World of Warcraft and the battle against black market gold

I'd tried saving the hard way, and it wasn't working. That glowing skeletal horse seemed permanently out of reach, so I kept dipping in.To get more news about Buy WoW WLK Classic Gold, you can visit lootwow.com official website.

It all seems so ridiculous now. I don't remember how I ended up there, but in 2005 I found myself at a gold shop, breathlessly confirming my intention to buy 1000 World of Warcraft gold for ￡100. I had to take an authentication phone call in the middle of the night while living in my Dad's house, and about an hour later the money turned up in my mailbox in the game. I loved that horse.

And it got easier each time I went back. I ended up spending hundreds. I didn't talk about it in the game - only to friends on chat programs, voice or text, hosted outside of WOW. I knew it was against the rules and that I could be banned, and that I could lose everything I'd played for. I ended up leaving WOW in 2006 but a good friend stuck around, buying gold ever since. He laughs in a slightly embarrassed way when he says he's probably spent "thousands" of pounds this way. "I just don't have the patience to grind, and I have the money." So why not? Who were we hurting?
What I didn't realise - what I didn't want to realise - was that we were fuelling an industry that was stealing accounts, hacking, phishing, and filling game worlds with bots (or people who may as well be bots) to make their gold. I wanted to believe someone just happened to have surplus gold to sell, but that trickle of income doesn't sustain the kind of businesses we're talking about. I just didn't want to know; if pressed on the matter I'd say I didn't have any alternative. But now I do.

We go to great lengths to combat that problem but demand is driven by well-intentioned player desires," World of Warcraft lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas tells me when I ask about gold selling. "There's a demand for this service. And offering a healthy, safe, legitimate outlet for that is just win-win all round."

Cue the WOW Token, which lets you buy gold legitimately in World of Warcraft. You pay Blizzard ￡15/€20/$20 for one of these tokens and sell it to someone else on a region-wide Auction House for gold. They want it because it represents 30 days of paid subscription game time. The Token price is entered automatically depending on supply and demand in your region, but the guide launch price was 30,000 gold.

"There was some trepidation, some concern," observed Hazzikostas. Now, a couple of weeks in, he confirms that there are happy people on both ends of the exchange. "Some people have proper amounts of gold for the first time, and others have bought subscription time for the entire year.

"For the majority in the middle who aren't participating, the game is pretty much unchanged," he continues. "Which was a lot of people's concern. There was no drastic change to the economy overnight - things pretty much continued as they were.
"It's going to take a lot for the [black market] version to seem more attractive," Hazzikostas tells me. That means plummeting prices, and they're already falling across the board. A month ago my friend bought 300,000 gold for World of Warcraft for around $300. When I tell him he can buy same amount for around $160 today he laughs - in a sort of 'oh bollocks!' way - out loud. If you couldn't get significantly more for your money on the black market you wouldn't take the risk, not now.

The gold-sellers are putting a brave face on it. After days of unanswered emails, I eventually get to speak to someone from SSE-Games in China - after I convince him I don't work for Blizzard, that is. Alex (probably not his real name), acknowledges that the Token has had "lots of effect on business" and that SSE will earn less money now. This is a company of around 60 people and WOW accounts for half of its business. It's not even one of the bigger companies in China, where he believes most of the gold-selling business to be located. "There are hundreds or thousands of companies like us," he says.

But what really worries him is Blizzard somehow banning his business - hence his nervousness in speaking to me - and World of Warcraft fading away. "There is a trend that less and less people are playing this game," he tells me. "The business for us gold sellers is less and less. The market is getting worse." WOW subscriber numbers rebounded to over 10 million around the Warlords of Draenor launch for the first time in years - but how long will they stay up there?