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The Black Market of World of Warcraft
By Zach Sprague | September 12, 2007
If you play World of Warcraft you are no stranger to the black market.
There are some who have even tried selling their accounts or other items on Ebay. Ebay however, due to the questionable nature of the transactions, have worked with Blizzard and other gaming companies to keep those auctions off of their site.
Grugal tells you: I have an exciting offer just for you!! World of Warcraft gold really cheap! 1000 gold for only 5 dollars!!! See our website www.dupedgoldisasureban.com. Also see our leveling services, 1-70 for only 25 dollars.
Unfortunately the above is an all too common occurrence in World of Warcraft. I am sure many a young and naive player has been taken in by such “to good to be true” offers. A young friend of mine, who’s allowance afforded him too much flexibility, paid a leveling service similar to the one described above and ended up with a suspended account. I personally would not be surprised if he was completely scammed and had his account stolen. Even in the black market there are good deals and bad deals.
If you are doing something that you know is against the “law” or Terms of Service, then it is going to cost you. If the deal sounds too good to be true, then it most certainly is. Real WoW gold does not sell for 5 dollars per 1k gold, it is closer to 100 dollars, the 5 dollar version will most likely get your account banned. Same goes for leveling services, if they only want 25 dollars for 40-60 hours of work, you are being had, those same accounts will sell for at least 300-500 dollars at auction.
In an effort to combat this growing problem Blizzard instituted a spam filter which has drastically reduced the overall number of gold spam messages coming through. Another thing Blizzard implemented to combat the black market was an increase in the mail timer for all gold sent between different accounts.
Even with all Blizzards efforts the black market is not going away. It is a product of the nature of an MMO. MMO’s are about time invested. So when that time investment is something that is tradeable, such as gold, it becomes possible to exchange your real world time rewards (e.g. Money) for game world time rewards. But it does not stop at in game money. Players buy and sell anything from leveling services on characters to complete characters with all greatest gear and literally anything in between.
Essentially people who play MMO’s do not always have enough time to invest in the game to reach the goals that they desire. Those people make the choice to purchase gold so they can afford a better mount or stronger weapon. Some people complain that these people are lazy, but often they are driven individuals who work quite a bit at their job and possibly even have many other responsibilities, such as family, friends, other hobbies.
I am sure that many have contemplated purchasing gold or leveling for a quick boost in game prowess. If we follow through on this, we will not be satisfied. We might achieve the result we desire, but we know that it was not through our in game work, it was ultimately a hollow acheivement. We did not play the game to achieve the results, we paid someone else to play the game for us. What’s more, we run the risk of losing the things we did work for and either getting our account stolen or permanently banned from the game.
It seems obvious, but this black market is completely against the Terms of Service of nearly every MMO out there. Perhaps the only MMO that actually allows players to trade game money for real money and vice versa is Second Life, but even Linden Research has problems with broken Terms of Service. A man used a questionable method on an online auction of virtual land to receive about a 70% discount. Currently the user and Linden Research are in litigation because Linden Research banned the user from access to any of his online assets.
Remember, if you participate in the Black Market of the MMO world you are doing so at your own risk. You might have your account stolen, banned, or possibly worse. But more than that, the playing experience, the enjoyment of the journey, will be lost because the journey is over once the destination is reached. Plus you cannot really boast about your accomplishment because it did not take the same type of effort that others may have invested to achieve the same results. They say, “nothing easy is worth having,” in this case at least, I believe it is true.
Topics: PC - Games | 4 Comments »
September 13th, 2007 at 8:16 am
I know gold buying it goes against the rules of the game, but it kills the game for me, when you are forced to grind for hours and hours to achieve a goal or buy that rare component.
In that case it could be the time to either decide not play the game anymore or save yourself 10 hours of grinding and throw someone $60-$100 for that in game scrill.
jst my 2cts
September 13th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I definitely see your point and gold farming definitely is one of the least fun activities in any game because it is tedious. I have bought gold on one occasion and I was happy enough, but in the end I felt a bit like a betrayer because I did not truely earn my accomplishment.
I also attempted to sell my EverQuest Character, but through a happy mistake I failed to reply correctly to all of the interested parties. Sure I would have been happy with one thousand dollars, but in the end I was happier to let a friend have my account since he had played for a very long time and never achieved the type of results I had.
There are positives on a personal level to participating in the black market of these games, but there can be negatives both on a personal and community level.
I personally will not participate in the black market again, but I do not look down on those who do especially when the case is as you have described, too much time required to achieve a goal.
I am currently 1/5 of my way to an epic flying mount, bleh, hehe, but its not so bad in small doses, 100g here, 100g there.
I usually decide to stop playing when it is not much fun. I have lots of other things to keep my occupied.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:13 am
yes, gold farming is boring. No one like it. But we all need gold to accomplish our goals.
so i always buy some gold from http://www.dgamesky.com.
i think it is worth to spend some money to save your time
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