Don't buy gold - a defense of honest gaming experience

If you’ve spent at least some time in World of Warcraft, you must have encountered a gold seller. They advertise on tradechat and whisper people to buy their “cheap” gold… There has always been gold selling in the game almost as long as the game has been in existence.  I know it’s obvious, but it’s still good to say that any exchange of in-game items or gold for real money is bannable offense.

 

What’s so bad in buying gold, you might ask.  Gold farmers work and earn their living? Well, in the beginning of WoW, a large bulk of gold for sale came from gold farmers who literally played the game for their living. Many of these farmers were Chinese and especially in the US servers people knew the stereotypical Chinese goldfarmer type.  These farmers played the game usually without any cheating, but they were extremely efficient in their farming routines and produced a large amount of gold for their companies to sell. I've heard stories of people befriending and actually getting to know the farmers who were honest blokes doing their job.

Those times are gone, but gold selling is unfortunately well and alive. What has changed from Vanilla times however is that alarmingly large amount of the gold for sale comes from hacked accounts. Maybe you have received a whisper from someone pretending to be Blizzard gm saying that you’ve won a free mount or some kind of reward and they’ve given a web address to go to redeem your price. Or you have received an email saying that your account is under investigation or something and again there’s a link where you need to log in. If you didn’t know, don’t ever click those links! They’ll get you hacked. There have also been many reports on power leveling services (paying someone to level your character, again it’s against the rules) etc. getting the account hacked some time later. Similar reports come from people who have actually bought gold, sometime later they get hacked and lose everything. 

Gold sellers do their thing because people buy gold. I strongly advice against it. First of all, by playing the game, you agree to a set of rules. Don’t want to respect the rules? Don’t play the game then. Secondly, gold selling compromises accounts. You don’t want to lose your well-earned gold only for it to be used some gold-buying lowlife to buy his übercool pwn-mount or whatever. If you have had experiences about gold hackers and such, share it in the comments.

But still, one more time, don’t buy gold! And if you’re irritated buy the amount of gold spam, there are addons like BadBoy that automatically hide and even report gold selling messages. Let’s make World of Warcraft a better place for everyone. And besides, making gold by honest means is fun. :)

- Adel