I have a confession that I’m a little embarrassed about. Yes, you guessed it, I’ve been playing WOW. I haven’t been spreading that around too much, because of the stigma associated with it. I imagine the next time someone yells at me to “Go back to WOW”, it might actually sting a little. But that’s not what this blog entry is about. Really, this is about someone reacting to me purchasing gold.
I’ve been playing WOW now for almost two weeks. In that time, I’ve racked up around 120 hours of play time. Today I reached level 40. Once a character reaches level 40 in WOW, they can purchase something called “dual spec” for 1000 gold. This game feature allows a character to respec their talent tree between two different specializations. For example, a Paladin could spec for tanking for one raid and then use the dual spec feature to switch to healing for the next raid. My priest is currently set up as a pure healer, but I desperately want to be able to switch to a DPS spec when soloing.
Perhaps I’m spoiled by games like Lotro. There every class has the option to switch to a DPS setup for a fee so cheap you forget it exists. Basically, it allows you a much greater degree of diversity in the way you play your character. Its hard for me to accept just one role for the life of my character.
So when I realized that obtaining 1000 gold by level 40 was unrealistic, I made the decision to purchase gold. I bought about 1000 gold for about ten dollars from the Microsoft of gold-farmers. You know, that company that owns Allakhazam, THOTTBOT, WOWhead and a bunch of other fan sites? They got my ten dollars.
After my purchase I stood around in town setting up my new talent setup for DPS so that I could solo for a while. I got a tell from a guy who had been giving me advice about the game. He had been quickly becoming a friend over the last two weeks, so I excitedly told him about my purchase and how much fun the game was about to get for me. Of course, I told him I purchased the gold I needed for the dual spec feature. He was silent a few moments and then said to me, “I don’t even want to know you when you do noob shiite like that.” and he put me on his ignore list.
I have to say, that really hurt my feelings. I was so excited about the game, but then I didn’t feel like playing. All day today, I’ve been wanting to do something in WOW, but when I try to log, in I feel a pain in my chest and log back out. I’m not even sure why I feel so bad. I certainly don’t feel bad about purchasing gold. I’m not especially worried about my former friend reporting me and getting me banned. He may do it, and I may get banned, but for some reason that’s not scary to me. I guess because I know I’d just start another account and purchase gold again for the dual spec feature. I just feel so bad that someone could be angry at me for just buying gold. I’m not used to people putting me on ignore, either. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. I just… feel so bad right now. This feeling sucks.
Buying gold is absolutely stupid on a number of levels.
One, why waste 1000g on dual specialization at level 40 when you hardly have enough talent points to have an effective dual spec to begin with. You do not need it. It was a feature originally designed for level 80.
Two, anyone can easily have a 1000g just through farming and working the Auction House by level 40. I’ve done it several times on alts with no concentrated effort.
Third, gold-selling seems to be a victimless crime until you get hacked. Then its personal. A good percentage of gold-selling is done through hacked accounts. Why? Because Blizzard has placed so many preventive measures against ways that gold-sellers used to deliver gold that they need to hack accounts now to deliver gold to their buyers.
Fourth, while making the documentary, Second Skin, the director Juan Escoriaza found that a lot of the gold-selling shops were run by the Chinese mafia. That’s not exactly the kind of organization we should be sending money to. So buying gold is hardly “harmless cheating.” I wouldn’t be surprised if your credit card number ended up being stolen in the future.
Sorry, but I would have put you on ignore and reported you as well.
Sorry, but you should feel bad. That gold is ill-gotten.
I have friends who have been hacked. They logged in to accounts with their 80s either stripped naked or deleted. One was our guildleader and the hacker/gold seller stripped the guild bank as well. Blizzard was not willing/able to restore the guild bank and our whole guild lost three solid tabs of flasks, enchanting mats, primals, gear, hearts of darkness, marks of illdari, and other items you can only get from months of raiding.
Why did this happen? Because of people like you who have created a black market for stolen gold. By buying it, you are implicitly supporting the bots, the hackers, the cheats, the people who ruin someone’s day when they log into a naked toon and an empty bank.
Agh. I want to sympathize, but… I really, really hate gold spammers and account hackers with a passion. And that company is at the very top of my hate list – they’ve been employing and encouraging the people who ruin my games for almost a decade.
I do sympathize on the dual talent spec front. Why make one of the best quality-of-life features of the game available at level 40, but only to alts and people who break the ToS to purchase it?
I second moondog548. I’d be more worried that your spending money that you should spend on food and shelter for yourself.
Well you certainly sound like nice person, and it’s unfortunate someone felt compelled to hate on you. I suppose it’s just the nature of the beast that is anonymity in on line gaming.
Did you do something genuinely “evil”? Almost certainly not sufficiently so to justify the anger directed at you; however, that being said, you did support an industry that at its best:
1) Puts a lot of restrictions on the kinds of content developers can put in their games. For example, trade, harvesting, AH activity, and the existence and acquisition rare items are all types of content that RMT severely inhibits.
2) Siphons off significant developer resources (CSR’s, extra servers, exploit patches) at least some of which could be used to create more high quality content.
I qualified the above 2 negative impacts with “at best” because while it does sound like you picked one the more reputable dealers, it should be noted that in general, the RMT industry is prone to a lot higher incidence of thuggish and asocial behavior than most legitimate service industries.
For what it’s worth, hopefully the next time someone feels you have trod on their on-line toes, they will actually take the time to talk with you as a person instead of blowing up at you and shutting you out. Unfortunately, general civility in on line games may be more challenging to attain than a workable solution for RMT. Ah well, nature of the beast.
Damn 120 hours in 2 weeks…full time job hours for 2 weeks is 80hrs…the bigger problem for you.
Blizzard themselves has to take some of the blame. When Gold selling is outlawed, only outlaws will sell Gold. Or some such…
If they were to bring Gold sales into the open and build the system to support it (like Second Life encourages RMT) then you wouldn’t have to be lumped with mafia hacker thieves. I think you did well to choose the largest affiliated groups, but as long as the trade takes place in shadows then your actions will look shady.
I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut on your posts for a long time now. There is still a part of me thinking that since this will probably be a “not that way” moment, I should just not write anything on grounds of it being against my personal philosophy. BUT you’ve once again proven that I can never underestimate just how much of an airhead you’re capable of being.
First of all, take half a second to think from the perspective of the other guy. Ignoring for a second the possibility that the black market you just supported may have violated his trust or that of a friend’s in a place they come to escape from the ills of the world, there is a certain amount of pain I can practically guarantee you caused him. As a law abiding, anti-rmt type, as soon as you told him what you had done you caught him in a moral dilemma, according to his beliefs you just did something that warranted severe punishment, but he was too kind and cared too much for you to simply report you out of hand. You crossed one of his uncrossable lines, betraying a trust that may or may not have been fair of him to have in you with a rather flippant disregard for it. So now you’ve hurt him, but so long as he’s good natured he knows it’s not right to retaliate, may even think he is ‘supposed’ to forgive you. And so he finally decides on the minimum he can accept, he doesn’t go off on you, he keeps it short to prevent his temper from getting out of hand and makes a clean cut in a relationship that would definitely be painful for him in the future.
So here you are, feeling shame and guilt, that’s what those terrible feelings are by the way. Given you’re post history though, so what? You’ve never learned from these bad feelings before, why should I feel at all sorry for you now? When you cause pain, it comes full circle and bites you too. If you could try and understand the people around you, their wants, needs and relationship to the rules we live in, rather than just blithely doing whatever you want without regard to the consequences to others I could at least feel some sympathy for you. Unfortunately, I see no proof of such behavior, so either you haven’t taken the hint, or it’s just never hurt soo much you finally had to take the hint. I recommend the former, I really do.
I also find it funny that she puts out a post like this and never comments further on it. As I see it, she still stands by her “if I’m banned, I’ll just make a new account and buy gold again”. Bad image, really.
@Sara: I often wonder if Suzina actually believes/does a lot of the things she posts on here, or if she’s just tossing darts out to see what provokes a response (and what sort).
Yes, Poe’s law can be quite difficult in this regard. A good troll is indistinguishable from a clueless person, and the clueless person can always claim afterwards that he/she was just trolling.
I’ve wondered that as well. And I’m not sure which I’d prefer to be true…
First of all having 1000g by level 40 is not unrealistic at all. I am levelling a character on a new server (so no heirlooms, no starting fund of G, nothing) and by level 40 I was sitting on something like 1200g or so.
I had the mining profession and didn’t even go out of my way to farm ore outside of what I went past while levelling. Stuck on the AH and voila, I had G to buy big bags and anything else I wanted.
Secondly, dual spec at level 40 is completely not necessary. You may WANT to have it, but it’s is perfectly fine to to dungeons and solo without it.
Thirdly, I find gold-buying unconsciounable considering so much of the gold/transactions are done via hacked accounts. I have seen too many people get robbed blind through hacking and to flippantly disregard all the pain people have had from this practice, just because YOU want something RIGHT NOW – sorry, that’s not a good enough excuse.
Let’s set the game-mechanics responses aside for a moment, since everybody’s already jumped on them: 1) 1000g at level 40 is pennies to an informed player and doesn’t take a lot of work; 2) dual spec was a luxury, not a necessity, and 1000g is totally reasonable for informed players and their alts; 3) for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t buy gold. This post was about you being excluded by your friend and feeling rotten about the experience.
I find it very, very reassuring that another player, presumably a nice and friendly human being who wasn’t just another antisocial jerk, would exclude you like that. I’m not saying this to take pleasure in your misery because you did something that abhors me as a player. I’m saying this because, absent an enforceable deterrent to gold-buying built into the game itself, the best deterrent is a social one: the threat of being ostracized by your peers.
If your peers ostracize you for buying gold, that tells me that gold-buying remains unacceptable in the eyes of other players, and that they’re not so apathetic as to say, “Well, it happens.” And that tells me the system works.
Did this post break the KTR record for number of comments? Expertly crafted Friday blog post, hats off.
(and on a more serious note and relating to my post, I don’t think you are a ‘bad person’ here. I think maybe you did not consider all aspects of buying the gold, or how else to get the gold. I’m hoping for a follow-up post with your reaction to everything. Did anything open your eyes? Would you do it again? Would you buy and not tell?)
Blizzard is just as much at fault where the whole illegal RMT problem is concerned as the companies servicing the market. Ilegal RMT transactions happen mostly because of a need the playerbase has that Blizzard isn’t addressing – trading real money for ingame currency.
Legitimized RMT involving money for gold or an intermediary like a timecard that could be sold ingame would go a long way towards solving the problem. And I don’t beleive gold has any impact on battleground/arena play…so the competitive PVP part of the game would remain as is.
I can understand the desire. What were Blizzard thinking introducing a feature that costs 1,000g and making it available at level 40 anyway? Of course it’s going to encourage gold buying.
Originally, it was going to be introduced at a much higher level. Players complained and said they wanted it sooner, so it was changed to level 40.
Blizzard should probably have stayed with the original plan. As it is now, they will likely be lowering the cost before much longer.
(Still not an excuse for buying gold, though. “They made me do it!” did not get any of us out of trouble when I was growing up. ;) )
Agreed it’s not an excuse. I just can’t understand Blizzard’s reasoning behind it though.
I think someone hit upon it in a comment earlier. Blizzard intended it to be a bit of a gold sink for higher level characters. When they consented to lower the level, maybe they did not take into account that a brand new player might assume something available at 40 is needed at 40.
No matter how you view the ease of getting 1000g by that level, it is quite a pricetag.
While the act of buying gold is very wrong, putting someone on ignore over it, is a bit overreacting I’d say.
I would never put someone on ignore for it, especially if me and that person got along very well.
We all make mistakes.
“the act of buying gold is very wrong”
“I find gold-buying unconsciounable” [sic]
“you’ve once again proven that I can never underestimate just how much of an airhead you’re capable of being”
“Buying gold is absolutely stupid on a number of levels.”
Wow, you’ve got some pretty dumb people commenting on your blog. It’s pretty simple. Blizzard doesn’t want you to buy gold; if you accept Blizzard as your arbiter of morality, then you shouldn’t buy gold. If you are able to think outside the box and make your own rational assessment of morality, then you’ll go ahead and do it.
Someone else owned the gold that you bought. You paid them a fair price for it. They’re happy; you’re happy. It’s only because of the silly wow-puritans that you’re being made to feel bad.
My advice: buy gold, and just don’t talk about it next time. Sensible people don’t care about it anyway.
I couldn’t agree more. For example, there’s this guy:
That someone is Blizzard, by the way. And Suzina certainly didn’t pay “a fair price” to them for the gold.
And no true Scotsman commits sex crimes.
>Someone else owned the gold that you bought.
Actually, someone probably stole that gold from someone who earned it by hacking their account.
“We regularly track the source of the gold these companies sell, and find that an alarmingly high amount comes from hacked accounts.”
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html
Why Blizzard won’t sell gold
“Permit people to buy gold through Blizzard, the argument goes, and the keyloggers, site spoofers, hackers, and spammers will go back to the rock from under which they came”
http://www.wow.com/2010/03/16/the-lawbringer-legal-gold-sales-not-a-blizzards-chance-in-hel/
Point of note, a dps specced priest or druid or paladin with healer gear can heal through any dungeon up to (and with experience) in outland.
Tanking without the spec, but with good gear is harder but doable assuming your friends let you build agro, however a agro grabbing talent would not hurt.
You can DPS fine in tanking spec and heal fine in DPS spec. Not sure what level this stops being viable for tanks, but a priest can certainly heal *easily* in shadow right up until you get to the Northrend dungeons. Paladins, maybe not so much.
If this gold selling company is so legit, where do they get their gold?
Whatever you do, don’t feel guilty because people say RMT is ‘illegal’. The FBI aren’t going to come knocking. And don’t feel bad because people report you for cheating or put you on ignore, because some people will do that for very silly reasons too. And in a way, you’ve made a community service announcement, so grats for that.
But if anyone gains something in-game they couldn’t play to achieve, then they must be honest with themselves. They’ve just proven that for them, the in-game “achievements” are now literally meaningless. Their friend who spent hours learning how to play well now feels cheapened: the gameplay has been proven a sham and his advancement, for all his effort, is now meaningless. And so ultimately the interaction and achievements of players in group play – as opposed to just chatting in Dalaran – being no longer dependent on ability, has become meaningless.
But it’s an MMO with gold sinks intended for people who knew how to play. And people are people, and still like to compare. So eventually we find a Dalaran full of haughty characters dressed in the best gear money can buy, while in the far corners of the game are people who play, make gold and sell it. And the only way we’ll be able to feel at comfortable in-game is to spend big. And that’s no fun for people who want to just play a game: they unsubscribe, subscriber numbers go down, and Blizzard closes the servers.
So spare a thought, because this may be the world you’re creating.
Buying gold is absolutely stupid on a number of levels.
But I bet you see no problem using 3rd party add-ons that may or may not have been coded by hackers?
First of all, most gold is made by farming, not “Hacking.” So yeah , don’t feel bad about someone’s account gold contributing to your stash. All those people spouting about you contributing to the hacking of accounts are just ill-informed and spouting nonsense. Incidentally, if you have been “hacked”, chances are it’s from your own stupidity such as not keeping your security and software up to date, downloading some nefarious software, sharing account details or falling for phising techniques. The age of someone targeting your computer speficially and hacking it is long gone.
Secondly, you can’t compare buying gold to real life events such as stealing, speeding or even murder (I actually read this in another thread.) Buying gold is what it is: Obtaining currency in an online game against the TOS. Where that lies on your moral compass depends on you. For me, it means very little. That I’d rather spend 10 bucks saving me from doing something menial to enjoy other aspects of the game, and it’s money well spent. Less money than I just spent on a few beers at lunch time. Incidentally it rates quite low on Blizzards compass too, since you only get the gold removed and not banned if you get caught.
If a friend of mine ostracized me because of this then I’d be glad to be rid of the self-righteous, self-aggrandizing bore. People finding gold buying “abhorrent?” Get over yourselves.
This whole notion that a person buying gold is somehow affecting the next person’s ability to play their game is ridiculous. There’s no conclusive evidence that gold sellers ‘hack’ accounts for profit, so just stop. Besides, I couldn’t care less if you fell for some social engineering from a bad link you clicked, and you can’t keep your machine clear of malware/spyware/keyloggers/viruses. Shoot, I have even less sympathy for you if you have no authenticator and an easy to guess password.
Unprovable stuff aside, why does it make a difference that this blogger spent $10 to get gold to make her toon dual spec? How does that affect YOUR game? Sure it ‘cheats the system’ and her account has been reported and she may be banned. What bearing does that have on YOUR game? Would it be cheating if she asked somebody and they gifted her the gold to get the dual spec? How is that different than her buying the gold? She didn’t obtain it on her own. How is one way of getting ahead by twinking/gifting any less of a cheat than buying gold? Oh because none of that is against the EULA? Ok. Say Blizzard said selling gold was now legal? Now what? Would you feel the same way? So what she could have gotten it relatively easy from playing the AH. What if playing the AH is not fun for HER at all?
Aside from buying gold, playing the AH is currently THE ONLY WAY to make the ridiculous amounts of gold necessary to do essential things like, buying a starter mount, then a flyer, then cold flying. For the folks that don’t like the AH why not have another ‘non-cheating’ way to obtain those items like say a quest chain plus farmed mats? I mean make the materials gathering a time sink like scraping enough gold together.
Do not feel bad about buying gold for any reason other than this.
The gold you purchased was in all liklihood stolen from it’s rightful owner(s). When Blizzard made it much harder for bots to survive, the gold sellers turned to a new source of income. To put it in oh so melodramatic matrix terms, Blizzard scorched the sky, and the players became the new power supply. The large majority of all gold sold was stolen from accounts compromised by keyloggers, scams, and social engineering. In buying gold, you essentially have paid someone to steal another person’s assets, liquidate them, and pass them on to you.
WoW on some of the reactions.
Personally I don’t care if someone does/doesn’t buy gold – it is against the ToC/Eula, so to me it’s purely a personal decision. It’s not making someone a better or worse player, or giving them much of an ingame advantage – wow they have dual spec of that new mount – so what?
I would have more problem with people having to pay real $$ to get an advantage over something I can earn in the game – hey that exists to in many online games! So, my choice pay $$ or not to stay competitive.
I know guildmates/in game friends that
- Do RL favors in exchange for in game gold
- Guildies that buy gold for epic mounts, etc.
- A couple that spend $$ weekly on the game cards in hope of the Spectral Tiger mount
- One that would prefer to buy level 80 toons off Ebay. He’s leveled four (a businessman with no interest in leveling again but addicted raider)
- a GM of a former guild that regularly bought gold. The GM figured he’d spent over $750 in a few years real cash on in game gold. I asked him why – he hated farming and working the AH and preferred to purchase gold. Was he tricked out in the latest gear, no. Primarily it funded the guilds bank tabs – enchants, gems, etc., for everyone else on his dime. Too him it was worth it. NO ONE complained in the guild. Many borrowed in game gold from him for their mounts/gear, etc.
Are you supporting the black market? Maybe. But SOME of the gold sold is from hacked accounts, much is from people literally farming in game and selling on the AH for gold that they in turn sell for cash.
BTW – Blizzard has replaced both guilds I’ve been in that have been hacked all of the gear/all the tabs stuff, etc., within a week once it was proven it was a ninja but was hacked.
I do wish Blizzard would make a ‘legal’ gold buying option – that would drive the majority of hackers out, and allow those that want to do it that way.
Have I bought gold, no. Am I tempted yes, it would make that dual spec or epic mount or uber piece of gear on the AH easy to afford. But I know I can earn it in game and have the time so that’s my way of doing it.
If you need/want to buy gold it’s your decision. Sorry the one guy over-reacted.
120 hours in two weeks? WOW!!!!!
There are a lot of douche bags in these comments. Just an observation.
If this would have taken place in a game with an actual economy like EvE then I could understand the other players reaction since the RMT purchase would actually effect the game world and potentially him. However WoW is essentially a coop single player game with virtually no ‘real’ economy so who cares what other players do? If you had not mentioned the RMT to the other player you each would have gone on playing with absolutely no negative effects.
The long and short of it is that people just like to get on their high horse about meaningless crap like this so just don’t mention it and go on enjoying the game.
I think I would have been disappointed that you didn’t consult me, mostly. Why should a friend buy gold when I could help them get it, or, heck, just lend/give it to them?
Do you know why developers (i.e. Blizzard) doesn’t like you buying gold?
Because you are supporting an industry that exists only to cause the developers more problems. We have to come up with ways to reduce gold spamming; we have to “fix” hacked accounts; we have to search through the database and track down where the transactions are happening and who they are going to and take the time to ban and/or investigate each case; we have to worry about economy inflation and come up with new money sinks to balance out the numbers so you don’t have copper bars on the auction house for 500 gold.
Overall, it’s just a giant damn headache for us.
Thanks for supporting it.
Dont let these children get you down. There are tons of websites (like wow.com) that spread lies about buying gold, etc. It is NOT illegal, it is against the TOS because blizz is greedy.
But the fact is, don’t feel guilty over buying gold.
What struck me is not you buying gold, not you thinking you need dual spec for dungeons but you thinking you need dual spec for soloing!
“My priest is currently set up as a pure healer, but I desperately want to be able to switch to a DPS spec when soloing.”
If you happen to read all the comments even if they’re posted “two weeks too late”, honestly, don’t listen to people who repeat what they don’t understand.
I levelled my priest as Holy. Actually, I levelled it as “smite spec” that is, put 3 points in spirit tap, fill holy until surge of light (remember searing light), fill disc until meditation, rest as you wish, I followed disc later for reflective shield and power infusion.
Use glyph of smite, stack spellpower and spirit on gear. I never ever had to “respec shadow to level up”. I expected from the people’s doomsaying that I’ll “have to go shadow” at some point, but now I know this point is dpsing in groups (dungeons, raids), never solo.
I bought dual spec at level 68-70, because it’s the point where everyone rushes to Northrend instances without Northrend gear and they are given a lot of punishment from the encounters. Once I got to 75 or so and was repeatedly running Violet Hold, I stopped bothering switching specs when I entered the dungeon, got back to healing in my solo spec.
I still have the solo spec before I decide what I “need for end-game content”, if you want to check me out, here’s armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Argent+Dawn&cn=Deidrit
Also I heard a lot of “omg don’t go holy in crap gear, you’ll be oom in no time, respec disc to heal”. Not true either. What helps, is getting a decent group instead of persistent fire-sitters, abusing a mage table and utilizing your mana cooldowns, like when to use shadowfiend for most profit. I also don’t use “holy raid spec”, I picked some talents that are more useful when healing 5-man content in not high-end gear. Understand what for is a talent / glyph, what it does. For example many people do not understand that glyph allowing your circle of healing hit 6-targets is a big waste before you start running 25-man raids.
One more point, levelling up specs are not copies of raiding specs just with fewer points in it and survivability talents can be more useful solo when you have everything on your face instead of on the group’s tank. Levelling a tank character in tank spec? No problem and you’ll never have to beg anyone to boost you on group quest. Also raid specs will throw out all the talents “you get bonus when you kill something giving you experience or honor”. Because in group you rarely deal the killing blow. Solo? You deal 100% of them.
And getting good gear has more impact on character’s performance while levelling than talent specs before… very, very late. That doesn’t mean you have to buy gold to get good gear, rather finding out how to get good gear for free, which quests and instances have them. Or if it’s crafted, have a gathering profession and gather the mats. Or sell the mats and you’ll have a nice gold cushion when you desperately need to buy something.
I still remember how excited I was on my first lvl20 to have 2 whole Gold to spend.
I am so pleased that apparently some of you are so adept that you can reach the gold cap by the time you leave the starting area on a new realm and then head immediately for Silithus or EPL to AOE grind at lvl6 but I think you are being a little harsh. It simply isn’t that easy for a new player who knows nothing about the game when they start.
Buying gold is bad. Don’t do it. But complaining that new players aren’t as Uber as you is also bad. Don’t do that, either.
“But complaining that new players aren’t as Uber as you is also bad. Don’t do that, either.”
What is needed, is that new players look for advice and listen to it, while old (veteran) players give that advice instead of laughing and /flexing with their superiority.
By the way, official WoW forums have “newcomers” section, have class forums and “professions” section where everyone can ask questions and read guides, so they don’t end up penniless (copperless?), with spec that hinders their gameplay and useless equipment.
Yes, veteran players can sped 5000 gold on levelling their profession, respec twice a day even with dual spec, buy expensive mounts and other luxuries and still have heaps of gold left, but not everyone enjoys AH camping, and nothing actually requires you to have 100k gold. Most stuff you can do in much more efficient manner and save yourself some of the expenses, especially buying gear and levelling professions has alternatives for the “gold impaired”.
Dual spec isn’t needed in a way people levelled without it before it was introduced, and dungeons didn’t get harder, on the contrary, they got relatively easier with boosts to players and nerfs to the content. Before level 65-70 dps specced healer / tank class can perform their role, warriors and paladins only should keep a shield and one-hander (with levelled skill, until Cataclysm delivers us from that atrocity of a weapon skill).
I bought gil in one of my returns to FFXI once. I find money a much more necessary means to having fun in FFXI than I do in WoW. One of my biggest turn-offs in FFXI was farming. I took the main aspect I hated and stomped on it. I had quite a good time poking Colibri with my pimped out DRG and never had to spend countless hours trying to make money to upgrade my gear.
With that being said, soon after I bought gold, my CC company informed me that my CC number may have been compromised and sent me a new CC immediately.
Do I regret it? Honestly, not really. Had something bad happened I most definitely would have regretted it. Moral of the story, shady things do happen with these gold selling websites and I don’t intend to risk it again for a little fun in a video game.
Epilogue: I ended up regretting both the purchase and the blog post.
You seriously need mental help, oh sorry, that statement was directed at all of you.
It’s just a game, and you made one fatal mistake which is not buying the gold from day 1.
I would empathize you if you decided to buy it due to imbalanced odds of getting a rare item or if you just don’t have enough time to play. (120 hours two weeks? gg)
But you’re just plain lazy and by the looks of it also misinformed like some mentioned.
Buy gold, but have a real reason behind it, if you know that you bought it for all the wrong reasons then I say you’re an idiot.
I live in Israel and I would buy gold directly from Al-Quaida just so you get the gist of it. Stop being a bunch of saints. At the end of the day anyone who buys gold can put up a perfect facade and you’ll never know that your best friend got his shining armor from Aldo de pachi and his gang. It’s only him who must live with it if he made the right decision or not.