Blizzard bans 30,000 World of Warcraft accounts

[radio667]

from arstechnica.com ...... A great poet of our age once said: "It's like the mo' money we come across/The mo' problems we see." Blizzard has certainly been in this position recently, with their 2004 blockbuster multiplayer online game World of Warcraft reaching over 6.5 million subscribers and gaining more than 50 percent market share in less than two years.

With this unprecedented success have come headaches, from persistent server outages, to virtual plagues , and even allegations of sexual harassment. However, one of the major issues for Blizzard has been the problem of gold farming, the practice of paying workers in poor countries to spend all day gathering virtual gold and then selling it to anyone with a credit card.

In their latest battle against the farmers, Blizzard recently issued this press release:

In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms. The banned accounts were taking part in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items, which severely impacts the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

Doing the math, that works out to only 1,000 gold per banned account. This is a fair chunk of virtual change for players at low levels, but it isn't that much for a higher-level player—an epic mount costs nearly that much all by itself, for example. This seems to indicate that the gold farmers don't have any magical method of extracting gold from the game, but are stuck doing the same repetitive tasks as the rest of us chumps (although perhaps with the assistance of extra tools to help automate this process). Had the banned accounts contained orders of magnitude more gold, it would have been indicative of a much more serious exploit of the game.

So how serious is the problem of gold farming, and does it really represent a threat to the game and its players? Most of the concerns involve runaway inflation, which has historically been a devastating problem in real-world human societies. However, in the world of Azeroth, nonplayer character merchants are completely oblivious to the problem, and will never raise their prices no matter what the human players do. Prices for items sold between players on the Auction House will inevitably rise, of course, but buying items in this manner is not necessary for completing the game. If anything, it helps the regular gamers, who can get more money selling shiny items they find on monsters in the game world, and save up for their epic mount that much faster. Still, it is annoying for people who enjoy player-versus-player combat to see hordes of newbies decked out in ridiculously expensive and powerful armor that they didn't have to "earn" in the traditional manner.

Not all online gaming companies have dealt with the problem the same way Blizzard has. Sony, for example, recently opened up its own virtual marketplace for EverQuest, letting players sell virtual items and gold for real money, all with the blessing of the parent company (who presumably gets a small cut of the proceeds). Richard "Lord British" Garriott, famed developer of the Ultima series of games, recently came out in favor of allowing these transactions, saying that they are "inevitable" and that he personally buys virtual gold "all the time." As virtual communities continue to grow, the question of paying real money for virtual items will have to be resolved one way or another. In the meantime, I have some trolls to kill.

[HortonsWho]

Well that oughta help server lag...

[HERO Maxwell]

the virtual plague sounds cool.
Has that problem been fixed yet?

[Vicious028]

Haha lolol!
E-HIV/AIDS epidemic on b-net.
Stay away from horrid, dark alleys and cramped spaces kiddies..

So.. uh what next?
Prominent 'organizations' pimping mules? wow.
simply wow.

[Dorkorama]

Originally Posted by Vicious028

Haha lolol!
E-HIV/AIDS epidemic on b-net.

WoW doesn't use Battle.Net in any manner. As for "the plague" it has been gone for quite some time.

As for "gold" farming, I think the only way to deal with it is to, simply, eliminate gold from the economy. Gamers will compensate by using other items as currency. When one gets harvested too much or becomes farmed, the economy moves on to something else. Given that I have seen this outside of MMORPGs, I'm not sure if it would work as well, but it makes it a lot harder for hackers to cheat, seemingly.

[faet]

yea would be like D2...
gold no value
then SOJs, sojs get farmed
moves on to some armor, armor gets farmed....
keeps going.... and going :\

[Manticore]

This WOW/Blizzard strategy stuff just keeps getting worse.

[overrandom]

"...Then, US Government deploys I.R.S. into WoW."

[harryhash]

Heh, I wonder how long it'll be before the US Army deploys their virtual "gay bomb" into WoW in order to take out the "bad (gold farmer) guys"...or maybe they have a better stupid idea...

Virtual halitosis perhaps?

[overrandom]

A new clan enteres WoW

[TEAM_AMERICA]

[harryhash]

Originally Posted by overrandom

A new clan enteres WoW

[TEAM_AMERICA]

F**k Yeh!!!

[overrandom]

Heh, we're talking about Banning for farming gold and guess which news advertisement is shown on my GMail inbox...

[JoystickMonkey]

What the heck is an epic mount?

[Dorkorama]

Originally Posted by JoystickMonkey

What the heck is an epic mount?

Regular mounts are available at level 40 and go 60 percent faster than normal running speed. Epic mounts require level 60 and are 100 percent faster than running. You have to pay up for both (more for the epic. No trade-ins )

[MortalPlague]

It seems everyone's pretty disgusted with the way Blizzard is handling the whole situation. Personally, I can't say I'll miss any of those gold farmers, and 1000 gold per account spread over thirty thousand accounts is easily enough to upset the balance of the economy on several servers.