Turns out that those dodgy services online are actually dodgy!
MMORPG games like World of Warcraft are usually based around activities and collecting of items - one of these is almost guaranteed to be money (though is usually in-game).
In a recent press release however, Blizzard point out that getting money from very shifty sites online is not only bad for other players who work to make their own, but especially so in how they source that money.
Blizzard give a lot of attention to WoW, updating their policies and constantly patching/updating the game to maintain it's appeal, so making sure it's as fun as possible is definitely important to them.
Through their extensive monitoring of these unfriendly companies, they've discovered that the majority of the dirty money doesn't come from employees gold-farming, but rather from hacked accounts.
They explain it pretty plainly on their site:
Through our normal support processes and the assistance of players, we also find that many accounts that have been shared with power-leveling services are then hacked into months later, and all of the items on the account are stripped and sold off. Basically, players have paid money to these companies, sometimes large amounts, and they're then targeted by these same companies down the road.
The amusing part about this article is that we might even get a spambot pop up and post a comment about this very topic, or a Google ad telling us to buy WoW Gold!
Have you ever bought money from these services? Has it gone well? Post below either way - it's always interesting to see.
Head to Blizzard's site for more on the stolen monies.
Issue: 106 | November, 2009