Gold buyers are cheaters. Nothing infuriates me more than seeing someone cheating to avoid work I’ve been doing. It gives me that feeling you get when someone blatantly cuts in line in real life.
When I tell people that I play the AH, I get incredulous stares and hear things like “Who needs gold?” and “I’d rather actually play the game than stare at the auction house”. That’s fine and dandy, and I’ve said similar things to people who collect achievement points and vanity items. When, however, these I’m-too-good-to-worry-about-trivialities people turn around and buy gold because they decide that a battered hilt is worth 30$ to them, they lose my respect. If you decide that the economy just doesn’t apply to you, and that rewards should just be given to you without you having to work for them in game, you’re cutting in line. You’re devaluing the work done by people who are trying to obtain the same things you are without cheating.
Gold sellers hack accounts and bot farm 24/7 to cater to these low-life cheaters. But I’ll bet you didn’t know that, at least in the US terms of service, while gold selling is expressly forbidden, buying is not mentioned?
Screw that! Blizzard should make buying expressly forbidden on US servers the same way they are on EU servers. Anything less makes no sense.
What they do now
Right now, Blizzard mass bans people for cheating at intervals. Unfortunately, this only seems to hit the sellers and people who facilitate selling. It works moderately well, however as long as there’s people with cash in their pockets and drool on their chins who are willing to buy gold, the hydra will keep spawning new heads. The only way to reduce the amount of gold selling done by hackers and farmers is to reduce their market: work at reducing the amount of money available to them.
What they could do
One thing that would work, of course, is simply banning everyone that buys gold. Buying gold leaves a clear trace that, believe me, Blizzard is capable of following. Problem is that this costs Blizzard money- these people are paying customers, however misguided their cheatin’ ways are. In my mind, that leaves one option: set examples and use them as deterrents.
If every time you logged in (or every Tuesday after maintenance) your realm message of the day included something like the following, people would buy less gold:
“Soandso from <suchandsuch> guild was caught buying gold, and consequently had [epic boe] and [awesome pet] removed. Remember, hackers wouldn’t install viruses on your PC to steal your battle.net password if they had nobody to sell your gold to!”
Nothing is perfect
Of course, whether they ban or humiliate someone, there’s always the possibility that people would use this process to try and hurt innocent players. Anyone with a couple of dollars to spend could hire a gold seller to mail in game gold to some innocent character, who would be at risk of being labeled a gold buyer. This is terrible, of course, but no more terrible than all the existing false positives they have already. All they would have to do is put up a notice (maybe on the same message of the day, or on the splash screen when you log in) reminding people never to accept money from people they don’t know, or they risk being labeled a gold buyer.
Also, innocents get banned all the time- all they have to do is get caught by whatever the newest algorithm Blizzard had made to catch the real cheaters. That article I linked to is old, and my opinions have since shifted. While I’d love for Blizzard to have time to coddle every banned account just in case it was a false positive, I acknowledge that having a process like this would add a serious strain on their ability to ban cheaters. The system they have now for protecting the falsely accused seems to work well enough.
IMHO buying gold in WOW is just another cheat code… but it costs money.
Personally, I would not play WOW if all I had to do was buy gold to progress in the game.
To me the journey in WOW is more fun than the destination, and buying everything I need to play would lessen my enjoyment… but to each their own I suppose.
This. The destination is meaningless if it can be accomplished without a journey.
And since you’re unfortunately probably preaching to the converted here Rip, authenticators are cheap and easy to use. If you can’t stop the practice, at least we can make sure we’re not contributing to it.
A recent poll of my progression 25 man guild showed that about 90% of the members have bought gold at some point, and these are people who already play 20+ hours per week at a bare minimum.
Conclusion? Almost everyone buys gold. Get used to it.
A recent poll of outdps lead bloggers showed that 90% of your guild’s raid team are asshats.
In the real world, “getting used to it” destroys economies. Complacency and resigned participation in corruption exacerbate inflation, population flight, weak infrastructure, weak oversight, economic insecurity and any number of other ills. It is only by refusing to be “used to it” and adopting other policies that a society creates transparency, accountability, reliability and security in its economic dealings. The lesson we can learn from this, I think, is that to have a better WoW economy we have to practice it ourselves and demand it of Blizzard.
And here I was wondering who bought gold.
Every guild I’ve been in has explicitly forbidden members from buying gold. Instant gkick. Did your guildies applaud Ensidia for exploiting the Lich King encounter? Did they cheer on Exodus for cheating Yogg+0?
I’ve never seen a reason to buy gold. Sure, getting new shinies now is fun, but earning and saving the gold myself makes the purchase so much juicier. I love my chopper far more than my Celestial Steed mainly because I earned it. I did the work, I saved the gold, I did it. That sense of accomplishment far outweighs the “Tri-Star sparkles!” feeling (and yes, I named my steed Tri-Star).
I’m not a buyer, reaching gold cap is one of the side-games next to raiding for me. I do however understand the buyers’ argument: ‘Hey why spend 10 hours of private-fun time if I can actual work 1 hour and use that IRL money to save the 10 hours.’
Like you said, Blizz can put a stop to it quite easily if they wanted too. Problem is, farm accounts are paying accounts too and the people buying gold are the same buying vanity pets.
If it were possible to give yourself BiS gear from heroic ICC 25 just by paying 100$ to a hacker, would it be right to do it?
Because gold can buy BIS gear?
It’s an analogy- gold can’t buy you much BiS. You need to raid to get good gear, but if you could cheat and get it for 100$, that would be like buying gold.
I do not agree with you Euripides. firstly, yes it is cheeting.
But it does not de value your work, at least it should not. The gold can be used in two ways:
Buying stuff from Blizz. Then the money is gone from the economy. This should in no way devalue what you do. You cant buy frost emblems for gold as you probably know. You dont get rating for gold either if I remmeber correctly. Im not a PvPer though. Unless you like to compare yourself and what you have with everybody else. You must hate the mount ppl can buy then.
The second way is buying of AH. That would increase the price of the items making legit farmers, and others richer.
Also I would like to point out that if you play the market by buying cheep and selling for a higher price you are affecting the market the same way as the cheaters.
And for the battered hilt. you could also get it from a drop if you are really lucky. The point here is that the amount of work required can vary a lot. So why would a unlucky person buying gold for this devalue the game more then a lucky guy getting it on his first run?
Last thing, the hacked accounts.. I have heard it lots of times but I have never seen any proof. Do you have any? I am not saying it aint so but I wouldn’t mind some proof for once. Oh and proof is not the same as anecdote.
I am sorry for my English, its not my best.
Oh last last thing. I dont believe you that it would be that easy for blizz to know who bought gold and who dident. If it were so easy we wouldn’t have that many gold-selling spamers. Dont you think?
Blizzard has stated that Gold Buying promotes hacking. Blizzard has data that they are able to come to that conclusion. They know that when I report my account hacked, that the hacker took the gold and transfered it to another character. Most likely that character has been involved in Gold buying/selling.
Not much in form of data or proof. Argument from authority only.
I am not saying that it is not the case. But is the majority of gold sold from hacked account? A minority? Are there ‘honest’ gold sellers or do they all do it the same way from hacking, and not for example farming?
Also are the computers hacked primarily for WoW (for gold selling) or is that a secondary advantage? If its primarily then I can see the number of hacked accounts dropping if ppl stop buying. Well unless they just sell the accounts. If it is secondary then I cant see why it would drop.
What is a hacked computer worth? Any ideas? In average. Some will have credit card info on them etc. perhaps a part of bot nets? Or perhaps it gives more money to just get to wow?
Can they get your account without hacking your computer?
Clearly, Blizzard isn’t planning on releasing internal numbers about this. I do know that there are rootkits and keyloggers that only report wow login info back to the creators.
I did a lot of research on Zbot / Zeus Bot. There is kits sold out there for this, and this would be a great tool to capture Wow information, along with bank information.
If someone was a criminal mind, with intent to make money, I’m sure WoW is not their only revenue maker. They are going to diversify (weird!) and also capture credit card info, capture bank information, steal identies, etc. The purpose is to turn virtual information into real money.
I know you can get the ZBot kits for as low as $300. Some SaaS options are even available! Its disgusting!!
And as said, Blizz will not release that data… But it is a threat to their business, and if they are saying that is where its coming from, I would trust what they say. I must trust them, I pay them $15/month! :)
And yes, they can get your account without hacking your computer. Two ways: Social engineering and brute force. Battle.net uses email address as a user name. How many public places might your email address be in? Forums? Blogs? Use your password in a non-reputable site that you also use… and they know your a wow player, EASY! Brute force isn’t too hard either once you know the email address.
Advice: Get an authenticator and/or Get a dedicated email address for your wow account. But get an authenticator and worry less about the second item!
I had a friend tell me yesterday he bought gold for a new toon he has on a new server. The look on my face must have said it all, he was quite surprised with my reaction.
When I first started the game, I have to be honest, I really considered buying gold. I wanted cool stuff, but didnt have a way to get it as I was very new. But, I also did not know it was against the EULA, and that these sick people selling gold are the hackers (that hacked my account once btw!). Knowing all this now, I am strongly opposed to buying gold.
And yes, Blizzard could track it. As soon as they know someone sells gold, all their transactions should be reviewed. Start building the web and tree of the money transactions.
Also, Blizz should be able to prevent this by implementing some simple pattern checks – IE: No websites in trade chat… Build patterns of known gold selling websites and immediate ban if its used… I cant count how many times I have seen the same URL for special gold deals.
Thinking of Gold, when is Call to Auction coming back with another episode Euripides? I love that podcast!
A guild on my server about a year ago ahd made so much money that there guild bank couldnt hold anymore.. so the gm decided to give it out to the guildies since they pretty much earned it.. so a few k gold here and there.
He was then ‘PERMA’ banned for selling/trading gold in game and NEVER got his account restored and blizz basically wouldnt listen to reason.
That’s really weird. Last summer, a guild I was in for a couple months imploded (in before “all your fault!”) The gm distributed all the gbank mats to everyone. My wife and I received 4k gold and about 1k worth of flasks, others received much more. The gm was never banned. Blizzard works in mysterious ways sometimes.
I agree with you on how it really is cheating,I don’t think I could ever justify paying real life money for in-game gold.
on the other hand, the people that do buy gold, tend to be very careless with their gold, because they can just buy more. These people are the kind of people that I’ve made a killing off of playing the AH, because they’ll just go to the AH, and go” I want that, and that and that” ect.
long story short, I think people who buy gold, and other things for real money need to think about what their actually doing.
LOL, google adverts is currently advertising where to buy gold on this article
But I agree 100%
Also I do realise you don’t have much control over google adverts, it still made me lo though
I looked into it- they display google’s “relevant” ads to a small portion of my viewers to help offset the hosting costs. I wouldn’t mind if they were actually relevant, however google only ever seems to advertise gold sellers on wow blogs :(
I’m going to have to go self hosted. Damn, I had been trying to avoid this…
Are you serious?? I think it may be time for me to migrate to a platform I can control the ads on :(
meh i don’t know how it works, but i see google ads has disappeared from this post
The most basic reason to not buy gold is that buying gold encourages account hacking. The majority of gold sold by the gold sellers is not obtained via “harmless” farming but by the hacking of accounts. The more gold buying that happens, the more account hacking happens.
Would one defending the buying of gold think it’s perfectly acceptable to have their account hacked? Probably not. Is it reasonable to say “get used to it”? I don’t think so. Are you 100% safe from hacking because you have an authenticator? Nope.
Buying gold is not just cheating the in-game economy or other players who legitimately obtain their wealth, but you are cheating legitimate players who have their accounts stolen because you are too lazy to play the game within the confines of the rules.
If you want to argue that the above is not the case, despite Blizzard having the data to back it up, look at it from a business perspective. What is easier and more cost efficient? To pay people (even a pittance) to farm gold or to hack accounts and reap hundreds of thousands of gold that way?
You may wish to believe you are partaking in a legit transaction and nobody is being hurt, but this is self-deception to make yourself feel better about what you know is wrong.
Please, you are asserting that the majority of the gold sold is hacked gold. Give me some data on it. Do not demand people to accept a positive claim without proof for it.
But let me ask you this. Do you see hacking account as an infinite resource (largely) with no costs associated with it?
It seems so by your argument at least.
If that is the case then from a business perspective the price for gold should be more related with the cost of business (sellers loging in and giving the gold? handling webpage?) then the amount of gold. Ie there real cost would be every time there is a transaction. In other words it would me a business model like a service rather then a manufacturing of a item. Price for 100000 gold would not be that much more expensive then 10000 gold as the amount of work the same. It definitively should not be a factor close to 10.
Remember in a competitive market the pricing should more closely resemble the cost of producing the product.
Unless hacking do have a cost and/or that it is not a infinite resource. If it does have the cost then you need to show that the cost is comparatively lower then gold farming. If it is not an infinite resource (largely, you cant just say go hack 100 accounts and give me 1 mil gold) then you need to show that it is large enough to be used as the main way of getting gold to sold.
Again I am not saying that it is or is not the case. I just rather hate bold assertions.
Please again if im wrong in any respect, please tell me. I like to learn.
Also I am curious if blizz have said that the majority of gold sold is from hacked accounts. It would be interesting to read that post. Any links?
The issue of time spent for monetary value is basically that it’s less time consuming to hack accounts, take the gold, sell the goods etc than to strictly employ farmers.
Usually, hacked accounts are then in turn used by farmers as they are higher level and thus can farm in more profitable zones, so the theft of accounts is dual-purpose and yields profit on two fronts.
As for figures, Blizzard have not, and for good reason, released figures on what percentage of the gold selling market is driven by which actions. They do have the data but have said they cannot provide the figures (I’m sure you can figure out why).
It’s a massive and complex industry with no clear cut parameters by which we can easily measure activity without being privy to Blizzard’s tracking tools. But the bottom line is that the act of buying gold supports the compromising of the game for other players on a variety of levels. From disrupting legit in-game economies to losing accounts to being falsely accused of illegitimate actions and punished for such and so forth.
Attempting to justify buying gold in no way comes off as acceptable, legitimate or presents it as a “victimless crime”.
In my last comment I did not ask for number, but of blizzard saying that the majority of gold bought is from hacked accounts.
That is what you have stated. I already know that you do not have data/proof for it, but im interested if there is second hand information from blizzard about it.
Secondly I am not attempting to justifying gold by saying it is a “victimless crime”
I am attempting to get you to either say why my description of your business scenario is wrong, or even better give me proof to why I should believe your statement that most gold sold is hacked gold.
Let me make it clear for you. The reason I would recommend of not buying gold is that I believe there is a non trivial amount of it that is from hacked account. But on the other hand as one gave as an example if you give your friend a pizza or, god help us, actual money for some gold I personal no not give a shit. I also like that blizzard understands that ppl might like to pvp without playing the leveling and gearing game. It would be nice if they can do something like that for raiding, so you dont need to level to 80 and gear up to start raiding with your friends (buying level 80, like the tournament).
Again though what I believe or do not is not relevant to you giving good arguments to your assertion.
Il try to illustrate it in another way. Several ppl here, including you, are acting like theorycrafters. But its not the simpel theorycrafting where you say “in ideal conditions bla bla bla this should possibly represent reality”.
no you instead preach the truth, hand out assertions left and right, and you demand that ppl understand that your views are reality.
Again to make this perfectly clear. I am not saying it is not reality, I am not saying it is reality. I am saying that you should at least try to prove it.
Do you have proof for your statement that most gold sold is hacker gold?
Perhaps somebody investigated this other then blizzard? Perhaps, you know, reporters? Just like there have been for many black markets? Perhaps a ex employ have blogged or been interviewed? Perhaps you have tied to get their confidence and then asked right questions? Perhaps you know a person that knows a person that knows somebody that works there?
I am still interested if blizzard have made the statement that most gold sold is hacked gold.
How do you know what you know? What information have led you to that conclusion?
I sold about 3K gold once. For a pizza. To a friend of mine. But hey, woulda given him the gold if he’d asked. I just loves me some pizza.
I wouldn’t target small scale personal trades like this. What gets me going is the people who buy from hackers who install keylogger viruses.
I think gold sellers and gold buyers should be burned at the stake. The whole industry encourages keylogging. How many times have you heard of someone who was left naked and unable to login?
If it’s too hard to make gold to do what you want to do then Blizz might add things like say.. daily quests to give you an easy source of revenue to cover in-game expenses.
It’s interesting to me the different thresholds people have for cheating. People who would agree that hacking an account and stealing everything is wrong are okay with buying gold — something about being a step removed I guess.
You see this all over WoW though, where people feel certain kinds of cheating are okay and others are not. Most people will say exploiting is wrong, but they’ll also have exceptions.
Most think using the exploits to get out of the gates in bgs before they started was wrong. Then when you get to exodus or ensidia exploiting to get a world first kill (taking advantage of a bug = exploiting) people are more split. Then you move down to when glyph of steady shot was known to be bugged and MM could get the effect without the glyph: suddenly hunters everywhere were happy to take advantage of this known bug… which is the definition of exploiting.
What really interests me is why certain kinds of cheating are considered okay, and other kinds are not.
Yeah, I’m kinda curious about that in an academic way, but I’m mostly concerned with this particular instance of the debate.
The cheating that benefits the cheater is acceptable, but the cheating that hurts the cheater is not acceptable.
That would pretty much sum it up I think. As for the immediate topic at hand, we obviously have people that believe it to be bad, and those that think it perfectly fine. What I want to know is, would the gold-buyer then be fine with their account getting hacked, their gold taken, gear sold and the character used to farm gold? Since gold-buyers defend the act as acceptable, is it then in turn acceptable should their account fall prey to the methods used to obtain gold they purchased?
I’m not sure I understand your point… generally the only reason people cheat is that it benefits them. It always benefits them, or they wouldn’t do it.
You asked “why certain kinds of cheating are considered okay, and other kinds are not”. My response was the the kind of exploits a cheater engages in are all okay provided the benefit is to the one cheating. But, if an exploit hinders a cheater, it is then not okay – basically, there is no fully “acceptable” form of cheating.
So I wondered then, somewhat rhetorically, if the gold buyer who defends their actions as something to get used to, in turn had their account hacked, would they consider this okay, or not?
Remove the ability to mail gold from one account to another. That way all gold transactions would have to occur in person. Then start applying bans for people who buy gold.
So I asked my friend who bought gold about the transaction and how it went/etc. He went to some website he could buy it from, and they took paypal. So he transfered it through there. The person contacted my friend by the phone and he was unable to understand this person with his accent. So they decided to email to make arrangements. This gold seller met him on the server and did an ingame trade for the gold.
Sadly, the stopping gold transfers on mail would be bad. There are lots of people who use the COD system in mail to buy materials to sell on the AH. There are others who use it just to send gold to friends who might be offline, or the guild to help out a guild mate…
But, yes, people who buy gold to should get ban as well.
The can track mail as easily as trades, so banning mail would accomplish very little. The real issue here is that they don’t bother with the buyers, and keep cutting heads off the hydra.
BTW: my position is gold buying is cheating, needs to be strictly forbidden and enforced. It is no difference than using a bug or an exploit to take advantage of the game.
For the one or two actual academics here:
Very nice vid. Ignore everything I have written and just watch it.
[...] @outdps: ranty post about gold buyers up on outdps: http://outdps.com/2010/04/29/the-real-problem-is-gold-buyers/ [...]
[...] (link) Social Reciprocity (Diabolical Minds) (link) The Real Problem is Gold Buyers! (OutDPS!) (link) It looked great until I actually read it (Dechion’s Place) [...]
The first step is to collect and examine the material. Broken and damaged jewelry is an ideal source of gold as are gold coins. When examining the material, the owner should remove any non-gold components in order to ensure that the gold can be easily weighed and valued by the dealer.Thanks for sharing.