Gold sellers ruin the realms in World of Warcraft Classic – but it is a huge business. And the community ensures that it keeps growing.
Gold sellers and bots are a problem in World of Warcraft. Once often called “China farmers”, gold farmers now come from all over the world and are a lucrative gain – some even build their entire existence around it. No wonder, since a single PC can run several WoW accounts simultaneously and thus earn about $50 an hour.
Especially in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, gold prices have developed oddly on some servers. Normal gameplay is no longer possible in many places, as an extremely high gold price even for the simplest materials ruins the fun of the game. In addition, “GDKP” raids have established themselves. Anyone who wants loot from a raid must bid on it with gold. The gold collected is then shared among all participants.
The YouTuber MetaGoblin has long dealt with the issue and published several videos. In them, he explains why botting in WoW is so easy, why the WoW token doesn’t help, and also why the community is partially to blame for it only getting worse.
Why is so much gold being bought? The main reason for this, according to MetaGoblin, actually lies with the community. Because it has simply evolved over the past 20 years. The players who were once students now have jobs and often families.
Those who want to farm enough gold in the game to cover the weekly raid expenses would have to invest many hours of playtime – or you simply work for an hour in real life and buy the gold you want with that.
The problem is that “gold farming” is not a fun pastime for most people. Killing the same mobs for hours, mining ores, or picking herbs is only enjoyable for a few.
What most enjoy are the raids and dungeons. And for those, you need gold. Thus, the step to buying gold, whether “legally” via the WoW token or “illegally” through gold sellers, is quite obvious.
Why gold sellers are happy about the WoW token
Blizzard introduced the WoW token in Wrath of the Lich King Classic a while ago. The justification was that the token is a “proven method to limit gold sales.” In a way, that may be true, because a few potential customers certainly resort to the “legal” variant to avoid risking their account – but the vast majority do not.
That the WoW token has not helped is something MetaGoblin attributes solely to the gold prices. Anyone looking to buy gold through illegal means paid only half as much shortly after the token’s introduction as they did for the legal offer.
At the same time, the WoW token has helped bots significantly. Because they have heaps of gold sitting on their accounts and can use it to buy their subscriptions, which have already paid for themselves within a few hours.
MetaGoblin believes that Blizzard only introduced the WoW token so that Blizzard can at least skim off some of the money and earn a bit from gold selling itself. After all, Blizzard earns from the original purchase of a WoW token in the shop.
How can Blizzard get a handle on this? MetaGoblin sees few chances of how that can succeed. For that, Blizzard would need to hire many more game masters who would essentially investigate the realms for suspicious activities in real-time. The bot users and gold sellers MetaGoblin has spoken to seem to agree: The automatic detection system in WoW is outdated and bots usually only get caught when they are repeatedly reported by other players.
This, in turn, happens almost only in the open world. Bots primarily in dungeons are almost never banned – or only during the next “ban wave”, which occurs only every few weeks. By then, a bot account has already made enough profit.
According to MetaGoblin, bots say: “Bans are annoying, but that’s all. After 15 minutes, everything is back to normal.”
How would you proceed to put a stop to the bots? Is there still a chance?
The most interesting thing in WoW Classic right now are the hardcore deaths
– like this perfect “hole-in-one”.
