Blizzard has moved to the offensive when it comes to gold-farming in WoW. They have banned over a thousand gamer accounts that they have determined to be farming gold and selling it for real world currency.
According to a post on the WoW forums:
The World of Warcraft Terms of Use clearly states that all of the content in World of Warcraft is the property of Blizzard, and Blizzard does not allow “in game” items to be sold for real money… If you are found to be selling in-game property (such as coins, items, or characters), for real money, you will lose your characters and accounts, and Blizzard Entertainment reserves its right to pursue legal action against you as well.
According to the following, they have finally cracked down on this:
Over the recent weeks we have been investigating the activities of certain individuals who have been farming gold in order to sell it in exchange for real world currency. After researching the situation, we have issued permanent suspensions to over one thousand accounts that have been engaging in this practice. We do not condone such actions and will take decisive action as they are against our policy and damage the game economy as a whole. We will continue researching this matter. If you suspect someone of taking part in said gold farming, please eMail the report to wowgm@blizzard.com. Forum-post link.
I don’t have experience with WoW, as I chose to participate in CoH instead. In CoH, there is currently no PvP (although, it will be released soon), so advancing in the game by utilizing exploits just means that a player would miss out on lots of in-game content. With that in mind, I have never been bothered by people utilizing game exploits or purchasing pre-levelled characters on eBay. Like I said, I haven’t played WoW, so exploit utilization may, in fact, effect other players in the game.
And, since it is apparently clearly stated in the license agreement for WoW, and there was a warning publicly stated in the WoW forums two months ago, I feel no sympathy for those poor people who had their accounts banned.
I think that Blizzard should them selves offer preleveled characters.. and them selves sell Gold to people there seems to be a good deal of money for them there.. I see no harm in doing that them selves .. the people buying that stuff would get bored quicker because they wouldnt have to work that hard in earning their characters status and gold themselves so its only bad for them and will not affect normal people that play it normally because they will be too busy working on their character.. I do hear that buying gold from places like ebay is not needed for WOW because its more easy to get gold in the game and the game economy is pretty decent and not crazy as it is in Star Wars Galaxies .. I mean I love that game all out but the economy is tooo crazy and high and the number of quests and missions are few.. atleast that is what I hear from people who have been playing it for the last 2 years.. I have been playing it for only 6 months so far and love it still and cant wait for the expansion to come next month .. just hope the economy gets fixed and more quests appear..tired of doing the mission terminal missions over and over again mostly the same missions too…and more items in the game everyone can get and rewards that we could get would be nice too.. many starwars players have turned to WOW and might come back one day.. Any ways in Star wars things are soooo expensive and it is quite hard to get alot of credits to get things all the time and you do need things all the time so alot of people have spent alot of real currency to get credits.. I personally have bought 2 million a couple of times when I really needed it … but if LUcas Arts said no more buying that stuff and no more using exploits I wouldnt do it anymore… but I do appreciate them letting us do this for now..
thanks
adrin
I helped someone get their account back because their name had “wanky” in it and that was offensive. this was after the armory came out. While building my case for him, I found 26 other instances of ‘wankies’ in the WOW world. They aren’t just taking the offensive on cheaters, they’re taking the offensive on rational logic and good judgement. If they get a complaint about anything, it doesn’t really seem to matter what the complaint is, they will start banning. Another person that I helped with an account recovery called another gamer a “cracker” while dueling. This was his friend, they were just playing around. And he got banned for it. I cheat myself, and have used various programs to do so. Blizzard does do a very good job at catching you, and other players are good at turning you in when you start acting automated. Last year over, 100,000 accounts were banned. Waves usually come in the tens of thousands, and are most often related to professional farming operations and whenever Blizzard develops an improved method of detection a bot, or automated player.