18,000 Cheaters Banned in WoW

[bapenguin]

According to the Official World of Warcraft Website (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/), Blizzard recently banned over 18,000 accounts due to cheating. A majority of these accounts were found to be 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.

We will continue to actively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the negative effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in the permanent removal of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

<Nelson>Ha Ha!</Nelson>

[Qoz]

Thats gotta hurt!
With WC3 they ban people in regular intervals, so cheat programmers cannot easily figure out what does not work. It seems they are doing the same in WoW (wait awhile, then ban) but what about all the gold/items passed on to other people? The people buying?
I wonder if they can track the gold transferred from these farmer accounts?
Its a bit unfair to not ban the people buying. The economy will suffer if they do not ban right away. But the cheaters will figure out what works and does not work faster.
Quite the dilemma! & merry christmas everyone..

[Demize99]

As far as I know, if say you legitimately made an ingame transaction with a farmer who later gets banned, you're in the clear. However if you're buying gold for real money, and you can get caught... you're in just as much trouble as the seller.

[Kefkataran]

Nelson would be "Ha ha", not "Ah ha". :P Sorry, I'm a stickler for Simpsons continuity.

Kudos to Bliz.

[bapenguin]

Nelson would be "Ha ha", not "Ah ha". :P Sorry, I'm a stickler for Simpsons continuity.

Kudos to Bliz.

LOL. I suppose. I will correct for you in the Christmas Spirit. ;)

[CapnAJ]

I guess this puts the subscribers back to 4982000.

[Kefkataran]

I suppose. I will correct for you in the Christmas Spirit.

That's why we love ya, baby.

[jacktion]

Why does WOW only do bannings in big groups once in a while? This inconsistent approach would seem to lull people into a sense that they are not doing anything wrong. It would encourage them to keep on doing wrong, descending further and further into wrongness until suddenly a giant hand slaps them out of the game and says "What are you doing?! Didn't you know to not be farming gold for the past year?!"

You don't see police officers sit back and let murderers kill people for six weeks, then have a "murderer arrest day" where they try to get all the murderers in one big swoop. Wouldn't a constant enforcement plan be more effective? We know that WOW snoops into all of our computers so when they detect a cheat program two days in a row, just ban the person then. Word would get out that they are enforcing rules and people would respect the rules. This haphazard approach seems... well, haphazard.

[Royal Fool]

Why does WOW only do bannings in big groups once in a while? This inconsistent approach would seem to lull people into a sense that they are not doing anything wrong. It would encourage them to keep on doing wrong, descending further and further into wrongness until suddenly a giant hand slaps them out of the game and says "What are you doing?! Didn't you know to not be farming gold for the past year?!"

Yep, that seems to be Blizzard's tactic. Underhanded, but it works. Or that's what I think...

[bKangy]

I think it's the best way, really - let them rebuild their shitty farming and cheating community over a month or two, make them think they're a bit safer... and wham, reap them all in one swing of the sickle. And honestly, they're the people ruining the game for everyone else. I have no sympathy for how much money or time they lose.

[alienchild]

"Neslon"? *makes fun of*

[Borys]

I guess this puts the subscribers back to 4982000.

Haha, yeah, that will teach them.

NOT.

I envy you WoW players. Wish I had the money or time to spend on this best game crack since Diablo 2...

[Zacharai]

Umm, if you read the article, it clears up one thing in the first paragraph:

"In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we have permanently closed more than 18,000 accounts over the past three months for participating in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use."

Over the past three months... not all at once. They just don't announce every ban publically, or they'd be doing it every two minutes.

[IagoTheHunted]

You don't see police officers sit back and let murderers kill people for six weeks, then have a "murderer arrest day" where they try to get all the murderers in one big swoop. Wouldn't a constant enforcement plan be more effective?

Police might not do it but FBI/CIA type agencies do. Plant spys, gather info, then make your move. . . if you always go after the first guy you see doing something wrong you spook everyone else and they go find new ways to cheat. This way Blizzard sends a clear message; "there are ways to cheat, but we're watching and we're not afraid to find EVERYONE whos doing it and ban them 'en mass".

There are other possibilities to explain it as well. Like I'm sure they flag anyone that is gaining assets faster than they "should" be, but proveing that they've been doing something wrong is a bit harder. Probably they had to come up with some automated way to prove they were doing something wrong (like reverse-engineer rootkit mods so they could find them on peoples systems) and then set that in motion and wait a while before they could go "ok now we have proof that all these people are cheating".

Anyway kudos to them for keeping their economy on track and bitchslapping cheaters.

[Jetherik]

Good for Blizzard. I get sick of in-game whispers of people telling me to go to their website for powerleveling and money for gold. I even recieved an in-game junk mail from a company selling gold for money. I talked to a GM about the whispers and they encourage me to send in a verbal harrassment petition with the name of the character and what they said and selling.

[AnthraxKitty]

Why does WOW only do bannings in big groups once in a while? This inconsistent approach would seem to lull people into a sense that they are not doing anything wrong. It would encourage them to keep on doing wrong, descending further and further into wrongness until suddenly a giant hand slaps them out of the game and says "What are you doing?! Didn't you know to not be farming gold for the past year?!"

I think when you start selling fake things for real money, you are officially doing something wrong, and if you don't know that, you really shouldn't even be playing games.

[Montolio]

Wow (no pun intended) thats a lot of money getting tossed out the window, which any cheater rightly deserves. For the fun of it I took a look at the numbers...

Month-to-month ($14.99/month) accounts = $269,820

3 month ($13.99/month paid in full) accounts = $755,460

6 month ($12.99/month paid in full) accounts = $1,402,920

How that 18,000 breaks down for Blizzard they only know but imagine any other game developer or publisher eating that kind of money to protect their customers. I'd guess most just couldn't do it. Go Blizzard and whatever uber-parent company you collect all this cash for. With millions of other happy subscribers playing the game as intended, it's easy to say this is hardly a drop in their bucket.

[Phanto]

I wonder if i bought the game, i pay the monthly fee to play online, how come you can't sell your "OWN" character....?

I'm not saying that i agree at all with selling your own character for real money, but how come that if you buy the game, pay the monthly fee, you can't do whatever you want with your own character, that practically you are paying to use it every month.

[Qoz]

Why does WOW only do bannings in big groups once in a while?

Like I said - it will make it much easier for cheat-programmers to figure out what feature/setting is revealing them if they are banned instantly. It is alot better to keep them somewhat in the dark. Still the 18.000 accounts were not banned at the same time, but over a period of 3 months. I would still guess that cheaters are not banned instantly, but in random groups with some weeks inbetween. This would make the cheat-programs harder to tweak to avoid detection.

I think when you start selling fake things for real money, you are officially doing something wrong, and if you don't know that, you really shouldn't even be playing games.

These things are not fake. They present a true value for people playing the game. Virtual objects are gonna be a common commodity in the future. They are not breaking any law only the EULA. I do agree that this activity is ruining the fun of almost all MMORPGs.
Goldfarmers are parasites.

[Roc Ingersol]

Goldfarmers are a natural outgrowth of the game design.
ingame time = gold = power
and we know that time = money
so... money = gold = power

Until a game breaks that relationship, or starts selling power directly, you're going to have farmers.

[Klade]

I wonder if i bought the game, i pay the monthly fee to play online, how come you can't sell your "OWN" character....?

I'm not saying that i agree at all with selling your own character for real money, but how come that if you buy the game, pay the monthly fee, you can't do whatever you want with your own character, that practically you are paying to use it every month.

Cause it is against the EULA. /shrug if you think thats silly then there you are, but the stance Blizzard (or for that matter all MMO companies take) is that you don't own your character, any of the items they have, or gold they make. Instead you are leasing time on their servers to create and play characters. As such you can't sell or transfer what you don't own.

[Novacaine]

I don't think they ban people who buy the stuff. I bought 1000 gold for $90 and never got banned.

It's like drugs. As long as there is a demand there will be a supply, just that the price might go up. So gold might cost $120 for a 1000 gold now, but you'll always be able to buy it. I wouldn't have ever bought the gold if I thought for a minute that my character might get banned. To stop it you really need to put the fear in the end user, the buyer, not the supplier.

Roc is totally right about time=$$$$. I bought the gold because it takes me a couple hours to make $90 where it would have taken forever to gather all that gold. Got my epic mount etc. Then when I decided to quit WOW I sold my character for $100. Didn't really care about the money so much as getting my $90 back. I recommend selling your toon if you want to quit because it's REALLY hard to go back after that.

[netcraazzy]

I don't think they ban people who buy the stuff. I bought 1000 gold for $90 and never got banned.

It's like drugs. As long as there is a demand there will be a supply, just that the price might go up. So gold might cost $120 for a 1000 gold now, but you'll always be able to buy it. I wouldn't have ever bought the gold if I thought for a minute that my character might get banned. To stop it you really need to put the fear in the end user, the buyer, not the supplier.

Roc is totally right about time=$$$$. I bought the gold because it takes me a couple hours to make $90 where it would have taken forever to gather all that gold. Got my epic mount etc. Then when I decided to quit WOW I sold my character for $100. Didn't really care about the money so much as getting my $90 back. I recommend selling your toon if you want to quit because it's REALLY hard to go back after that.

I don't like it when people buy gold, but when breaking it down to time/money you have a point. I just can't justify spending $90 to get a horse that goes 40% faster in some game.

[RevXwise]

It's actually 100% faster ;)

[Wyrm]

I bought an item way back in the D2 days, and I felt dirty for it. It was on a character on the INTERNET. Not a physical, actual thing. Not something tangible I could touch. That really irked me for some reason. Plus, for the rest of my time on bnet, I didnt feel right playing with that character. It just felt wrong to be cheating like that, even though just about everyone else was. I went into a game with level 6 guys and dropped 2 Stones of Jordan that came with the Occulus I bought from the hacker, said merry xmas and left.

I havent done anything like that in WoW yet, but I've thought of selling my account on occasion. I actually like the game too much to do anything with my account at this point, but it does suck up a large portion of my life that I cannot deny I would like back at some point.

[Deadend]

The reason most companies say that you do not own your items in games is one of liability.

Lets say you have the uber sword of uber. It's a uber sword, see? You could sell it on eBay for $200. But then! Devs decide that the Uber Sword of Uber is tooo good. They Nerf it. Your sword is now worth $50. You decide to sue them. So does everyone else who owns an Ubersword.

Same thing happens if you OWN a lv. 60 Rogue and rogues get gimped. You could possibly sue them if the Rogue is yours. Or if the server goes down, or anything bd at all.

You don't own the items you have in the game, because if you did, then the devlopers could be sued easily.

[Sion]

Why does WOW only do bannings in big groups once in a while? This inconsistent approach would seem to lull people into a sense that they are not doing anything wrong. It would encourage them to keep on doing wrong, descending further and further into wrongness until suddenly a giant hand slaps them out of the game and says "What are you doing?! Didn't you know to not be farming gold for the past year?!"

You don't see police officers sit back and let murderers kill people for six weeks, then have a "murderer arrest day" where they try to get all the murderers in one big swoop. Wouldn't a constant enforcement plan be more effective? We know that WOW snoops into all of our computers so when they detect a cheat program two days in a row, just ban the person then. Word would get out that they are enforcing rules and people would respect the rules. This haphazard approach seems... well, haphazard.


Because if ppl were banned as they cheated then people can test the system and know what flys under the radar and what doesnt. People arnt stupid. They know the Blizz has this stance agenst cheating.

People get around PunkBuster becuase they make a cheat and test it out to see if it works and keep testing and tweeking untill it does.

[Vulture]

Banning Gold Farmer accounts accomplishes very little,

The accounts are macroed up characters in the first place.

The accounts are paid for via cut outs and the related email addresses are just another virtual.

The demand does not go away because time=~money


As for paying for virtual objects , ever bought a web domain? Do you really think you own it? In most cases you don't. But people still spend time on your piece of virtual real estate.

Buying something in AC2 = Bad Investment.
Buyinh Something in a Blizzard Product = Likely a good investment because you expect it to be around for a while.

[drakkarim]

this is one good way to get another 18,000 customers to go out and buy your game again :)

[GrinR]

I have a friend who buys gold all the time. No one has successfully convinced me that it has a serious impact on the game's economy. The gold had to be "earned" within the context of the game, so it's not like you're getting a hack that makes money appear out of nowhere. Banning hackers who break the rules of the game (not the EULA) is a must, and I'm all for it, but people who want to exploit an economy? I'm all for that as well.

BTW, there are good vendors for this stuff who I've spoken with about their business model and it's pretty cut and dried stuff. You don't need to cheat to make money as a gold farming operation - and apparently a sizable amount of the profit comes from arbitrage, the buying of gold for cheap and selling it for much much more.

[Genital Eclipse]

I don't think they ban people who buy the stuff. I bought 1000 gold for $90 and never got banned. I then used the 1000 gold pieces to purchase real children from the Marshal Islands.


Woah woah, wait a minute, you bought CHILDREN with WOW gold?!?!?!?!

[DeadPixel]

If you let the gold farming get you, you're either jealous others have the time and you don't, too poor to afford their gold, or simply enjoy seeing people banned who don't happen to play the game the way you do. Ruining the game economy? What is this World of Russia?

Cheaters and gold farmers will always exist. The solution is to work on fixing the cheats because banning is simply ignoring. Easier to ban then re-engineer faulty game features, but that's an obvious thing.

[endrom]

HAW HAW, Good riddice, Im glad blizzard is taking forward action against this like their other games. Congrats blizz

[IagoTheHunted]

If you let the gold farming get you, you're either jealous others have the time and you don't, too poor to afford their gold, or simply enjoy seeing people banned who don't happen to play the game the way you do. Ruining the game economy? What is this World of Russia?

Cheaters and gold farmers will always exist. The solution is to work on fixing the cheats because banning is simply ignoring. Easier to ban then re-engineer faulty game features, but that's an obvious thing.


Sorry but: wrong. Ruining game economy is in fact a very real problem, but you have to have at least mid-level intelligence to understand why. Basically:

The developers need to make sure the game has a certain level of difficulty in obtaining money and precious items. So anything that continuously pushes the game twards being unbalanced is a problem. What would "unbalanced" be? Well either
a) Theres so much money and so many items floating around that the game is easy and dull. The extreme example would be that a beginner player walks up to anyone and gets tons of money and all the best weapons for nothing because everything is abundant and thus worthless. This breaks the game.
b) Basically the opposit. Too little of everything, or all valuble items/money belong to a handful of cheaters, and thus the game is impossibly difficult. This also breaks the game.

The developers need to make sure the game doesn't float into either catagory by making sure that money and items are released into the world (by killing monsters and doing quests etc., which creates items and money from nothing, like the government printing more money) at about the same rate that the world grows in terms of people/level/whatever other growth is intended for gameplay.
If people cheat, then they're artificially disturbing this balance. By getting more money and valubles faster than intended, they're making the game too easy for themselves, but the results effect everyone, because now the game economy is slideing twards that first example of broken gameplay where everything is too easy. If the developers just sit on the side and do nothing, the game becomes broken over time. To stop the game from being broken, they'd have to tweak the balance to compensate for the cheaters, which means making it harder to get money and items... in fact, harder than it should be for people who aren't cheating. Right there we've finally hit the problem, cheaters fuck the economy and non-cheaters suffer when developers are forced to compensate.

The solution. Ban cheaters. If you cheated, screw you, your fucking it up for everyone.

[Hagetaka]

Well said Iago, props.

[Zeal]

Someone give me gold.

Player name: Zealcrusader, Malfurion

THX.......

[IagoTheHunted]

Well said Iago, props.

thanks. bugs me when people speak out without thinking it through. (Not that this is exactly the ultimate social forum, and granted I can't spell for shit... but still )

[Vulture]

I'm sorry banning these 18000 accounts accomplished what in terms of Gold Farming again?

/Nope never played WoW , but I do understand the economics of MMOs having played/tested several.

[Phanto]

Cause it is against the EULA. /shrug if you think thats silly then there you are, but the stance Blizzard (or for that matter all MMO companies take) is that you don't own your character, any of the items they have, or gold they make. Instead you are leasing time on their servers to create and play characters. As such you can't sell or transfer what you don't own.


In a true bizarre way that nobody care about that, that sucks :D .

Anyway the may be in the EULA but i think its not fair.
I know that i sound to you guys like "WTF your talking about!?!"
I know it would be useless that you can keep the character after the MMORPG of that company end, yes like you hear it end, if i remember correct in the faq of their website they said that the game will have a 3 years cycle but that was in the time before the game was release i don;t know now. :)

[Nastrado]

I have a friend who buys gold all the time. No one has successfully convinced me that it has a serious impact on the game's economy. l

Go ahead and try to mine large amounts of thoruim for yourself for such things as darkmoon tickets (eng). You will get pretty pissed whent here is a farmer there 10 seconds after a vein pops up if not sooner 99% of the time on some servers. Then go to the AH and see that 99.9% of the Thorium on the market is from the same China farmers.

[GrinR]

Go ahead and try to mine large amounts of thoruim for yourself for such things as darkmoon tickets (eng). You will get pretty pissed whent here is a farmer there 10 seconds after a vein pops up if not sooner 99% of the time on some servers. Then go to the AH and see that 99.9% of the Thorium on the market is from the same China farmers.

Sounds like sour grapes to me. Get there sooner.

[GrinR]

thanks. bugs me when people speak out without thinking it through. (Not that this is exactly the ultimate social forum, and granted I can't spell for shit... but still )

I think you're grouping cheaters together with economic entrepreneurs. If you're using teleport cheats to get to areas or resources - that's cheating. If you modify the code so you "make" gold appear - that's cheating.

If you have no life and spend your days "farming" resources and mobs, that is not cheating, that's playing the game. If you then sell those resources to someone else for RL money, tell me how that is any different from simply transferring the money to someone you don't know. The economy is still closed.

When my friend buys gold he's hopefully buying from a gold farmer and not a cheater - but they are not the same thing.

[DeadPixel]

a) Theres so much money and so many items floating around that the game is easy and dull. The extreme example would be that a beginner player walks up to anyone and gets tons of money and all the best weapons for nothing because everything is abundant and thus worthless. This breaks the game.

Truer words have never been spoken, by a jealous person.


b) Basically the opposit. Too little of everything, or all valuble items/money belong to a handful of cheaters, and thus the game is impossibly difficult. This also breaks the game.
What a pussy! Maybe you should go back to Mrs. PacMan.


The solution. Ban cheaters. If you cheated, screw you, your fucking it up for everyone.
Did I say cheaters? I said gold famers are not a problem. What a moron.

[Montgomery_Python]

Homer sekshul!

[Thenetcase]

Why does WOW only do bannings in big groups once in a while? This inconsistent approach would seem to lull people into a sense that they are not doing anything wrong. It would encourage them to keep on doing wrong, descending further and further into wrongness until suddenly a giant hand slaps them out of the game and says "What are you doing?! Didn't you know to not be farming gold for the past year?!"

Well apparently it's like RIAA tactics.. don't do jack and out of the blue you blast people with court orders. Only in this case they are just banning accounts.

Really, I can understand it. They probably have a limited number of people for this stuff, so what they do is they assign someone to spending a week or two going through and finding the people who are cheating and banning them. That way they don't have to pay someone just to sit there and actively do that all the time. It's called employment ballancing or something. :)
The unfortunate side effect is that it looks disorganized to the untrained eye. ;)

The fortunate thing about it is that the cheaters never know when the hammer is going to fall and that kind of scare tactics is effective in keeping some would-be cheaters from even trying in the first place (which is ok with me, if you want my opinion).

Anyways, that's all I have to say about that. I could be completely wrong, but that's what I see.

-TNC-

[IagoTheHunted]

I think you're grouping cheaters together with economic entrepreneurs. If you're using teleport cheats to get to areas or resources - that's cheating. If you modify the code so you "make" gold appear - that's cheating.

If you have no life and spend your days "farming" resources and mobs, that is not cheating, that's playing the game. If you then sell those resources to someone else for RL money, tell me how that is any different from simply transferring the money to someone you don't know. The economy is still closed.

When my friend buys gold he's hopefully buying from a gold farmer and not a cheater - but they are not the same thing.

It was my understanding that by "gold farming" they were talking about people useing macros to have their character automatically repeate a gold-aquireing activity, which is certainly cheating. As for people who just have no life (or work at some asian sweatshop) and spend all there time getting resources. It's not cheating but it sets a standard that the developers have to take into account balancing the game, and makes the game harder for "normal" players for the same reason cheating does.
*shrug* I don't have a problem with that for casual users but sweatshop farming has a big enough influence that it can fuck the economy and effectively force people to buy from them instead of aquireing money on their own in game with resonable difficulty. Personaly I'd rather get it free.

[IagoTheHunted]

Quote:
Originally Posted by IagoTheHunted
a) Theres so much money and so many items floating around that the game is easy and dull. The extreme example would be that a beginner player walks up to anyone and gets tons of money and all the best weapons for nothing because everything is abundant and thus worthless. This breaks the game.

Truer words have never been spoken, by a jealous person.



oh braaaaavo. jealous of what exactly? I'm a developer. I don't have time to play MMO's much nowadays, so jeliousy of other players doesn't much enter into it. I'd just prefer games I develop aren't broken by simps like you, that's all.


Quote:
Originally Posted by IagoTheHunted
b) Basically the opposit. Too little of everything, or all valuble items/money belong to a handful of cheaters, and thus the game is impossibly difficult. This also breaks the game.


What a pussy! Maybe you should go back to Mrs. PacMan.


uh... yeah. what an argument, amazing. You should write for the times.



Quote:
Originally Posted by IagoTheHunted
The solution. Ban cheaters. If you cheated, screw you, your fucking it up for everyone.


Did I say cheaters? I said gold famers are not a problem. What a moron.

if gold farmers are useing macros they are cheating. If not then it's only a problem when people are doing it en-mass sweatshop-style to make money, because the game isn't intended to contend with that sort of impact on the virtual economy and it screws it up for everyone for the same reason that cheating does, if the money becomes so devalued from not-real-players that you have to buy huge cashes of it off eBay then there's a problem.

I'm not saying that it's wierd to buy virtual money or it's wrong to play your game all day and night, but when a huge mass of people is doing it for profit and it makes the game less fun to play for everyone else (by breaking the economy) then it seems totally reasonable to ban those people.