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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard strikes gold sellers with Paypal notices
by Mathew McCurley 
Jan 28th 2011 at 3:00PM
Here is Paypal's letter to the gold sellers:
What's very interesting is that Blizzard is claiming intellectual property violations in the face of the most recent decision in the Glider case. Where Blizzard lost on intellectual property concerns under the EULA, they could have a better shot over their game assets being sold, if somehow it ever went to court. Still, Paypal is the easiest route to go for Blizzard's plan of attack against gold sellers, since most of them are run outside of the country. Suffice to say, it's nice to see some action being taken against gold selling.You were reported to PayPal as an Intellectual Properties violation by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. for the sale of World of Warcraft Merchandise.
If you feel your sales do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of the Reporting Party, please complette the attached Objection to Infringement Report by January 21, 2011.
The completed form should be faxed to the attention of the Acceptable Use Policy Department at [number removed] or emailed to [email removed].
Should you choose not to object to the report, you will be required to remove all World of Warcraft Merchandise from the website [url removed] in order to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy.
Filed under: Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 6)
thawedtheorc Jan 29th 2011 2:50AM
If you are spending real world money to buy in-game fake gold.. you have some serious self worth issues. Why even play the game?
I enjoy the journey in advancing a toon. How can you feel good about your toon and achievements in WoW if you cheat like that?
Shamaenei Jan 29th 2011 3:26AM
If you want to make some gold start off by following some gold blogs and read yourself into it. When you know how to do it you will make gold quicker then the goldsellers themselves but just in a legal way and without having to pay anything.
Adam Jan 29th 2011 4:03AM
Sod gold selling, somebody get rid of all the fecking gather bots
Eldoron Jan 29th 2011 4:45AM
I can see it that "people" will soon look at gold selling as a positive thing, and Blizzard will be the bad guy for them, just like in the case of downloading music and games illegally ...
Mardoc Jan 29th 2011 8:03AM
I think you vastly underestimate not only how many botters are actually out there, but also how much gold can be made through botting.
This is what ACTUALLY happens.
Botters set up accounts. See the S. Multiple accounts. Like, loads of them.
Botters bot there way to 85.
Botters farm mats and vendor them (quicker and safer than AHing them)
Botters sell their excess gold (keeping enough for their main accounts) to gold sellers for peanuts (it's a little bit on the side, after all. As long as it covers the cost of the account over time, it's profit for nothing.)
Gold sellers sell you gold for dirt cheap because... they bought it for practically nothing.
Repeat for every account simultaneously.
1000g is nothing in today's economy... that's why you find trade spammers advertising so cheap. Gold is plentiful, so it's value depreciates. Not to mention that Blizzard cannot... or will not... ban these accounts straight away because of a "lack of evidence" or whatever. And even when they are banned, a lot of them are reopened within a few days anyway upon appeal (something Blizzard DON'T tell you when they publish their banwave numbers)
I'm not saying that there aren't script-kiddies out there robbing people of their precious golds, but with the authenticator that method has been made much more difficult and, as such, not economically viable for gold sellers.
Believe what you will, but as I said when you look into the subject beyond what Blizzard tells you (and without jumping to baseless conclusions) you'll find that actually most of the gold that is sold to the idiots who buy it comes from botters who simply farm the mats and sell them on.
Mel Jan 29th 2011 9:23AM
Its really cute to watch you get your panties all in a twist because people don't believe the bullshit you spout. *gnihihi*
Mardoc Jan 30th 2011 9:39AM
And I think it's cute to see ignorant fools such as yourself attempting to justify your misguided opinions by pointlessly dismissing facts without any evidence or references to the contrary other than "Blizzard told me so". *gnihihi*
Paul Jan 29th 2011 9:42AM
The only place that email address is used, is here, curse, and wowinterface. And I bock ads through my hosts file and use the adblocker plugin for chrome. Still my spam folder is quite full of blizzard account verifications.
Vince Thompson Jan 29th 2011 11:46AM
Guys,
Not sure where all this hacking of accounts and selling the gold comes from, if your dumb enough not to purchase an authenticator for a few Euro's then if your accounts gets hacked it's your own stupid thought.
Also other methods which are more common is selling gold to company's like Swagvault. If you have enough of it they will purchase it from you. You can make a ton of cash farming Whiptail on my server.
Bots and Gold Sellers don't bother me at all, as long as the game is around this problem will never go away, just live with it...
kybob1313 Jan 29th 2011 12:35PM
This is the age-old argument about criminalized behavior and de-criminalized behavior. Once an illegal item is legal and regulated, the criminal element tends to fade away or at least be severely diminished. Blizzard should just sell gold through their website and get it over with.
a gold seller Jan 29th 2011 1:17PM
yall don't even know the half of it, spouting stupid shit of " gold sellers get their gold from compromised accounts", "gold sellers primarily steal their gold", "half of the bought gold is stolen" etc.
Perhaps you guys should take a fracken research trip once in a while, perhaps you'd see that a TON of people use Honorbuddy, Gatherbuddy, Pirox, soon to be Glider again, Private Bots, Underground Bots and the list can go on. FYI- Sue me for needing money from a game that isn't real, I need the money from selling gold to pay for some bills that minimum wage isn't able to. I don't have the luxury of family to support me and or move me out of the area. Perhaps you should actually see who is doing the real gold selling for 50% of the chinese site price. Your "friends", "guild mates" that random level 1 bank alt at the auction house. 10k/ night = 10$/day for 1 character to farm materials in 8 hours.
Good luck killing gold selling when the very source is the player base, only idiots get their accounts hacked because of insecure protocol. Next time read up on learning to change your password every 3 months.. might make things a bit easier.
"10k aint much" that is just 1 person, there is thousands of botters across the globe. Many have more than 1 account. Many are able to do basic exploits into dungeons and sell that lovely BoE gear you guys so frantically lay down 45k for. 255+ servers for the US region, I know of 7 other botters on my faction only for my server.
I can ship out 400 full stacks of product each and every day for the average intake of 30g each, and this is just little old me... 1 person, of many.
Happy hunting down the people who keep your materials at a low cost because there is MORE SUPPLY than demand whilst still moving gold around in a cyclical fashion of bot material-> AH them->sell gold->nub buys gold-> nub buys botted materials from AH
I'll be back later to post again when you guys downrate the truth.
PeeWee Jan 30th 2011 12:51PM
So. 400 stacks at 30G a pop, that's 12K, which you can sell for 12$ according to your own math.
You do realize you'd make more money washing car windscreens at the random red light, right?
Jason Ralph Jan 29th 2011 2:02PM
Really? Which world?
Shad0wembrace Jan 29th 2011 8:36PM
I'm curious if this will also count for Blizzcon tickets.
PeeWee Jan 30th 2011 12:48PM
"Suffice to say, it's nice to see some action being taken against gold selling."
I'd rather see some action taken on gold BUYERS. Hardore chinese triads (lol) won't be scared by this paperwork. Pimpled angsty tenagers will shit their pants.
Also, I love the typo in the email, makes it look like it was written by some chinese mobster. "...please complette the..." *giggle*
MissIllie Feb 6th 2011 1:53PM
o_O Authenticators cost 7 bucks not 25-50... I mean seriously it's super affordable.
Florian Kluge Mar 18th 2011 6:26AM
It's just rumors!
Tell me just one chinese goldseller who don't offer paypal!
Its just copy writing what others say. There is not one single source.
Gath Apr 12th 2011 3:18PM
I was hacked, apparently the hack was traced to China, but the trace was unable to distinguish any "rogue" owner from there, and perhaps the trace may even be a misleading source, and may not even originate from China, so obviously hackers are quite resourceful. Blizzard took care of the situation very promptly and has a dedicated team that continues to thwart hackers 24/7 ...in fact when I turned in a ticket, as I found myself standing in Orgrimmar with only a white shirt and a tabbard on, one backpack and 20 silver, it has a rather violating feel to it. I felt like'a hooker dropped off at the curb in fron'a Jerry Springer's green room, not that I've been there! /looks around...
I have been in a tech support role, and I'll wager the anti-hack team works the hardest out of all of the tech support branches, even though i would imagine regular phone tech support remains horrifically overwhelmed, lolz ...I could only imagine how hard the ppl who work on us that HAVE been hacked and keeping the majority that haven't, from it ever occurring. I have nothing but good to say about the way Blizzard takes care of ppl who have been hacked. Furthermore, they offered me a free authenticator key-chain beCAUSE of what happened and in lieu of the fact I have no cell phone to be able to receive this service for free.
You may say what you will about Blizzard, and I agree on most of it lol...cuz they R bigger than their britches these days but only because of supply and demand, it's our fault they hit the stock bell, not theirs lol...although they are the ones who invented the game, we all must remember that without it's players, and their input from patch after patch and all of the beta testers, blizzard would not be blizzard as it is today.
I believe we earned our right to certain changes, but blizzard is still boss, and like ghostcrawler, you ain't gonna kill it, EVER. we love this game and although we think all these changes should be made here and there, I feel as long as they are keeping our accounts safe, it's as good as saving our Identity, as in identity theft. there is no difference and blizzard works hard, but thieves work harder, so it's up to all of us to do our part, after all, this ain't no game made in friggin China ok?...it's made by diverse raced americans who love gaming, and our demand for their product skyrocketed and we all wish we could do that. jus' sayin' I work in america and i spend my money here too, but what I do find, well disturbing is that the key-chains are made in: where? uhhh hn u guessed it. ;) hmmmmm.