http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

it's always been against the ToS, but i'm glad they wrote this.

hells yea

Yea we are acutally not to bad on Etrigg.

On my horde server Madornana there are constant, like every 2-3 minutes if not faster, spams for gold from different "players". They log in under DND, spam twice, log out, make a new toon, log in with DND , spam a few more times and repeat.

It's crazy.

Plus we all know people who have had their account hacked, couple in this guild, Jack for one.

And I know that gold was going to be sold off somewhere for sure.

u have smal peniss? u want be strong lik bull????/ wow-toolshed.com u go now make strong.

Dude, that's horseshit. Blizzard writes stuff like that to keep up appearances. They can't just sit there and do nothing. They don't care about gold farming and gold buying. They get more money out of it. If they really cared they would actually try to do something about it. Aside from wandering elites and weak (user-initiated) spam filters, they've done virtually nothing to even slow the gold-selling, account-hacking machines. Not only do they do nothing themselves to keep accounts from being hacked or going after the account hackers, they blame the user for putting their account in a position to be hacked and then make it infernally painful for the victim to get the account back from the hackers. Additionally, most of their efforts have actually added annoyances to the typical gameplayers (only 43 minutes and 19 seconds til I can get the gold from my auction. Yusss!).

A couple years ago when AOL started their anti-spam deal, they got people locked up for SPAMMING. Not for account theft or spreading viruses or anything of that nature like we deal with in Warcraft... it was simply for illegal spam mail. You know how many spam emails i've gotten on my AOL account since then? Zero. Even my spam folder has been empty since. Until Blizzard actually makes an effort to show that they want this problem to go away, they're supporting it. It's not about the game or the players, it's about the money. WoW is a money-making engine, and that is all. Yes, it's a relatively enjoyable one for the people they're making money off of, and that's why it continues to push through these issues despite their blatantly hollow efforts to deal with them. They've done nothing but thrown up another smokescreen in the waning wake of the last one.

I'm a little bit offended by this "new" policy they're claiming to uphold. It's a bit of a slap in the face to people who play the game properly and is a bit of a huge slap in the face to anyone who has had his or her account ripped off. What they basically said in that statement is... "these companies are only of minor annoyance to us, but they can be life-crushing for you. Therefore, it is entirely up to you to stop them by not using them. We don't care enough to do anything about it, even though this is our game. You're the one who will suffer, so we don't really care all that much. We still get your monthly fees, their monthly fees, and the monthly fees of any accounts that are started in order to be used for power-leveling and gold-farming. Only you can prevent account hacks. Oh, wait... no... we could try to do something about it... buuut... we'd probably have to put on pants. We're not about to risk having to make an effort for something. That's just how we roll. Anyways, um... don't buy gold, don't buy levels... all that stuff is bad... and, um... that's about it. Have fun, guys." This would be akin to the police saying, "well... the only way to get drug dealers off the street is for people to stop buying drugs. You could be robbed, shot, sold fake drugs; you can even die from the drugs themselves. If you don't buy from them, they don't make money. It's all up to you. End of story." Those are just my thoughts, though. I'm done. Carry on. ...Wow, that ended up being a really long pointless rant. I do feel a little bit better, though... like a massive emotional weight has been lifted from my shoulders! What a rush! Or something. What?

<edit> Let me clarify what bothers me so much about their "official statement:" They basically just told everyone who buys gold, sells gold and/or hacks accounts that they have no plans to take any additional measures against them, but that they are instead leaving it upon the players to decide whether this activity continues.

Not only do they do nothing themselves to keep accounts from being hacked or going after the account hackers, they blame the user for putting their account in a position to be hacked and then make it infernally painful for the victim to get the account back from the hackers.

There is only so much a company like Blizzard can do. I'd be willing to bet all the common password hacking models are blocked (like brute force or dictionary lists as two quick examples) with a "too many failures - locking account" type feature.

One thing they could do (which I have not tested) is put password requirements in place. Each password must have at least one capital letter, one special character, one number, so on and so forth. For all I know they'd allow you to use 12345 as a password. (12345? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard of in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!)

One major problem with this are the users. Tell them you have to have a password like 3yM@tBd69s and they'll bitch. Tell them the passwords must be changed monthly and they'll bitch. Slowman is a sysadmin so I'm sure he can provide more examples of why users bitch about the inconvenience of computer security. Yes, Blizzard could make the login and authentication system more secure... but at what amount of griping form users.

If a user decides to give his account information to a power-leveling company, what is Blizzard supposed to do? One can not (and should not) save another from their own idiocy. That power-leveling company now has access to whatever billing and address information you provided, and the ability to change your password. How is Blizzard supposed to verify that it is really you claiming the account was hacked and now want the password reset? The "bad guys" have the same info about the account you do. As far as Blizzard is concerned it could be the "bad guys" trying to get your account back after you changed the password.

There isn't much to say about the gold farming. It's not like these guys are cheating or some how waving magic wands and putting thousands of gold into an account. They are actually farming it up... just like anyone else does. I don't support selling or buying gold... but they are not exactly doing anything the game does not allow them to do.

/ Is it 5pm yet? I want to go home.

Well, it's not the actual gold farming itself that's against the rules; it's the stealing of it from hacked accounts and the selling of it in exchange for real money. I definitely agree with your idea about the password requirements. I'm also not saying that EVERYTHING is on Blizzard. Just that it seems that they have very little interest in stopping it. Obviously, people who act stupidly have a much higher chance of becoming victims, but, even though they cheated and should be banned from the game, they're still victims of a much larger crime partially because of the game and blizzard's reluctance to put any effort into enforcing their rules. Keyloggers can show up on a computer from downloading bad mods that claim to have completely legal effects on the game, too. I understand blizzard can't be expected to police the add-ons, but the information is still contained on their site and in their game. I dunno. I just get the idea that they want to make people feel safer with messages like this, but that there is very little behind them. They don't really seem to care all that much about it, since they don't have to worry about it legally or financially. I mean, I suppose I can't really fault them too much for that, because it would take an effort to try and protect their users, but statements like these are just meaningless. They don't care about protecting their users, stupid or not, but they want us to think they do. I dunno, I really just felt like ranting about it earlier. Not really anything I can do about it. Almost 5, yo.

They don't really seem to care all that much about it, since they don't have to worry about it legally or financially.

You've probably hit the nail on the head there. It has no ramifications on their business, aside from upset users. With 10M users... a few thousand getting screwed isn't a drop in the bucket.

/w00t - 16:54... almost time to GTFO

If Blizzard really wanted to do something about this, they could just cap the gold an account can have. The general viewpoint is "It is ok to spend time to get your gold, but not ok to spend your money" even though acquiring real-life money takes time (and a hell of a lot more skill).

If you don't want gold to transfer, stop allowing people to transfer it. If you want to level the playing field, make it so you can't move a single gold piece from one account to another. Eliminate the market altogether. But is that "fun"?

And why is it against the ToC to sell gold, but not to buy it?

Why does the ToC say your minor child living with you can share your account but when he goes to college he can't play anymore?

You could argue the esoterics of these rules endlessly. But at the end of the day, they just have policies and they enforce them how they wish. It is no different than any other MOG out there.

Like rtgturner, I am convinced a lot of Blizzard's revenue comes from the gold farmers and the power leveling services. How many accounts do you think the average gold farmer has? How many accounts do you think the average player has? I wouldn't be surprised at all if 1.5-2 million of the active subscriptions belong to such services.