Blizzard, Square/Enix Ban Yet More Farmers

Eurogamer has the news that both Blizzard and Square/Enix have banned another batch of players for farming. The number of accounts, and the amount of money removed from the economy, is astonishing. From the article: "According to the World of Warcraft website, some 30,000 accounts were banned last month - and, as a result, more than 30 million gold were removed from the economy across all realms ... Based on the results of this investigation, more than 250 [FFXI] accounts among those found to be involved in large-scale RMT operations have been terminated... Thanks to these measures, more than 250 billion gil has been removed from circulation."

Comments

1000g Average

[ender_]

These must be mostly hackers and a few farmers:

30,000,000gold/30,000accounts= 1,000g/account average.

That sure doesn't seem like a farmers quantity of gold. Especially since they typically sell them in 500g and 1000g lots to people buying epic mounts/items. You might argue that they spread the gold around, but it doesn't seem very smart to be paying for 30,000 accounts when you only net ~$50/1000g. Unless they cycle through gold a lot faster than I can even begin to imagine.

It just doesn't seem like the order of magnitude is right for "farmers" so my guess is the majority of these banned accounts are hacking or botting.

It's too bad because I'd like to know how much gold a gold farmer could farm if a gold farmer could farm gold.

Ender