Fortunately for me, the WoW forums has provided some entertainment.

First, amusing and innovative, a gold farming outfit took to the skies to advertise their gold site across several servers: “Gold Spam: Going to new heights. Literally” and “Emerald Dream server just got hacked it seems“. Mods and the original posters pulled the screenshots before I could capture (damn them!), but basically, gnomes fell from the skies to their deaths to form the words and web addy for a gold farming site.

From the first post:

Server: Skywall
Time: 1 am server
Gold Spam of the Month…

Level 1 gnome warriors are falling from the sky in Ironforge to their deaths, and instantly releasing leaving their bodies on the ground in Ironforge.

“Nothing new” you say? Well, so far the bodies have spelled out < < The Name Of A Site That Will Not Be Mentioned >> and keep falling to form more letters as I type this.

I’m currently at the noob starting zone for the gnomes, in Dun Morogh, and have been watching lvl 1 gnome warriors being created, “flying” 20 feet into the air, then walking towards ironforge. STILL IN THE AIR.

Oh the gnomity!

Emailer Indy, who never goes on an adventure without a hat, found this interesting – bound for deletion – thread: “From the Front Lines (A botter’s story.)” Confessed botter Andeasdr wrote:

Short introduction about myself.

1.) I’m a bot developer.
2.) I’m an American.
3.) I work for companies that cheat at WoW for a living.

Purpose of this post? Several reasons.

1.) High five to Blizzard. I botted and cheated at this game for well over a year without a single ban. June ban wave knocked out 8 of my personal accounts (including my epiced out 70 main), and over 200 company accounts. Never thought I’d see the day that Blizzard would completely devastate the botting community, not only dealing a nearly lethal blow to the most popular, but as well as decimating the less popular alternative program.

2.) Let players know that Blizzard -is- dealing with bots. They may not deal with bots in the way you expect. Reporting bots may at times seem fruitless, but trust me, they are doing their jobs. I’ve seen complaints on these forums many times, and can think to myself “If only people knew”. Blizzard can not delve into what they’re doing, and you don’t see much proof of their accomplishments, but they’re there.

3.) Let players know that Blizzard is keeping up with this. I stopped cheating on personal accounts after the last ban wave, so the second ban wave they did a couple days ago didn’t hurt me personally (unless you count the wallet). Yes, they’ve just done two ban waves in the span of 3 weeks. While everyone was trying to recuperate losses, they go and knock the crap out of them once more.

4.) Let players know that the asshat spammers have nothing to do with me. They trip whisper detection and auto-replys so often, it pisses me off too!

5.) Let you know that not all of us want to ruin the game to fill our wallets. I am in this profession because I love Blizzard games, and I’m good at what I do (and who can argue with playing games for a living…). Given an oppurtunity to work for Blizzard instead, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately they don’t pay relocation costs and have no HQ close to where I live, nor do I think I’m qualified…being only 21 and having little schooling.

Basically, Blizzard is doing a killer job. Love this game, love the company, and a huge fan.

Blizzard’s Public Relations isn’t so hot because they have to keep many things secret, so if this post can help improve yalls image, I’m willing to endure the flames.

Oh, and I absolutely love the plausible deniability you gave botters a few days ago with the server news. “Players may experience disconnections or be unable to connect.”.

Was a good laugh when we realized that everyone getting DCed and Banned could use that as a cover story.

Thanks Blizzard for everything you do, you’re one of the few companies I actually believe does what they do for the customers. No matter how much some of the outspoken ones whine and complain.

The forum websleuths do their best to debunk his claims, but my opinion, he remained un-debunked.

Someone mentioned the EQ hacks that used to go on which reminded me of that one EQ proggy, had to run on Linux, hell if I can remember the name tho. What it did was, you would zone in and could see what bosses were up and what loot they had. Anything Linux and dual boot and I’m defeated, so lucky for my guild, we had a guy.

So this guy would zone into … say Sebilis … and then tell us, “Nah, you don’t wanna do Sebilis. Maybe Howling Stones has something more to your liking.” and off he’d go. He was richer than God and never got caught and I learned an important lesson: In games, just like in real life, it’s good to know A Guy.

True story. Except for the hugging.

(Thanks emailer Byron!)

The image links in that thread are probably dead thanks to the 10 million people clicking wildly to see Neth and Drokthul’s shame. Here you go: Drokthul and Nethaera.

This WoW poster and I agree on this: the WoW forums are the ideal place to seek legal advice.

Puddle, level 12 trolling alt of the Shattered Halls realm, wrote in “Acct hacked and im gonna sue”:

Does anyone have any advice for me a guy hacked my wow acct and it was my bank toon, we lost 100s of hours of play time.

1} Has anyone ever sued a person for hacking there acct

2} should I file the police report first or not

3}I know in the police report there needs to be a fraud charge so they cantt bankrupt out any other helpfull hints

4}we are going after this guy in court if you have any helpfull ideas please post

*points to the “Please Don’t Feed the Lawyers” sign.*

(Six sentences and not a one is correct. Sad.)

The World of Warcraft guild Overrated has been permanently banned by Blizzard Entertainment after it was caught cheating in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Guild members used an exploit that essentially knocked down walls, according to postings on World of Warcraft-related forums.

i.e. used an exploit that took advantage of client-side movement.

Well fucking duh. EVERYBODY, including my teenaged gaming neighbor Skippy, knows that WoW has too much in the client.

This is also a good reminder of a life lesson most of us learned in grade school: Two people cannot keep a secret.

And its corollary: There’s no way in Hell an entire guild can keep a secret.

Ordinn, Blizzard economist wrote:

In keeping with Blizzard’s aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms. The banned accounts were taking part in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items, which severely impacts the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to hacks@blizzard.com by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.

Thank you for your continued support, and good luck with your adventures in Azeroth!

I’d like to imagine that this was one huge sting, set up over the past few weeks, involving undercover GM agents and late night interrogations of suspected farmers. Probably it was far less glamorous: players ratting out some guys who were stealing spawns in Eastern Plaguelands.

One of our guild priests is relieved he bought his epic mount last week instead of waiting — supply and demand being what they are. And when I say “bought”, you know I meant he used some real life scratch to IGE the damn thing because who has the energy to farm 1000 gold for their second, third or fourth level 60? Nobody I know.

(Furl archive of forum announcement)