Question about these WoW gold selling sites

That was an issue, if I recall. Numerous guild bank
characters/accounts had action taken and then had to appeal, because of
the large amounts of gold being transferred.

Trooper wrote:
> > Yeah. I don't know exactly how Blizzard's system works internally, but
> > if the mail system is using a database, I would think it would be
> > fairly easy to query users who send over a certain number of mails a
> > month containing say 100g or more (and not COD), and then narrow that
> > list down further. I could be wrong but I don't think there are that
> > many normal players who transfer that much gold through mail without
> > exchanging items, etc. And if the mail is between characters owned by
> > the same account, those could be excluded too.
> >
>
> I would imagine there would be quite a few, what with guild bank
> characters, etc...
>
> --
> Trooper
> usenet.DeleteThis@trooperlooper.co.uk.invalid (remove the obvious)
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

"flopbucket" <flopbucket.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142589422.507356.59680@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I clicked on an add on thottbot for a place that sells WoW gold for
> money. I'm not interested in wether it is right or wrong, etc.
> Personally I see it as cheating but that's not the point of this post.
>
> What really struck me was the number of servers, both US and EU, and
> the amount of gold they have for sale. My question was, how do they do
> it? They must have at least 1 level 60 on each server, and even at
> level 60 it takes a while to accumulate 1000 gold (I only have highest
> level 47, but I still assume it takes some time at 60 too).
>
> Even playing WoW constantly, it takes several days to reach 60.
>
> I was just curious, anyone have any ideas how these places actually
> operate? It would seem they would need lots of people working for them
> to farm all this gold on so many servers.
>
> Or maybe they just buy gold at a reduced price from other players or
> something and resell it?
>
> Thanks
>

They employ hundreds of chinese workers for peanuts who sit infront of their
screens all day farming.

Bulla
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

Vere wrote:
> That was an issue, if I recall. Numerous guild bank
> characters/accounts had action taken and then had to appeal, because of
> the large amounts of gold being transferred.

What exactly is a guild bank? I assume it is a bank run by a guild
officer for the common good of the guild. But how do they normally
operate in practice? Do members contribute to it or something? And
what is the money typically used for?

Thanks
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

The ones I have seen are characters that take donations of money or
items to assist in distributing them as needed. Operation is primarily
on the honor system, and guilds really have to have a good core
membership; often the guilds I see have at least a core group of ppl
who know eachother in real life, so that helps. I know 4 of my
guildies in real life, my college roomate and his current law school
roomate. There are several other groups of 3 or 4 who are also RL
friends.
Most of my guild bank experience is from another MMORPG, where I was
the 'admin' officer of a guild (as opposed to GM or a class officer,
handled lots of disputes and treasury stuff). This is what I know from
there and have seen applied here in wow.

Often the GM will have a character that maintains rare or expensive
crafter mats, Repair bots, etc to be redistributed based on the guild
loot rules (i.e. a guilds main tank being outfitted with specific
crafted items so that the guild as a whole can secure a well geared
tank because they have not obtained a specific drop item or the normal
MT missed the group when the bop item dropped). .

They also take money donations. Then, say, if the guild needs a new
engineer to make repair bots and no person desires to do it, the guild
will offer to assist in the levelling of that skill from the bank. High
level recipe drops might be saved or key recipes being saved for people
who need them to level tradeskills. I even saw a new guild in wow that
was funding talbards for lowbies who couldn't afford it.

The character, for ease of use, would be mailed these items. Gold
would often be mailed in fairly large quantities to support
tradeskills. One guild in another game even allowed people to "buy"
rolling rights on items from the guild bank; it didn't work out very
well, though.
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

"flopbucket" <flopbucket RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142589422.507356.59680@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I clicked on an add on thottbot for a place that sells WoW gold for
> money. I'm not interested in wether it is right or wrong, etc.
> Personally I see it as cheating but that's not the point of this post.
>
> What really struck me was the number of servers, both US and EU, and
> the amount of gold they have for sale. My question was, how do they do
> it? They must have at least 1 level 60 on each server, and even at
> level 60 it takes a while to accumulate 1000 gold (I only have highest
> level 47, but I still assume it takes some time at 60 too).
>
> Even playing WoW constantly, it takes several days to reach 60.
>
> I was just curious, anyone have any ideas how these places actually
> operate? It would seem they would need lots of people working for them
> to farm all this gold on so many servers.
>
> Or maybe they just buy gold at a reduced price from other players or
> something and resell it?
>
> Thanks
>

It is against Blizzards "TOC Agreement" (As far as I am aware) to buy and
sell items / Gold etc in Warcraft for real money, and if found to have done
so can result in a account ban.
But the problem seems to be how do you Police such activity, pretty
impossible really.
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

There are two kind of companies in this gold selling business, the
manufacturer and the retailer, just like the real business world.

The manufacturer focus on making golds, and then sell golds to
retailers. They don't hire people to just farm, that would be stupid.
They hire people to watch over farming bots, manually control the bots
and interact with other players every once a while so the bots don't
get busted. One so called "farmer" can watch about 10-15 farming
accounts at a time.

Retailers usually obtain golds from farmers and distribute to the
general public. Sometimes they also advertise to buy golds from regular
players to cover some extensive needs on a particular server. Of course
Blizzard can monitor the money flow and bust the big pipes. The
transaction pattern is very different from regular usage even guild
banks. But trust me, they don't want to touch the gold source or the
buyers. That would involve too many accounts, both farmers and normal
players, since there's no way to distinguish them.

Yeah I know what the EULA says so anyone want to bring up the "law"
prospect can save the time. I'm just saying this is how things operate.
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

In China they usually use proxy and IP masking technology, because the
government monitors their internet usage, alters search engine results,
and blocks certain contents.
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

In article <1142595431.180086.166880 RemoveThis @p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
flopbucket RemoveThis @hotmail.com says...
>
> > It is against Blizzards "TOC Agreement" (As far as I am aware) to buy and
> > sell items / Gold etc in Warcraft for real money, and if found to have done
> > so can result in a account ban.
> > But the problem seems to be how do you Police such activity, pretty
> > impossible really.
>
> Yeah. I don't know exactly how Blizzard's system works internally, but
> if the mail system is using a database, I would think it would be
> fairly easy to query users who send over a certain number of mails a
> month containing say 100g or more (and not COD), and then narrow that
> list down further. I could be wrong but I don't think there are that
> many normal players who transfer that much gold through mail without
> exchanging items, etc. And if the mail is between characters owned by
> the same account, those could be excluded too.
>

I would imagine there would be quite a few, what with guild bank
characters, etc...

--
Trooper
usenet RemoveThis @trooperlooper.co.uk.invalid (remove the obvious)
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

Doppleganger <Doppleganger RemoveThis @earthlink.net> wrote in news:Doppleganger-
D2AD02.07111017032006 RemoveThis @comcast.dca.giganews.com:

> Anyone can sell to them,
> as a couple US based guilds tried it out, selling their guild bank gold
> - but found that it's severely marked down when you sell it - 500 gold
> costs you $50, but they will only give you $20 to sell them $500.

Kinda like the in-game vendor markup (buy versus sell price).

The thing I wonder is how a "studio" doesn't trip alarms from all the
activity coming from a small block of IP addresses. Is the game tunneled to
other countries to conceal the location of the farmers?
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

flopbucket wrote:
> Vere wrote:
>> That was an issue, if I recall. Numerous guild bank
>> characters/accounts had action taken and then had to appeal, because of
>> the large amounts of gold being transferred.
>
> What exactly is a guild bank? I assume it is a bank run by a guild
> officer for the common good of the guild.

yep.

> But how do they normally
> operate in practice? Do members contribute to it or something? And
> what is the money typically used for?

this depends on what it's for.
e.g. some of the higher-level chars might donate some items to the bank
so that lower level chars can use them when they have the right level.
Same for money so they don't have to grind for mount money or some such
(mount money is easy to earn when >40, but hard before).

then there are "raid banks", e.g. you are raiding MC. All finds of lava
cores/fiery cores/core leather/whatever else go to the raid bank. Then
the member of the raid get some items created for them. E.g. Dark iron
plate stuff for the tanks so they have enough fire resistance, etc. Also
BOE items which nobody on this run needs get put in the bank so some
other member can maybe use the later. Disenchanted epiXXs (the nexus
crystals) get also put there, so you can use them later for the
highest-level enchantments, etc, etc.
Also you get special stuff in BWL (sand of time I think, elementium)
which you only can/need to use later

I know of a raiding bank which had > 11k Gold in it and MANY items ...
and the owner got banned. As much as i know they haven't yet gotten it
back. An I think they've given up hope to get it back ever.

Urs

--
"Why do we have to hide from the police, Daddy?"
"Because we use vi, son. They use emacs."
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

"flopbucket" <flopbucket DeleteThis @hotmail.com> writes:
>the amount of gold they have for sale. My question was, how do they do
>it? They must have at least 1 level 60 on each server, and even at
>level 60 it takes a while to accumulate 1000 gold (I only have highest
>level 47, but I still assume it takes some time at 60 too).
>
>Even playing WoW constantly, it takes several days to reach 60.

They simply throw a lot of people at it, and have low-paid labor playing
the farmer characters 24/7, in shifts. And, they camp out in spots with
quickly-regenerating monsters who drop lots of cash and resellable items.

>I was just curious, anyone have any ideas how these places actually
>operate? It would seem they would need lots of people working for them
>to farm all this gold on so many servers.

The real scandal of it is that it's basically a sweat shop operation. Buy
gold from one of these people, and you're supporting a seriously evil bunch
of real-life exploiters. *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:03:05 +0000, Grumpy wrote:

>
> "flopbucket" <flopbucket.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1142589422.507356.59680@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
>> Hi,
>>
>> I clicked on an add on thottbot for a place that sells WoW gold for
>> money. I'm not interested in wether it is right or wrong, etc.
>> Personally I see it as cheating but that's not the point of this post.
>>
>> What really struck me was the number of servers, both US and EU, and
>> the amount of gold they have for sale. My question was, how do they do
>> it? They must have at least 1 level 60 on each server, and even at
>> level 60 it takes a while to accumulate 1000 gold (I only have highest
>> level 47, but I still assume it takes some time at 60 too).
>>
>> Even playing WoW constantly, it takes several days to reach 60.
>>
>> I was just curious, anyone have any ideas how these places actually
>> operate? It would seem they would need lots of people working for them
>> to farm all this gold on so many servers.
>>
>> Or maybe they just buy gold at a reduced price from other players or
>> something and resell it?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>
> It is against Blizzards "TOC Agreement" (As far as I am aware) to buy and
> sell items / Gold etc in Warcraft for real money, and if found to have done
> so can result in a account ban.
> But the problem seems to be how do you Police such activity, pretty
> impossible really.

it would be extremely easy, actually.

i play with a real life friend who turned up one night with nearly all of
his equipment upgraded. i asked him how and he said he'd bought a few
thousand gold and went to the AH. yeah... i was jealous but i'd rather
have the satisfaction of having earned my possessions

he put the guy's name in his friend's list and he knows when somebody buys
gold because the name logs on then logs off again with just enough time to
mail gold.

let's take it from the beginning...

somebody doesn't have the time or inclination to go out and earn their own
gold so they visit a website and buy 1000g.

payment is confirmed.

the owner of the website then logs on, sends his customer the required
amount of gols then logs off. thinking about it, the website owner would
have to have two such "bankers"... one for horde, one for alliance.

how could blizzard detect this activity?

i imagine that there are a bunch of "chinese farmer" level 60s in both
factions who, at the end of their 16 hour working day (for which they earn
a few dollars), send all of their gold to this "banker".

let's imagine that blizzard are technically incompetent and have to
resort to manual methods to discover the gold sellers.

employ someone on each server to buy 100 gold from every gold selling
website. when that gold is delivered, make a note of the name, trace back
to the account, ban account and confiscate the 1000s or 10s of 1000s of
gold in the account(s).

now, let's imagine that blizzard are technically competent and know how to
create scripts and retrieve information from databases. run a script once
a day to discover the top gold "earners" per day. run another script to
find out where that gold comes from.

is it someone who's playing the AH? is it someone who has saved a bunch
of epic items and decided to sell them all at once? is it a guild master
who demands every guild members gold at the end of each session? is it a
chinese farmer's "banker"?

scrutinise the activity and mail for that account. does he play 20
hours a day and earn that gold? does he receive it all in the mail? does
he log on 50 times a day just to mail gold to other players? if the
account meets certain conditions, ban that account and all accounts that
send gold to it.

it would be trivial for blizzard to discover and ban these accounts but
they don't want to for some reason. sure, they mouth the words but they
don't mean it.

the reason they mouth the words is because they know people, especially
children, are being exploited... they're a large, international company
and they have to be seen to be "concerned" about this exploitation.

the fact a few people have died playing WoW, possibly to earn a few
dollars for their poverty stricken families, must really be an
embarrassment to blizzard.

in my opinion, the reason they take little (if any) action against the
farmers is that they would lose a lot of casual players who don't have the
time/inclination to play way WoW more than a few hours a week and resort
to buying gold to "keep up with the joneses".
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites 

On 17 Mar 2006 01:57:02 -0800, "flopbucket" <flopbucket DeleteThis @hotmail.com>
wrote:
> and even at level 60 it takes a while to accumulate 1000 gold

It's not that hard to earn gold. My lvl 45 hunter currently has 1148
gold to her name, all earned. My lvl 22 warrior is already up to 422
gold. Knowing where the good drops are, a little luck and a copy of
Auctioneer is all you need.
 >> Stay informed about: Question about these WoW gold selling sites