Gaming Signal: Gold farmers can be fought

Gold farmers can be fought

I'm not sure if anybody realizes this, but Blizzard has embarked on a major campaign to ban accounts of the so-called 'gold farmers' in a way to try to hurt the rampant secondary market that has grown up around their wildly successful game. And guess what - it has been working.

Last year about this time you could purchase 1000 WoW gold for about $100. Today, that price is double that - about $200 for the same 1000 gold. That's a major change from one year to the next when you would normally expect prices to go down (prices had been dropping significantly throughout 2005.)

As a non-purchaser I have to say that I'm happy with this, overall. It shows Blizzard has in fact made good on the promises they made regarding a focus on this. But as a person who thinks purchasing items for games is inevitable, I fear it is fighting against the tide.

...and I seem to be getting twice as many spam in-game emails/tells asking me to buy their gold! Blizzard needs to make it so that level 1s can't email or /whisper! Of course, then I would have to play my bank toons just a little bit...

Posted by Peter on Thursday March 22, 2007 at 6:41 AM

Probably not surprising to people who knows me, but my accounts will expire on the 23rd and 25th. I've done all the BC quests -- there isn't much left to except to do endgame instances (but there aren't enough people in my guild to do much) or farm for gold, which is, by far, the most mind-numbingly, skin-crawlingly, boring activity not to mention the childish people who insist that you've stolen their kills and will jump on each of their toons just to tell you even after you've /ignore each one in turn. That's just crap that I don't need to pay to put up with!

Posted by Peter on Thursday March 22, 2007 at 9:24 PM