Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsHow 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 2 of 3)
Markymark Sep 20th 2007 12:05PM
@10 I hardly have time to play WoW...as a matter of fact i basically quit(i might play again someday but RL is top priority right now) Anyway PAying for virtual currency anyway you look at it is redundant... You could feed starving children instead of buying make believe currency. If you wanna pay someone for their time then dont play your wasting your time. WHenever you play you make a schedule of what you need to do. Whoever cries foul about buying gold are not young or old it's the people with common sense that says why would i pay someone to play a game for me.. i might as well not play.
Hazimus Maximus Sep 20th 2007 12:07PM
Have I bought gold? yeah.. but not from a chinese farmer, it was from a friend of mine who is 28, has 3 70's, and no job. His love for WoW has really messed up his life and he's trying to get back on track.
I am sure I speak for a lot of us when I tell you my job is very demanding, stressful, and requires good time management and responsibilty. I bought gold from him so he'd have a little extra cash, but mostly to feed my characters so I could come home and enjoy my life in WoW where I am now rich and can buy whatever I want. It's a nice contrast to the real world were most of my income goes to bills and taxes. Escaping into a familiar fantasy world as a rich adventurer is bliss.
I can understand their reasons for not following the footsteps of Sony as to selling in game gold. Imagine how much it would suck if the goverment got their hands on MMO's. Do you want to pay personal property tax on your Tier 3 set? It may sound a little far fetched, but just wait and see...
Tiago Sep 20th 2007 12:18PM
@19: Instead of wasting your time posting on an webpage you could be making a difference by investing that time into feeding starving children. :O
Dan Sep 20th 2007 12:27PM
@ WoW Insider: If gold selling is that despicable, you could always, y'know, do your bit by NOT ADVERTISING THEM ON YOUR SITE!
Dave Sep 20th 2007 12:30PM
I've never seen what the big deal about buying gold is. I've bought gold a couple times in the past, and I don't regret it at all. I've got a lot more money than time these days (something I suspect most of you kids in collge and lower don't understand yet but when you're 30 and have a well-paying job and 2hrs or less of time to play most of the week, you will). Back in the pre-expansion days, getting an epic mount took a significant amount of mindless repetition and farming. I wasn't terribly interested in sacrificing my entire playtime just to farm herbs for an epic mount, so I bought the gold to get the rest of the way there on one character. Good deal too, 300g for $20. I can spend $20 on lunch one day, it's not a huge amount of money to me. I did it again when I re-rolled on a different server too.
I don't have any problem paying real money for "fake" things. I don't understand the disassociative reality that goes on with this concept either. You'll pay $10 for a movie, where you just go and watch a movie for 2 hours and come away with nothing after 2hrs. People will spend far more than $20 on a concert, and once it's over you've got nothing as well. We buy non-tangible things all the time, especially for ephemeral things that have no reproducible value in the real world. Yet, when it comes to paying money for a virtual item in a video game that will actually stick around and be useful long after you've decided you shouldn't have spent $20 taking your girlfriend to see Dragon Wars... we consider it stupid? It seems a little more than illogical to me. I know personally I've spent several hundred bucks on movies this year that I wouldn't mind having back. Meanwhile, I'm still using my epic mount on a daily basis.
What's the wiser purchase? An epic mount in WoW, or seeing Balls of Fury? Either way, you're throwing money down a hole you're never getting it back from, I'm much happier with my epic mount than I was when I left the theater after Balls of Fury, or that horrible Haloween remake or any of a dozen other movies that just plain sucked.
nav Sep 20th 2007 12:31PM
@22 Keep up at the back there. Every time there's an article discussing gold selling here someone trots that out, and someone has to provide the explanation.
WowInsider get their ads served to them (by Google?). They don't have direct control, but I believe if you tell them about it they can arrange that those ads won't appear in future.
Richard Sep 20th 2007 12:53PM
@24 The fact that they HAVEN'T made the effort to contact the ad servers to block those type of ads is the point.
It's hypocritical for the authors on this site to bemoan the "cheating" of gold buying, and yet, they're using these same gold farmers and buyers to PAY THEIR SALARIES.
Naaruminded Sep 20th 2007 2:16PM
I've not seen this done with low level items, but I have seen it with BOE blues and purples. A gold farmer will send you an item with instructions to put it up for an extremely high BO price. The gold farmer will then buyout the auction, and you receive the sale monies.
Jason Sep 20th 2007 1:16PM
Creative use of in-game mechanics.
Working as intended.
bennet Sep 20th 2007 1:02PM
@11: I think you're spot-on with the taxation issue, although it seems more likely to bite online communities like Second Life first, since the transfer of real-to-virtual currency goes both ways.
And @9: We have a guild of mostly over-30 professionals, and one of the few guild rules is no gold-buying. People who play more are happy to help out those who play less with tradeskilling mats, non-soulbound faction items and yes, on occasion, gold, which fosters a nice sense of community and avoids the species of resentment and drama I've seen in other guilds when some people are happy to buy their way up to gear and faction and other people aren't.
I guess I don't get the point to gold-buying. Seems kind of like playing a game in god-mode, which is just...boring. If it takes me four times longer to get exalted with Netherwing because I play a quarter of the time that a fellow guildie does, so what?
RogueJedi86 Sep 20th 2007 1:06PM
@#23/Dave
Yeah, but you forget one thing. It's not against the rules to go to a concert or the movies. It IS against the EULA(that you agree to when you login after each patch) to buy Gold. But I guess it's like they say about money corrupting people.
Delcoro Sep 20th 2007 1:07PM
"It's hypocritical for the authors on this site to bemoan the "cheating" of gold buying, and yet, they're using these same gold farmers and buyers to PAY THEIR SALARIES."
Aside from the fact that you CAN'T block Google Ads before they come in, only after the fact. Idiot.
Chilblain Sep 20th 2007 1:16PM
Personally, I love it. I have to admit, I thought this was a very clever work-around.
LEGALIZE IT!
Urofseron Sep 20th 2007 1:25PM
I thought I'd chime in on this one.
I don't have a problem with gold buying personally. I, like a lot of players, work for a living. Between work, family, home....there isn't enough time to get the things that I want. So, if I can pony up $50 and get a new weapon or piece of armor...you bet I'll do it.
The AH trading method has been around a long time but it is used for legitimate purposes as well (such as trading between Horde / Alliance chars). A lot of companies are simply doing face to face transfers now.
No matter what Blizzard does, gold selling will always...ALWAYS be around. They can continue to invest millions of dollars to try to stop it, but it will always be around at one level or another.
Peace
Arras Sep 20th 2007 1:28PM
Gold selling, like any other business is subject to 'supply and demand'. In this case, the demand is driving the supply and clearly there is a large demand for this service. If no one was willing to pay for gold, the supply would dry up and they'd do something else to stay in business.
If you've got the disposable income to pay for it, that's fine, it's your money and your account. Just don't go whining when you get your account banned (we all know you will anyways).
Personally, I'm going to be putting up some stacks of bread to see if the gold sellers are really paying attention. Though...hrmm..with the attention WI is now giving this, that would subject my account to the risk of being banned. Hmm, maybe not. I'll just go back to my dailies and selling overpriced enchants to twinks
Pingmeister Sep 20th 2007 1:39PM
I love all the justifications. How about playing the game as it was designed?
I think we are a credit card society: If you want something you can't afford then rather than save up for it (GOD FORBID!) do soemthing to get it before you can afford it.
Sheesh, people. Show some restraint.
EvilCheese Sep 20th 2007 1:45PM
@29 because you know Google is the only ad provider in the entire world, right? It is hypocritical, and frankly hilarious of WoW Insider to condemn gold selling while profiting from it at the same time. If this is due to the ad system... get a new one.
popeguilty Sep 20th 2007 1:57PM
Gold selling: Because your wealth entitles you to a leg up here, as well.
Delcoro Sep 20th 2007 2:08PM
@35 If you still see ads on the web that's your problem. Firefox. Adblock. I haven't seen a web ad in years. lrn2browse. And if you don't like this site or how they conduct business, DON'T READ IT. lrn2STFU.
Hallick Sep 20th 2007 2:13PM
@ everyone talking about "income" taxation if Blizzard did sell its own gold, I'm pretty sure it has to go both ways for that to be an issue. I would have to be able to buy virtual items with real money, and buy real items with virtual money. They could legitimize gold buying while keeping gold selling against the ToS. Enforcing the second wouldn't really be an issue as long as their pricing undercut what sellers could realistically charge and make a profit. If I couldn't legitimately make a living playing WoW (generate real income to buy real food) I would guess in-game profits would not be taxable.
Even in a world where you could transfer real money both ways you wouldn't be taxed on your tiered sets, soulbound items are completely worthless and could never be converted to any form of currency.