Goldsellers and you

There have been a few ripples going through the World of Warcraft blogging community. One in particular caught my attention today: Account hacking. And goldselling. Amazingly enough, those two issues seem to be closely connected…

Now, not all goldsellers are bad. Some of them may genuinely farm the gold, or employ players to farm it for them.

Goldsellers are also the kind of people that would happily strip your character naked, clean out the bank, and leave you stranded in hostile territory. If they’re feeling particularly nice, they might even server-transfer the char and enable a mobile authenticator, so they can later use your account for in-game spamming.

Goldsellers are the kind of people that gleefully rub their hands when a guild actually trusts their members and then proceed to sell the entire guild bank. In addition to your character being stripped and cleaned out, then deleted.

So if you’re pleading ignorance, or buying from “safe sources” – next time you read a horror story about a hacked account, keep in mind that it might have well been your purchase that triggered it. The next time you log in, have that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, because goldbuyers are among the favourite targets for goldseller hacking.

And for those interested in actually solving the problem, Tobold has a nice article why Blizzard selling gold wouldn’t help at all. Other games have cash shops, yes, but they don’t sell a universal in-game currency. They sell items, often one-use items.

I couldn’t care less how you play your game. But the moment you decide to employ people, goldsellers, that actively destroy that which other players have spent a long time (and subscription fee, and emotional investment) of gaining, I stop not caring. I start loathing. The time it took me to gather the links and type this entry, about 50 gold arrived from the auction house, simply from selling stuff I got during questing anyway. And that’s with half of it going to my disenchanter for training. On nothing but level 20 chars, starting from scratch without any prior knowledge or experience.

Buying gold not only makes you a bad person.

Buying gold means that Chuck Norris will come to your home and deliver a roundhouse kick for every copper bought. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?