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.

Here’s what I say: why rationalize? It’s none of our business, frankly.

An interesting history lesson about this and prior fan site sales, including Thottbot and Allaka-adver-popups, by Ahmed Farooq, former acquisitions dude at IGE: “Hot off the Presses: Wowhead sold for over $1 million”.

Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record with these stories? The truth is, I can’t figure out WHAT we’ve got and until then, I have to use lots of slashed up phrases for all the “either-or’s” like estimated/rumored/speculated and current/former/not-yet-denied.

I could be misreading this but that sounds like a call to REVOLUTION! Hang the rich.

Here’s a screenshot from a recent, wretched Fornost PUGgie to whack the hilt mobs. As gaming vets, it’s always our responsibility to get the new-to-gaming noobs up to speed on how all this works. I realize that, I accept that, but after giving my short-speech about the do’s and don’ts of crowd control to the same 5 people again and again, I get a little irritated.

They never did get it, but fortunately for me, we one-shot the last hilt mob — a BAMF nemesis mob — and thank you, Jesus, I never have to go to that pisspool again.

If you’re thirsty for more arrogance and Napoleon-esque posturing, Psycho E-Bitch’s Fraxx was granted an IM audience with me last week to chat about gaming, books and cyber music: A Visit with AFKGamer’s Blogging Bad Boy.

Some highlights: the “Mithaniel Marr story”, the rest of you suck, the liberal manifestos I’m reading, and, gaming’s last dirty little secret.

Posting ID #308349637 wrote:

Hello I need 5000 world of gold for my epic flying mount. In return you can mount me.

You have to have an account on the laughing skull server and I want the 5000 gold BEFORE we do anything, we can make the trade at your place since I can’t host. EDIT: Because I am having a lot of dumb guys message me who clearly don’t have the gold make SURE to send: a picture of yourself and a screenshot of your character with the 5000g, I will be checking armory profiles, thanks.

I play a level 70 night elf druid and would prefer someone who was into roleplaying (I have a costume!) but honestly anyone will do, as long as you have the gold. I would also be ok with a woman too, as long as you have the gold! Also not adverse to the idea of groups\anal.

Please send a pic and be real and drug\disease free with 5000 gold on the laughing skull server.

(the next day)

Posting ID #308349637 has her epic flying mount and a smile on her face.

So talk all the trash you want, I got MY Epic flying mount AND I got laid which is more than most of you failures can ever hope for.

She’s the one turning tricks for pixels and the rest of us are failures? Interesting.

Ya, me too.

First, if my company tried to float this idea, I’d say, “I’m not doing that.” Then, when they’d insist (as they ALWAYS do), I’d either approach it as A. Fine, I’m never sending email, fuck that, I’ll use voicemail, or B. I’m not changing my habits at all and if I end up short on email currency for the week, then bummer. Guy walks down to my office and asks why I didn’t email that we were critical on some production-whatever, “Man, I was tapped out for the week. Great game, isn’t it?”

UNLESS … unless … I could convert my email currency into real virtual currency, like Warcraft gold or EverQuest platinum, then I’m on board. And by the time that little experiment was over, I’d be the GOD of email currency.

And no, I don’t want to buy little pencils from the office store with my email currency — I want something GOOD.

My real life self-centeredness aside, I do like thinking that’s outside the box, whether it be work strats or game strats, and while much of what we learn in gaming translates well to real and work life, there’s plenty we learn that we shouldn’t bring into real life … like gaming the system, exploiting the mechanics, duping currency, perching the office supply room, or, forming uber guilds to farm the currency. These are the things that a gamer would excel at and a non-gamer would be noob fodder under our boots.

Every multiplayer game requires policing, not an immaterial cost either, I imagine — not just for out-and-out cheating, but also: is the game encouraging the behaviors we want it to encourage? I’m sure my Corporate Overlords don’t want me to drain Accounting’s currency allowance each week just cuz I can, but if the reward involves a better LCD monitor on my desk, then look out Accounting.

Corporate Overlords shouldn’t buy an email game and think that’s the end of the cost, be prepared to rake in savings! Policing is an ongoing, neverending, costly process because the strong will always exploit the weak and players will always choose the shortest, easiest route to the reward.

Interesting real world idea, anyways, even though I could game that system hardc0re.

An incomplete timeline and history lesson (because although the blog never lies, back then, the blog didn’t exist):

October 1999 – EverQuest’s handlers, 989 Studios, Verant Interactive and, what would become SOE, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. forbids players from selling EQ’s virtual property to other players. The collective EQ population thinks, “wtf, people are doing that? How can I do that?” Also in that article: at the time of its writing, there were over 1500 eBay auctions for EQ items and characters (possibly true) and EQ was released February 1999 (not true — it was March 1999).

April 2000 – Sony decides that “forbid” is a sissy word and BANS the sale of EQ items and characters from one player to another. The noob population thinks, “wtf, people are doing that? How can I do that?” EBay auctions are still going strong, although “Smedley (of Verant, later of Sony) said that he plans to ask eBay to pull the game items off its site. eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said eBay would likely agree to do so.”

January 2001 – EBay bans the sale of virtual items and characters on their auction site. (It’s even in fucking Wikipedia, fercrissakes.) The EQ EBay crowd moves to playerauctions.com and/or rewords their Ebay auctions to duck around the new rules (i.e. Seller is NOT offering virtual items or characters, seller is auctioning his/her time to acquire the items or to build the character).

The more casual eBayers started working with the private, professional virtual property companies (IGE, et al) — players would receive less money for their items and characters, but it was considered safer and faster than working out a private sale or sweating out an eBay or playerauctions sale. That changeover went down sometime in 2003, if memory serves. Certainly by the time Star Wars Galaxies was released (June 2003), IGE and its brethren were the preferred methods for casual sellers and buyers.

Which brings us to January 2007’s press event. Yawn.

Today’s Lessons:

#1. Apparently, the internet population completely turns over every few years and what was old is new again.

#2. Please people, if you want to dabble in virtual trade, seek the counsel of a guildmate or e-friend who has some experience. They can guide your noob ass through the maze that is the Virtual Goods Black Market.

#3. You can get “it” on eBay, unless “it” is virtual property. Still.

#4. When eBay announces they’re banning auctions of Vanguard items and characters, let’s all agree not to FREAK OUT. Thank you.

The ingame gold sellers/power level services have moved to fancy textual messages to hustle their shit.

Well, it would have been fancy if he could have tested his macro first.

Here’s one of my guildmates. His fun had come to an end.

Bastard still hasn’t told us the story behind that mistell.

I told you a few weeks ago that my guild had split the membership into two ranks: one for the high-attendance raiders, the other for the lower-attendance raiders. (Link) One of the officers proposed adding a third rank.

Bah! If only we had the nerve to follow through on that. I don’t know about other guilds, but mine is losing its edge with the expansion just around the corner. There’s two camps of raiders. One is “the expansion will make our gear worthless, why bother farming it anymore!” and the other is the “umm, you will need SOME gear in the expansion to start off, you twits!”

I’m on the fence. I’ve got my purplez, but I’ll help others with their purplez just cuz what the hell else is there to do besides hide in the beta?

And finally, as you can see below, I’m still winning friends and influencing people in the PVP battlegrounds.

I am REALLY surprised I didn’t get reported for that. Not that I cared.

W O R T H

I T.

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)

Back to Vanguard, Microsoft is getting out while the getting’s good. Based on the HORRIFIC beta buzz swirling around Vanguard, it’s not a moment too soon. That’s me being blunt.

Here’s me being nice: Microsoft and Sigil had irreconciliable artistic differences. Now, Sony and Sigil can have artistic differences.

Did you want to get into the closed beta and try out Vanguard for yourself? Let me rephrase that. Did you want to get into the queue for Vanguard’s beta but for some reason you haven’t signed up on the Vanguard forums already?

Here ya go: the latest issue, June 2006, of Computer Games Magazine includes a code that will give you exclusive access to the Vanguard beta (queue). Plus, there’s pictures.

Heh, a couple of guys in my Warcraft guild went out Monday to pick up a copy, excited to give Vanguard a try. They weren’t too pleased about the queue thing since that’s not very evident from the cover. They tried to convince a few more guildies to get in the queue so we can have a merry little band running around in Vanguard.

This was me being nice: I don’t have $5 to spare this month on a computer mag.