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.
Suzina the reason you’re probably feeling bad is the point of these games is to experience a world with other people, so being so abruptly and rudely abandoned by a friend over such a trivial matter definitely would be painful. But I just want to say don’t let one person ruin a great game like WoW for you. There are lots more friendly people and fun to be had which is just waiting there if you give it another try. I don’t comment much but I try to read everything on KTR and I appreciate everything you add to the site, so I just want to say thanks and try not to let one person get you down on our great hobby.
I feel genuinely sorry for you as you seem not to have grasped what you have done. Firstly if you play wow for any time either you or someone you know and like will have there account hacked. You may be surprised quite how much upset this can cause and yes I mean emotional upset even in old gray adults like myself. This is also a good point to say “For god’s sake get an authenticator”. Now what’s accounts theft got to do with you? Sorry to say but where do you think the gold you bought came from? Secondly it plain and simply using the power of your pocket over skill and endeavour or if you like cheating.
I know for a fact that not all gold is stolen. My account got hacked and when I finally got it back, I was respecced to Demonology, in the middle of somewhere I’d not been, and had bags full of skinned hides and high selling mats. They were using my character to farm gold and I actually came out on top because not only did they leave my bags full of mats but all of my items that were sold were reimbursed by Blizzard.
Um, your account was hacked. It was used to farm. Your items were sold.
How is that not stealing?
Because I didn’t lose anything and in fact increased my gold two fold.
So it is ok for me to break into your car and take it as long as when the police recover it, I’ve filled the tank for you? :)
The same exact thing happened to me. My account was hacked shortly after BC came out. When I finally got it back, my 2k gold was gone, but I had about 6-7k worth of farmed items in my bags.
Buying gold from gold farming companies is like cheating to pass the SAT. Or college entry exam. Or breaking into a co-worker’s email to blackmail them. It is a moral choice, virtually or in reality. Some people choose differently than others.
Most people try to earn their place in any online world. FPS, RTS, MMO positions within the community are earned…not bought. So when they hear of someone BUYING their online reputation, they get rather offended by the offender.
But since you admit that you will just do it again, you shouldn’t worry about it. Play however you want. Its your money, both subscription and bought gold. Just don’t expect people who’ve earned their levels/items/skills to respect or play with you.
TQQdlesâ„¢,
Dolnor Numbwit
Eternal Newbie
The problem here isn’t the gold buying per se. It’s also not about “buying your way to position” or “replacing skill with cash”. It’s that a key game feature – dual speccing – flat isn’t accessible to a new player unless they acquire gold through means outside normal gameplay. 1k gold may be trivial to people with a stable of level-capped alts to feed their lowbies with, but to a first-time player who just hit level 40? It’s a sealed, signed invitation from the devs to buy gold, delivered on a silver platter by a handsome butler/French maid.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m very much against gold-buying in general, but I’m even more strongly against developers building in a guaranteed market for the gold sellers.
This is crucial. When devs set up a game function to be an absurd time/gold sink, they are asking for bypasses. Blizzard can whine about gold sellers, but bottom line, without the demand, they wouldn’t be there.
Playing a game becomes a lot less fun when the other players cheat.
I have no sympathy with the argument that you have “cheated” by buying gold. That argument would only hold water if WOW was a competitive game. It isn’t.
The fact that you bought the gold on the black market is harder to excuse though. Black markets tend to attract unscrupulous organisations and individuals and by participating in the black market you are supporting their activities.
It is a shame that the dual spec was lowered to 40 with the aim of allowing existing players to buy it for their alts because it puts people like yourself in a difficult situation. I agree it feels like there is no option but to buy gold but even if I was to reroll fresh on a new server I would still not buy gold for dual spec.
Dolnor hit the nail on the head imo by saying “It is a moral choice”. I regard myself as a person of high morals in real life and regardless of the anonymity provided by the internet I still follow the concepts of morality.
Carson has mentioned that this kind of thing can be regarded as cheating which in a way is true. However, my main reason for not buying gold is the people you are supporting by giving them your money. A lot of these gold farming organisations are infamous for their hacking of other peoples accounts just to strip them of all their possessions to improve their gold supplies. While I cannot comment on whether the organisation you bought your gold from engages in such activities, the fact that some do is enough to leave a bad taste in everyones mouth.
I’ve been a bitch once and completely severed ties with a player I used to play with, after I had heard they had bough gold so they could buy some extremely expensive endgame items. The person was also a guild leader, and I had helped them for free by making them a high-quality guild website, so I did feel righteously cheated when I learned that not only was the leader openly supporting businesses that hack accounts and spam ingame channels, but also that the rest of the guild was completely okay with that.
It’s like buying pirate CDs – a couple dollars isn’t a big investment for you and you get what you wanted cheaper than it would have cost you otherwise (assuming the goldseller isn’t a complete scam!), but the money itself often goes to support illegal activities which harm others – or in this case, their gaming experience.
I wouldn’t worry too much, I’d say most WOW players buy gold, they just don’t admit to it. If it helps you enjoy the game more, so be it. If WOW wants to put a stop to it, then they can either stop charging some silly price for abilities/mounts, or put in some kinda cash->gold method. Perhaps they (which they won’t) should look at how CCP does it. You getting your dual-spec or mount affects, nobody – other than making those who have base their own personal value on how epic their wow toon is whine.
“I guess because I know I’d just start another account and purchase gold again for the dual spec feature”
Would you tell people you’d bought it? Knowing that they’d probably shun you for it? Would you buy it if you knew it was stolen?
That bad feeling you’re experiencing is that of having violated a social norm. In some ways it’s good, it shows that you’re a properly functioning social human being with a conscience.
The irony is that dual spec isn’t even all that useful at level 40 when you only have 30 talent points.
It’s a matter of trust. Trust is hard to gain, and easy to lose. Now that you’ve admitted that you can’t be trusted to abide by the Terms of Service, he’s succumbing to the slippery slope fallacy and starting to wonder what else he can’t trust you with.
I have been reading this website for a few months now and have enjoyed the insights, humor, descriptions of gameplay, and articles that make me think outside my little MMO box. When I saw the title of this post in my RSS reader, though, I felt the little twinge of anger I get every time I think about blackmarket gold selling/buying and hesitated to read the rest.
My account has never been hacked and I have not even been playing WoW this past year, but I read stories about the lengths people will go to to steal accounts and gold from players. I have known guildies whose accounts have been stolen, I have seen our guild bank emptied.
Was Blizzard wrong to put such an expensive purchase at level 40? Perhaps. I agree that it puts an unfair pressure on a new player who does not have the gold to spend on dual spec at that point, but believes they need it. If the intent was to only have it available for players with a higher level character to supply funds, maybe they should have done it more like the flying where you could buy an item to send to an alt allowing for dual spec.
Saying that, blaming Blizzard, is just an excuse, though. I think the Best Buy down the street is a horrible store. Their staff is rude, their prices are high, and they try to trick customers into buying extra services that are not needed. Does that mean I should buy my new television set from the person selling it cheap from the back of a truck when I know the back-of-the-truck television market is often supplied through the theft of items from my neighbors? No. But I also won’t support Best Buy if I think their practices are that bad. I’ll look for another legitimate store.
There was a post on the LotRO forums recently that said Turbine was encouraging gold buying by making the drop rate on an item too low. (http://forums.lotro.com/showpost.php?p=4459361&postcount=1858) So we aren’t allowed rare items in the games anymore, either? What about mount prices? What about items that get expensive on the AH through fluctuations of the in-game economy? We can come up with excuses in all sorts of places. Excuses are cheap. It is the consequences that are expensive.
You say if you are reported and banned you can just get another account. Good for you. What about the person who has their account stolen? Even if they get it back and have things restored, it is time lost. Money lost. Maybe desire to play the game lost. And if they don’t get the account back for some reason, should they just have to buy another one, too?
I will not call you a cheater for buying gold. I don’t care that you did not earn it yourself (for people who use that argument…what if she had an in-game friend give her the gold? is it ok then?). Buying gold, though, makes it profitable to steal items from other players, and that is something I can’t understand why anyone would support.
If you believe dual spec is absolutely required at level 40, and you believe Blizzard is making the game unfair to players who do not have legitimate access to that amount of gold at that level, make sure you put that down in the box when you stop your subscription. It does not sound like you are having much fun anymore anyway. :(
The issue, as others have said, is mainly where did the gold come from? If it is from a hacked account then you indirectly helped cause someone some stress and annoyance even if that was not your intention.
..and lets not forget, Dual Spec is simply not that important at level 40. Certainly not important enough that you need to go buy 1k gold to pay for it anyway. At level 40 1K G is a lot of money, at level 80 1K G is chicken feed and dual spec is actually of some use.
I don’t play any more, and even if I did, I have more important things on my mind then whether someone I know bought gold or not, but as I and others have mentioned…. chances are that 1K gold you bought was obtained by stripping someone’s character of gear that they worked hard to obtain, so you don’t have to work at all to obtain dual spec.
As an ex-wow player I know all too well the time and money sinks present in the game so I cast no judgement on anyone buying gold. I just wish people thought more about where it came from before they support that sort of “business”.
Gold-buying to save time is analogous to saving money buying a “cheap car stereo” from a local mobster. Much of the gold people buy comes from hacked accounts, and 99.999% of account theft and hacking originates with gold-sellers. Blizzard has a good page on the many ill-effects of gold buying : http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html
What people say above is true — it is cheating and it’s not surprising that somebody reacted in the manner you describe, especially someone that works hard for money in the game.
I’m not sure if you are new to WoW, but it seems like you are doing some things wrong that put you in the situation where you felt you needed to buy gold.
First, when you level you should always use a dps spec. No healing specs for leveling because they are slow and not really necessary for anything. In fact, many experienced players that can afford dual specs still don’t buy them until level 80.
Second, have two gathering professions and you can make a lot of money on the auction house. 1000 gold is not unthinkable for a level 40, even without the support of alts or high-level characters.
I think the problem is with WoW rather than with you, but then I am opposed to this kind of price gouging via “you can farm it” timesink anyway.
I am thankful for the post here. It takes a lot of courage to be that honest, but you are brutally honest in all your posts.
I wonder if you had told your friend first about your problem of not getting anywhere near 1000 gold, if some other solution could have presented itself. A loan or a gift?
So I guess I see your purchase as kind of impulsive. I can imagine that you wanted the feature _right now_, but you took the easy route right away. If you exhausted your resources and then bought gold, I think you would be in a much stronger position to argue your point.
Some people think playing a single player game on easy mode is noob shite, but video games are for fun. The ignorant haters above can whine all they want, but it all comes down to whether you are having fun. As for where your bought gold comes from, just because most hacked accounts are done by gold sellers does not mean that most gold comes from hacked accounts. Hacking accounts isn’t as cheap as farming since once the hacker gets caught they usually lose atleast one account and have to start over with another. It stands to reason that most gold comes from a local farmer. Gold buying suffers from the same ignorant stigma that buying marijuana has, and as seen in games/countries where it is legalized none of their prophesied mayhem occurs. Haters to the left.
The problem is less that you bought gold. The problem is how they seller GOT their gold.
Why people react strongly is explained for example in these two recent blogs:
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/03/12/fn-bastards/
http://aggromanagement.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/an-open-letter-to-people-who-buy-gold-levels-and-honour/
So, yes, I have no sympathy at all with people who buy gold. It’s not a matter of you skipping content, it’s a matter of you hurting other, completely unconnected players.
I’m in a similar situation, having recently returned to WoW and finding that the economy in the game is really whacked out and unapproachable to “lowbies”. Simple things like affording large enough bags so I can carry some consumables, have space for gathering, and actually play more than 30 mins without returning to town all the time to sell stuff. Other things take up money like getting *occasional* gear upgrades off the auction hall, buying skills, mounts, repairs, flight paths, etc.
Anyway, my druid is level 37, and according to the in-game stats page, I’ve accumulated a grand total of ~82 gold through normal play. That has barely kept me afloat with normal expenses (gear, bags, skills, level 20 mount, etc.) and even if I had been able to save every copper, isn’t even 10% of what’s needed for dual spec. My shaman is level 52, and has accumulated ~280 gold through normal play; again, not even 30% and most that money was spent on bags, skills, mounts, etc.
Everybody who says money isn’t a problem in WoW has then admitted to me they either have a high level main that can do daily quests for huge (to a lowbie) gold, or plays the AH a significant amount. Well the first option isn’t available to me, and the second doesn’t sound like fun, spending hours farming materials to then play market games. And when you’re < level 20, the stuff you can farm is barely worth selling anyway.
So I can sympathize with your purchase. IMO, Blizzard will absolutely have to fix this problem if they seriously want to draw in more players, versus maintain population against normal attrition. At this point, everybody who has heard of WoW and been interested in an MMO has tried it. Significant growth will only come from people brand new to the genre, and telling them they either need to a) find a high level patron to loan them money so the game is actually fun, or b) need to grind herb gathering or mining to have spare cash, isn't workable. What would be a good start is a significant revamp of every starting zone's quests to make the rewards useful: gear, bags, skills, maybe even the level 20 mount. I could barely afford buying my skills on my druid and often skipped ones I didn't think I'd use, until recently.
I don’t agree at all that Blizzard/Vivendi has to fix the problem. You and millions of people like you will continue to pay that company $15/month regardless of the dirt they throw at you. Six year old graphics? No problem. Game which equals gear spreadsheet? Sure thing. Mindless keymashing gameplay? Yep.
Now, Blizzard/Vivendi will be very nice to you and revamp the low-level zones in their expansion called “Cataclysm,” which will come out at some point (and you’ll keep paying $15/month until it does). When Cataclysm releases, you’ll be allowed to pay $40 for the privilege of playing six-year old zones that have been given a fresh coat of paint. Oh, and you’ll pay the standard $15/month for the month Cataclysm comes out too.
Low level crafting stuff sells. I’ve tried it with tailoring, leatherworking and jewelcrafting. Every little green ring or pair of pants is worth and average of 1g on the AH. And you make shitloads leveling your professions. A stack of copper? Between 4 and 17 gold on the server I’m leveling my new character on.
What you could argue is that the AH is not obvious to a new player. With that I agree – I had no idea it existed for the first few months I played. But afterwards? I rolled a character on a completely new server and had 800 gold at level 40 just by questing, having professions (skin/lw) and selling things on the AH.
Everybody who says “no big deal, all you have to do is figure out the AH and farm your fingers off doing ultra boring gathering skills” is missing the point. The economy in the game is super-whacked towards the high end, there is minimal in-game direction to NEW players, and be honest, if somebody new asked “how do I make money” they’ll get ROASTED in chat by the community.
Everybody who says “I rerolled on a different server…” also misses the point. Yes you are wealthy again, but you also brought all the KNOWLEDGE from your previous server about how to make money, and more importantly, that the tedium of farming and playing the AH is worth it since the game gets more fun later.
WoW’s been successful, no doubt, and they aren’t in immediate trouble. But the game has stopped growing (re: their recent conf call), most new players don’t subscribe past the trial… what’s the growth plan? Rely on current players recruiting friends? Having newbies just stick it out? At this point everybody who has heard of MMO’s and WoW has tried it and are playing or have quit; what is the plan to at least replace those lost to normal attrition?
The sad thing is, it would take so LITTLE revamping to make the starting experience much much better. Like starting new chars with some real bag space. Not charging gold for the first 10 levels or so of skills. Giving tokens for quest rewards to trade in for gear. Quests to explain the functioning of game mechanics like the AH or professions. Are there even any quests in the game to direct a NEW player to train professions or first aid or cooking or anything, except by them stumbling on them on accident?
Then all of you with the attitude “screw ’em, I suffered starting out and so can they: let them farm for hours to afford the basics!!” can still keep the infamous WoW-attitude towards newbies while letting them enjoy the game more.
I mean, why even charge 1000 gold for dual spec? Seriously, what is that charge for? It is totally an artificial barrier placed as a gold sink for wealthy chars, but at the same time it punishes a segment of the playerbase… those who weren’t max level and rolling in gold when dual spec was added, those new(er) to the game, etc. Gold sinks should be for cosmetic items and looking cool, not for FUNDAMENTAL mechanics of playing the game.
“if somebody new asked “how do I make money†they’ll get ROASTED in chat by the community.”
Nope. People on my (high pop) server (with consistantly racist, sexist and homophobic trade chat) roast people that beg for god in trade chat, and tell them how to make money instead (killing things, doing dailies, farming cloth).
It is NOT unrealistic to make 1000g on a low level character you just have to put a little effort into it and learn how to use the auction house.
I recently rerolled on a new server to try tanking my way up to 80. I didn’t have the resources of my 80s because they were on another server but managed to buy my epic mount at level 40 and dual spec at level 41. At level 60 I had 2,800g, more than enough to grab a flying mount.
All you need to do is take two gathering professions (mining/skinning/herbalism) and pick every flower, swing your pick at every ore node and skin every animal corpse you come across. The lazy high level players on your server will do the rest by buying these items is the auction house at pretty good and sometimes very high prices. Just look at which herbs/ores/leathers are selling the best and spend some time farming them.
Also, as someone that is tanking with a paladin, you do not need dual spec at low levels, just go retribution until your mid 50s and make sure you use a shield and one-hander in instances. I was able to do every instance up to BRD like that without a problem as long as my healer wasn’t brain-dead. I also found it possible to heal groups as shadow priest up until the mid-60s. Yes, it’s harder than being holy but not impossible.
The problem with getting another account and buying gold again is you are supporting the people that write the viruses and trojans that infect people’s systems to steal gold to sell to people that will buy it. There are no real gold farmers anymore in Warcraft, they get most of their gold from hacking accounts.
The bad feeling you should be having is because you just validated the work of some hacker that profited from their illicit activities. And you should be feeling bad for the poor person that had their character(s) looted and possibly deleted by said hacker just because you didn’t want to earn 1000g in-game to buy something. I’m sure that person that is praying Blizzard will restore their account soon so they can play isn’t feeling wonderful at the moment either.
This.
The Glyph market changed a bit, but not too long ago I rolled a Death Knight on a fresh server where some friends play, got him to 58 via the tutorial, started to level Herbalism and earn ~100g from quests for some purchases – and then proceeded to make 4000 gold in 2 weeks.
As I said, it’s not that easy anymore, but making 1000 shouldn’t be too hard.
Not to belabor the obvious, but somebody playing for TWO WEEKS isn’t going to have a level 55+ in order to roll a DK in order to make hundreds of gold from quests, etc. Or even know about Herbalism or the auction hall, etc.
Not to belabor the obvious, but somebody playing for TWO WEEKS doesn’t need a dual spec. As mentioned previously, a DPS build is drastically more effective than a tank/healer build when leveling. A flat respec to shadow would only be a few gold.
In order to specifically belabor the obvious, since the point sailed way over your head – What if they want to play both heal and dps builds, get some variety by switching up and allowing more options when they queue in the dungeon finder?
Why charge so much for dual spec? Why make it that difficult? Shouldn’t the game be trying to encourage more “non DPS” players without making their leveling so much more tedious? Why does the game throttle your ability to switch between facets of your own character, to being level 40 with 1000 gold to drain?
I just don’t get the “sh*t on the newcomers” attitude so many WoW players have. If anything, that will be the downfall of the game – an outright hostile game community hell bent on retaining unfriendly game mechanics.
Allowing more options? You can play effectively enough as all three in DPS spec until at least level 60.
“It is NOT unrealistic to make 1000g on a low level character you just have to put a little effort into it and learn how to use the auction house.”
It’s not even that much effort. I started playing three weeks ago, with no prior experiences, not reading any guides, nothing. I’m level 20 and have over 300 gold, just from spending 10 minutes on the AH each session…
Many people still don’t understand how the gold selling business has evolved in the last few years.
At the begininning people who played a lot could sell their extra gold for real money.
When the market was created, gold making shops were created with kids in countries like China getting paid to chain kill creatures and sell mats. Then it became more efficient to use “bots” instead of payed players: the gold was farmed by characters playing a prerecorded sequence of actions 24/365 using some unauthorized software.
At some point there were so many of them that some game area where valuable materials dropped had become impossible for any normal player: if you had to kill 10 mobs of type X you could spend hours because 5 or 6 “bots” would be there tagging the mobs as soon as they spawned 24/7.
Players were sick, complained, and Blizzard decided to put a stop to the phenomenon, so started checking the presence of the forbidden apps (“WowGlider” for one) and banning the accounts of botters.
This was a real relief for the regular players, but there were still too many people willing to buy gold: the sellers reorganized.
Nowadays, when you buy gold you can be 100% sure that it comes from a hacked account, or a guild bank robbed.
My old guild had the bank robbed 11 times in the last 2 years.
So, if you buy gold TODAY, you are screwing your fellow players, not simply “no respecting the rules” or takig the short route, and that’s why your game friend got angry and said good-bye.
Buying gold years ago was different, personally I never even thought of doing, but I didn’t mind it. Nowadays, if you buy gold it’s as if you were hacking other players’ accounts yourself.
Some of my WoW playing friends bought entire accounts and characters, employed levelling services and all that.
I say it is just bad to buy gold or similar services, regardless reasons you and they had. You are supporting a shady industry this way.
They openly told this their guildmates, nobody made too much fuss about it. But a certain disdain from some players remained, and even if they are my friends, I do not sanction their behaviour. Still, all these things are no reason to dump them ingame or out of game.
But if someone whom I just started knowing only in a game told me he just bought gold, well, I would at least remove him from my friends list as well.
My account was hacked. All my money taken, and most likely sold to the next Gold Buyer.
Thank you for supporting unlawful practices.
Really, I would not care if someone bought gold or stuff…but, only if it were done through the developer or game runner.
I suggest you keep these posts to yourself.
As other people have mentioned, it is probably the source of the gold that is causing the problems, not actually buying it. There is no point covering this again.
However, this doesn’t excuse the attitude of your ‘friend’. He doesn’t try to clarify why you bought the gold, if you know how the gold sellers get the gold, or how it affects other players or the game. He just cuts you off. It really doesn’t take much to ask a simple question and try to explain a point-of-view. If someone doesn’t even want to give you the benefit of the doubt then they are no friend.
My account was hacked, all my items sold, and gold transferred. I got it back eventually, thankfully. But if someone I knew bought gold I would ask them first if they knew what consequences their actions were having. Only if they knew the practices of gold sellers would I be rightfully rude to them. If not, I would explain the situation and hope to clarify why illegitimate gold sellers shouldn’t be supported. There is no reason to fly off the handle immediately, if you really are a friend.
I’m really sorry that this jerk made you feel bad. What he did was inexcusable.
Not that I really want to pile on, because I think all of the points I’m going to make have been made, but I’m going to reiterate for emphasis some things.
First, don’t take any of the criticism too personally. You’re clearly dealing from a position of not having the knowledge that a lot of us who have been playing for a long time have, so it’s understandable that you just didn’t see the issue. I’m hoping you do see what people are objecting to now. Don’t get too haunted or discouraged by this, but do try to learn from the experience.
Second, in your specific case this was a really unnecessary move (but again, I’m not shocked you didn’t realize this). Five years ago, leveling my priest, I specced for DPS (as well as one was able to at that point) and healed just fine in that spec until I reached the level cap. And player characters have only got more powerful. You do not need a dedicated spec to do _any_ of content before level 60, so the dual spec feature, while obviously _better_, is not something you needed. Spec DPS, and heal if you want to, you will be fine.
Third, 1000g is not as hard to get anymore. Get two gathering professions, gather and sell on the auction house, you will make the cash as you go. There’s also playing the AH, but that does require a bit more effort and knowledge you probably don’t have at this point. I’ve used a level 1 character with 1 silver to his name, on a new server, and made 1000g within two weeks just spending 10 minutes in the AH every day. I’m not saying you can do this too, but there are ways of coming up with 1000g pretty easily that don’t involve buying it.
Fourth, buying gold does support hacking, as has been stated. Was your gold from hackers? I would actually guess “no” considering where you bought it from, but there’s no guarantee. It doesn’t really matter though. It’s against the Terms of Service, so it’s a black market. And by buying gold you help create the demand, no matter who you are buying it from, which in turns gives the scammers and hackers incentive to steal from others. You’re not anywhere near as morally culpable as the thieves themselves, but you are complicit to an extent even though you may not have realized it.
Again, don’t get too down about the whole thing. You’re learning about the game, and that’s good. The conversation, even the more unsavory parts of it like getting called a noob or being ignored, can be valuable for you.
Wow, Busket. Clear and informative post. I echo your response completely. I like your writing style – do you write or blog at all?
It seems that this purchase was made out of ignorance. It sounds like you didn’t know all the facts behind how the sellers get the gold, etc.
However I think Blizzard could, and should, solve all of this by offering the gold themselves. They’ve already gone against everything they said they would never do: paid character/race/faction switches etc. I don’t see why they’re dragging their feet on this.
EvE Online provides this service via Game Time Cards (GTCs), where you can buy them using RL money, and selling them in game for ISK (Eve’s ‘gold’). This essentially takes out a vast majority of the ISK sellers that were plagueing the game in past years. You can buy directly through one of EvE’s approved GTC sellers without fear of your account getting hacked, and with the reassurance that it is completely legal.
Since Blizzard has no problem nickel-and-dime’ing subscribers on almost everything else, I dont see why they wouldn’t implement a similar system that would simultaneously make them money AND help out their subscribers.
“You can buy directly through one of EvE’s approved GTC sellers WITHOUT FEAR OF YOUR ACCOUNT GETTING HACKED”
Capitalized for emphasis. In all of the half-dozen or so account hacking cases I’ve personally encountered the hack-ee had dirty hands – they’d paid somebody to power-level their characters, or bought the accounts second-hand from shady sources, or installed external ‘hack’ utilities. They were not innocent lambs. I’m sure that cases exist of people getting their accounts hacked out of the blue, but honestly my first question when somebody says “My account got hacked” is “What kind of nastiness were you up to?”
Gold-selling will be with us as long as people are buying in enough numbers to make it a worthwhile business, and if dev houses don’t want to get into the business themselves they need to examine *why* people are buying. In the case at hand, “because this money-sink is an order of magnitude greater than you’d earn through normal game-play by that point in the game” seems to be the answer. (Yes, you could probably make that playing the AH, but let’s face it – most people play these games to fantasize about being Red Sonja, or Conan, or Gandalf. Very few of us play MMOs to satisfy our fantasies of being Willy Loman.)
Yes, buying gold increases the chance of you getting hacked.
However, there are more than just one way to steal your account without the victim having actively done anything wrong or illegal. Phishing mails from “B1izzard”. XSS. Exploits on older IE versions. Man-In-The-Middle attacks on authenticators. Social engineering. Using the same password for multiple sites. Using a public computer to log into the armoury. The list goes on and on.
Good for you. Honestly, playing the AH to make money is the most boring part of the god damn game, right behind farming shit for hours on end to get cash. Anybody that thinks otherwise has a poor sense of fun and what video games are.
Enjoy your dual spec! It does make the game 10x more fun
Tell that to the players who had their accounts hacked by gold ‘farmers’…
You don’t need to farm for hours. I just mine whatevers on the path during questing – easily 50 gold a day at level 20.
You don’t need to spend hours on the auctionhouse. 5 – 10 minutes per session are enough.
Get in a guild that has bankers who might be interested in accepting an investment from you and then share the profit.
The attitude “if I buy gold it’s my own business” simply doesn’t apply – the money comes from SOMEWHERE. And you can bet it’s not from the sellers own account.
I had a mate.. his mate raped my friend.
Neither are my mates any more.
You buy gold, you are asking someone to rape someone’s friend.
Tonight that was my friend.
When I mean you in the street… I will give you a close encounter to the pain that my friend went through.. you will go through.
You may or may not be the one… but you will all pay!
Gold selling is not rape, don’t be stupid.
RANT God I hate the way people throw the word ‘rape’ around in games so easily ENDRANT
Spinks, gold selling is rape.
Maybe your definition is narrow, only refering to rape of the sexual nature, however that is but one definition.
“an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.”
I too hate the random and unwarrented use of the word when the intention is the sexual reference.
No, I agree with spinks. Cut it out.
Tricky subject. Lots of assumptions, misinformation and more though. Buying gold isn’t illegal as some seem to imply, just as a note. Violating an EULA does not equal violating any law. In fact a Korean court just made it officially legal to buy and purchase virtual products.
If you want the real scoop and detailed arguments for why RMT does not hurt MMO’s I encourage you to read the thread here on David Sirlin’s website. David Sirlin is one of the best Street Fighter players in the world. He also was the lead designer on Street Fighter 2 HD Remix for the Xbox 360.
Get away from the emotional aspect of it all people. This is an industry.
“Roughly 12 percent of Americans, or more than one in 10, have bought a virtual item at some point in the last 12 months, according to a new study by analyst firm Frank N. Magid Associates and commissioned by virtual currency provider PlaySpan. With the virtual goods and currency market estimated to reach $1.8 billion this year.” http://gigaom.com/2009/07/30/12-of-americans-bought-virtual-goods-in-past-12-months-survey/
You have to find a way for them to co-exist. Being self-righteous and throwing around words like “morals” and “ethics” are not arguments nor are they a reason NOT to buy gold. This is a huge business, guilt and rage-filled emotional posts on your friends being hacked are not going to make it go away. Find a way to make MMO’s and RMT’s exist together.
When the word “illegal” is thrown around in situations like this, I don’t think most people mean it as “is against the law and you can be arrested”. They mean it as “is against the terms of the game and you can lose your account”. So any quibbles over the use of the word should be thrown out. I think we can all agree that, at present, the purchase of gold in WoW with real-world money is against the rules set by Blizzard in the ToU and EULA.
Next, whether or not RMT hurts an MMO is not the issue here. We are not talking about cheating or the pros and cons of having a cash shop in the game. We are also not talking about the prevalence of buying virtual goods, so it does not matter how many Americans (or anyone else) purchase virtual goods.
We have to look at the situation as it exists now.
Much of the gold being sold in WoW can tie directly to other player accounts being stolen. Even sales of gold that is not obtained by theft encourage the thieves to continue their practices because it is profitable.
If you want to find ways for this to work legitimately in a game, fine. Find those ways. Let us know what they are. In the meantime, though, don’t break rules and don’t support practices that can harm others while trying to excuse it as either something that should be ok, or something that other people are doing anyway.
Thanks. :)
Well. Hmm.
The above was in reply to a response from Loralai, but that response seems to have gone *poof*.
If you edit your comment it puts it into a “moderation que” is all. Had too many “and’s” in a sentence.
And you can not throw out or dismiss the argument over whether RMT is legal or not legal. It’s essential to the argument. Breaking the rules is entirely different from illegal. If someone means “breaking the rules” than it’s quite simple to state it as such. You are fooling yourself if you don’t realize there are a large number of players who do indeed believe violating an EULA means they are breaking a law. As if it’s some legally binding contract. In fact, the game developers WANT you to believe it is.
I also find it amusing that you state “… whether or not RMT hurts an MMO is not the issue here. …We are also not talking about the prevalence of buying virtual goods, so it does not matter how many Americans (or anyone else) purchase virtual goods.” Than go on to state “We have to look at the situation as it exists now.” THESE ARE THE ISSUES. If 1 out of every 10 players are buying gold how is that number not part of the situation? If RMT’s are having a positive or negative impact on MMO’s how is that not an issue? You seem to want to take on the task of defining what is an issue and what is not an issue by your own lofty standards. Hacking a player’s account is honestly a minor issue when you look at the big picture. But because it’s a more emotional issue for you, you consider it to have more weight.
You are correct, stealing and hackings people’s account are indeed more profitable now than farming for RMT’s. This is because of the very security that MMO’s have tried to put into place to STOP them. Ironic isn’t it? If you can find a way for them to co-exist guess what, they won’t need to hack players’ accounts.
No, buying gold for money is not, in the legal sense, illegal. They can still terminate your account.
Hacking an account is illegal, though. And buyers (in WoW) therefore buy stolen goods. If you buy a stolen car that you know comes from shady sources, you are every bit as responsible for some bloke having to go to work on foot as the guy who stole it.
And yes, that applies, because the victim spend time (which in turn costs subscription, as well as emotional investment) on developing.
Eve, Allods, etc. have legal cash shops. That doesn’t mean it would work for WoW, as Tobold and Gevlon (and those two should know) pointed out again and again. But that’s not the point, it really isn’t.
Currently, there is no official way to buy gold. That means, by default, all gold comes from shady sources. And buyers make it profitable to hack into accounts.
I completely agree pndrev. Hacking an account is the illegal portion of it. Buyers do make it profitable.
But a billion dollar industry is not going to go away. So rage and sob stories are not going to combat this issue. So new solutions have to be found and I mean out-of-the-box thinking rather than just new security measures that encourage RMT’s to become even more creative and interfere more with players accounts.
We’re on the same page then, more or less. ;)
I just disagree that RMT (which DO work in other games) would be applicable to WoW, introduced this late.
Since linking triggers the moderation queue, I’ll quote Tobolds directly.
—–
If Blizzard would sell gold, that gold would be “freshly minted”, created out of nothing by a keystroke. If enough players buy that sort of gold, overall money supply goes up, causing inflation. The price for a stack of herbs or ore or eternals would go up significantly. That is not only bad for people who want to buy things from the auction house and didn’t buy gold. It also is counter-productive to the goal of eliminating third party gold sellers. Because as prices for herbs and ores go up, gold farmers can stay in business, because now with the same amount of work they make more gold, and can undercut Blizzard’s official prices. And the more gold players have, the more profitable it becomes to hack their accounts and steal their gold. Of course then Blizzard could undercut them again, because it doesn’t cost Blizzard anything to create gold, but that obviously leads to an undercutting death spiral in which the economy is flooded with cheap gold and inflation is rampant.
—–
I’m not dismissing the argument over whether or not buying gold is illegal. I’m dismissing the quibbles over what “illegal” means, since in this case all it needs to mean is that it is against Blizzard’s current rules.
As for the RMT arguments, in your response, you bring up examples for showing
a) having a legitimate RMT system in an MMO does not need to be a bad thing
and
b) a good number of people purchase virtual goods (not specifically that a good number of people break the rules of the game to purchase blackmarket gold, although that may be the case as well)
While these examples may be good for an argument that the buying and selling of gold should be allowed, I am saying they are not good excuses for breaking the rules that currently exist, nor are they good excuses for ignoring the side-effects breaking those rules is currently having.
Now, if your original response was not intended to defend the breaking of rules, then I apologize. We probably agree more than disagree over how things should evolve in the future.
But here, in the responses to the original post, emotional reactions do, in fact, matter. And the hacking of accounts as it relates to the situation is not minor.
Suzina says it right in the first paragraph:
“But that’s not what this blog entry is about. Really, this is about someone reacting to me purchasing gold.”
I had my account hacked several months back, shortly after merging my WoW accounts to a Battle.net account. I’d never bought gold, never went to shady websites, didn’t have any trojans/keyloggers/etc. so at the time I was at a loss as to how it happened. But it did happen, and the sick feeling I got as I logged in to my main character, that I had spent 2 years working on, being naked and penniless in Dalaran, was terrible. The hacker had taken everything from every character on both my accounts – taken all of the gold, sold every item they could, left all of my characters naked, and then – adding insult to injury – transferred one of my two 80’s to a different server where they stripped her of her gear and the stolen gold and left her there to rot.
Having your account hacked leaves you feeling violated, which is why people use the word “rape” to describe it. Even if it is a melodramatic way of saying so, it’s a harsh word that’s intended to very clearly present how upset and violated the person feels after having things they worked hard for, the things they love and enjoy, stolen and destroyed.
The reason hackers take over people’s accounts and steal gold/items/characters is because of people like you. I can understand if this was just a noob mistake on your part, but I have no sympathy for someone who says so flippantly that they don’t care that what they did was against the rules and they’d just do it again. You might as well say, “I’m a lazy player who cheats if I can and I don’t give a crap about how my actions affect others.” No wonder your “friend” turned their back on you. You’ve shown them (and everyone that’s read this now) that you are selfish, lazy, and untrustworthy.
And for those saying the “friend’s” behavior is inexcusable – give me a break. Has it occurred to you all that maybe their vehement reaction stems from having been hacked, knowing someone that was hacked, or having a guild bank robbed? IMO the “friend” is perfectly justified for turning their back on her in disgust, especially when she knows she did something unacceptable and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about it. Kudos to the “friend” for having some standards.
Unless you have actually been raped, I don’t think you understand the seriousness of your metaphor. YOu could just say that you feel violated, that your account was violated. People feel violated (but not “raped”) when their house is broken into irl. I think that is a much better metaphor for you to use rather than pretending you understand what it is like to be raped.
to paraphrase keanu reeves: “you need a license to drive a car and you need a license to own a dog, hell you even need a license to catch a fish! but they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole have a child… or a blog”
I would have just asked friends/other players. I don’t despise gold buyers, but gold is so overabundant in WoW these days, someone could of farted it out and never noticed it was missing.
In the very, very old days of WoW – pre-BC, when I was still playing – there was a guy in our guild who had two accounts up and made gold with two rogues looting some chests in some instance he could sneak to easily. Apparently, it was worthwhile, since he sold the gold and yes, I bought from him a couple of times.
I didn’t and still don’t consider this as that big a moral hazard since he wasn’t cheating or anything, and I actually loosely knew that guy in real life – and yes, it was convenient.
But I wasn’t aware of that account hacking going on. That really sucks.
How is it cheating? No. Really. How is it cheating?
If I borrow 1,000 gold from a Guildmate so I can get Dual-spec, is that cheating?
If a Guildmate gives me 1,000 gold so I can get Dual-spec, is that cheating?
If a complete stranger is quitting WoW and I happen to be in the right place at the right time and he gives me 1,000 gold and I buy Dual-spec, is that cheating?
If I create a female Night Elf (or Blood Elf) then dance on my respective faction’s Bank Mailbox, or simply beg for gold from other players until I’ve leeched 1,000 gold so I can get Dual-spec, is that cheating?
Don’t just say “Yes, it’s cheating!” explain why it is.
Yes, players do get hacked, and possibly (but you cannot say for sure) some, or all, or maybe none of the gold Suzina received came from a hacked account. It’s actually entirely possible that all of the gold Suzina received came from the activity of the infamous Gold Farmers and not one coin came from a hacked account.
Just because Blizzard banned the use of Glider doesn’t mean the Gold Farmers aren’t still using it. They’re still selling gold, which is against WoW’s TOU: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html and you believe they hack accounts, so why would you think they’re abiding by a ban on Glider?
What it realistically comes down to is the only way Suzina’s Gold Buying activity could be considered cheating is if it violates the Terms of Use, Paragraph 11, Ownership/Selling of the Account or Virtual Items: “Accordingly, you may not sell in-game items or currency for “real” money, or exchange those items or currency for value outside of the Game.”
Any other reason for why buying gold is “cheating” is pure opinion, based on emotion not fact, and emotional, opinion-based arguments are irrelevant. All we are concerned with is, “Did Suzina violate TOU #11?”
If she bought gold, then yes she did, ergo, she cheated, and yes, it’s that simple.
That someone possibly got hacked so Suzina could get her gold is an irrelevant, emotional, and unsubstantiated argument and has nothing to do with whether or not she violated the TOU, which is the only yardstick you have for considering whether or not she cheated.
I’ll leave you with one last point to ponder.
If you consider Suzina’s violation of TOU#11 to be “cheating”, and think she should be banned, do you also report every single character you encounter with a name that violates TOU #9 Code of Conduct ” A – “Rules Related to Usernames and Guild Designations” ? If not, why not? They’re in violation of the TOU just like Suzina. Aren’t they also “cheating”?
“That someone possibly got hacked so Suzina could get her gold is an irrelevant”
Sorry, it isn’t, when she explicitly states that this post is about their emotional reaction to her confession.
Names: You’re mixing things here. Names like “asdfdpslol” technically should get reported. But they don’t affect anybody (outside RP realms). A name like “dpsnigger” most definitely will get reported. Because that name affects other people. Buying gold affects other people, because most likely it comes not from legitimate sources but from destroying another players work.
And it gets the same reaction. So if the original question is “why did he react like that and why do I feel bad?”, then yes, we absolutely have to consider the emotional attachments of players to their characters.
Buying gold is pretty crap.
I think a lot of people wouldn’t want to play with you if you buy gold. I wouldn’t in a game where it’s not allowed.
I’m ok with people buying plexes in Eve. I’m not ok with people buying black market isk in Eve.
It’s defined by the TOS as cheating, it causes horrible in-game effects like account stealing and stripping, phishing, spamming and so on. The design of the games is massively influenced by games companies efforts to fight people like you, Suzina. (And we’d have better games if they were free to concentrate on what would be fun for honest players rather than how to handle people who abuse the game).
Everyone has their own boundaries and these vary from player to player. I think we’ve all encountered broken bits of code and exploited it a bit before thinking “hang on, this ain’t right”. (I did the Heigan boss in WoW standing in a safe spot where the fires buggily don’t hit so I could heal without doing the Safety Dance a couple of times).
My point is none of us are angels, it’s ok to do this once.
But if you’re ok with doing this whenever the game throws you a roadblock your setting your standards too low.
Please do better in future.
“And we’d have better games if they were free to concentrate on what would be fun for honest players rather than how to handle people who abuse the game.”
Agreed, 100%. We’d also have better games if developers concentrated on mechanics that welcomed new players, rather than being actively hostile to them. Money sinks are great and necessary things, but shouldn’t be obstacles to new players just trying to level.
A thousand-gold money sink at level 40 is trivial if you have a level-capped alt to fund it while being (or at least appearing to be) an insurmountable obstacle if you don’t. In both cases it’s piss-poor design.
Yes I agree totally (and tried to make this point in posts above). Blizzard took the lazy way out when they introduced dual specs – seeing a population of max level wealthy players, they just slapped on an arbitrary fee for this new mechanic. The downside is if you come into the game afterwards, it is a punitive charge for no reason.
This is the most glaring actively hostile barrier placed in simply to target players with level-capped alts rolling in gold. That’s just the wrong way to go about making the game appeal to new players.
In response to the early comment about the former friend engaging in the “slippery slope fallacy”, I will allow that the slippery slope doesn’t always apply, and that the friend could not know what Suzina intended to do from here. But she has very clearly stated that she would break the TOU again, and probably again after that, regardless of the desires of the developers or the playing community, demonstrating that, in this case, it is not fallacious.
Suzina, people in real life also fall loosely into classes, and some are paladins. If they see (what they percieve as) wrong, they can’t forgive it. You get to either 1. abide by the rules, or 2. decide that you don’t care about making emotional connections with those people who would like you to join them in creating a lawful community. Your choice is to weigh your guilt against your impatience.
I’m just another voice in the majority, so I’m not adding much to what has been said already. However, if, in the face of the responses you’ve gotten, you still feel this way, why keep playing a game where other people care about what you do?
Indeed, her actions are harmful even without the slippery slope argument and even without the “gold buying supports real criminals” argument. It is logical to assume that she’s going to break that specific rule again, given her unrepentant attitude. It’s like finding out that your teammate in sports uses doping or plays dirty whenever the referee isn’t looking. If she ever gets caught, it will negatively affect the team. Maybe the referee will negate the team’s (partially) ill-gotten accomplishments as a punishment. Even if just Suzina gets banned, it may happen at a point where it’s highly detrimental to the team. Doing an instance or raiding becomes much harder if your main tank/healer/leader is unavailable.
I wouldn’t put a long-time friend on ignore for buying gold in a game. I’d have harsh words with them, though.
Someone I’d only known for two weeks? They’d go on ignore immediately. I’d probably report them too.
I’d also comment that it is in no way impossible, or even difficult, to get 1000 gold legally in WoW by level 40. If you don’t want to put in the time and effort needed to do that, maybe WoW isn’t the game for you. And you don’t need to have dual spec. Personally I rarely use it even games where it’s free. I certainly never even considered it in WoW.
First…some encouraging words:
Don’t buy gold. Instead, let other players pay you in-game gold for things you pick up as you play.
No matter if you take it to the “Auctionwhore” level of making legitimate, in-game gold with practices such as Gevlon’s Inscription empire (greedygoblin.blogspot.com)…or you simply stop by the Auctionhouse whenever your bags get full and post the items you don’t need, you WILL make gold.
You can make gold without ever stopping by the Auctionhouse at all. There are PLENTY of players who consider themselves “businessmen” and would gladly make an agreement with you to buy any raw materials you may find during the course of your gameplay.
Be it metals, leather, cloth, or herbs…all it takes is connecting with a “businessman” and agreeing to a price per stack. Anytime you accrue a stack, just mail it to them COD (an option in the mailbox interface’s send panel) for that price.
Fire-and-forget gold…all for something you’d do anyway.
Ok…now for the mean words:
If you don’t have an authenticator dongle for your account, I fully expect to see a followup post from you about your account being “hacked” at some point in the future.
Maybe not tomorrow…maybe not next month.
If you continue to buy gold, and you decide the place you purchased from last time is too expensive because you found a better deal elsewhere…you might also be exposing yourself to malicious scripts.
Heck, you might not ever buy gold again…but you may stumble upon a completely unrelated website for say, video game walkthroughs or somesuch that’s running a bit of nasty code hidden in a Flash file advertisement.
That Flash file pops in a keylogger that goes unnoticed. Next time you log into your account, they have your info.
This is how the innocent non-gold buyers are preyed upon and become a victim of the system.
At ANY time, they could log in and strip you of everything you’ve gained.
Not because you bought gold…but simply because someone else MIGHT buy gold if the price is cheap enough.
The man-hours it takes to code a single malicious script has a much larger Return on Investment than “legitimately farming” gold.
The price per thousand can be lowered, and therefore can generate more sales for more real-life money, making the continued scripting and exploitation of browser and operating system vulnerabilities more attractive to the gold-selling people.
It doesn’t matter how careful you believe you’re being or whether or not you think you’re a computer guru who can’t possibly get hacked. There’s someone out there that’s better than you are.
You’re motivated to buy gold because you believe it will increase your enjoyment.
These gold sellers are motivated to SELL gold because it increases their income.
Guess which of the two parties involved in the transaction is going to work harder to find a way to increase their share of the transaction? I’ll spoil the question: It’s not the buyer.
Haha! The responses here are so typical. MMO players are the most fickle and uptight bunch around.
I think buying gold is about equivalent to buying weed. Some people’s lives inadvertently get hurt in the process of growing and selling. Yet still nobody wants to be the first one to stop smoking pot because its a good time. So the process continues as long as there is a market for it.
i think its totally unfair to put one honest person on the cross for this. After all, everybody is doing it!
Methinks this is some kind of social engineering or trollbait post? Honestly, how can someone be so shocked that others find the act of buying gold deplorable?
You can argue back and forth on all the gray areas but one fact remains: The gold farming/selling industry hurts games/gamers though account hacking, spamming, and taking up valuable CSR time and developer resources.
Your selfish act affects many others. Then again, if you’re spending 60 hours per week in WoW, you’re probably a little out of touch with reality.
Obviously, you don’t deserve a whipping over this but maybe some enlightenment is in order since you claim you’d do it all over again if necessary.
LOL
Why would you dual spec at level 40?
Lame. You dont need it. Other than that I dont care, everyone buys gold at one point or another
I was confused by this paragraph:
“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.â€
Just like LotRO you can switch specs in WoW for a small fee. Also the life of your character includes the time when 1000 gold becomes reasonable which is also the time when dual spec is a lot closer to “neededâ€.
“I have to say, that really hurt my feelings.†I think I empathize more with the other guy than with you. His feelings were obviously hurt too. I know you have been playing these games long enough to know a good portion of the population does not like real money gold purchasing. Yet you did not consider this before telling a person who had been helping you out that you were breaking the TOS.
He does not have to report you for you to be banned. It could happen just from the log trail that gets left behind from the 1000 gold you received from an account that recieved a large amount of gold and also sent out gold to others. Just takes one account in a chain to get caught and everyone gets banned.
Lol, trollbait.
Also, gold buyers deserve the beating the street they get. It’s like buying your neighbors’ TV from the guy that stole it from them.
L2play. 1K gold is nothing, and I’m a dirty casual.
Perhaps he acted like a friend, but ask yourself, by your own standards, does a real friend have this little forgiveness? That he just ditches you over the events in a video game?
I don’t think he really was your friend – he just wanted another person who does what he does.
Of course he wasn’t really her friend–they were only friends in a video game. Where she acted against what he thought was wrong. Where, exactly, is he supposed to base his assessment of her character and lay the foundations of a friendship? Once she told him about buying gold, was he supposed to say, “Well, I disagree with gold buying, so I don’t want to be associated with you in-game. Give me your phone number so we can develop a friendship irl and forget about this silly video game thing”?
Oh, and if you’ll forgive the double post, I rattled off something I wrote about fake mmorpg friends: http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2010/03/these-are-your-mmorpg-friends.html
“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.”
This, to me, is the only REALLY significant part of your post. All the “OH LAWDY LAWDY!” absurd righteousness thrown around and yet folks overlook this? C’monnnnnnn.
Sure, a little shame on you for buying gold. A lot of shame of the douchebag who severed all ties with you. And actually a lot of kudos to you, Suz, for bringing this subject up from personal experience for open and honest discussion. A follow up post(s) from KTR would be nice, since you can’t easily filter out the 6 insightful comments out of this pile.
I hear that. Funny thing is I got an email from Blizzard yesterday saying my account has been suspended for 72 hours for exploiting the economy, but my account hasn’t been active for almost a year.
I am not sure what your intent was here Suzina. If it was to clear a guilty consious and gain sympathy, I think you really underestimated peoples feelings on Buying Gold. If it was to reaffirm that what you did (buying the gold) was ok, again, you severely underestimated everyones reactions.
Either way, you are a brave woman to come on here and state what you did openly, but, I am still disappointed with your decision to empower both bolh buyers and sellers. I wont be reading any further posts by you in the future.
Suzina, have you ever looked into the history of Allakhazam / Thottbot and their owners? Their dealings go far more nefarious than just account hijacking, etc..
Do a search for Marc Collins-Rector and Brock Pierce if you’re curious. They keep changing company names to whitewash the image, but AFAIK it’s still the same scumbags getting your money. DEN -> IGE / Affinity Media -> Zam Network.
You’ve sent your money to some seriously nasty people. Shady businesses tend to do shady things, often beyond the scope you may expect.
I can understand why your friend would be angry over the irresponsibility of such a decision.
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.