Gold Buying & Making Gold
What are your thoughts on buying gold? It has been made abundantly clear on both my blog and the rest of the WoW blogosphere that buying gold (and ads about gold selling) are generally frowned upon. In fact, I’ve had fellow bloggers refuse to link to my site because of some of the ads I’ve had up!
The thing is, I personally don’t think that buying/selling gold is really all that bad. I understand its a violation of the Blizzard TOS, but other than that, I don’t see any reason to disagree with the practices of these companies (except the ones that spam Trade and LFG channels).
Trust me, I know all the arguments as to why people are against buying gold, mainly:
- Messes up the WoW economy (how, I’m not sure)
- Unfair to other players (how, I’m also unsure)
- People miss key game aspects by not farming gold
- Why else is gold buying looked so badly on?
Thing is, I personally know a lot of people who only have time, and play the game to raid. For the record, I never have, and will never buy gold. I would never need to, I make at least 5,000 gold each week from selling things on the AH. I don’t even farm, do dailies, or grind mobs/reps for factions. Enough about me though, I’m trying to get a grasp as to why gold buying is such a negative thing.
I always feel weird about blogging about controversial issues, so I’ll say again that I don’t endorse or participate in gold buying/selling. The thing is though, I can give a few reasons as to why I don’t see it as such a bad thing:
- Gold doesn’t provide many benefits over other players just because you have a lot. — It seems that one of the arguments against gold selling is that people who have lots of gold have some sort of advantage over people who farm for theirs. This is not really the case, the only thing more gold will give you is let you purchase some BoE items, get the best enchants on your gear and appropriate gems, but that really isn’t that expensive, and most BoE items are easily replaced by BoP drops. In either PvE or PvP, the amount of gold you have in your bags can only go so far, and you are not going to out DPS someone who has 1,000 gold simply because you bought 50k gold last night.
- Gold RMT (Real Money Trade) messes up the WoW economy. – I don’t see how this ever could happen. The WoW economy mirrors economies in the real world, it seems. It’s all about supply and demand; so the only way someone could feasibly mess up the WoW economy is if they bought tons of the same items and resold them much, much cheaper. I can’t see how else they could destroy a virtual economy. If anything, it might stimulate the economy and get more stuff bought/sold, but who knows.
- Unfair to other players. — No. It really isn’t unfair. If WoW was free to play, maybe it would be unfair, but since we assume most players that play WoW have at least some money to afford a decent computer, a solid internet connection, can afford at least $15/month, etc. This also goes along with the fact that more gold doesn’t really give you too much of an upperhand with other players, so someone with 100k gold really doesn’t have many advantages over a player with no gold.
- Buying gold makes players miss key game aspects. — I missed tons of key game content, and continually do so. I levelled from 1-60 by instancing the entire time. Do you think I read quest text and stuff like that? I don’t do most world events, the Argent tournament, and other stuff. People play the game as they choose, most of the people in my server never cleared Sunwell, etc. I don’t agree with this argument either.
So, I understand this post really isn’t moonkin related, but I am looking for hopefully some reasons as to why you guys don’t agree with gold buying/selling, or even if you don’t think its bad at all.
In other news, and by the way, the pic of that bags is not my own screenshot, I have been making gold insanely easily these past few days. I’ve been working on building our guild bank money (which dropped to 1,000g while I was out of the country, its now at 8,000g and its only been a week!), as well as my own personal gold.
As always, I’ve been using my professions to make incredibly fast gold. I simply purchase mats I may need off the AH, and craft items like Sapphire and Brilliant Spellthread, Wispcloak, and pieces of the Frostsavage set. I try to run Onyxia at least weekly, both for fun and easy gold, its good times.
In completely other news, I just switched back to an iPhone after having a Blackberry for nearly a year. Its taking a little getting time to get used to the touch screen and snazzy iPhone features (as well as a decreased battery life), but hopefully I’ll be able to setup the Wordpress on iPhone app and take this blog to another level.
Macbook
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Ditto. UO had a number of virtual commodities up for eBay, and if anything it added to the game. What’s the difference between buying on the AH and on eBay? Either way the “value” of the items, I’d wager, are close to the same. The shift is from hours of in-game play to discretionary dollars to waste on it.
Your points about having more gold not necessarily translating into an [end-game] advantage are well taken. There are places where it would speed up the game — I still haven’t shelled out 5k for epic flight, but if I was the gold buying type I should would have — and that’s “unfair”, but so are those who get to buy nice, fast computers, who can then see farther in the game, or people who can more easily justify throwing down $15 a month every month to play. I tend to take periods of time off when I’m busy. If I had tons of cash, I’d drop back by to play two or three days even during those months I’m “away”.
I understand that Blizzard wants to cash that comes with their game, and wants value to stay in-house, where it can all be counted and studied. Yet already wowhead, thottbot, even blogs can garner cashola from adverts next to WoW-related content. The cat’s out of the bag; might as well let the players benefit as buyers and sellers too.
But, again, for those who played UO, breaking down the wall between virtual and “real” economies makes things more interesting, not less. I’m a goody two-shoes. I won’t buy gold because it’s against the rules, and because I’d hate to lose my hours on hours on hours of progress, but there’s already iniquities in-game because of cash, and the same outside on WoW content sites. Why not just have Blizzard sell gold, huh? They’re already making the game easier so many other ways (XP less expensive, mounts more quickly, no attunements), they might as well make some cash.
/hemorrhage of text
Personally I don’t think buy gold online is a bad thing. Like you said some people don’t have the time to farm for gold / mats for raid supplies and just get online to raid. Which means they are more willing to buy gold since time isn’t on there side. But on the other hand making gold has gotten extremely easy. I have had up to 31k gold just from flying around picking up herbs while doing my argent dailies. On my server the most expensive things are herbs.
I am usually the one who lends gold to friends. I wouldn’t buy gold but I am not against people who do. I don’t see how the WoW economy shouldn’t get thrown out of balance cause someone has 100k gold. In the end its just a game and people in 3rd world countries need to make money some how. And if farming a virtual game for gold is how they make money should we stop them? Wouldn’t we be considered bad people for putting a stop on someone’s chance to get food on there table.
Ideas continue to blossom…
In the end its fake money it can’t really hurt someone that much…
- Earth
I do believe many people are against people buying gold because of the unscrupulous means these companies use to generate gold. Gold farmers are an annoyance, and many gold selling companies also use account hacks to get gold. It’s the account hacks that cause the major issue most people have with gold sellers/buyers.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html has a lot of info about why Blizz has an anti-gold selling stance.
Gold certainly can get you BoP gear.
It is likely that for 100k gold I can join an arena 5-man that wouldn’t otherwise take me. That may give me access to BoP loot that I couldn’t otherwise get.
For a similar amount I can buy a spot into a raid that wouldn’t otherwise take me. Again, access to more BoP loot, and earlier.
The standard for WoW is that we trade on our in-game skill/time/gold/reputation. If that is not the standard, then paying someone RL cash to level/raid/pvp your toon should also be fair.
If I see a Druid running with Val’anyr, I’d like to assume that the guy on the other keyboard was a respected healer in a top guild, not that he just dropped some RL cash on ebay for a geared toon.
I cannot argue with the fact that gold has little impact on end-game content for raiders and PvPers. I imagine it has significantly more impact for people who want to level several characters, run heroics, and use their professions.
With a renewed emphasis on crafted BoE epics in Ulduar, it’s easy to see the unfair advantage that players who buy gold would have over those who do not. Runed Orbs are not cheap (nor are the other mats), and having large sums of gold can result in getting some of BiS pieces before others can even think about it.
My biggest problem with it is that we don’t know what the future brings — what Blizz has planned for the game. If they want to add player or guild housing, for example, how would that be impacted by gold buying/selling? If they want to create a revamped profession system that rewards people who dedicate large amounts of time to their professions and the virtual economy, how would that be impacted by gold buying/selling? Would Blizz scratch these ideas if they didn’t see them being fair?
Yes, Blizz is making the game easier — ridiculously easy, in my opinion. But that does not justify players seeking to make the game easier for themselves.
I like your point about the time spent farming 1k gold is probably the same amount of time you have to work to pay for that much, unless you have an incredibly high-paying job.
I also always wondering why Blizzard simply didn’t offer gold selling themselves; but they probably wouldn’t do it because people would never cease to QQ about how unfair that is, while I don’t agree.
But yes, and they already do things that are similar (but not quite) to selling direct gold – ie – special perks for people that purchased the Blizzcon showing on HBO, special pets for buying Limited Edition WoTLK, TCG items, etc. Sure, none of those things have any real impact on raiding or PvP, but I don’t really think buying gold does either.
Yeah. I lend gold to guildies all the time as well, usually for them to purchase BiS BoEs or for enchants.
My guild pays for our raiders repair bills, and we have fish feasts at every boss, so the only real cost to our raiders on raid nights are flasks (and half of them don’t flask, grrr), but somehow people still manage to be broke.
I don’t get it.
And yeah, its incredible how many WoW farmers there are in the world, I read a bio on one of the guys who said it sucked but it brought in the money.
I managed to skim through the key points, and their main point does have validity – hacking, spamming, botting, etc, are not methods I agree with that these gold selling companies should be using.
There are some “reputable” gold selling companies though that actually have teams farm up gold (or others that buy from players and resell), which is usually what I refer to when I think about the RMT.
Fair, and I definitely don’t agree with account buying (unless under certain circumstances), mainly because you are right — you see a players gear and assume their skill level.
I remember back in BC there was a rogue on my server with dual-glaives (before everyone got them). I remember leading a Gruul’s pug and didn’t want to take him until he said “I got dual warglaives”. I brought him in, and I out DPS’ed him in my T4/T5 gear, even though he was in almost full T6 with 2 warglaives.
Regarding buying BoP loot — it IS possible, I’ve done it sort of indirectly (ie – I purchased a Maly25 run from another guild when I got my Saph key like a month after WoTLK came out), but I believe the average gold buyer does not purchase enough gold to buy a lot of BoP gear.
Fair points, but even if it is unfair the extent is not that severe. There is a certain point where unlimited gold cannot outweigh a player with no gold in a decent raiding guild.
Speaking of craftables that require Runed Orbs — I’m thinking about crafting the Spellslinger’s Boots, although they seem to be just about on par (if not slightly below) my Footsteps of Malygos.
I’m just tired of having a 213 item equipped on my feet x.x
lol to your last sentence. Its not a huge upgrade for the money haha
I knowwww but sometimes I’m a WoWHeroes whore (if you haven’t noticed already I log off in weird but high iLevel gear), and the 213 boots are really killing me
haha yeah so do the same thing.
One of the methods that gold farmers use to acquire a majority of their gold is from hacking accounts. If you’ve known anyone who has gotten hacked, it’s quite a nightmare knowing that all of those toons that you put hours upon hours of time in to are in the hands of someone else. I’ve sat at a mailbox watching a friends toon get hacked, their gear sharded and/or vended and all of that gold mailed to one of their alts. That alt was then transferred off of the server to an account made by gold sellers.
Sure you could say “get an authenticator” but the fact still remains that the gold that you would be buying to make your life easier just made someone elses life hell.
When you put it that way. It makes it seem horrible to buy gold. =( I don’t buy gold cause I simply don’t want to get hacked with 9 80s I think I have wasted a life time haha…
Sure you could say “get an authenticator”
Ha, so who’s sharing in the gold farming reality cash? (For those who missed it, that would be Blizzard selling authenticators as a way of cashing in on gold farmers.) Legalize gold selling! ;^)
I don’t think buying gold gives an advantage. I have all kinds of gold in game and I still suck. The only thing that worries me is that I have heard some of the gold sellers get their gold by hacking someones account. Thats beyond wrong in my oppionion. Me personaly, have thought about it to get a swift mount for an alt, but think to myself this is a game dude, and it took real work to get that money, hell no. Do you know how much beer I can buy with 65 bucks?
Heh heh. There’s already a built-in authenticator — just choose a good password. No need to spend money on it.
Yeah, well, I guess we still get nabbed by key loggers every so often. I wonder how upset I’d be if my dude lost all of his gearz. He could run BRD nekked, I’d bet, and grab cash. Wonder how long before he would be viable again…
How do you get key loggers? I mean, assuming you virus scan your addons before logging into WoW.
@Chris, ROFLMAO is all I have to say, but true. You can get at least 3 cases of decent beer with that much dough.
Macbook, let’s get this contest going. I think your readers will appreciate it.
As I understand it, some get keyloggers due to bugs in Flash, where apps can somehow reach out and listen to logins (perhaps on worldofwarcraft.com?) if they’re open or have been open on other browser windows.
I’m not real down on the loggers, but I’ve heard enough about them they must exist. ;^) You know, like bigfoot.
I wouldnt have a problem with gold buying if the gold was obtained under legit circumstances. Fact of the matter is most of these companies either employ scammers and hackers to get their gold or they buy from individuals who do so. Some of these companies actually give out info on how to do this to their “freelance” agents. Fact of the matter is anyone who buys gold is at minimum indirectly supporting account hacking.
You’re weak.
Fair enough, but I think that the bulk of the gold being sold is legitimately farmed by “gold farmers”. I’m sure Blizzard tracks and bans most of the gold being hacked/sold and returns it, I think most people have a mindset that isn’t entirely accurate when they think most gold is obtained by hacking accounts and botting.
WoW farmers, if I’m not mistaken, are a large part of the player base and subscribers to WoW. I read an article on it somewhere.
I dont like gold sellers who whispers me in game with a lvl 1 char as soon as I logg on.
Kick, ban and burn those sons of bitches.
Blizzard should sell gold and get rid of the gold sellers.
I 100% agree. WTF is up with that. Last night I got 4 different whispers during my raid time from different gold sellers trying to talk me into buying gold.
I tell them to stop whispering, they don’t listen.
ARGH!
I like your post, but I expected there too be tips for us to make some gold. I do agree with you though, buying gold isn't a crime, only people who get really into the game who decide to spend more money on it.
Scratch that post. Did not read all of the other ones, my bad.
i agree but i want to know something will buying gold get you baned?
or will just selling it?
I'm in Mac's Guild, and honestly no, i don't think buying gold is that bad. But, if anyone in the guild actually did it they would probably be ridiculed and laughed at for weeks on end. Gold is so easy to come by. I make 400g a day just doing the argent tournament, fishing, cooking, ect. dailies on my 2 80's. Not to mention I made about 30k gold over the last 2 weeks selling greatness, death, and illusion cards right before and during the DMF.
If you want to waste your money buying gold, do it. But, I believe that shows something about your personality. You are taking the easy (and lazy) way out. And i know that (from our guilds perspective) there is no room for lazy ppl in our progression guild.
With that said, Mac!!!! Gimme 5k!!! haha