59,000 WOW accounts banned
Swept away by a, er, oh, um, hrm, I dunno, whirlwind?
Ever forgiving Blizzard popped up earlier this week to absently mention that it's banned 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts during June.
Not content with that, it's stripped over 22 million gold from the total economy across all realms relating to the banned accounts.
"While we regret having to take such extreme action," Blizzard said regretfully, "these accounts were participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items."
"Such behavior not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately," it added.
Blizzard routinely bans huge numbers of accounts for cheating, but with millions of paying customers worldwide it isn't exactly sending them under.
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Comments (34) Latest comment 6 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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'so how do you play 24 hours a day in eastern plaguelands?'
'ummm ... red bull'
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"WHY HAVE I HAD MY ACOUNT BANT???"
rofl
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It's just a bunch of dumbasses who have more money than sense.
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I don't really know the ins and outs of WOW, so this is probably nowt like that.
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Getting that gold in game is the most boring, tedious waste of time you can imagine involving hours and hours grinding. The only 'purpose' of this endless grinding is to slow down the players enough so the hard-core 7 hours a day gamers have enough to do.
For me (a play 3 or four hours twice a week WoW player) I really just want to play the 'interesting parts' of the game, and not have to grind for weeks to scrape up the money for repairs etc.
It's not 'cheating' IMO, it's just avoiding the dull parts of the game. In all honesty, if I *had* to grind for that gold and couldn't buy it, I'd cancel my sub.
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Blizzard don't like anyone else profiting from their game, understandable as they were the ones who made the blooming thing.
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By the sounds of it the people who play the boring griny bit of WoW properly are the dumbasses.
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Well, obviously. If you find an online game boring and are still paying to play it, you're as much of a dumbass as the lowbrows buying gold.
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Option A: Suck it up.
Option B: Forget about getting an epic mount and just quest or raid.
Option C: Quit.
Option D: Break the game's terms of use agreement and contribute to unbalancing the game's virtual economy by purchasing ingame gold with real-world cash.
I chose options A, B, then C. If you choose option D, you're a schmuck.
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So, which one is it?
WoW's 'grinding' for gold for repairs, or grinding 1000 gold for an epic mount, or grinding for reagents, is for one purpose alone: To slow down the 7+ hours a day players before they 'complete' the game and have nothing left to do. 'Farming' is outside the game and does nothing for the 'content' or story, or plot or anything but generate gold to let you pay for repairs and reagents, or for the lazy people who buy their (mostly crap) gear for AH.
Oh and this notion you have that somehow me buying my gold is destroying the economy only actualy happens if I spend my money buying gear, which I do not, because the only decent gear cannot be bought OR sold.
So, kindly STFU. You have no clue.
And FYI, I have the gold, but haven't bought an epic mount, or any of the gear I own. The 2 items I didn't get via drops were given to me by my guild's 'bank'. Other than that, I got as either instances/quests/world drops.
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What's the point even playing if you're buying gameplay.....that you're paying for in the first place O_0
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I just never seem to have much cash, im a lvl 55 Rogue with herb / skinning so should be rich...but It seems as soon as I have 50g I find something else to spend it on (upgrading to all blues, shadowcraft etc...) plus some guildies got a couple of epic world drops which sold for 100g - 500g and I started to feel like the only skint one.
Started doing more instances for drops instead of spending on the AH, looking up but I still need to hammer the herb/skinning
Oh and grinding the ogres in deadwind pass as every other epic drop seems to come from them (or the yetis in winterspring)
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Now I'm into the raiding content and I have no problem covering repair costs by playing the AH here and there. Or switch to a crafting profession and acquire a rare recipe or two. And if I start to get low I just do a run or two in a 5 man instance and make plenty of cash.
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Because there is constantly new money entering the system from quests and drops etc. If more money is entering the system than dropping into sinks like repairs then the value of each GP effectively drops because people are able to get more money for the same item. Inflation is bad!
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I've seen level 1 characters near the end of the game, who thought they were awesome because they'd not actually done any of the missions themselves 0_o
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But doesn't it de-value and de-balance the economy making the honest players hard earned cash much less valuable? I.e. making the experience less enjoyable for players who choose not to cheat.
Personally I'm surprised to see people defending gold farming on this forum..........
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So you buy the game, pay your monthly line rental and also pay real cash for virtual gold?!
I'm not poor or that tight-fisted, but to me that seems a massive waste of money (not to mention maybe slightly sad?).
Perhaps that's why I have no interest in WOW?
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One of the problems is that gold farmers grind for resources with low droprates and make it less likely that you'll find them. Arcane Crystals are a good example of this.
Blizzard designed the game so that you'd have to spend a certain amount of effort acquiring enough Crystals to make something nice. Gold farmers screw this up by farming them and selling them in the AH to earn money which they then sell to people who would otherwise have been happy grinding for them. The worst thing is that the peope who can afford to buy them are often the very people that buy gold - this is what shafts the economy.
I spent weeks grinding for stuff to make some nice armour before finally giving up and spending 15 quid on a few hundred gold to buy the materials. Some people may see that as cheating but I was fed up with spending all my time running around looking for Thorium veins when I could have been doing more interesting stuff instead.
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