How gold sellers are transacting business these days
by Robin Torres 
Sep 20th 2007 at 11:01AM
I was reading the Se7en Samurai blog today and found an interesting post about gold sellers. Stormgaard went to a site advertised by one of those delightful spammers in Ironforge and discovered an open letter to their customers describing how they were currently conducting business and why they changed their methods.
It seems that the changes that Blizzard has made to the mail system has forced the gold sellers to change their tactics. They can no longer simply send gold through the in-game mail system because of the hour delay and the new "anti-transaction system". Face to face trades are out of the question for this particular company due to the time difference between their customers and their country.
Everybody now: awwwwwww!
Their new workaround is to have you put up Tough Jerky in the AH if you are Horde and Tough Hunks of Bread if you are Alliance for certain amounts (they provide a chart) using the character name you provided them. This bypasses the in-game mail security Blizzard put in by using the Auction House to conduct the transaction.
I went searching the Auction Houses where I keep my numerous alts to see if I could find any. As you can tell by the above picture, I did -- though it took me 5 servers to find one. Surprisingly, (to me) it is an RP server. Though it took a few tries to find this gold buyer, I assume that different companies are using different items to do the same thing. I would go looking at other gold selling sites but I don't want to give them the traffic or risk accidentally downloading nastiness.
No matter how many obstacles Blizzard puts in the way of Real Money Transactions, as long as there are customers, the gold sellers will find a way to satisfy them.
Have you seen any other easily obtained, cheap items up for sale on the AH for outrageous prices? How do you feel about spending real money on virtual property that you actually don't end up owning? Do cheaters really never prosper?
(Update: Help us get rid of the gold seller ads on our site by using the Contact Us Link under Resources on the sidebar.)
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
recrudesce Sep 20th 2007 11:07AM
what about the listing costs, dont they reimburse that ? and the cut the AH takes too...
or have i missed something ?
Mordiceius Sep 20th 2007 11:27AM
Time to go buy me some tough jerky.
Robin Torres Sep 20th 2007 11:14AM
The amounts you charge for your tough food include extra for the fees.
jpn Sep 20th 2007 11:18AM
Hmmm, I'd think maybe they could put caps on how much you can list cheap things for....but people would cry foul....
Bixxi Sep 20th 2007 11:27AM
Well, I routinely put fishing poles up for sale in Booty Bay for 100g each. It's a convenient way to move money from my Alliance main to my Horde alt. Not everybody doing this is a gold farmer.
Znodis Sep 20th 2007 11:47AM
They cost 25c so they cost way less than that to list, and wouldn't need to be compensated. As for the AH cut, you notice the one for 53g? They guys is obviously buying 1000g, and the 53g must be the extra for the AH cut.
Personally, I'm going to start listing these items too and hopefully get lucky that the seller clicks on the wrong name. Imagine if everyone did it :)
He'd have to go through pages and pages to find the right customer. hehehe.
Armath Sep 20th 2007 11:21AM
This is nothing new.
Selling low-value items for high prices in the AH has long been a way to transfer gold across boundaries. It's perfect for gold transfers between players, or for transfers between horde and alliance using the Goblin AH.
As for the wrongness of gold selling, consider this: someone can use a L70 main to grind out 1000G in a week or less, and then transfer that to a lower-level alts to create a rich twink, or just supply that leveling character with all the gold they need. I don't see that as all that different from getting gold from a gold seller, or getting a loan or a gift from a buddy online.
Being broke in game really sucks, especially when it comes time to buy a mount, or to level up a skill. Gold can take the place of some grinding, and there's way too much grinding in the game already. I think Blizzard is better off trying to manage gold-selling rather than eliminate it entirely.
pumeler Sep 20th 2007 1:05PM
dang, i think i will just look and see what is in the auction house like this and list one for the same price. You never know, the little chinese santa claus may show up on accident for me :-)
corbindallas Sep 20th 2007 11:30AM
This is also a fairly common practice on PvE servers when you want to transfer money between your Horde and Ally toons. With so few items on the faction neutral AH, it's quite common to see an auction asking 500g for some random grey item.
Zamboni Sep 20th 2007 11:29AM
On our server, it's usually Lucky Rabbits Feet that sells for big bucks, but they've started using common items such as Silk Cloth in the past few days (which in turn is poisoning Auctioneer scans).
Adaroit Sep 22nd 2007 2:35AM
I say if you see something like that in the AH, create a toon with a name that looks similar to that and simply put up the same item on the AH at the same price. Hopefully the farmers will get confused by this and accidentally give it to you. If you happen to get the money send it to your main and delete the character, look for another one of those AH listings, rinse repeat.
Richard Sep 20th 2007 11:35AM
You know, it seems a lot of the people who cry foul over gold buying are younger players who don't have full-time, well-paying jobs and can't sit in front of the computer all day and night like a lot of the teenage/college-age players.
Have I bought gold? No.
Would I buy gold if I really needed it? Certainly. I'm not buying the gold, per se, I'm buying the time for someone else to go "collect" it for me.
Obviously others have issues with this; that's entirely their prerogative.
Blizzard *should* follow Sony's route and provide some way for players to purchase currency... of course, the amount of QQing from kids who don't have the money to do so would be of artifact-quality.
Richard Sep 20th 2007 11:37AM
Excuse me, I muddled my first sentence. It *should* read:
You know, it seems a lot of the people who cry foul over gold buying are younger teenage/college-age players who don't have full-time, well-paying jobs and can sit in front of the computer all day and night and grind unlike the "adults" who play.
corbindallas Sep 20th 2007 11:38AM
Regarding the "wrong-ness" of gold buying / selling, most folks are focused on whether this breaks the game. I don't think this is Blizzard's main concern when policing gold selling. I think the primary reason is to avoid the sticky subject of virtual taxation. If Blizzard were to make no attempts to prevent real money transactions for their virtual items, Blizzard could be said to encourage or allow real money transactions. If that is the case, then it is a legitimate business. If it is a legit business, governments are going to want to get their hans on a cut through taxes. And if you can tax the purchase of virtual gold, it isn't much of a stretch to tax in game purchases made with that virtual gold.
And if you don't think this sort of thing is already happening, think again. Congress was to release a report in August of this detailing their findings on taxation of virtual goods
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/06/26/u_s_to_tax_virtual_worlds_/1
Scary stuff. I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want to have their name attached to a new type of tax, and this is a good way to make sure that doesn't happen.
Erica Olson Sep 20th 2007 11:39AM
And you're just figuring this out. Are you behind the times.
It's also a way to move money from your Horde to Alliance toons and vice-versa. Just use the AH in Gaz and you're bypassing the no-fraternizing rules.
RogueJedi86 Sep 20th 2007 11:43AM
Price cap on white/gray quality items? I'd like to see people farm out 50 greens or blues to transfer the gold over.
Paw Sep 20th 2007 11:46AM
This gives me an idea to do a little gold farmer fishing. Maybe put up some cheap junk like this and see if I get an accidental hit.
I have run across items at the neutral AH that were obviously being swapped from one faction to the other, like a 30g Skeletal Shoulders for 10s. I also bought about 50g worth of savory delites for 1c per stack of 5...heheh. When whomever it was realized that their trade had been seen by someone else who was quickly taking advantage of it, they hastened their buyouts.
jshtan77 Sep 20th 2007 11:52AM
I'm sure gold farmers find alot of random BoEs. They can keep some of the random blue and green items and mail these over to the player and ask them to place each of these on the AH at the requested buy outs, really, there is nothing blizzard can do about that unless they limit the buy outs on AH items...
bonse Sep 20th 2007 11:52AM
so, scan the ah for a high priced hunk of bread, see who the seller is (say Bob) quickly run up an alt called Bðb and sell a whole bunch of bread for the same price....you may get lucky and confuse the seller, or unlucky and banned for buying gold.
Markymark Sep 20th 2007 11:58AM
@4 Are you silly? Gold Sellers make profit off selling gold. I would rather see Gold Selling eliminated rather then managed. If bliz were to sell currency that would be amajor turn off like a bunch of those korean games. Bottom line whatever adjustments u make it just shows Gold sellers will find a way to sell their farmed gold. :_: