59,000 WOW accounts banned

By Tom Bramwell Published 27 July, 2006

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.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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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!

  • Carlo #1 6 years ago

    Thank fuck I bought my gold before this happened. I bet the gold price rockets now Blizzard have banned all these accounts!

  • tenma #2 6 years ago

    bahahaha @ anyone who was banned

  • Hunam85 #3 6 years ago

    Its win/win for blizz on this, then ban a massive amount of gold farmers, they then go out, buy a new key and carry on.

  • Xerx3s #4 6 years ago

    Blizzard should post the comments that banned ppl make on their webby (like bungie does) it should be very entertaining. ;)

  • El_MUERkO #5 6 years ago

    'i'm no gold farmer'

    'so how do you play 24 hours a day in eastern plaguelands?'

    'ummm ... red bull'

  • Totoriko #6 6 years ago

    So farmers can't use third party machinery to get gold? That's DICTATORSHIP!

  • Stickman #7 6 years ago

    I never understand people who cheat at games. It's a game! The whole enjoyment is in playing it properly surely?

  • gaijin #8 6 years ago

    Stickman - well actually I think in a lot of these cases the point is making an indecent amount of cash without actually having to do any real work, so enjoyment is sacrificed to the profit motive. Bit like professional sport, really...

  • Carlo #9 6 years ago

    Stickman, it's not cheating. All the 'significant' gear in the game you have to get yourself, buying money just saves you all that boring time spent grinding for enough money to fix your gear, buy re-agents etc etc.

  • Azazel #10 6 years ago

    Aaaah :) This news is always good amusement value.

    "WHY HAVE I HAD MY ACOUNT BANT???"

    rofl

  • ave #11 6 years ago

    Yeah really, all gold will buy you is some boe epics, you need a decent raiding guild to get more(and in a decent raiding guild you tend to be spending ~1k a month on reps, pots & misc stuff like new resist gear etc)

  • Stickman #12 6 years ago

    If it's not cheating, why are people getting banned?

  • Carlo #13 6 years ago

    People get banned for things other than 'cheating'. Have a look through the EULA for a list of things they *might* have been banned for.

  • Sko #14 6 years ago

    "I never understand people who cheat at games. It's a game! The whole enjoyment is in playing it properly surely?"

    It's just a bunch of dumbasses who have more money than sense.

  • Azazel #15 6 years ago

    Or a bunch of kids whose parents have more money than sense.

  • Stickman #16 6 years ago

    Oh, OK. Fair enough then!

  • jellyhead #17 6 years ago

    It's also the "Winning is everything" mentality, who cares if you cheated "You Won and were better than everyone else"! :(

  • Stickman #18 6 years ago

    I think that's what bugs me. My brother in law always used to cheat on Age of Empires and give himself millions of gold and wood and whatnot, then bang on about how l33t he was.

    I don't really know the ins and outs of WOW, so this is probably nowt like that.

  • Carlo #19 6 years ago

    It's not Stickman. In WoW, you need to repair your equipment frequently, and if you have good gear, it's very expensive to maintain. you also need 'reagents' (ingredients bought from shops in game) to use certain spells etc.

    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.

  • MrChuckles #20 6 years ago

    Well, think if then your brother could sell all that gold for 1 million = £1 to some sap who can't actually play the game for themselves and just wants to get powerful quick.

    Blizzard don't like anyone else profiting from their game, understandable as they were the ones who made the blooming thing.

  • IAmBatman #21 6 years ago

    > It's just a bunch of dumbasses

    By the sounds of it the people who play the boring griny bit of WoW properly are the dumbasses.

  • Nillsens #22 6 years ago

    My ex-girlfriend left me for World of Warcraft :(

  • Sko #23 6 years ago

    "By the sounds of it the people who play the boring griny bit of WoW properly are the dumbasses."

    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.

  • yagisencho #24 6 years ago

    Game's boring money-grind getting you down?

    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.


  • Carlo #25 6 years ago

    Yagi, you have either LOTS of time (Like unemployed, care in the community, or a young person), not doing much on the 'end game' and thus low repair bills, or do nothing BUT play WoW with every spare moment you have, making you a bit pathetic TBH.

    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.
    Edited by 1 at 27/07/06 @ 23:17

  • Psi #26 6 years ago

    if you buy gold from these people then spend it on repairs how does that ruin the game? i would have thought repairs were a money sink?

  • Solly #27 6 years ago

    WTB GLOD, DM PLS, THX.

    What's the point even playing if you're buying gameplay.....that you're paying for in the first place O_0

  • Venkman90 #28 6 years ago

    I must admit, I have been tempted to buy gold, but never actually bothered. Mostly due to the fact the websites always seem a trite dodgy.

    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) ;) Praying for that Krol Blade

  • bmanula #29 6 years ago

    I honestly don't understand anyone who has problems getting enough gold. I had over 500G when I hit 60 without any farming whatsoever. Just pick gathering professions, gather what you find in the course of questing and sell as much as possible on the AH. And buy as little as possible, of course.

    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.

  • reality_cheque #30 6 years ago

    if you buy gold from these people then spend it on repairs how does that ruin the game? i would have thought repairs were a money sink?
    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!

  • reality_cheque #31 6 years ago

    It's better buying gold than being 'run' though missions which was a problem with Guild Wars - people buying money from gold sellers and then using that money to pay a lvl 20 (GW only goes up to 20) to run to the next town with you in the party so you get teleported there. Now that's a fucking waste of time!

    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

  • Hog-lumps #32 6 years ago

    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.

    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..........

  • Hog-lumps #33 6 years ago

    @ FT

    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? :)

  • Dexter #34 6 years ago

    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.

    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.

  • Hog-lumps #35 6 years ago

    Fluffy, what I meant was it's sad that somebody has to resort to using lots of real world money to gain progression in a game. I'm in no way critising you or WOW - I just dislike the concept of cash for virtual cash and err cheating!.
    Edited by 1 at 28/07/06 @ 14:41