World of Warcraft Gold Selling: Effects and Consequences

[GameBanshee News]

Blizzard's European World of Warcraft website has been updated with a new piece detailing the negative impact that gold and power-leveling services have on the game.

What many people don't realize when buying gold is the large impact it has on the game economy, and also how the companies selling gold obtain it. Our developers, in-game support, and anti-hack teams work diligently to stop the exploits these companies use and help players who have become victims of their services. We regularly track the source of the gold these companies sell, and find that an alarmingly high amount comes from hacked accounts. These are the friends, relatives, and guildmates you may know who have gone through the experience of having characters, gold, and items stripped from them after visiting a website or opening a file containing a trojan virus. Our teams work to educate players and assist them in avoiding account compromise, but the fact remains that the players themselves are often these companies' largest target as a source for gold, which the companies then turn around and sell to other players.

Through our normal support processes and the assistance of players, we also find that many accounts that have been shared with power-leveling services are then hacked into months later, and all of the items on the account are stripped and sold off. Basically, players have paid money to these companies, sometimes large amounts, and they're then targeted by these same companies down the road. We come across stories every week of the aftereffects of players using these services, and some players now have to deal with long-term repercussions -- In addition to consequences such as possible account suspension or closure, in many cases the companies they paid then use their personal information to perpetrate identity theft and credit card fraud. These are long-lasting effects on players' personal lives that can take years to recover from.

The battle continues.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by GameBanshee News

The battle continues.

And unfortunately - it'll do so in many years to come.
It is all but impossible to target these gold sellers, and I personally think they should try and do much more to target the gold buyers.
Of course when the gold is created by exploits or duping or similar - target the exploiter, but otherwise, you can't remove the supply, because the farmers are actually playing the game.
However by consequently targeting the people who buy, you can create quite a buzz.
The reason people buy, is that they think it is safe to do so (duh) and by removing that layer of safety, I'm sure you could remove many potential buyers from the equation.

Worst thing is that IMO it would be relative easy to track these transactions.