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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 3 of 3)
Eternalpayn Jun 7th 2008 6:43PM
They do it with Linen Cloth on Sargeras Horde. I was mad leveling my little tailor, when I saw 995g for a piece.
The Chi Jun 8th 2008 8:25PM
Oh C'mon fellas...let's all be honest and admit that the real reason we care so much about what everyone else is doing is because they've found an easy way to make gold, while you're up in Quel Danas doing dailies everyday for hours for your gold. Mind your own business and get over it. If someone wants to spend real money for a video game to enhance their experience, who's to say they shouldn't, besides Blizzard's TOS. You act like you've never broken any of their rediculous rules. If you're going to be an angel in blizzard's eyes then guess what! You're welcome into WoW Heaven. Grats, because you now have access to...farming gold in quel danas.
If you're a level 32, and you still haven't made enough gold from those lucrative 25 silver quests to purchase your level 28 skills, spending 30 bucks for 1000 gold doesn't look too evil at the time. For those of you who figure that somehow I'm assisting some 'evil' company at stealing your c.c. you're thinking wayyyy too into this topic and at the end of the day, what doesn't have an immorality attached to it these days. Stop crying about how other people play the game and let blizzard deal with it if they want to. Stop wasting time crying over a topic that doesn't even effect you.
JALbert Jun 8th 2008 7:25AM
This is the exact same argument being used by those 'smoking weed is funding terrorism' commercials.
Even if magically all the account hacking, credit card stealing and malicious behavior stopped, there'd still be a market for cheap labor providing a luxury good, and the act of gold buying would be essentially a victimless 'crime.'
Where things turn ugly is when you consider that there's pretty much no law, punishment or management for theft of virtual property. Stealing someone's WoW account isn't punishable. The CC information is trickier, but I imagine there's not much you can prosecute when someone on another continent steals a CC# and uses it to buy virtual goods.
So yeah. The convergence of liquidity, anonymity and value pretty much gives you the modern Gold market. Blizzard's quixotic war on gold selling is pretty much as successful as Prohibition. Take a regulatable commerce and ban it in the name of morality, and the black market takes over, and criminals move in. To be fair, Blizzard IS quixotic enough to be against gold selling sheerly for the sake of creating a level playing field in their game, but I also don't think they want to mess with issue of governments wanting to tax their virtual economy either.
ghostboci Jun 9th 2008 4:39AM
This is plain simple: the gold must come from somewhere.
The seller definately doesn't want to farm more then anyone else, so the gold must come from some unacceptable activity:
* stealing someone's account, sell his stuff and use his gold
* bot-farming with a stolen account or an account created using stolen credit card. Since goldfarmers do it for money, they will definately not pay subscription fees for their accounts, so someone else has to pay
The powerlevelling services are also involving such activity. Do you belive someone is playing the quests for the ridicolously low amount of money you pay for this "service"? No! Your toon will be levelled by a lvl70 running him trough instances. And guess where the lvl70 comes from?
Unless the goldfarmers can conjure gold from air, the gold must be missing somewhere!
batgrl Jun 9th 2008 6:02PM
I'm cynical enough to think that the majority of the "buying gold is ok!" posts always come from people who are gold sellers or who are benefitting from it in some way and trying to convince themselves they didn't break the EULA. It'd be interesting to see how they'd feel once their account is hacked, knowing that the hacker is then going to use all their gold/gear to sell to someone else.
Meanwhile people who feel they just HAVE to buy gold? Folks, you're in the wrong game. If you don't want to take the time to get your own gold/gear/level 70 - don't you realize this is an MMO? There will just be another thing to grind for in a few months, a new way to make money, new sparklies to aquire. It doesn't END. The fun should be in the act of the collecting, not just immediately having it all. If you don't get that - well there are some great stand alone, offline games you can play out there. Because you're not getting that you're competing in a non-ending game.