Nothing short of I.P. tracking and working with local authorities would take down most gold farmers. It's like the drug trade. You can suppress and keep it at bay, but as long as someone wants it, it'll be there.
 

The gold sellers simply adapt to ban waves. If they know they're going to lose their level 70 accounts, they'll simply ask the players to use their accounts. Others just hack the accounts and save themselves the trouble of asking. The players get the risk and the sellers get the profit.
 

The main reason Blizzard bans in waves (both with gold farmers and botters) is that doing a mass ban makes it harder to narrow down exactly why the account was banned. If bans happened within a few hours, or even a few days, it wouldn't be hard to go, "Farming in this spot is too visible", "Blizzard knows about this dup exploit!", or "Looks like they can detect the bot, better warm folks on its forum."

Unfortunately, the cost of having more complete cleaning means the cheaters can stay active for longer periods, yeah.
 

They are also devaluing the gold as well, most of the decent stuff that is attainable is either raid or badge gear now. Badges are easier to come by so most people just put the time in, instead of paying out for gold and getting substandard gear.

Pre-TBC you could buy BoE epics that were pretty damn good really, making those drops worth allot and gold worth allot more to the player. But when I can sit for 2 hours and get 1k gold quite easily I would never, ever buy it.
 

Blizzard Will never be able to Stem The gold sellers or the botters Banning works but if there is money in it, the farmers will find ways around it.

Instead blizzard will just create a new economy devalue gold and instead make items that are of high value only attainable by tokens, badges or another form of currency. These are Bind on Pickup so cant be traded and as such cant be sold.

The only way around that would be for farmers to farm the items on the players account which is far more hassle and puts allot more tust needed from buyers
 

The trouble with a move to BOPU items like badges is that they destroy the in-game economy. Sure it hinders gold farmers by forcing people to hand over account details if they want this stuff "free", but is that a net benefit if it means that player trading is impacted?
 

Player trading is a game feature like any other. A developer could opt for not having that feature implemented in their game.
Is selling and buying stuff between players so necessary for a successful game?
 

It's not just bots farming gold, there's human labour at play here too, isn't there? Makes it trickier.
 

Blizzard really need to crack down on the buyers, not just the sellers. Once a hundred or so players get banned per server people will realize there is a huge risk in losing their precious lvl70's and the market will definitely shrink.
 

"A hundred or so players" banned for gold buying? I'm afraid that simple math shows that if Blizzard would ban gold buyers, that would be several thousands per server, which would seriously disrupt Blizzard's business. One seller buy definition needs lots of buyers to survive, so if Blizzard can ban a significant number of sellers, the number of buyers must be HUGE.

A banned seller will buy another copy of WoW and create income for Blizzard. A banned buyer might not want to level a new character and just quit the game, losing business for Blizzard. Not going to happen.
 

Player trading is a game feature like any other. A developer could opt for not having that feature implemented in their game.
Is selling and buying stuff between players so necessary for a successful game?
I'd agree that a player economy is a feature that a developer could choose not to implement. But that choice would have consequences - it removes some of the human interactions that bind the society of the server together and motivates and retains players. One only has to look at a game with a well designed economy like EVE to see how powerful a good economic structure can be.

Gold farmers are a pain, but I don't believe they're as big a problem as losing community cohesion.
 

Gold selling is considered bad while giving friends gold in-game is considered ok. The real problem is the hackers stealing hard-earned money from bona fide gamers. Blizzard is introducing a new hardware key to allow players to have two-factor authentication on accounts. This should resolve at least partially the problem of hacked gold. Prices be damned.
 

They need to ban gold buyers if they want to stop RMT. There is no other option, because attacking the supply has proven to not work.

Attacking the demand is the best option, both in terms of game design and terror. Once people are afraid to buy gold, they will hesitate.

Of course, buying gold buyers will hurt too much. The fact that they do not ban buyers should indicate very clearly where the pain threshold is relative to the real "damage" being done.
 

I have a friend who got banned, because she used her account on a friend's computer, which I guess contained an unauthorized program...

I don't care about bots, and I hate to see regular players getting banned, with no recourse possible.
 

The only way to get rid of gold farmers is to make the content so much fun everyone wants to do it all over and over.

It's really the only way. I.P. tracking won't even work. Honest people will get banned because someone spoofed thier address. And Local authorities won't be that excited to get in the banning business. For some strange reason drug trafficking, murder, etc will always be higher on thier radar
 

The in-game advertising is annoying but do I really care that Mr X bought his weapon for $?? as opposed to spending 30 hours in BG? Well of course I do - but if anyone has rolled an alliance char and tried to have fun in AV then they'd know what the worst part of WoW is.

So...if I could just rather kit a player out that's ready for the Black Temple (I'll level it to 70 - that's easy enough) would I do it?
Yes I would (assuming it were legal of course).

Why? Well simple - right now I'll probably only get to see the Black Temple on a private server or when I'm level 80+ in a Kara-sized raid group but I'll never get to see it in all it's glory (just like Nax or MC - kinda boring and pointless when you're over-levelled).

So much for having fun - because raid guilds are far from fun while the fun guilds never raid.ejwln
 

Innerspace's ISXWarden and Glider's Tripwire both monitor the unique signatures of Warden in order to detect a Warden update. If a change is made, it takes Innerspace or Glider offline until they can perform an all clear check.

One thing Blizzard COULD do is frequently make insignificant changes that force botters to take ISXWarden and Tripwire offline while they update.

The obvious advantage right away is that this interrupts botters frequently and creates consumer dissatification in the botting products.

The less obvious advantage is that once you have reinforced this pattern of seemingly innocuous changes, you can drop in a significant new detection which may be overlooked.

The reality is that client-side detection like Warden can always be avoided. The idea here however, is that you make such avoidance incredibly burdensome for a handful of people to continue for a prolonged period of time. It's a war of attrition similar to the process of bleeding your opponent with excessive legal fees in a drawn out court case.
 

Sid67, that reminds me of DirectTV, which started requiring seemingly innocous updates to be in place in their satellite decryptor cards. Pirates were forced to include those updates into their own cards, not knowing what they did. Finally, DirectTV dropped the last piece of code in place.. which fried all of the pirated decryptor cards.

Even though the poetic justice in the story is indeed sweet, it raises the sceptre of vigilantism. How much damage can an individual or a company inflict while protecting their assets?
 

How much damage can an individual or a company inflict while protecting their assets?

Hmm. Well, considering how often burglars are legally shot for breaking and entering a home, then I would say they can inflict quite a bit of harm.

I realize that's an extreme example, but I think it does prove the point that inflicting harm to protect your assets is a long-standing tradition in the US.
 

Lawsuits are also a long-standing tradition in the US. If Warden did disable goldfarmers' computers, there would be a class-action lawsuit if an innocent got hit. Or even if Blizzard was 100% accurate.
 

Provide a sanctioned method of paying real life cash for in game gold.
The best approach I've seen is the way Eve Online does it. You can sell game time codes to other players for in game currency.
So you purchase a real life game card, then sell it to another player for gold. The transfer takes place securely through Eve's website and the time code is redeemed right away and used to extend the persons account.
This is a win-win-win for everyone. Eve gets money and makes two people happy who will both continue to play.

Once you provide a sanctioned way, then you crack down even harder on gold sellers.
You also start issuing warnings to people who buy gold.
I've never heard of anyone who buys gold even getting a warning, even though Blizzard claims that they do.
 

I have to agree. I've been in guilds where I was one of the few people not buying gold. And in 3 years I've never seen anyone even get a temp ban for buying gold.