Yeah you can’t compare the two.
Blizzard forces you to sign a TOS before you’re allowed to play. If you choose not the read it and go in blind, then you suffer the consequences of your actions. Claiming ignorance doesn’t work in this case.
3 Likes
i once told a friend i will trade it to him for a soda…he declined lol
1 Like
If I thought I could have gotten anything for it, I’d have sold mine way back when. I think now the most valuable thing I have may be my hoard of battle pets.
My… digital beanie babies 
1 Like
Back in Cataclysm tons of people sold accounts. As far as I can tell, some of my old characters are still running around. I think it’s always been against ToS, but with mediocre enforcement at best.
Why do you report him for? I really don’t see what’s wrong with it or how it hurts the game in any way, other than blizz isn’t getting a cut. Blizz is at least getting continued sub fees.
When i first started to get seriously into Arena my first real partner was a Resto Druid (i was maining a Warrior at the time). We got to 1800, achieving my first “rating locked” weapons with him.
Next thing i knew, he had sold his account. But that was in S7 during Wrath of the Lich King.
It was a lot more common then because, well first the game was a lot grindier and secondly people held “online achievements” to a much higher standard than now as people were mostly exposed to what was going on on their own realm, meaning individual achievements didn’t need to be as impressive to at least be noticeable (ie being 1 of the like 10-12 people to achieve gladiator within your realm is a lot more interesting than being 1 out of the like 10,000 people achieving it worldwide).
Accounts were worth a lot more then too than now, while nowadays the only ones really going for anything worth taking all the risks involved are usually the ones with rare rewards from back then (Realm First titles, R1 Titles, Scarab Lord etc.)
It was happening in Classic in the last couple of years so that ppl get R14
It’s so hard to imagine going through will selling an account. I’ve had mine for 15 years, it’d be like selling my dog or something. Even if I decided to quit or go on a long hiatus I’d just park my characters somewhere nice and sign off… handing them over to someone else almost feels like a betrayal of sorts.
5 Likes
Yep, couldn’t do it, if I’m not playing them no one is playing them 
Given the age of the game, I think the real question that’ll start becoming prevalent isn’t about directly selling accounts, but rather… What rules will Blizzard put in place to govern the inheritance of accounts by our heirs?
And what guidelines would the IRS use for valuation of the accounts as digital assets for our estates? And will our grandchildren respect us less the more valuable the account?
“My grandpa had HOW many achievement points? Was an R1 Gladiator, for ten seasons straight? Had Cutting Edge, for EVERY tier it existed? Jesus, no wonder grandma left him, I just can’t believe it took her so long.”
3 Likes
Back in cata we had a guy who would sell his account then report it stolen when he wanted to play again. As others have mentioned it’s against ToS and in his case was kind of a scummy move.
I get the sense that this was more common “back in the day”, but maybe people just talked about it more. I assume Blizzard has tried to make this somewhat more difficult, but I wouldn’t be surprised that it’s still possible.
I knew a guy who bought an account some time before TBC launched. There was at least one 60 with some pretty nice gear; I think he had most of the epic PvP set, T1, T2, and a couple pieces of T3 or Naxx gear.
I’m not sure how much he paid for it, but I got the impression that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred USD.
I think that, among other reasons, the inherent risk that the seller could regain control of the account would prevent me from doing this sort of thing.
wait for the naysayers saying theres no such a thing as people selling accounts , just to troll ye thread and derail it.
yes it is a common thing , there are several sites that offer the service of buy/sell or platforms for you to advertise , in my case it feels dumb to even try to do that , kills all the joy of growing your stuff from scratch.
I think the first ever rogue to have the twin blades of azzinoth sold his account for thousands before it got banned.
Right, right. 53 posts of no one saying it doesn’t happen but it’s coming! Just wait!
3 Likes
yes it is common
it is always done for shortcuts, a shortcut to a glad character or a shortcut to a mythic geared character or a shortcut to a toon that owns extremely rare items/titles/cosmetics/mounts/etc
or the cheap ones merely to skip things like a bunch of stupid grinds like allied races and bunch of reps
this happens in every MMO game, easily googled if you feel like researching it further
I don’t know this for sure but it seemed more common back before a lot of quality of life features were added to the game and longer tiers with smaller power gaps between the tiers
nowadays, tiers seem to be a bit faster and have huge power jumps making a lot of old gear largely useless very quickly, this is a product of so many difficulties and M+ but makes an account hold less value for its gear power compared to before
I had a friend in vanilla who sold his r14 account shortly after hitting it due to massive burnout and he got quite a bit for it as that was extremely hard to achieve. It was well known during late vanilla/tbc/wrath that there was a ton of accounts being sold and bought for convenience. And it would happen all the time that someone on your friends list started acting strangely, avoided voice, and played completely different than they used to
there just aren’t nearly as many super exclusive things in wow anymore so a ton of the value often comes from old stuff that you can’t get anymore or that has the 1% drop rates
I was tempted many times but never did it either way
edit: bunch of peeps not able to understand someone selling accounts with so much time in them but you just don’t understand that often some grind just completely burnt them out on wow and they were convinced they would never play again or they were actively looking for ways to break their addiction
oh yeah I just remembered a guy in on of my law classes who literally just used bots to level up characters in MMOs and sold them as fast as he could and that was his sole source of income. That was before I had ever played wow or any MMO so way way back.
and yeah as many have said above, bliz detection methods are vastly better nowadays at looking for red flags for this type of stuff - but it still happens
I thought it was only common in vanilla. If someone earned top PVP titles etc. They could sell their account for quite a bit, like maybe $1,000. Now that boosts are a thing, I assumed no one buys accounts anymore.
I knew a guy that sold his account for $650 back in vanilla when he quit, he was a molten core bis raider. he came back for classic, having never played any expansions. He was having trouble setting up his account. He submitted a ticket. GM said he already had an account with that email that hadn’t been played since TBC, and GM let him reset his password. He got his old account back. Then after a month he felt guilty, so created a new account, but on same Battletag I think. He doesn’t use the account he sold and recovered.
He only plays classic, so I don’t play with him, since he doesn’t understand retail mechanics.
I never heard of it before except as something that “used to happen in the old days”, before I started playing.
But if it is becoming more common, it is probably due to an increase in supply of people deciding to permanently leave the game. We certainly see enough threads where demotivation to even log in anymore is being discussed.
1 Like
Account selling has been going on for many years. The best thing to do is report it because it is a violation of the rules.
I think it has existed on pretty much every single game out there regardless of rules.
1 Like