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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Can gold buying be outlawed?
Followup on today's earlier gold farmer post, where Felsir in the comments suggested banning the gold buyers. According to this newspaper there are as many as 500,000 Chinese gold farmers. That is for all MMORPG together, but obviously WoW has a significant market share.
In Blizzards regular gold farmer bannings press releases the usual number of accounts banned is between 60,000 to 80,000, and that is just the accounts that have been found using bots, Blizzard doesn't ban "manual" gold farmers.
Lets do some hypothetical math. Lets assume that WoW has a total of 100,000 gold farmers. Each gold farmer earns $100 per month (see link above). According to the spam tells I keep getting in game, its about 1,000 gold for $50, but I'd say 80% of that is kept by the companies running the gold farms. So each farmer only gets $10 per 1,000 gold, and needs to make 10,000 gold per month to earn his $100. Which means that each month 1,000,000,000 aka 1 billion gold are being sold, for $50 million. Wow!
But now lets look at the buyers. 1,000 gold seems to be a frequently traded amount, so lets assume that a typical buyer buys 1,000 gold per month. But if each gold farmer produces 10,000 gold per month, there must be 10 buyers per seller. So that would make 1 million gold buyers, or 1 in 7 World of Warcraft players.
Blizzard can well afford to ban 80,000 gold farmers. It makes for good publicity. And most of them will be back within a day, so Blizzard isn't actually losing any money from the bannings. As they need to buy a new account key, Blizzard actually *makes* money from these bannings. At $20 per new account, banning 80,000 gold farmers nets Blizzard $1.6 million. Call it a Blizzard tax on gold farming operations.
What Blizzard couldn't possibly afford is to ban the 1 million gold buyers. As these have no commercial interest in playing WoW, and banning would destroy the characters they were willing to invest in, a large percentage of the banned gold buyers would *not* open another account and start over. Blizzard can't afford to lose one seventh of their player base. Especially since we can safely assume that most gold buyers are in the USA or Europe, where Blizzard earns a lot more per month on each account.
Do you know what Blizzard could do to permanently remove at least half of the gold farmers from World of Warcraft? Easy, just decrease the cost for the different levels of riding skills by a factor of 10. Learning to ride an epic non-flying mount should cost 80 gold, not 800. And the epic flying mount 500 gold, not 5000.
True, the gold farmers exist only because there are gold buyers. But the gold buyers exist only because of the money sinks in the game. If there weren't expensive things like epic mounts to buy, and if raiding would net you more gold than the cost of repairs and potions, few people would need to buy gold. And then the gold farmers would be out of a job.
- posted by Tobold @ 4:08 PM Permanent Link
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Or replace the gold with a more significant rep grind, or quest chain for a bop item, or anything else that leads to an equivalent time sink without the ability to buy your way out of it. It almost makes you wonder whether the people willing to sink money instead of time into the game are being encouraged instead of simply permitted.
# posted by 
: 28/11/06 16:53
: 28/11/06 16:53
Yes, yes, but you are assuming that everyone needs to buy gold to purchase things like epic mounts. I never needed to buy gold and I could afford to buy anything for both myself and my wife's main.
Warcraft has a very advanced economy for a game. You can make as much gold as you want if you take a little time to explore opportunities. For most people we can call this process "unexplored content".
There are 2 ways to spend your time in WoW. You can waste time doing stuff directly leading to your intended goals or you can make money and buy the items needed to achieve goals (if they aren't BoP). Normally making money is more efficient and just as rewarding so I try to mix a little of both to keep from getting burned out on either.
Here is an example of how I made about 2500 gold in about 2 weeks (~16-20 hours of play time). Each day after work or on the weekends in the mornings, I would camp the guard tower in WP near Hearthglen for an hour or 2 with my mage and farm Recipe: Enchant Weapon Crusader. I farmed 6 recipes in ~16 hours, sold them for 425g each which equals about 150g per hour plus a TON of runecloth used for power-leveling Darnassus faction and the assorted greens for DE. That is WAY more than enough gold for 2 Epic mounts and all the runecloth to power-level 2 avatars to exalted with Darnassus.
Or yes, a person could just fork up $100-$200 USD to a gold farmer for the WoW gold I guess, however; I have no clue why that person would bother to play WoW in the first place (other examples: people who don't like hardcore raiding, don't like farming mats, don't like rep grinding, don't like making gold, etc...).
Making gold isn’t easy which is where the challenge and enjoyment come from. That enchanting recipe is now selling for less than 150g on my old server and isn’t worth the time to farm it anymore for me. On to the next challenge.
Warcraft has a very advanced economy for a game. You can make as much gold as you want if you take a little time to explore opportunities. For most people we can call this process "unexplored content".
There are 2 ways to spend your time in WoW. You can waste time doing stuff directly leading to your intended goals or you can make money and buy the items needed to achieve goals (if they aren't BoP). Normally making money is more efficient and just as rewarding so I try to mix a little of both to keep from getting burned out on either.
Here is an example of how I made about 2500 gold in about 2 weeks (~16-20 hours of play time). Each day after work or on the weekends in the mornings, I would camp the guard tower in WP near Hearthglen for an hour or 2 with my mage and farm Recipe: Enchant Weapon Crusader. I farmed 6 recipes in ~16 hours, sold them for 425g each which equals about 150g per hour plus a TON of runecloth used for power-leveling Darnassus faction and the assorted greens for DE. That is WAY more than enough gold for 2 Epic mounts and all the runecloth to power-level 2 avatars to exalted with Darnassus.
Or yes, a person could just fork up $100-$200 USD to a gold farmer for the WoW gold I guess, however; I have no clue why that person would bother to play WoW in the first place (other examples: people who don't like hardcore raiding, don't like farming mats, don't like rep grinding, don't like making gold, etc...).
Making gold isn’t easy which is where the challenge and enjoyment come from. That enchanting recipe is now selling for less than 150g on my old server and isn’t worth the time to farm it anymore for me. On to the next challenge.
# posted by : 28/11/06 17:11
: 28/11/06 17:11
Perhaps perma-banning gold-buyers would be disasterous, but a one week ban might be effective. If they do this every month to everyone who bought gold, that would be a very harsh penalty without the need to re-roll. If repeat buyers were looking at one week out of every month as banned I think people would begin to think twice about buying.
# posted by : 28/11/06 17:18
: 28/11/06 17:18
"True, the gold farmers exist only because there are gold buyers. But the gold buyers exist only because of the money sinks in the game. If there weren't expensive things like epic mounts to buy, and if raiding would net you more gold than the cost of repairs and potions, few people would need to buy gold. And then the gold farmers would be out of a job."
This might be true...but the real improvement is more mental than anything else. If the players were not so consumed with "gotta have it NOW" then they wouldn't buy. The idea is that they are EPIC. Epic isn't something that happens overnight. If you are playing a legendary character, or you wish to have an epic character...you must be willing to sacrifice to get it. The rub is that...players want it now, with as little pinch and effort as possible. And thus, buy the gold.
This might be true...but the real improvement is more mental than anything else. If the players were not so consumed with "gotta have it NOW" then they wouldn't buy. The idea is that they are EPIC. Epic isn't something that happens overnight. If you are playing a legendary character, or you wish to have an epic character...you must be willing to sacrifice to get it. The rub is that...players want it now, with as little pinch and effort as possible. And thus, buy the gold.
# posted by : 28/11/06 17:57
: 28/11/06 17:57
I used to enjoy playing The Sims until I found the cheat to give my Sims literally billions of Simoleons. And that's when the fun stopped.
My Hunter has the Amulet of the Darkmoon, a Dwarven Hand Cannon and a regular (not PvP) Epic Mount, all bought and paid for with gold and mats he accumulated through grinding for hours, days, weeks, months even.
The absolute one & only reason I'd buy gold is to pay for the ever constant Raid-repair bill. But as I don't Raid I don't need to buy gold. My 34 Warlock currently has 90 gold in the bank, of which 10g came from my Main so he could buy a set of Runecloth Bags. I'm amazed at how much gold he has accrued, and in such a short period of time, and at how easy it was to make such a large amount (for a mid level toon). Of course if I was any other class (except for a Paladin) I'd soon be spending most of that gold on a lvl 40 Mount.
I was going to dispute your calculations of 1 in 7 players buying gold, but I personally know two people who do so, and they both buy gold so they don't have to spend their off night farming to pay for the previous night's Raid repair bill. I suspect many of the gold buyers are buying gold to pay for their Raid repair bill. I'm sure people buy gold just to get their Epic Mount, but I bet a lot of buyers are also hardcore Raiders who need to pay the blacksmith bills.
Tobold, I agree with you. If Blizzard increased the drop rate of gold in end game Instances to where it did pay for your Repair bill, I think you'd see considerably less gold sellers.
My Hunter has the Amulet of the Darkmoon, a Dwarven Hand Cannon and a regular (not PvP) Epic Mount, all bought and paid for with gold and mats he accumulated through grinding for hours, days, weeks, months even.
The absolute one & only reason I'd buy gold is to pay for the ever constant Raid-repair bill. But as I don't Raid I don't need to buy gold. My 34 Warlock currently has 90 gold in the bank, of which 10g came from my Main so he could buy a set of Runecloth Bags. I'm amazed at how much gold he has accrued, and in such a short period of time, and at how easy it was to make such a large amount (for a mid level toon). Of course if I was any other class (except for a Paladin) I'd soon be spending most of that gold on a lvl 40 Mount.
I was going to dispute your calculations of 1 in 7 players buying gold, but I personally know two people who do so, and they both buy gold so they don't have to spend their off night farming to pay for the previous night's Raid repair bill. I suspect many of the gold buyers are buying gold to pay for their Raid repair bill. I'm sure people buy gold just to get their Epic Mount, but I bet a lot of buyers are also hardcore Raiders who need to pay the blacksmith bills.
Tobold, I agree with you. If Blizzard increased the drop rate of gold in end game Instances to where it did pay for your Repair bill, I think you'd see considerably less gold sellers.
# posted by : 29/11/06 00:05
: 29/11/06 00:05
Part of the idea behind making mounts so expensive is to soak up all that extra money and reduce mudflation. Of course mudflation is an issue partly because of the gold farmers that exist because mounts and such are so expensive. Kind of a vicious circle. Though I think it'd be hard for Blizzard to go back and make epic mounts cheaper now, they still have the opportunity for making flying mounts cheaper, at least up until TBC comes out.
# posted by : 29/11/06 00:16
: 29/11/06 00:16
Making gold isn’t easy which is where the challenge and enjoyment come from. That enchanting recipe is now selling for less than 150g on my old server and isn’t worth the time to farm it anymore for me. On to the next challenge.
Are you considering farming a challenge? I guess finding a sweet spot might be considered a challenge at least.
My threshold for farming/grinding activities is quite different I guess. I don't think I would spend 20 hours (or more) grinding/farming for anything really. If not obtained through regular (fun) gameplay, then I'd just skip that part of the game. I have spent too much time grinding/farming in some previous MMOs , don't want to go through that again.
Are you considering farming a challenge? I guess finding a sweet spot might be considered a challenge at least.
My threshold for farming/grinding activities is quite different I guess. I don't think I would spend 20 hours (or more) grinding/farming for anything really. If not obtained through regular (fun) gameplay, then I'd just skip that part of the game. I have spent too much time grinding/farming in some previous MMOs , don't want to go through that again.
I have a friend who buys WoW gold, it costs him £13 for 1000g, less than 2 hours pay.
I'm tempted to myself, I have gotten my epic mount and everything already on my main but have clocked up over 80 days played time, I am frankly bored of grinding with him. Should I go through all the same crap with my alt when I can be in the same financial position after 14days played time?
I really can't see any pride in spending another 66 days /played time getting alot of the same stuff. I'd love to hear someone try and justify it to me.
I'm tempted to myself, I have gotten my epic mount and everything already on my main but have clocked up over 80 days played time, I am frankly bored of grinding with him. Should I go through all the same crap with my alt when I can be in the same financial position after 14days played time?
I really can't see any pride in spending another 66 days /played time getting alot of the same stuff. I'd love to hear someone try and justify it to me.
# posted by : 29/11/06 02:08
: 29/11/06 02:08
Blizzard can't afford to do anything - temporary or permanent to guild buyers. The numbers are probably too high. BC being pushed back, people are getting ansy and other games are around the corner, this wouldn't be the time to piss off paying customers. A ban of any time might piss people off enough to quit.
# posted by : 29/11/06 04:56
: 29/11/06 04:56
Hmm, Tobold that is a take on the subject I hadn't considered. Seeing those numbers makes the buyer-banning tactics less probable.
I'm not sure if the price of items really are an issue. Compare it to people copying compact-discs. I buy my CDs and DVDs (because I like to have the 'real' cover, booklet etc.) and people keep bringing the price-argument to the table to 'justify' pirating CDs and DVDs. However when confronting them with a question "would 5 euro be a fair price", the response usually is "yes". Still they will pirate the copies since a empty CD-R costs less ("I would be mad to rob my own wallet!"). Unless items come for free, there will still be people to choose the path of the least resistance. In WoW people see things as a timesink- see Johnny's comment: "why play 60 days if I can buy the reward for £13?"
Prices could come down a little but not too much to make the reward ...wel..a reward. One of the reasons I think is, these items are outside of the player economy. The price of the Crusader enchant is 450 gold because it is rare, it becomes cheaper is more are available. If the mount could be bought by gathering ingredients the price of a mount depends on the availability of those ingredients the Dreadsteed for warlocks is such an item.
Thinking of it- it wouldn't solve anything then there would be chinese-ingredient-farmers *argh!*
I'm not sure if the price of items really are an issue. Compare it to people copying compact-discs. I buy my CDs and DVDs (because I like to have the 'real' cover, booklet etc.) and people keep bringing the price-argument to the table to 'justify' pirating CDs and DVDs. However when confronting them with a question "would 5 euro be a fair price", the response usually is "yes". Still they will pirate the copies since a empty CD-R costs less ("I would be mad to rob my own wallet!"). Unless items come for free, there will still be people to choose the path of the least resistance. In WoW people see things as a timesink- see Johnny's comment: "why play 60 days if I can buy the reward for £13?"
Prices could come down a little but not too much to make the reward ...wel..a reward. One of the reasons I think is, these items are outside of the player economy. The price of the Crusader enchant is 450 gold because it is rare, it becomes cheaper is more are available. If the mount could be bought by gathering ingredients the price of a mount depends on the availability of those ingredients the Dreadsteed for warlocks is such an item.
Thinking of it- it wouldn't solve anything then there would be chinese-ingredient-farmers *argh!*
# posted by : 29/11/06 13:44
: 29/11/06 13:44
The price of the Crusader enchant is 450 gold because it is rare, it becomes cheaper is more are available.
The AH price of the Crusader enchantment is a typical example of bad game design. Why is one of the best enchanting recipes a rare random drop which isn't bind on pickup? The top-level recipes of all tradeskills should be acquired by quests or be bind on pickup drops at specific locations, where then only the people doing the tradeskill would farm. The way this is handled in Scholomance, where Jandice Barov drops a book *on the floor*, and every tailor in the group can click it to get a recipe for a soulstone bag, is much better game design. You want something specific, and there is a specific way to get it. Not "I want something specific, so I farm money and buy it from some lucky bastard for whom it dropped".
The one thing that Blizzard did right is to make most rare and epics be bind on pickup or quest rewards. There is no doubt where my Will of Arlokk or my tier 1 and 2 priest gear is coming from, I couldn't possibly have bought them. I'd love the game even more if *all* rare and epic items were bind on pickup, and only green loot and crafted items could be traded on the AH. I don't see any added value in having bind on equip epics in the game.
And the chinese ingredient farmers already exist. Curiously they tend to be too productive, gathering more resources than there is demand for, thus keeping the prices down. I like them. :)
The AH price of the Crusader enchantment is a typical example of bad game design. Why is one of the best enchanting recipes a rare random drop which isn't bind on pickup? The top-level recipes of all tradeskills should be acquired by quests or be bind on pickup drops at specific locations, where then only the people doing the tradeskill would farm. The way this is handled in Scholomance, where Jandice Barov drops a book *on the floor*, and every tailor in the group can click it to get a recipe for a soulstone bag, is much better game design. You want something specific, and there is a specific way to get it. Not "I want something specific, so I farm money and buy it from some lucky bastard for whom it dropped".
The one thing that Blizzard did right is to make most rare and epics be bind on pickup or quest rewards. There is no doubt where my Will of Arlokk or my tier 1 and 2 priest gear is coming from, I couldn't possibly have bought them. I'd love the game even more if *all* rare and epic items were bind on pickup, and only green loot and crafted items could be traded on the AH. I don't see any added value in having bind on equip epics in the game.
And the chinese ingredient farmers already exist. Curiously they tend to be too productive, gathering more resources than there is demand for, thus keeping the prices down. I like them. :)
"I'd love the game even more if *all* rare and epic items were bind on pickup, and only green loot and crafted items could be traded on the AH. I don't see any added value in having bind on equip epics in the game."
There's plenty of value in having BoE epics, most of which are lesser quality than BoP's. For one, I think they balance the economics for a raiding guild. Our guild collects blue/purple BoE's from raids and sells them on the AH. All of the profits are used to buy potion/flask mats for our raids. So our members get "free" consumables and only need to cover their repair bills. We clear BWL, AQ40 to Twin Emps, and the first 3 Naxx bosses every week. That's a lot of mats. But this way our members get to spend their off nights relaxing, rather than farming.
Secondly, at least on our server, a large chunk of the Horde will never get epics any other way. Our guild members don't want these items, nor do we need the nexus. We sell at fair market value and someone benefits from our efforts.
-Mart
There's plenty of value in having BoE epics, most of which are lesser quality than BoP's. For one, I think they balance the economics for a raiding guild. Our guild collects blue/purple BoE's from raids and sells them on the AH. All of the profits are used to buy potion/flask mats for our raids. So our members get "free" consumables and only need to cover their repair bills. We clear BWL, AQ40 to Twin Emps, and the first 3 Naxx bosses every week. That's a lot of mats. But this way our members get to spend their off nights relaxing, rather than farming.
Secondly, at least on our server, a large chunk of the Horde will never get epics any other way. Our guild members don't want these items, nor do we need the nexus. We sell at fair market value and someone benefits from our efforts.
-Mart
# posted by : 29/11/06 14:59
: 29/11/06 14:59
"I never needed to buy gold and I could afford to buy anything for both myself and my wife's main."
Either you are account sharing, which is a no-no IRC - or you are giving you wife gold.
Lets us examine the latter. You "farm" gold. You give it to someone else.
Now.
Lu Ping "farms" gold and gives it to me.
Except that I give him some money.
How, exactly does Blizz ban me and not you ? Get access to my Visa card bill and bank accounts - nope, never.
You must have some pretty good Crusader drop rates on your sever though :o) I know people who have farmed for days on end and not got a drop, let alone 6 !
Either you are account sharing, which is a no-no IRC - or you are giving you wife gold.
Lets us examine the latter. You "farm" gold. You give it to someone else.
Now.
Lu Ping "farms" gold and gives it to me.
Except that I give him some money.
How, exactly does Blizz ban me and not you ? Get access to my Visa card bill and bank accounts - nope, never.
You must have some pretty good Crusader drop rates on your sever though :o) I know people who have farmed for days on end and not got a drop, let alone 6 !
# posted by : 29/11/06 18:23
: 29/11/06 18:23
And a whinge about Crusader, it took me ages to Level enchanting to 300. And quite a long time gathering Dreamfoil to make the 180G I paid for Crusader (but still less time I think than farming the enchant itself despite the above.
And now folk complain when I dare to charge them just 5G for it when they have the mats. Humph !
And now folk complain when I dare to charge them just 5G for it when they have the mats. Humph !
# posted by : 29/11/06 18:27
: 29/11/06 18:27
Half a million Chinese working in this industry? Imagine if Blizzard sold the gold directly (it's going to happen anyway) and hired the workforce to do something valuable for the game. Imagine if all the NPCs were replaced with CLPCs ("Cheap Labor Player Characters").
Gamers could play in a much richer environment, interacting with real people playing various roles.
I suspect language would be a barrier, but not an unconquerable one.
I think it would be a whole different game. My point is that this kind of cheap labor should be an opportunity not a drain on the gaming industry.
Gamers could play in a much richer environment, interacting with real people playing various roles.
I suspect language would be a barrier, but not an unconquerable one.
I think it would be a whole different game. My point is that this kind of cheap labor should be an opportunity not a drain on the gaming industry.
# posted by : 30/11/06 01:01
: 30/11/06 01:01
i think everyone has thier own ideas about how to stop gold buying, and for some reason everyone thinks it's for mounts. if that's the case, then why not just give every class a free mount at 40, and force every class to have a epic mount quest.. just like locks/pallies. but just make it like 100g or something for the total epic cost.. but make the "challenge" be collecting/doing instance runs to make up for difficulty and significance of owning an epic mount instead of paying crazy gold for it.
but i still don't think that'll stop gold buying.. because I've bought gold, and it was for profession leveling.. not for a mount. I just don't have the time to go out and farm all the mats i need for a profession. i got my gathering professions to 300 and it wasn't all that bad.. but still had WAAAAY less mats needed to get the trade skill up to 300. It was just easier to buy the mats at that point.
plus i know another friend that bought them, just to buy some nice new blues for his char..
so i don't think changing mount costs will really stop gold buying.
but i still don't think that'll stop gold buying.. because I've bought gold, and it was for profession leveling.. not for a mount. I just don't have the time to go out and farm all the mats i need for a profession. i got my gathering professions to 300 and it wasn't all that bad.. but still had WAAAAY less mats needed to get the trade skill up to 300. It was just easier to buy the mats at that point.
plus i know another friend that bought them, just to buy some nice new blues for his char..
so i don't think changing mount costs will really stop gold buying.
# posted by : 30/11/06 04:44
: 30/11/06 04:44
I wonder why gold prices vary so much by server. I get a google alert for "world of warcraft" sent to my gmail account. On the sidebar, I see the sponsored ads for WoW gold. Some places advertise $69/1k gold, while another says "as low as $5/1k" That's a huge discrepancy!
My bet would be that anything below $20 / 1k gold is a scam. Yes, chinese labor is cheap. And yes, some gold can be earned by botting. But making 1000 gold still takes time and effort, which isn't free. You'd need to be able to dupe gold to sell it that cheap, and that hasn't happened yet in WoW.
The high gold prices are probably for newer servers, where people are less rich. On my relatively old server, the unsolicited whispers I constantly get sell gold for $40 to $50 per 1 k.
I don't know how much time it would take *you* to make 1 k gold, but I figure I couldn't possibly do it in less than 30 hours. So $1.50 per hour, which seems a reasonable price to me.
The high gold prices are probably for newer servers, where people are less rich. On my relatively old server, the unsolicited whispers I constantly get sell gold for $40 to $50 per 1 k.
I don't know how much time it would take *you* to make 1 k gold, but I figure I couldn't possibly do it in less than 30 hours. So $1.50 per hour, which seems a reasonable price to me.
What real reason is there to give or mail gold to people in this game, anyhow? Wouldn't much of this be eliminated by simply capping the amount of money that can be exchanged outside of the auction house? Yes, the AH could be exploited, but it's not very big at all and wouldn't be difficult to monitor for that.
I've withheld comment to this point... but here are a few tidbits:
Gold buying and selling is prohibited by the ULA. If one engages in the practice, one becomes liable to corrective action. Excuses are a dime-a-dozen; everyone has a stable of excuses to justify their actions. But the bottom line is that hacking and botting and gold trafficking are not permitted. Getting away with prohibited actions at the present is no guarantee that you won't be banned next week or next year. If you get scammed by a fake gold seller, you'll probably have to eat that loss yourself - or admit to Blizzard that you got scammed while breaking the ULA. And don't hold your breath waiting for those persons who are following the rules to rush to your defense if you're scammed or banned.
Corrective action has been taken by Blizzard in the form of tens of thousands of accounts banned every month for the past several months. Botting and hacking have been targeted; botting is obviously associated with gold selling (US law enforcement would that deduction "profiling"). The impact of the mass-banning on game economy has been a noticeable deflation of prices; a tangible and welcome trend for those who not buying gold.
Regarding other recommended solutions:
Caps can be circumvented.
Let's say a 10g cap is imposed on the WoW mail system, and player X buys 100g from Gold Sellers, Inc.
Then Gold Sellers, Inc. has 10 of their farmers each send you 10g.
BoP seems a viable solution at first, but I don't think it will be implemented as a solution because less BoE items will result in less in-game economy. Part of the fun of WoW is playing the AH. Many people play the AH for their cash, making more by buying-low-selling-high than they would by grinding. And one of the biggest money-movers in the WoW economy is enchanting, which would not be touched by BoP.
Gold buying and selling is prohibited by the ULA. If one engages in the practice, one becomes liable to corrective action. Excuses are a dime-a-dozen; everyone has a stable of excuses to justify their actions. But the bottom line is that hacking and botting and gold trafficking are not permitted. Getting away with prohibited actions at the present is no guarantee that you won't be banned next week or next year. If you get scammed by a fake gold seller, you'll probably have to eat that loss yourself - or admit to Blizzard that you got scammed while breaking the ULA. And don't hold your breath waiting for those persons who are following the rules to rush to your defense if you're scammed or banned.
Corrective action has been taken by Blizzard in the form of tens of thousands of accounts banned every month for the past several months. Botting and hacking have been targeted; botting is obviously associated with gold selling (US law enforcement would that deduction "profiling"). The impact of the mass-banning on game economy has been a noticeable deflation of prices; a tangible and welcome trend for those who not buying gold.
Regarding other recommended solutions:
Caps can be circumvented.
Let's say a 10g cap is imposed on the WoW mail system, and player X buys 100g from Gold Sellers, Inc.
Then Gold Sellers, Inc. has 10 of their farmers each send you 10g.
BoP seems a viable solution at first, but I don't think it will be implemented as a solution because less BoE items will result in less in-game economy. Part of the fun of WoW is playing the AH. Many people play the AH for their cash, making more by buying-low-selling-high than they would by grinding. And one of the biggest money-movers in the WoW economy is enchanting, which would not be touched by BoP.
Don't know if this is a sign of things to come but I was just recently notified that my account was banned for exploiting the WoW economy. The only premise for this ban I can see is that I purchased 200 gold about a month ago after returning from a 6 month absense. Gold buyers be warned!
# posted by : 21/12/06 02:57
: 21/12/06 02:57
Banning player accounts is not the way to go and it won't solve anything. I have not heard of anyone I know having their account banned for buying gold so that's just BS. Blizzard wouldn't cut off their nose to spite their face, I'm sure. As was earlier stated, 1/7the of their player base is a huge number and one they can't afford to lose.
So whatever reject from Vanguard suggested that, go back and play Bannedguard and leave us at World of Warcraft alone.
The problem is that if you raid nightly or even a few nights a week, your repair bills are huge and you have no way to pay for them except grinding silly quests for hours on end. And what do they get you? More repair bills. You make a little bit of money to go raid for a night - maybe.
Someone suggested some wild idea about end rep, something...I didn't even understand what they were saying. How would that fix the problem? It sounded like it would only complicate it. The problem is REPAIR BILLS - not buying gear or stupid epic mounts.
Mr. "I can go find place to get this uber recipe that sells for 425g a whack" or whatever, your time has come and gone. In other words, making money in WoW is extremely difficult and time consuming. My guild expects me to raid every night and I can't grind out money during the day to pay for repair bills - I work for a living.
So...let the gold farmers do it. Blizzard makes more money and you know that's got to make them happy. If they are happy, you know they really don't give a rat's hind end about the players. As long as they have a monthly paycheck, you are small potatoes.
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So whatever reject from Vanguard suggested that, go back and play Bannedguard and leave us at World of Warcraft alone.
The problem is that if you raid nightly or even a few nights a week, your repair bills are huge and you have no way to pay for them except grinding silly quests for hours on end. And what do they get you? More repair bills. You make a little bit of money to go raid for a night - maybe.
Someone suggested some wild idea about end rep, something...I didn't even understand what they were saying. How would that fix the problem? It sounded like it would only complicate it. The problem is REPAIR BILLS - not buying gear or stupid epic mounts.
Mr. "I can go find place to get this uber recipe that sells for 425g a whack" or whatever, your time has come and gone. In other words, making money in WoW is extremely difficult and time consuming. My guild expects me to raid every night and I can't grind out money during the day to pay for repair bills - I work for a living.
So...let the gold farmers do it. Blizzard makes more money and you know that's got to make them happy. If they are happy, you know they really don't give a rat's hind end about the players. As long as they have a monthly paycheck, you are small potatoes.
# posted by : 29/7/07 00:33
: 29/7/07 00:33<< Home
