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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBuying gold is not a victimless crime
by Amanda Dean 
Jun 6th 2008 at 6:30PM
For many reasons I've never felt compelled to buy gold or pay for leveling on World of Warcraft. So I had no idea how the process worked. We got a tip from Kyron of Andorhal about a friend whose account was hacked. In addition to having all of his gear and gold stripped from his characters, he had 2 emails in the inbox for cheap items that he'd purchased off the auction house that the hacker had purchased for 500 gold a piece.
They recorded the name of the seller from the auction house and confronted him when he next came online. It turns out that person wasn't a gold seller but a gold buyer. He'd been told to put Coarse Thread on the AH at the 500 gold rate and would receive his gold when the hacker purchased the ridiculously priced item.
I didn't know how gold-buying worked, but this sounds like a way to exchange gold easily. This is something that blizzard could check into pretty easily. While sometimes players make strange prices in order to dupe would-be buyers, something like Coarse Thread would go unnoticed because most players wouldn't look for such items on the auction house.
If you're buying gold, you know that it is in violation of the terms of use. Keep in mind though, that the gold you're buying is probably not being purchased legitimately. Blizzard warns that people who buy gold and pay for leveling services are more likely to get keylogged. But also keep in mind that your gold purchase is most likely going to come at the cost of a bystander's labor. You are paying real money for something that has been stolen. While it may be exciting to get your shiny new gold, someone out there is going to get hurt, and you may very well get banned.There are legitimate ways to make money in the game. If you don't want to put the time and effort into raising funds for your epic flying skill, or other pricy purchases, full time consideration of another endeavor might be in order.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Cheats, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
NeSuKuN Jun 6th 2008 10:19PM
Blizzard monitors it but isn't punished without proofs, they can track any single copper where it came and where is it going. Also, many people uses overpriced auctions to transfer money to their toons in the other faction.
Kyron Jun 6th 2008 10:30PM
The funny thing is... this happened 2 days ago and my hacked friend already got half of his gear back.
But, a couple hours ago, I saw the gold-buyer guy in Orgrimar. I asked him how did it go for him and his answer was: "I dont know, nobody has contacted me yet".
So, my question is: Is Blizzard doing a real investigation? I mean, dont get me wrong, I dont think this gold-buyer guy deserves to get banned or anything, but at least i'd expect some GM contacting him and asking him about it, right?
Maybe it's easier for Blizzard just to deal with the hacking thing restoring stolen stuff and thats it?... they dont waste time and resources in a possibly-pointless investigation?
mensrea Jun 7th 2008 12:04AM
The biggest problem with banning gold BUYERS (and the reason you never really hear about it happening) is that it's immensely difficult to prove with any sort of reliability that the person actually bought the gold. The portion of the transaction that is against the TOS happens completely outside of blizzard's watchful eye.
So they'd have to ban you for... selling a worthless item for 500g. What's the point? It's easier to fix/ban the inherently damaging behavior (hacking accounts) than it is to fix people who MIGHT be buying gold.
Kyron Jun 7th 2008 12:18AM
Yeah, but thats my point.. I mean, I dont think the gold buyer should get banned, but I'd expect someone from Blizzard asking him about how all this happened.
That's what I expect from a real "investigation". Maybe the gold buyer talked to a char in the game and received instructions, maybe it was outside the game, maybe he got instructions from game-mail, etc...
The last I'd expect is Blizzard returning stuff and doing nothing else, not even questioning people "involved" about more info about it.
That's what an investigation is supposed to be, right?
Cynra Jun 9th 2008 7:21AM
The wonderful thing is that it looks like you had that conversation with the gold buyer in-game. As a number of Blues recently pointed out in various forums, Blizzard has the ability to look over chat logs, transactions, and so on. Think back to the individual who tried to claim that he purchased an epic flying mount only to "lose" it when the server crashed -- and Blue's response congratulating him on leveling skills, commenting on how a week later he was looking forward to purchasing his mount when he had the gold, and so on.
Chat logs are called logs for a reason; they can go back and look through all of that information. If you have an approximate date and time, you could probably direct a staff member to the approximate time.
And most bannings regarding cheating take time. Think of how long it took for Arena traders to get caught. A thorough investigation is typically performed and I know from interacting with people who have been banned in the past for asinie behavior that the banning can come weeks or even months after the incident.
Isa Jun 6th 2008 10:59PM
I see nothing wrong with gold buyers. I don't care if Joe Shmoe got his epic in 1 hour by buying gold, instead of grinding week's worth of quests for it.
Who cares if someone cheated their way to purples or lvl 70? Just like highschool, cheaters probably suck at their class and have no skill.
Starbeast Jun 7th 2008 12:00AM
I'm not proud of it, but when I was a Newb, I bought gold. I didn't even realise it was against the EULA at the time. And I certainly didn't realise just how much it hurt other people. This was back in the day when 200 gold cost 50 dollars. I can't believe what a complete idiot I was. For the other newbs out there, I can't reccomend Auctioneer enough. Sadly, I never found this site when it really mattered. Just wish I had been told about WOWInsider way back when, I might not have made so many stupid mistakes.
Narissa Jun 7th 2008 1:09AM
I love a good 50 / 50 discussion so here goes.
The addition of the Isle only further makes a point that you don't need a lot of time, to make money in game. What's that 100 ish Gold for an hour or so of work.
So why still buy, is due to laziness.
excuses riding on "I don't have the time", or "it's too hard" (* yes I have heard that as an excuse *) seriously isn't anything close to viable.
I would go into a social retrospect of society particularly western society in regards to "I don't want to get my hands dirty or put any effort into it when I can get someone else to do it for me". Instead, I will just say if you can't make money in the game, your just not putting in effort or spending way too much on items that are being price gouged. Auctioneer, and WoWEcon are your friends.
Then again if you are buying your epics and characters there is a 99.9% chance you don't know how to play with any measure of skill in the first place. Then you'll join an area team, and loose badly, and Blizz will investigate a legit player for win trading. LOL "Does that seem right to you". 8)
~Cheers
*BTW this is a humerous post poking fun at pretentious comments. BUT I AM against gold buying and selling, L2P really not that hard.
Inscrutibob Jun 7th 2008 7:41AM
BTW if you have to tell us that it was supposed to be humorous, maybe not so much...
justlikehoneybaby Jun 7th 2008 2:32AM
@mensrea, the poster who said that buying/selling gold is not the same as stealing money from the credit card company, etc. you may wish to re-read the comment you replied to. The commenter was noting that these other RL credit theft
issues are tied into the hacking/gold theft. They are part of the
same stealing that is the basis of the gold selling.
And btw, if you are an adult, employed by a large company, like VISA, your annual bonus is based on how well you do your job, and how well the company does overall. So if you work in the fraud department and you eat a lot of these charges, there goes your bonus, thus stealing money from the commenter. That's not being dramatic -- that's how things work in the corporate world.
Panagiotis Jun 7th 2008 2:51AM
What some of you seem to forget is that you don't OWN your account or your character (read the EULA/TOS) you're just renting the account from Blizzard and that is why most if not all of the times you don't have full control over it. Look at it this way, it's like you renting a car with YOUR ID and/or passport and then get caught by the same company with someone else driving the car around.
jim Jun 7th 2008 3:21AM
ive bought gold back in the day and sold gold
and honestly i dont beleive it hurts any one
if i choose to take my time and farm gold and
sell it to some one who in turns sells it back to other ppl
i dont think its a big deal
and at the time it was damn good money i could make 6-12dollars an hour depending on luck
and i think min wage was 7 at the time
in a matter of 2 days i made 200 bucks
that made me happen
the buyer/seller site happy
and some over paying fool happy
sadly in the end for what i consider a victimless crime
i was perma banned :(
PS also for the CC guy with the big wine on
when people steal thats stealing and its wrong
it also has nothing to do with gold farming
its like saying cars are bad and hurt ppl
because ppl rob banks and then drive away in a car...
of course that doesnt make sense... right?
same idea think about it
peace all
slimj091 Jun 9th 2008 3:39PM
did you read nothing on the article? major gold sellers are not "farming" gold anymore.. atleast not the way they used to. it's much easier for them to hack peoples accounts and steal their gold now.
if you think that it doesnt happen, or that it's still a victimless crime your delusional.
yes there are still people out there that farm gold to sell the legit way. but these days they are the small fish. the big boys steal gold for the sole reason being that they can rake in more gold to sell that way than they ever could farming items in the game to sell on the AH.
Inshallah Jun 9th 2008 10:38PM
Am I the only one who expected this to rhyme?
osedax Jun 7th 2008 7:51AM
My brother and I use the goblin AH to transfer items and gold between our horde and alliance toons, Is that breaking the rules?
JosephMohmed Jun 7th 2008 7:55AM
Sometimes I look under "Junk" in the AH and sort by price descending. There's usually greys in there for 500g or 2000g or whatever, so I make an alt with almost the same name as the seller and put the same items up for the same prices. It's worked one time for 500g. If it doesn't work I just report them, I'm an asshole like that.
Rhodenator Jun 7th 2008 10:04AM
Blah blah blah, that's what you're all saying and that's what I'm saying to you. I've bought gold TONS of times and it was worth every penny. I pay to play WoW and I'm not doing ANYTHING that I don't want to do and I'm going to do EVERYTHING that I want to do. It's a virtual world. This means that I don't farm materials, so I buy them. To buy them I have to buy gold.
If you are blaming 'ME' for credit card theft, then go ahead and blame EVERY eCommerce site out there because they 'could' be selling a product to someone who stole credit card information. THINK a little more thoroughly when you just jump to conclusions of who's guilty of what.
ShadowEric Jun 7th 2008 11:20AM
Except in this case, it's the seller who's stealing the credit card numbers, not you, the buyer, using stolen credit cards to buy it. You wouldn't buy anything else from shady dealers, yet you'll do it with gold. Realize the gold has to come from somewhere and they don't want to farm it any more than you do. I think you're the one who needs to think a little more thoroughly here.
Besides, if you feel the need to buy gold instead of farming, you might be playing the wrong game. Grinding is the core of any MMORPG.
Rhodenator Jun 7th 2008 12:47PM
ShadowEric, while I believe that you are correct about the 'store' being shady or not, I don't think that they are all shady (just like in real life). I've used the same service for over 3 years. I have friends who've powerleveled with them and nobody has lost ANYTHING (in-game or in-real life).
How do you know that the company you purchase from is doing/participating in legitimate business? You don't. That's why there's the infamous Enron and other companies alike who've had their 'internal troubles'. Nobody knew. I would assume that if/once you find out that you have a shady company, that you'd purchase from somewhere else.
With that being said, everytime you make a purchase on eBay, how do you know that it's legit? What about when you go in a local pawn shop. The PROBLEM to me here is that I haven't had my account hacked, so am I just lucky, or because someone was ignorant/miss-informed and did something stupid to get their information comprimised. I'm sorry if some 83 year old lady received a phishing eMail and let her c.c. get loose. Tough luck, maybe someone should use some brains with their money, I know I do.
Punky Jun 7th 2008 1:39PM
As far as power leveling is concerned, maybe I'm missing something here, but I JUST DON'T GET IT. What exactly is the point now of purchasing a game to play if you're not actually going to PLAY it??