Blizzard - it should be, at least.

No, the best way to get rid of all this mess has already been said - legitimize it. If Blizzard can sell their own currency, then not only do they make more money but they utterly control the market on that currency, driving the gold sellers out of business by default.

[Greenghost]

Why on Earth would you want to legitimize it? So Blizzard can take a skim of all gold transactions? They already make a hefty amount of money when the gold farmers purchase new accounts. There is a reason why they ban people from gold farming. It wrecks the in game economy.

Let's say the 'eye of shadows' (priest quest item) is being sold in the auction house for 350g. That is within reach of a regular player with a bit of saving and grinding. If everyone is buying gold then that auction house price could shoot up to stupid values 1000g+ and the only way a player would be able to purchase this then would be to buy extra gold. People already subscribe to the game, adding this extra cost on top in order to compete is stupid. Some people would buy gold, which wrecks it for everyone else.

Honestly, I wish blizzard would mail people who have bought the gold and issue them a warning that their account has been flagged and any further gold buying would result in vendoring of their items to the sum of the amount bought.

[captainstrombosis]

It's blatently clear why we would want to legitimize it. It's far too deeply rooted in the game. There are so many subscribers that buy gold, that if you got rid of them. You would have a lot of pissed off guilds and friends. If you legitimize it, atleast you have a way of seeing roughly how much is being sent back and forth. It also helps protect the would-be buyer from scams outside of the game.

Buying gold is simply a fact of life in MMO's these days. You can try and fight it. Or legitimize it and tax it. One of these idea's would actually work and benefit SOME people... And it's not the banning one...

[Greenghost]

Firstly, I've no interest in safeguarding people buying gold outside the game. It's cheating and ruining the experience for many other people who play the game.

Blizzard have it half right and banning the gold farmers is a good move, but it needs to be backed up with action taken against those buying gold. I've already suggested that items/gold from those players is taken away as punishment. You could also introduce a gold loot penalty, where players receive no money from mob kills till the bought amount is paid off.

I'm sure there are numerous more creative ways to restrict people rather than banning them outright, you only have to make the punishment enough to discourage people from making that purchase.

[CannibalKid]

I don't play Guild Wars, but i know they have an anti farming system implemented. So if you take your Monk that can return damage while constantly healing to a place that has a ton of monsters for hours on end, they eventually stop droping loot/gold. Any GW players see how this effected anything?

[easi]

Firstly, I've no interest in safeguarding people buying gold outside the game. It's cheating and ruining the experience for many other people who play the game.

Blizzard have it half right and banning the gold farmers is a good move, but it needs to be backed up with action taken against those buying gold. I've already suggested that items/gold from those players is taken away as punishment. You could also introduce a gold loot penalty, where players receive no money from mob kills till the bought amount is paid off.

I'm sure there are numerous more creative ways to restrict people rather than banning them outright, you only have to make the punishment enough to discourage people from making that purchase.

Newsflash: everybody buys gold. One of my old guilds even had a guide on how to talk to chinese farmers stickied in their forums. Another raiding guild I was in, their gear was like 90% purchased with bought gold. It was the same for all the big guilds on the server. Of course, it was PvP and I guess the average PvP kiddy rogue doesn't understand how economies work.

[Greenghost]

Newsflash: everybody buys gold. One of my old guilds even had a guide on how to talk to chinese farmers stickied in their forums. Another raiding guild I was in, their gear was like 90% purchased with bought gold. It was the same for all the big guilds on the server. Of course, it was PvP and I guess the average PvP kiddy rogue doesn't understand how economies work.

I'm in a raiding guild myself (on a PVP server) and nobody in there has purchased gold. In addition all the class sets and best items are bind on pickup drops from high end instances so that 90% figure you quote seems very dubious to me.

I've seen the 'how to talk to gold famers' post, it basically outlines how to take advantage of farmers trying to ditch their loot at the last moment and picking up items cheaply before their shift ends. It's a bit missleading to bring that up when we are talking about purchasing gold with real world cash rather than how to get yourself a bargain through an in game trade.

[steve]

Newsflash: everybody buys gold.

:rolleyes: Generalization is awesome... I'm sure you meant "more people than you think buy gold".

While I can understand that it's handy for folks who prefer to spend their time raiding instead of gathering gold, the problem is you still can't legitimize it as that would lead to malignant growth. The game would turn into a gold buying competition for those who can afford it/don't mind spending their $ on it.

In the end I'm sure Blizzard would lose the main percentage of their customer base. WoW has a lot of casual players, and those don't want a dollar competition. As Blizzard is not stupid, I'm sure they are quite aware of that.

[Shifter]

There's no doubt that gold farming/buying ruins the in-game economy. Problem is as it becomes more and more prevalent, in-game inflation makes it more and more difficult for the average player (like myself) to resist doing it just to buy once in a while average greens and blue items, not to mention mats. I haven't done it yet myself, but as I look at every cool item on the AH for 750g, I'm thinking *damn* that's like 3 months of my real life to get that! It's either that or tell my wife that I can't spend any time with her because I have to raid for 3-5 hours nightly just to someday have a chance at getting a cool drop...

WoW might be easy levelling for the casual gamer, but the end game truly sucks for anyone not able to dedicate at least 4 hours straight.

[Goronmon]

I can't believe there are people who actually think legitimizing gold buying is a good idea. You think farming is bad now? How about when every one and their brother start farming some gold to make some RL cash? You don't think the servers would become overcrowded cesspools filled with people trying to farm the best spots? Once you make it alright for people to translate virtual currency to cash in a game where the currency doesn't come solely from other players its just plain, old stupid. It just wouldn't work.

It would only work if resources in the game had a limit. Since games like WoW don't have a limit, you'd pretty much destroy the economy.

[Stormwatcher]

You gotta be pretty fucking ignorant to think that bliz even considers legitimizing gold selling.

And I have two words for why: Law Suits.

As long as 1) all in-game assets (gear and gold) are the PROPERTY OF BLIZZARD and
2) trading these assets for real money is forbidden,
bliz is largely safe from legal shit. But AS SOON AS that changes, they're in for a world of pain.

And buying gold sucks. people who do it are pretty sad. they spent money buying the game, they pay a hefty monthly fee and they pay money for itens? Ahahaha, fools, I have some some real state on the Moon I'd like to sell ya.

[Badgun]

I can't believe there are people who actually think legitimizing gold buying is a good idea. You think farming is bad now? How about when every one and their brother start farming some gold to make some RL cash? You don't think the servers would become overcrowded cesspools filled with people trying to farm the best spots? Once you make it alright for people to translate virtual currency to cash in a game where the currency doesn't come solely from other players its just plain, old stupid. It just wouldn't work.

It would only work if resources in the game had a limit. Since games like WoW don't have a limit, you'd pretty much destroy the economy.

Most sensible post I've seen yet!

[Amalor]

I see alot of people talking about Blizzard setting up a legit gold/item service. The subject is getting people hot but lets chill out and look at this from a game mechanics stand point, have we all became such instant gratification my dick is bigger than yours jerks that we would get rid of the core of the game and just buy our way to level 60 with "Uber" gear? At that point I think you miss out on a lot of great gaming and invalidated both your investment and the designers work. As to the comment about my consolidating all farmers as asian, I did not mean it as a racist remark I was simply basing my assumption on the often quoted term "Chinese gold farmers" but you raise a flaw in my idea, you can't single anyone out, only allow USA IPs on USA servers and Europe on Europe etc etc, but this raises the problem of people living away from their respective homelands. I hope this isolation is not the best answer its simply one idea.
Does anyone have any new ideas to contribute?

-Not attacking anyone's point of view
-Amalor

[HeisinDC]

Blizzard could ban everyone who bought gold and sold gold (they can track when 100 or 500 gold is sent from a farmer account to yours, etc) but that would be taking away a big part of their player base. They should have come out in the beginning and said 'gold buying will not be tolerated', but this would have distanced casuals who like to buy gold instead of farm (for people who work and have lives whose time is more precious than farming).

As it stands, there are lots of people besides blizzard making money off this game, some might even use the term sweatshop, but blizz is making enough and continuing to maintain the balance of the game (up to opinion - coming from a deactivated shaman).

We will see what happens with other games, as each is a learning tool in the real world for the next game down the pipe. Conan anyone?

[Drinking_Buddy]

You know, I think this is accually working. Take a look at IGE.com, the biggest company in gold farming, when you go to a realm to find the prices of gold, you get this message. WE ARE CURRENTLY RE-STOCKING. ORDER NOW AND RECEIVE YOUR CURRENCY WITHIN THE NEXT 12 HOURS!

I check ige.com every now in thing, because the gold farming buisness fasanates me. This is the first time I have seem them admit that they need to restock.

[captainstrombosis]

Heh, that could also mean they sold out because of high demand. And have nothing to do with the bannings.

[Drinking_Buddy]

Heh, that could also mean they sold out because of high demand. And have nothing to do with the bannings.

Possible, but I dont think that it is likely.

IGE.com is the big billion dollar gold farming company. They have been around for years and have set model for selling MMO currency. They bought thottbot, the Allakhazam network and other wow community sites an d thats just for WoW alone.. For them to be outof stock because of a recent high demand, is unproffesional and doesnt make sense.

IGE.com is also another reason why "legalizing" gold selling will not work. IGE has invested millions of dollars into World of Warcraft. If blizzard desides to legalize gold selling, they will not throw up there hands and say "We give up." They will undercut there price and compete against blizzard.

[51|RandoM]

If you find yourself paying somebody else to accomplish in game something that you don't feel like to doing yourself, ask yourself why are you even playing the game?

people are silly.

[fitbabits]

QFT !
Really? I thought you knew better than to QFT a needlessly insulting comment like that. :(

[easi]

Search your feelings.. you know it to be true.