Tales from a non-Chinese Gold Seller
As many of you know, I endured the banhammer on my main WoW account. I'm as bitter as anyone would be, but not because of all the time I lost. I can get mounts, titles, pets, gear and all of my 80s back within time. I think what I'm the most bitter about is how Blizzard went about this and how I have to basically bend over and take it in the rear constantly from this company.
I know gold selling is a bannable offense. It's stated in the ToS, it's stated (sometimes) when you log in. I knew it would happen eventually- but not like this.
After over 10 emails exchanged with the account admins, I was replied consistently with the same copy/paste format each time until I guess I annoyed them enough and it was taken up by a supervisor. I am still awaiting a reply.
After reading hundreds of forum posts, threads, and the like- people are getting banned for the dumbest stuff when it comes to gold. A guild breaking up and the GM splitting the guild bank between the 3 officers? Perma ban. Someone buying a crimson deathcharger from someone face to face instead of the auction house? Perma ban. Sending 140k to a brand new alt on the same account? Perma ban.
Most of these aren't even getting unbanned, let alone replied to. These people were doing normal things in the game yet were put on the same page of wrecking the economy, goldselling, etc. as me? It makes no sense. I in no way defend what I do/did. I sold gold. I made loads of cash. Call me a bad person, but it was good money. These people on the other hand? Did nothing wrong. From what I read, Blizz has a way of tracking large amounts of gold being moved. I get it- it makes sense. But do they not realize 100k is not a lot of gold anymore? You can make that in one day with proper farming, watching prices, and especially when a new expansion is released OR during Darkmoon week. If they're going to track gold and ban people for it- at least up the amount to track.
What really grinds my gears out of all of this is how quick they were to reply about the incident. Over the past 2 years I have contacted NUMEROUS GMs for harassment and threats made in and outside of the game WITH PROOF. I got blown off completely, and sent the same copy/pasted email format as to what action was taken. On what level is harassment and threatening a player put below selling currency? I don't understand.
REGARDLESS
I will not stop selling gold. It's almost like a bad drug addiction. The income was nice and I got to do things I would not have been able to had it not been for selling gold.
Game Stop is an okay job but pays for absolute shit. There's no way in hell I can make a living from that job but with it + gold I was making a pretty decent income.
I get sick a lot. I have a very weak immune system that treats a common cold as the flu. If I ever catch the actual flu, or even pneumonia- I will die, no questions asked. During December I had to call in multiple times because I was sick nonstop. Of course in December is Christmas- so every white trash child and his mother was trading in their nasty, dusty, smoke plagued items for minimal amounts of cash. Even with using hand sanitizer in between transactions, washing my hands to the point of where they were red and raw, you just can't get away from it. Long story short- I was out of work for a very very long time trying to recover.
With that said, I remembered I had sold gold here and there over the course of 2 years. I'd say maybe done it 6 or 7 times. I figured since I was going to be at home a lot, and there's no going back to work for a while as I am basically a biohazard- I'd start making some money on the side until I fully recovered.
It started off as just farming herbs occasionally on my mage, 1-2 maybe 3 hours at a time. I wasn't raiding and had loads of free time. This was a bit after Cataclysm was released so they were still decently priced. I did this for a few days and made well over 300k. I pawned off all of it to guildmates and ...
6 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 21.8 ms ] threadThere are a lot of skills you can use in other online businesses that you can take from this:
1) watching auctions. Find something else to buy/sell besides WoW gold. There are tons of other online opportunities out there outside of the WoW universe that can make just as much money, you just need to find it. If you have some Chinese contacts, you might be able to get in touch with some wholesalers/dropshippers (if you want to go that route).
2) answering emails/customer support. Another good skill to have.
You could also reword your resume to say that you ran an online business and you have experience with customer support and sales. I think many business owners would be impressed that you were able to make a living on it, even if it is WoW gold.
We did well for ourselves -- I won't speak to my numbers (except to say that my buddy did better), but I know he cleared well over $200k just on EverQuest hacking.
When WOW was in closed beta, we paid a few hundred for beta invites. We would get banned all the time, and have to spend another few hundred for a beta invite. When WOW was released, in the few short months before Blizzard exhausted all the hacks we'd found, we were buying, on average, a new copy of the game per day, for each of us.
The challenge was awesome. Some of the hacks were brilliant, some, pedestrian. Generally, the more mundane hacks were the easiest to exploit -- for example, by intercepting the 'sendMail()' function, we were able to substitute the value of gold we actually sent with an arbitrary one -- as Blizz wasn't checking signed vs unsigned ints on their data types, sending -1 copper to a cohort meant they would receive 65,535 copper on their end. When the game was new, this was ridiculous, as there probably wasn't 1,000 gold in the entire economy at that point that was legitimately gotten.
This was difficult, it was challenging, and yeah, every now and again we'd get a little paranoid at a noise outside, imagining it was a SWAT team ready to breach our house for having violated Blizzard's terms of service. The highs were high, and the lows weren't that bad, since we were making tons of dough.
I cannot imagine the amount of time and energy it takes to farm $2000 worth of gold without these hacks, but I can only guess that it is insane.