Your statement does not logically follow. An inherently evil act can also have evil consequences.

Blizzard's post does not say anything (positive or negative) about the morality of the act itself.

I'm not saying you are wrong, just that you are jumping to conclusions that may not be warranted.
 

Agreed. It just struck me as odd that they wouldn't mention anything about why gold selling / buying is bad in itself, but just went on and on about keylogging, scamming, and spamming, which are all secondary effects.
 

Because the risk of having their account hacked is problem going to impact most players more then "buying gold gives an unfair advantage"

they're trying to make people who buy gold. afraid to do it.
 

Just like how buying marijuana supports terrorism? Let us face facts here: Spamming, botting, and keylogging happens with or without the gold trade.

Yet, all of the above is not a result of gold purchasing, it's a result of power-leveling.
 

If you read the whole article Blizz put out it's slightly less 'anti-drug message'. They do mention that many power leveling sites will store your account info and late try to break in and strip your account to fund much of their gold selling activities.

Blizz is trying to eliminate the market for gold selling, which is an impossibility. People will always want an easy way out. How many times do you see someone spamming trade looking to buy runs through instances instead of looking for a group?

The market will never go away unless Blizz makes it completely impossible to get away with it. This article shows that they are losing that fight.

Now, if what Blizz states is true and most of these gold selling sites do use account raids as a way to collect gold, then, Blizz can sue them, as Hacking/defacing a website is considered an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act. By selling and deleting others' characters Blizz might have their foot in the door to shut many of these site down.
 

Gold buying is like the canary in the coal mine. It's indicative of something inherently flawed in your game design.

Blizzard makes good cash off the gold farmers and everyone knows it.

Banned accounts = more box sells.

Which is why you don't see gold buyers banned, only sellers.
 

Didn't we just hear SOE say something similar a while back?

Okay Blizzard, stop the madness and just sell the gold yourself. Undercut the sellers and see if spamming, botting, and keylogging goes away!
 

Okay Blizzard, stop the madness and just sell the gold yourself. Undercut the sellers and see if spamming, botting, and keylogging goes away!


Or they could closely examine just why gold selling exist in WoW, and make sure those design flaws are eliminated in their next mmorpg.
 

Or they could closely examine just why gold selling exist in WoW, and make sure those design flaws are eliminated in their next mmorpg.

The "flaw" you seem to pointing at is a cash economy and what we see going on with unauthorized RMT is a reflection of what happens in the real world.

Declaring it a flaw that can be fixed seems to me to be understating the issue and misunderstanding human nature.

The only way out is to kill off the in-game economy. Otherwise, there will always be an accumulation of wealth of some sort and people willing to sell it off to others for real money.
 

WoW doesn't have a real economy, wilhelm, because spawns are a bit flip away. The other posters are right when they say that players buy gold to reduce bad game elements (grinds, etc.) and that Blizzard can eliminate the problem by selling gold themselves (undercut the market rate). This is true of all kinds of MMOGs that are out there, too, and it would be nice to see Blizzard actually learn from its mistakes going forward. Blaming players is not a viable strategy in the long term.
 

Well, Anonymous, it is nearly as real as a "real" economy. Go tell Edward Castronova it isn't real and see how far you get. And let's face it, the paper money in your wallet has no inherent value and more of that is just a print run away. We're talking degrees of separation here, not polar opposites.

As long as there is freedom of trade between players, it does not matter how easy they make game play (and what you call "grinding" is often "playing the game," and that would be the point of being there, right?) there will be people who will accumulate in-game wealth and who will try to turn that into real world currency, fiat money though it be.

Blizzard uncorking the database and selling gold directly would cut back on this dramatically, but not completely I bet. And the effect on the in-game economy would lead eventually to complaints from people feeling they have to buy gold to play the game (or to bypass playing the game) leading to another economic issue to balance.

Basically, I object to assertion that unauthorized RMT is easily resolved, that it is a mere flaw, a design oversight. It isn't, and if you think it is, you haven't thought it through.

Homework: Come up with a theoretical in-game economy that allows freedom of transactions, controls inflation, and discourages unauthorized RMT. If it is that easy, this should only take you ten minutes.
 

I'm not saying it's the lack of value that makes it less real, but the fact that because it has value (both in-game and via currency exchange) that it is subject to runaway inflation when there is no real economy. In real life, that does indeed take a big print run with some very serious consequences to the country. In WoW, every drop is a print run because there is no real ecosystem with limited resources to develop an economy around.

"It isn't, and if you think it is, you haven't thought it through."

Consider, if only briefly, that it is you who is not thinking. The burden is on you to show why you think that currency exchange between WoW gold and US dollars is any harder to resolve than the numerous examples of currency exchange that go on all the time in our global economy. Your silly "Homework" is solved in not 10 minutes but 10 seconds: you eliminate unauthorized RMT by simply allowing RMT. It's the MMOG companies that have turned a small border dispute into a war.
 

"They do mention that many power leveling sites will store your account info and late try to break in and strip your account to fund much of their gold selling activities."

The unreputable ones, perhaps - Doing research (mainly looking aroumd, reading FAQ's on certain websites for example) ive found Many request you change your password afterwards, if youve allowed them to login, etc - they even do it themselves for the period of whatever service they are offering (usually powerlevelling.).

The whole "FAQ" thing just seems to be a whole lot of scare tactics without any actual evidence to me, and whilst I dont agree with the secondary affects of the RMT Industry, I dont see how this article blizzard wrote, which anyone with a double IQ figure can poke holes in, it seems not worth the effort.

I mean seriously, most of the people I know have absolutely no spare gold anyway (half the problem, no?), and do you really think the RMT industry is mainly funded by hacking accounts that sell all their gear for about 100g at best? I dont think so. (especially with the tier system and badge gear, alot of peoples gear isnt sellable anyway).

As mentioned, I think its about time they fixed the time sink of money earning in WoW especially (levelling really isnt hard nowadays..), aswell as other MMO's to make it feel less like a waste of time, or just offer the services themselves.
 

I see many comments where Blizz is to blame as the reason people buy gold, however I see another cause.

The only thing I've ever had trouble buying is the Epic Flying mount, mostly because after I hit 70 all I did was run instances, very little questing or grinding. I've always had a decent amount of gold as long as I did one thing: not spend money at AH.

This is a player run economy and the reason people buy gold is not for repairs or training (minus for mounts), it's to spend money at AH making sure that they are always over-geared. Because of this the AH is has become rather inflated in the higher population and older servers. I've seen lvl 20 gear sold, not just priced, at well about 5g.

People continue to buy at these prices and lack self control. With the lack of many lower lvl'ed players to run much of the pre-60 instance, many plays feel forced to buy gear off AH so as to not fall behind.

Also, people are constantly rolling alts to either twink out or just to try a new class with. These alts are often loaded with money farmed from their mains. Having a large wallet to buy all their gear further increases the price many greens go far, not to mention mats for the various professions.

What I'm getting at is that minus very few areas, Blizz has very little control over the economy of WoW, we do. As long as we continue to buy unnecessary gear at inflated prices in AH people will continue to buy gold. If Blizz started selling gold themselves the problem would only get worse and you would end up with a Second Life scenario; one where if you don't buy gold you will be left behind.
 

Dear Tobold,

Blizzard does declare: "Without..people using their services..., the companies have no way to continue their unethical actions". So basically thay say Gold selling is bad and unethical and "Selling gold for real money.. is.. violation of our Terms of Use and End User License Agreement".

I think Blizzard is stating that the act in itself is illicit and players fuel it with their behaviours. You can solve it by resizing the economy system, imposing limitations to the freedom of trading among players for example.

Another way (which I think Blizzard is implementing with daily quests) is giving players more money or, better, giving players more way to accumulate it faster. Faster than it takes to get tempted and buy it.

Just remember the only real currency in WoW is TIME..

cheers
 

Just deleted a comment saying "For World of Warcraft Cheats wow gold and World of Warcraft Hacks click here." The irony of it being in this thread made me laugh. :)
 

i think it just put something up there that short that people would read. if they put a one page document on why then most people would see a bunch of text and skip it over.
 

Close the auction house, and prevent transfer of gold from one character to another; problem over.

There is no reason why items that are needed for crafting can't be sold by in-game vendors anyway.
 

I don't think RMT is evil, but it does detract from the in-game experience of knowing that someone had to "earn" their gold.
 

I get kind of tired hearing all the conspiracy-like theories re: Blizzard and RMT.

First, why does bad game design have to be the reason for the existence of unauthorized RMT? Suggesting that's it is possible for Blizzard to anticipate the needs of every player and be able to accommodate them through in-game mechanics is asinine, especially since many players' goals and needs are mutually exclusive. It's an MMO, and people can find ways to leverage real life assets into game assets no matter what Blizzard does. It's clear that people would rather spend time getting around rules than avoiding games that have rules they don't like. Authorizing RMT isn't a panacea either; there are plenty of players who hate the very idea of RMT, so how does authorizing it serve them?

Second, why does Blizzard banning the sellers and not the buyers have to be some sort of clever money making scheme by Blizzard? Yeah, companies go for the bottom line, I get that. Maybe Blizzard does just want to have their cake and eat it too, I'm not going to say that's impossible. But frankly, I would go for sellers above buyers too; their motives are definitely wrong, whereas the buyers' motives are often more murky. I personally don't like gold buyers, but I feel kind of sorry for them that they are apparently wasting their time with a hobby that doesn't fit them. I don't feel sorry for sellers. All the snarky speculation bothers me because that's all it is, there's absolutely no evidence to support the assertion that Blizzard tacitly supports underground RMT.

This notice is just a reminder to buyers that buying gold impacts other people besides themselves. It's an appeal to their conscience, because maybe they see it as a victimless "crime" and it really isn't. If you help to create a market that is prohibited, you are complicit in the activities surrounding it. The degree of that complicity is up for debate but not the fact of its existence. There's nothing contradictory in Blizzard's stance if 1) they want to provide a game without RMT even though 2) they can't realistically do so; they're 3) trying anyways.
 

The answer was hinted upon and it's not at all game design. If Blizzard offered the option to buy gold you'd see one thing happen. Prices in the AH would skyrocket. So you'd need to buy MORE and MORE gold to fund the same things you're having trouble buying now. So what you're complaining about spending 5 gold on now to equip your character you'll be paying 25 if not 50 or 100 gold.

I know as a person who would quit the game before BUYING GOLD I'd pull everything I had out of the AH as soon as this came into effect. Then I'd buy everything up that my grinding and AH buy/reselling profits could buy. I'd wait and then throw it all up at extravangent prices. Hoping that everyone else would follow suit with me. You may not think so but the people who play the AH keep in touch with each other. So this way I can swim in a world were gold grows on trees.

Most likely the simple act of Blizzard selling gold would make me stop playing. Making coin is part of the fun for me. You being broke or others being broke all the time is bad game play not bad game design. I don't play daily but I've been keeping pretty good pace level wise with my friends who are all broke and I've got 1000 gold sitting for me to stare at happily. Biggest hint from me.

DON'T go crazy and buy the best DPS or protective item that the AH has to offer. You're going to be using for 5 levels at the most before you replace it. Get drops or just search for the cheaper and slightly better equipment in the AH.

I know a guy who had to BUY gold bceause he never had any. Then he HAD to buy a 300 gold sword in the AH and used it for 6 levels before turning 60th level and getting a quest for a sword that was far better and only an hours worth of gameplay away. An hour may seem horrible to some but it was a quest he HAD to do anyway to get XP/move forward in the game.

Get in a good guild and don't make 13 dozen alts. A guild get get you stuff for cheap like bags and weapons or even simply enough help with that quest that will get you that awesome and FREE sword. limiting Alts means more time for your main and less coin spent on trying to supply something you'll only play when your bored. Or only to realize you don't like the class.

Gold Selling is Evil! But I can't say it's horrible as the way it is people buy gold the illegal way are more apt to spend it's hastily on the stuff I got in the AH.

Also when you got to sell something and it's not grey put it in the AH. Search first (hold shift and click and it magically puts the name of the thing in the search text box) see the prices everyone else has it at and put it up for that price not super cheap. It will sell and you'll get more than 17 silver out of it. Also set a buyout price. Think how many times you go in there and want something RIGHT NOW. Well give people that option too. also make sure to keep your bid price up to or you'll have people just bid low on it and then relist it for more.
Simple and easy and keep the market at a sustained price means you can always make a profit for that item. Low balling everyone means the next time you go to sell you'll be low balling your earlier low ball sending a 10 gold item down to a 7 gold item to a 4 gold item to 23 silver item. No profit to supply your alts or greens there is there?