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Blizzard Wields The Banhammer Again
Eurogamer reports that Blizzard is once again clearing house, and this time they mean business. From the article: "Blizzard has banned more than 5400 World of Warcraft players from the game for good as part of plans to clamp down on gold farming and cheating in general. A further 10,700 accounts have been suspended for 'participating in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items.'"
The problem with farming gold and items is that often they're not camping one specific mob, but a small area.
Bind-on-Pickup items, like those won from bosses in dungeons, are worthless to a farmer; it can't be used by (or even go into the inventory of) anyone except the person who wins the loot roll for it. All you can do is sell it to a vendor for about 5g.
Bind-on-Equip epixxxx, which are the ones characters with no vowels in their names try to pawn off for about 800g, are almost entirely random world drops, which have a tiny chance to drop from anything in certain level range. This way, the farmer camping an area makes life miserable for anyone trying to complete a quest there, but there's not overwhelming 24-hour competition for one specific mob.
You banned 5400 accounts! You're really showing those gold farmers who's boss! Boy, at this rate I bet those companies selling gold will be out of business in NO TIME! /runsOverToIgeDotCom
Hrmm... 500 gold on my server was $30 bucks last week... Let's see what's up after blizzard's heroic bans! Arthas Server, Horde... 500 gold. $31 bucks. =|
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