Banning Gold Buyers

Did you know the vast majority of gold being sold by sellers come from hacked accounts? Those accounts get stripped for everything and converted, then passed around a good 6-12+ accounts for storing the gold.

From the in-game support side this becomes a real mess, as they have to run programs that tries to auto-restore the characters that were stripped and often times deleted, and then try and follow the gold trail to the buyers, remove the gold from them or items they bought, etc.

It will be interesting to see what rules they put into effect to combat gold sellers for Classic, but I do expect to see them non-the-less. Stolen CC info to create a bunch of newbie accounts or the gold sellers will use the hacked account character to advertise.

Having a strong pass-phrase for a password (that is not used on any other account) along with using the 2 factor for your phone would greatly diminish these occurrences.

IMO, they should simply ban both the sellers and the buyers.

IMO, they should not add tokens to Classic.

Further, IMO, they should institute a definitive policy that ā€œtradingā€ Classic gold for retail gold is not only unsupported, but is subject to account disciplinary action, up to and including account termination for both parties.

If Johnny wants to buy gold in Classic, IMO, buying that gold should include the knowledge that he risking his account being banned or hacked.

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Hopefully Blizzard does not agree with that opinion, as itā€™s totally devoid of logic and not good for their business, nor players.

Iā€™m hoping that Blizzard does take that stance.

Iā€™m hoping that those that are too lazy to actually earn their own gold will have to risk their accounts to buy gold.

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Thereā€™s nothing lazy about a currency exchange. You work for something, you spend it how you want to spend it.

I understand what youā€™re saying but, hereā€™s an argument. You have no job and play wow 80 hours a week. You earned it bud. Congrats, be proud.

Johnny works 2 jobs and supports a family of orphans. He enjoys playing wow but doesnā€™t have enough time to farm gold. Johnny buys gold to be able to compete. He understands the risks and accepts them. He didnā€™t get caught and was able to buy his epic mount.
He stilled earned it and heā€™s dang proud.

What work did Johnny do in game to ā€œEARNā€ that gold he bought?

It doesnā€™t matter who earned it, so long as it was earned, not conjured.

ā€œDonā€™t have time to earn that goldā€ is a blatant lie and a copout attempt to justify an action that is a direct violation of the EULA.

There is no time limit for earning gold. Gold will suddenly disappear from the game.

Johnny does not have to earn that gold in a week or two. He will always have the opportunity to earn gold.

Johnny can take as long as he needs to earn the gold for his epic mount. He does not need to have that epic mount in a week.

He might want that epic mount NOW, and he might be impatient enough to buy that gold, but he WAS NEVER in a situation in which he did not have time to earn that gold himself.

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Then that rules put tokens because tokens DO conjure gold.

It might not happen with every token, but gold IS created out of thin air with the token system. That has already been explained numerous times in various threads.

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Tokens are traded with gold thatā€™s already earned, not conjured. Trading does not conjure gold. It was already farmed, therefore, there is no harm to the economy. Iā€™ve already explained trading/tokens numerous times in various threads. I need to construct a mini wall and just start dropping it in these.

You once again show how little you actually know.

I will explain it once again.

The amount of gold a player gets for that token they bought with their $20 is locked in when the token is placed on the AH. It makes absolutely no difference What the buyer actually paid.

If Johnny spends $20 for a token and puts it on the AH when the value is 150,000 gold, but the price drops to 120,000 before Billy buys it, Johnny still gets 150,000 gold even though Billy only paid 130,000 gold. That extra 30,000 gold is conjured out of thin air.

That does not even address claims the possibility that if a token dies not sell within 24 hours, the token is ā€œdeletedā€ and the player receives the amount of gold that was ā€œlocked inā€ when the token was placed on the AH. In this case the entire amount would be conjured out of thin air.

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Then your complaints are with a method/mechanic, not the concept itself. This is a contradiction to your prior posts, where you were against the entire concept of trading gold, not just a method in which it was done.

To expand on my original post I turned off BFA because people were able to buy gold and pay for guilds to run them through the latest content.

I earn decent money now and could easily purchase a dozen tokens per patch to go through the latest content and it would have 0 impact on my finances.

Why spend so much time grinding and working in a guild when you can pay and get carried through the content. Buying gold through legitimate or illegitimate sources with no consequences diminishes the content which diminishes my drive to play. Hence why I havenā€™t played BFA since BoD.

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No.

I oppose buying gold in Classic in any form, whether that be from a third party site, a ā€œClassic tokenā€ or trading retail gold for Classic gold.

IMO, players should have to actually put forth effort in game and earn their own gold in game.

I explained how the token system conjures gold out of thin air again because you falsely claim that tokens do not conjure gold. You also stated that gold should not be conjured.

Allow me to quote you:

By your own standards, tokens should not be in Classic because they conjure gold.

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That means the method is flawed, not that trading itself is bad. Legitimate trading does not harm the economy.

People need to get off their imaginary high horse. Other players trading gold donā€™t affect you or the economy one bit. Your own gold is not suddenly made any less valuable because someone else traded theirs with someone else.

With Bobby Kotick in charge, you know it will happen eventually. They just canā€™t resist putting in micro-transactions.

Never randomly received 5k gold in the mail?

I take it all back11
I am not a girl11q

My recollection from Vanilla was that Blizzard DID try banning gold buyers and gold sellers.

Periodic ban waves would go out. Sometimes tens of thousand of accounts at a time would get banned.

ā€¦ but even this failed to stop the spam. Public chat channels continued to remain largely unusable until Blizzard implemented WoW tokens.