Blizzard Bans 30,000 Gold Farmers
Blizzard nuked 30,000 accounts last month, which removed 30 million gold from the World of Warcraft economies across several realms. At current exchange rates, this equates to roughly US$3.4 million in sales.
Imagine if you were running a business, and $3.4 million worth of merchandise just suddenly up and vanished like a fart in the wind. That would be like 100 standard SUV’s. Gone.
I don’t want to anyone to misinterpret me, here. I really don’t condone gold buying, and I think that gold farming sweat shops are just as bad as any other sweat shop. In fact, if the whole situation for these workers wasn’t completely pathetic, the loss of that much farmed gold would be completely hilarious.
It’s also one of the first times Blizzard has come out and put their foot down about gold farming. Yeah yeah, it’s against the terms of service, blah blah. But I think gold farming is a much larger problem than whether or not someone sells their account on eBay.
At least if someone sells their account on eBay, no one is working in a sweat shop for 16 hours a day, and the realm economy doesn’t get screwed up by a huge influx of farmed cash. So, account selling really doesn’t bother me that much.
Time will tell, however, whether this is just Blizzard throwing a bone to all of those who have complained about gold farming. We’ll see…
Recent Comments