Obviously you didn't know about the people who were getting banned for "gold buying" when they didn't.

Back during Burning Crusade, there were some people who were banned for transferring large amounts of gold, 5000g and up, between characters and account. There were some who were even banned for giving it to a friend to buy Epic flying.

They were legit because they came to the Customer Service forum, complained about the ban, said they had never bought gold, and was simply transferring gold between accounts or gifting it to friends, and a CM checked, confirmed it wasn't bought, and they were unbanned.

I don't know if the gold buying banning is quite as reactive now, but they would ban you even if they SUSPECTED gold buying.

Also, I do wonder why don't they censor out gold seller addresses. There is one very well known one that we all know who's name still isn't censored, and I wonder why. I am so sick of seeing it.

A lot of people get their accounts compromised without ever buying gold, or going near to gold selling sites or even 'dodgy' websites. There are lots of legitimate sites that have had their adverts poisoned to load malware onto visitors machines. Banning them is a little extreme don't you think?

The gold spam in chat is blocked to a degree, but there are limits to what Blizzard would filter. It's so cheap to buy domain names, that gold selling websites would buy names with more common words, and then we'd be trying to chat and have their own words censored due to unfortunately saying a word matching a gold selling website.

Gold farmers don't hack or steal - they farm the gold, hence the name. Criminals using malware steal accounts and gold, and then sell it on to the gold selling sites.

There are two ways to stop it

1 - don't make gold worth much. If there's nothing to buy, then there's no reason to buy gold. Of course this will kill professions etc.

2 - Blizzard sell it themselves for a low sum, and allow players to sell their excess gold back, in exchange for game time.

The first won't happen, and I would have said once that neither would number 2, but having seen Blizzard sell pets and mounts, it wouldn't actually surprise me to see them selling gold.

No offense, but I believe those are some terrible ideas. As long as you can't hear the spammer, then your experience isn't harmed. Let Blizzard worry about the farmers, and you just play the game.

Allowing players the authority abuse your hypothetical kick system gives players the right to sue Blizzard. They pay their monthly dues for access, and allowing players to deny them access is a very poor and potentially illegal decision.

The purpose of a business is to make a profit. If Blizzard banned every account, or refused to return gear and gold to every account that purchased gold, players would quit. Guilds would lose contributors, and raid scheduled would be messed up. Blizzard doesn't want to upset the community because it lowers the quality of the experience.

Gold farmers hurt WoW. They probably drive 1/1000 WoW players from playing. But if Blizzard took action against anyone that bought gold, it would probably drive away 1/100 WoW players.

Only problem with #3 is you basically hit level 2 now by traveling from the starting area to a major town to access /2-Trade :/

I missed the part about level 2's.

I absolutely hate it when someone makes a "minimum level to enter cities/talk in Trade" suggestions.

One of the methods companies use to gain gold is to bot. Those bots can automate leveling. Let's put 2 and 2 together, shall we?

The gold farmers use those bots to level, then spam anyway.

Net result? Absolutely no !@#$ing change.

And it wouldn't matter anyway. The accounts they use to spam on are usually compromised accounts. They will have a character above level 2 anyway.

@craig http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/06/29/the-lawbringer-why-youll-never-buy-gold-from-blizzard/

@kevin
actually you don't pay for access. read the eula and tos. you're paying to use blizzard's toys when they say you can. i'm pretty sure there was a lawbringer about that too but i can't remember. blizzard can let you play as much or little as they want and you can't sue anyone.

Tatsumasa, you're in correct. However, when it is players that are denying your access, that's a different story. It's like if you went to see a movie. Management could ask you to leave for any reason. However, if a patron forced you to leave, and management didn't reimberse you, that's where you could take legal action via consumer protection laws.

Gah! I meant, "you are correct".

@kevin

alright, i can see the legal issues there. so maybe if someone is reported for x number of spams in a given time frame make that person not able to talk then. it isn't enough that i don't have to hear it because there's still more people out there waiting to be tempted to buy and have their accounts stolen so they can then be used to spam some more.

when a person comes in to work and discovers they're sick, they need to go home to keep from getting everyone else sick, not me go home so i don't get sick. i'm already not buying gold. it's the people who could that need to not have it thrown in their face.

Tat, if that's how you feel, I'll respect that. I'll only say that logisitically, that would be a nightmare for Blizzard to have to deal with rampant abuse. Blizzard is (and should be) more concerned with player experience than they are with gold buying.

It's easier for them to give the players the ability to tune out gold spammer if they player chooses to do so. Then at their own leisure, investigate the gold spammer and takes actions from there. It would be multiplicatively more challenging to deal with players kicking people out of WoW for fun, and having to take disciplinary action against them.

@ tatsumasa: Well if it ever happens to you, then maybe Blizz will take your advice and wipe you out. You have to realize many people who get hacked are not buying gold. They can hack thru uploaders or even if you just unwittingly visit a website and your IS is lousy. A kid exploring the internet is very vulnerable, and loads of victims are kids.

I wish they would try blocking the gold spam. Maybe put a BadBoy on each server.

@Drakkenfyre

A week ago in the Ashen Lake area of Mount Hyjal where the flame mobs pat, I saw 2 bots going about their routine of killing and skinning. They would even detect someon killining near them and run and skin your kill too. (my toon is a skinner and had to learn to be quick skinning his kills as they got one of mine).

I tried talking to one (the other was an ally) and he was unresponsive in any way. So I watched these two for quite a while and eventaully one's bags got full so when he killed he'd pause, couldn't skin, then move on. Between the two of them they had dead mobs strewn everywhere. They did that for an hour and then suddenly they both left the area.

When they came back, apparently their bags were empty because they resumed their original pats. The one I had attempted tp whisper to was still unresponsive.

So I filed a GM ticket on them both.