World of Warcraft: Buying Gold Bad for More Than VR Economy
Posted by Shawn on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm under Blizzard, Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Games, World of Warcraft
Blizzard is issuing a notice to try and educate it’s World of Warcraft customers about how buying gold effects the game. They claim that not only is the practice damaging the stability of the servers and the game economy, it could place the players themselves at personal risk.
According to the company, “an alarmingly high amount” of the gold being sold in real money trades is now coming from hacked accounts. They claim that many of these targeted accounts were previously shared with a power leveling service, only to be hacked and stripped months later by the same outfit. More of these players have also become real world victims of identity theft and credit card fraud.
I think it’s naive to share personal account information with a company that is going to do something for you that you know violates the terms of your agreement with a company such as Blizzard, and then expect that the gold traders or power leveling service to deal ethically with you. Although I question just how often players are lured in and victimized this way, I do agree that these practices wouldn’t continue if players didn’t seek them out. However, someone who is so addicted that they consider purchasing one of these services for real money is likely not entirely in touch with reality in the first place.
via World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
If you found this story interesting, why not subscribe to our RSS feed to get your daily fix of gaming news?
February 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
In many cases, accounts are hacked (Blizzard likes to call them 'compromised') because people simply don't use good browsing habits. They click on links that install keylogging software onto their computer without their knowledge, or they download and install corrupted add-ons for the game. Many people also have poor passwords.
Using your pet's name or your middle name as a password is begging to get hacked. Using dictionary words as a password is begging to get hacked. In a WoW account, the most important piece of information your have is your account name and password. Don't use your name, don't use something simple.
The best thing to do is to use a random string of letters and numbers. You can also include certain special characters, although Blizzard limits the characters that are available for usage in a password. WoW passwords are also NOT case-specific, so capital letters are not necessary.
To wit:
'hclw1u45e' is a good password, 'shawnsines' is not.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
To be fair though, you should also use a different set of password (though relatively less different usernames) for everything that requires one. People just don't want the hassle of that. Then again, we're talking here about the kind of people who would rather be referred to as a Mage or Warrior than as 'Joel Goodman' or any of anybody else's real name.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
That's another excellent point, Joel. People have a tendency to take the path of least resistance, and that usually means the same password for everything. Of course, then if they get hacked, the hacker gains control of their WoW account, their online banking, and everything else in one fel swoop.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
well, it must be stated that these are generic statements
if you name is kasder de whellz and you decide to use that as your password, it probably isn't as easily as guessable as say "john smith" or something of the like.
Then again, if your name is John Smith, who's going to guess you used one of the most common names in the world?
But anyways, be smart with your private data.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
February 25th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
[...] by Google Inc. and Powered by [...]
February 25th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
[...] by Google Inc. and Powered by [...]
February 25th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
There's something you don't realize. When you buy gold, you don't have to give them any information other than your character and server name. I admit I have checked it out (but chickened out because I was afraid Blizz would catch me).
Power-leveling services are the ones where you must give out account details (because they have to actually log onto your account and play).
You can't get these confused. Gold buyers never have to give out personal details.
February 25th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Additional note: Gold is delivered, apparently, through the in-game mail service.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere's a quick excerpt [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 7:31 am
In Reply to some of the comments left here. To say that these people would rather be called "Mage" or "Warrior" is untrue and rather offensive. I play WoW quite often and pretty much all of our guild are on a first name basis. We don't call each other by character names and I would not use my character name outside of WoW unless someone asked me what my character was called.
Also, the major reason why WoW has been affected so badly by this is the new player whose totally knew to the whole online game situation and so they are understandably naieve. They do not necessarily know the best places to get their info/mods and can be quickly duped in to scams. Power levelling is something that is being addressed by Blizzard by enhancing the amount of EXP you get from quests and lowering the Level EXP requirements.
Though it does hurt the community tremendously. I've had to install a 3rd party anti-spam mod to stop myself from getting the constant barrage of spam whispers from people who have a questionable ability to speak the English language. Names as your passwords is a flawed concept but on the flip side many of these gold sites do not posess good use of the English language so I don't think they are guessing what your password is. It's the key loggers that are making them so fruitful.
Also as blizzard stipulated the power levelling services used by people make a very easy target for hackers.
There are so many elements as to why this is such a lucrative trade, like established wow players auctioning (eBaying) their high leveled/powerfully equipped characters for real money (I saw one guy around a year ago selling 5 high levelled characters for the sum of £2,500). Many modification sites are succumbing to the keylogger scam and even the big ones such as Cursegaming.com I've heard are suffering. Also the vast majority of IE users who inadvertedly let in keylogging software due to the flaws in IE. Many places are making software suites so you can search for mods via the suite (such as WoWace) hopefully this will reduce the amount of hacked accounts.
As for the gold spam? WoW is a victim of it's own creation there. I remember when the main frustrations were the lag and server downtimes, now for many that would be preferred to the constant gold spam that you receive pretty much anywhere in Azeroth. Personally it doesn't bother me because I have Spamsentry. This has saved me from the constant barrage of idiocy that is gold spam.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Sorry guys ….but even if they have the greatest password in the world…they just dont have IPS, NIPS, or HIPS on their machine or personal network.
Many times they have a wireless router with no security deployed at all.
And the simple fact is that the malware/spyware doesnt need anything to download itself to the end users machine
just my 2 cents
March 25th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
[...] of Warcraft parent Blizzard, the creation of Activision Blizzard would supplant EA …www.fool.comWorld of Warcraft: Buying Gold Bad for More Than VR Economy - Gaming TodayThey click on links that install keylogging software onto their computer without their knowledge, or [...]
March 25th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
[...] chosen. The game has nine character classes that a player can choose from.www.onlinegamesurvival.comWorld of Warcraft: Buying Gold Bad for More Than VR Economy - Gaming TodayThey click on links that install keylogging software onto their computer without their knowledge, or [...]
March 25th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
[...] Is that this site sell cheap WoW Gold?otavo.comWorld of Warcraft: Buying Gold Bad for More Than VR Economy - Gaming TodayBlizzard is issuing a notice to try and educate it??s World of Warcraft customers about how buying [...]