Gold Capped: Ask an auctioneer -- auction house PvP

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-02-2010 @ 12:13PM

jdryner said...

Hey All,

I have news for you...botting is the easiest means of profitability for gold sellers (IMHO). Hacking an account is not nearly as easy (I assume) as writing a script that, for example, takes the bot from point (a) to (b), mine, defend itself (as needed), and move on to point (c), etc. Of course, all they need to do is have one of them that knows how to write code, they then share it amongst themselves. Heck, they probably use account hacking, general game hacks (characters that float in the air, stand on top of one another - advertising a website that sells gold, no less), and botting.

-Coldmeiser (Drenden, US, A)

9-02-2010 @ 2:11PM

Spark said...

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jdryner Sep 2nd 2010 12:13PM

I have news for you...botting is the easiest means of profitability for gold sellers (IMHO). Hacking an account is not nearly as easy (I assume) as writing a script that, for example, takes the bot from point (a) to (b), mine, defend itself (as needed), and move on to point (c), etc.
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Well, yes. But that requires an account with which to do it. Blizzard has gotten better at detecting bots and killing accounts. So scammers need a constant flow of accounts with which to bot, spam, transfer gold, and other tasks. Along the way, they might also liquidate whatever they can get their hands on (banks, gear, etc.).

Our most recent scammer victim in our guild didn't raid the guild bank. The scammer took a couple potions. But otherwise, they dropped her professions, leveled up mining, added a recruit-a-friend, mounted up on their rocket and proceeded to farm ore. That is, until Blizz got our ticket and shut them down. When our guildmate got her account back, she found that MOST of her stuff was intact (Blizz had to restore a few things) and she had a wealth of ore and gems. I suspect this scammer didn't want to alert us by doing the usual guild bank grab (which did have us leaving "her" running for about 24hrs longer than we would have otherwise).

As for the difficulty in "hacking" an account - it takes about $200. That will buy you one month of service consisting of a sizable number of nodes in a botnet and the latest version of the service's malware with the game-account plug-in. You can spend more for more nodes and additional services / malware options. But $200 will likely start pulling in WoW accounts. No technical knowledge required (so much for "hacker") - just pay up and wait for the botnet to start reporting account credentials.

9-07-2010 @ 11:21PM

Bronwyn said...

And don't forget that some of the money they spend is actually from stolen credit card accounts- I know several people who have had fraudulent charges show up on their cards with the Blizzard store- everything from server transfers to months of account time, etc.

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