what about the listing costs, dont they reimburse that ? and the cut the AH takes too...

or have i missed something ?

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Hmmm, I'd think maybe they could put caps on how much you can list cheap things for....but people would cry foul....

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This is nothing new.

Selling low-value items for high prices in the AH has long been a way to transfer gold across boundaries. It's perfect for gold transfers between players, or for transfers between horde and alliance using the Goblin AH.

As for the wrongness of gold selling, consider this: someone can use a L70 main to grind out 1000G in a week or less, and then transfer that to a lower-level alts to create a rich twink, or just supply that leveling character with all the gold they need. I don't see that as all that different from getting gold from a gold seller, or getting a loan or a gift from a buddy online.

Being broke in game really sucks, especially when it comes time to buy a mount, or to level up a skill. Gold can take the place of some grinding, and there's way too much grinding in the game already. I think Blizzard is better off trying to manage gold-selling rather than eliminate it entirely.

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Time to go buy me some tough jerky.

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Well, I routinely put fishing poles up for sale in Booty Bay for 100g each. It's a convenient way to move money from my Alliance main to my Horde alt. Not everybody doing this is a gold farmer.

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On our server, it's usually Lucky Rabbits Feet that sells for big bucks, but they've started using common items such as Silk Cloth in the past few days (which in turn is poisoning Auctioneer scans).

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This is also a fairly common practice on PvE servers when you want to transfer money between your Horde and Ally toons. With so few items on the faction neutral AH, it's quite common to see an auction asking 500g for some random grey item.

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You know, it seems a lot of the people who cry foul over gold buying are younger players who don't have full-time, well-paying jobs and can't sit in front of the computer all day and night like a lot of the teenage/college-age players.

Have I bought gold? No.
Would I buy gold if I really needed it? Certainly. I'm not buying the gold, per se, I'm buying the time for someone else to go "collect" it for me.

Obviously others have issues with this; that's entirely their prerogative.

Blizzard *should* follow Sony's route and provide some way for players to purchase currency... of course, the amount of QQing from kids who don't have the money to do so would be of artifact-quality.

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Excuse me, I muddled my first sentence. It *should* read:

You know, it seems a lot of the people who cry foul over gold buying are younger teenage/college-age players who don't have full-time, well-paying jobs and can sit in front of the computer all day and night and grind unlike the "adults" who play.

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Regarding the "wrong-ness" of gold buying / selling, most folks are focused on whether this breaks the game. I don't think this is Blizzard's main concern when policing gold selling. I think the primary reason is to avoid the sticky subject of virtual taxation. If Blizzard were to make no attempts to prevent real money transactions for their virtual items, Blizzard could be said to encourage or allow real money transactions. If that is the case, then it is a legitimate business. If it is a legit business, governments are going to want to get their hans on a cut through taxes. And if you can tax the purchase of virtual gold, it isn't much of a stretch to tax in game purchases made with that virtual gold.

And if you don't think this sort of thing is already happening, think again. Congress was to release a report in August of this detailing their findings on taxation of virtual goods

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/06/26/u_s_to_tax_virtual_worlds_/1

Scary stuff. I'm sure Blizzard doesn't want to have their name attached to a new type of tax, and this is a good way to make sure that doesn't happen.

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And you're just figuring this out. Are you behind the times.

It's also a way to move money from your Horde to Alliance toons and vice-versa. Just use the AH in Gaz and you're bypassing the no-fraternizing rules.

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Price cap on white/gray quality items? I'd like to see people farm out 50 greens or blues to transfer the gold over.

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This gives me an idea to do a little gold farmer fishing. Maybe put up some cheap junk like this and see if I get an accidental hit.

I have run across items at the neutral AH that were obviously being swapped from one faction to the other, like a 30g Skeletal Shoulders for 10s. I also bought about 50g worth of savory delites for 1c per stack of 5...heheh. When whomever it was realized that their trade had been seen by someone else who was quickly taking advantage of it, they hastened their buyouts.

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They cost 25c so they cost way less than that to list, and wouldn't need to be compensated. As for the AH cut, you notice the one for 53g? They guys is obviously buying 1000g, and the 53g must be the extra for the AH cut.

Personally, I'm going to start listing these items too and hopefully get lucky that the seller clicks on the wrong name. Imagine if everyone did it :)

He'd have to go through pages and pages to find the right customer. hehehe.

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I'm sure gold farmers find alot of random BoEs. They can keep some of the random blue and green items and mail these over to the player and ask them to place each of these on the AH at the requested buy outs, really, there is nothing blizzard can do about that unless they limit the buy outs on AH items...

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so, scan the ah for a high priced hunk of bread, see who the seller is (say Bob) quickly run up an alt called Bðb and sell a whole bunch of bread for the same price....you may get lucky and confuse the seller, or unlucky and banned for buying gold.

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@4 Are you silly? Gold Sellers make profit off selling gold. I would rather see Gold Selling eliminated rather then managed. If bliz were to sell currency that would be amajor turn off like a bunch of those korean games. Bottom line whatever adjustments u make it just shows Gold sellers will find a way to sell their farmed gold. :_:

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@10 I hardly have time to play WoW...as a matter of fact i basically quit(i might play again someday but RL is top priority right now) Anyway PAying for virtual currency anyway you look at it is redundant... You could feed starving children instead of buying make believe currency. If you wanna pay someone for their time then dont play your wasting your time. WHenever you play you make a schedule of what you need to do. Whoever cries foul about buying gold are not young or old it's the people with common sense that says why would i pay someone to play a game for me.. i might as well not play.

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Have I bought gold? yeah.. but not from a chinese farmer, it was from a friend of mine who is 28, has 3 70's, and no job. His love for WoW has really messed up his life and he's trying to get back on track.

I am sure I speak for a lot of us when I tell you my job is very demanding, stressful, and requires good time management and responsibilty. I bought gold from him so he'd have a little extra cash, but mostly to feed my characters so I could come home and enjoy my life in WoW where I am now rich and can buy whatever I want. It's a nice contrast to the real world were most of my income goes to bills and taxes. Escaping into a familiar fantasy world as a rich adventurer is bliss.

I can understand their reasons for not following the footsteps of Sony as to selling in game gold. Imagine how much it would suck if the goverment got their hands on MMO's. Do you want to pay personal property tax on your Tier 3 set? It may sound a little far fetched, but just wait and see...

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