I’ve learned a lot about what’s going on with gold sellers in WoW-land this week because I was pushing hard on farming marks of Sargeras. I was 12000/21000 with Aldor and also was 1500 gold short on my upgraded mount. As everyone knows, when you’re that close (yet so far) you just want to grind it out and get it over with.
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It’s not “Chinese scammers” as so many people believe. I’m not sure if I am allowed to name the neighboring Island countries, but I will say that USD goes much farther than it would in China.
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There are as many or more gold sellers than there are actual players. For years they’ve been perfecting their techniques which includes but is not limited to selling boost runs - yet they have no idea how to recognize an actual player in raid gear vs a gold seller in piecemeal armor or boosted armor.
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The reason for the overwhelming toxicity and aggression that the gold sellers display towards actual players is because they assume everyone who picks an herb, mines ore nodes, kills creatures, farms rep or otherwise play this game in any capacity is one of them. They rake each other through the mud, are crude, nasty and foul with one another and rather than recognizing that actual players are a part of the WoW community, they see us as competitors and their enemy. Here is my example:
…and this is a true story…
I was in Socrethars Lair killing demons for marks. If a mana thistle spawned in my area, I of course would pick it. I’m an herbalist and an alchemist. Actually, you’d THINK that’s how it should work, but instead I had a gold seller hovering over me on his flying mount and any time an herb would spawn he would dive down and swipe it out from under me. His buddy, who was killing demons in a race against me for tags, and in a race against they flying gold farmer for herbs, he was constantly stealing my tags. I play a holy priest. My casts are long, and my wand doesn’t hit as hard as a damage dealer who automatically gets the tag in that case.
For whatever reason, they didn’t put 2:2 together and see that I’m not a damage dealer and that the only reason I was able to kill these demons was because of the raid gear I am wearing. I’m NOT one of them.
After about 45 minutes of complete degraded game play and frustration, the gold farmer on the flying mount pulled Socrethar and a couple of demons, dragged them to me and feined death. He did this unprovoked. I typed in LFG chat, “Can someone help me? I’m being griefed by a gold seller”, at which point one of his friends responded to me, admitted to me that they are “just working for a living” and selling gold, but explained that they are from Indonesia, they all know each other and this particular hunter was his real life friend. After I explained my position in no uncertain terms, I will be reporting all of them for griefing and for gold selling activity. I also made it clear that if they don’t get the F-- away from me, I will report each incident separately. He tried to claim ignorance and pretended to not know their behavior is against TOS, that its suspendable and (or) bannable behavior. Within seconds of my last sentence to him, suddenly all the two gold farmers disappeared. They logged off and switched toons or moved to a different area and for the next 24 hours I was free to get what I needed for Aldor rep and the Mana Thistle I needed to create several flasks. Not only was I free from gold seller harassment in that specific area but every single place I went that day, people just seemed to disappear when I showed up to the point that i was able to make the 1500 gold I needed for my mount and obtain the marks I needed to become exalted with Aldor.
If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million more times. Blizzard needs to get rid of VPN’s. They also need to sell their own gold and their own mats/marks/game items. They need to make boosting against TOS. It will be the only way to rid the game of the cockroaches who multiply and swarm about us.
My other idea is if any of the above mentioned actions aren’t considered to be a solution for Blizzard, then they need to move the gold farmers to their own servers where they can compete with, degrade and leave all areas desolate of resources all they want!
–coming back to edit in–
Pretty much any time you see someone in Blizzards property defending this type of behavior, chances are they either are a gold seller or are affiliated with them. I know of no gamer that is happy when they get a bot in their 5 man group or an undergeared schmuck who believes he is owed a carry simply because we can and he’s there.
I also have never known a gamer who says things like, “work hard, buy a fast mount and you can be like me”.
I also don’t know a RAIDER who isn’t sick to death of the whole Boost BS. There is NOTHING worse than having to pug a raid spot only to find out after the first few pulls that he’s some imp who isn’t able to level his own toon, let alone gear himself and certainly has no clue how to raid.