Heretic! Heretic! Burn him! lol just joking.

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Its also not like buying gold is the end all for getting the best gear because the best gear Bind on Pickup or requires a token which requires you can make that far in the game itself. I think what Blizzard has tried to do to stopp is just annoying to those in game more than it really hurting those selling it.

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The delay isn't to deter people from buying the gold, it's to give Blizzard a better way to track down transactions. Do some research before you post this trash. What you're saying is misleading and wrong.

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I damn near fell outta my chair when i read that...

I don't know if the folks that do write ups for this site have other employment, but seriously Mark, you might be too good for this schtick.

To anyone who has the ability, pay this man well.

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Personally speaking-
My main source of income is the AH. I started with 10g on a lvl 13 toon and by the time she reached lvl 19 I had 450g. All I kept doing was getting all the lowbie greens and sticking them in the AH for low buyouts.

Atm- I’m gambling on the AH. I buy all of a particular item and then put them back up at an increased rate. I know this might be monopolizing the item but I have to make my G so I can repair.

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No harm, no foul. It's your $14 a month play the game however you want. BoP is on most all good drops anyway. The 1 hour delay is a sham and needs to go away. What of those of us who have multiple accounts? Haveing to wait 1 hour for 2 stack of ore is BS, pure and simple.

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Last night I needed 20 more gold to buy some mats. I had 3 Primal Waters sell in the AH but with the delay I just went to bed instead of finishing off what I worked all day to level my enchanting for. Kinda sucks.

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If you can't stop it, make it really really annoying to do it...that'll impede 'em
the idea behind the delay is that Blizzard is supposed to check the transaction to make sure it's legit (how they're determining that is beyond me and I'm sure a little bit out of their reach too).

Want to stop gold selling? You don't need to delay Auction House transactions or anything like that, just kill the demand. Make it easy enough for anyone who wants to to grind 5000 gold in a weekend afternoon.

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I swear I have read some really retarded conspiracy theories on the official forums. The one that stuck out was that Blizzard put the hour delay in the the AH to reduce inflation or earn interest....

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I think Bliz needs to allow for a certain amount of gold selling as an alternative to people's accounts getting stolen. Here's what I mean:

As an example, I think most people consider the 5k needed for the epic flier to be the main reason people buy gold. Suppose they changed it to be a rep grind instead. Now the people who were to lazy to grind gold have a choice: either grind the rep themselves, don't get the epic training, or get someone else to grind their character for them. I think people would likely risk their accounts if what would be a several month grind could be reduced to a few weeks. But stealing an account creates much greater problems for Bliz.

If a player gets ripped off for buying gold, Bliz can shrug and say "you shouldn't have done that" with no further action, and ban the account of the goldseller. If someone's account gets compromised, the player will probably be much more upset (and likely to quit), Bliz is more likely to try to restore that players account (a lot of work), and they have no action against the person (can't ban an account like with a gold seller). In short, buying gold is a much better problem for Bliz than sharing accounts is.

That's why you'll see changes to bother/harass/annoy both goldsellers and buyers, but wont see radical changes as described above.

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@3: It's both. One of the reasons why the goldsellers were using the AH was because it could transfer the money instantaneously.


Anyway, I just don't see what the problem is. It's only an hour, and it helps our gold retain its value. Do you want to have to pay 100g for a single Mote? Then you'll just have to wait an hour on your auctions. If you really need the money NOW, go do some daily quests, or borrow it from a guildie.

It's really not a problem, and it does far more good than harm.

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It's too double edge, the main point I get from many people is that the costs of epic mounts and such are too high, which is why some people buy the gold, but to lower the price, many people would be outraged that the price was lowered after their epic grind to get it, as well as others who would say that the challenge in earning your epic flyer would be eliminated, or ezmode. Do I think 5k for epic flyer is a bit much? Yes. Am I willing to pay someone else to get me the gold? No. Reason is, getting gold in this game takes effort, and effort is something lost in many games today, no one wants to make the effort to earn their rewards, they want them as fast as they can for as little effort as they can. I have no problem grinding my epic flyer, it might take forever, and I'll curse a lot, but I won't spend more real money to obtain something that is only in the game. I've spent far too much money on other things that I don't even want anymore.

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If you want to get rid of gold farmers, do what some other MMO's do: Blizzard should sell gold themselves. Charge enough to keep the economy from being flooded, but keep it quick and reliable, and you will kill the farming industry overnight. People who have more money than time will be able to get decent stuff, people who have the time to get the über BOP stuff will still have better gear.

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Personally..I think the only reason people really buy gold anymore is for the mounts. I can easily do 1 or 2 dailies to get the money I need for a basic item. Or do a few circuits of mining to toss bars up on the AH for enough profit to buy an item I may need.

I was discussing how much easier it would be for blizzard to implement an upgrade system for the mounts as opposed to spending a large lump sum, of almost unreasonable proportions, of gold.

Imagine just spending the 800 gold for your basic Flyer + Training. 800 is easily attainable at 70. I usually have twice that depending on class/professions by the time I get there. After purchasing the Flyer+Training, receiving either a series of quests which would unlock upgrades for the mount you've already purchased.

Like in Shimmering Flats you collect Hollow Vulture Bones to lighten the goblins race car.. implement a quest to kill Chimaeras in SMV, say a good number.. more than the Nagrand Mastery quests. Which would unlock a purchasable upgrade "Load Lightening - Increased Flying Mount Speed by 40%" and so on.. until you got to 280%. At this point, people would could earn the upgrade instead of dropping the large sum of cash.

Who knows, maybe it would settle some servers economy issues, where everyone is overpricing everything to be able to get their epic birds.

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Regardless if its for tracking purposes or not, its still annoying as hell. I would actually prefer it if they didn't send the "Sale pending notice".

His point about getting rid of gold sellers is still valid. In order to get rid of them, we would need to make some serious changes to the game or Blizzard would need to sell it themselves.

There are three changes that Blizzard could do in the next patch that would seriously put a dent in gold farming.
1) Make all blues and purples (weapons, armor, profession patterns, etc) BoP.
2) Increase the money and most item drop rates on outdoor world mobs to about twice what it currently is.
3) Increase the money earned from quests by 50%

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My paychecks don't clear for a day after they get into my checking account. But instead of crying about it, i just keep enough in there so i'm not waiting for it if i need to buy anything right away.

Just do the same thing in game- don't spend all your money, and this new rule doesn't affect you at all.

Even if this did affect me, it would be worth any more hassle it causes for gold sellers.

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As @3 said, the delay isn't about the actual transfer of cash, it's simply to give Blizzard room to trace and check transactions to help catch the "dodgy" ones easier. (Why exactly they didn't have checks in place without needing to expand the transaction period is another question, but I digress.)

To be honest, when you put an item up for auction, you accept that it'll take a possible 8, 12 or 24 (soon to be 12, 24 and 48) hours to sell, or not sell at all. How exactly is waiting an hour a problem? If you want to make cash instantly then use the trade channel, that is, after all, what it is there for!

I don't really see where the issue is except as something else to whine about. And this is yet another ill-researched post.

WoWInsider is suddenly turning into the Official WoW Forums, Mark 2.

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@3

He's right you know? While I won't call you work trash (you've written some articles I like) I will say that it's wrong. You should consider retracting this post or rewriting it. If you want to write us something interesting, try interviewing someone at Blizz to ask how they are figuring out what's legit and what's not. That's what I'm interested in.

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GREAT article!

Blizzard, the one-hour lag is not just annoying the gold sellers, it's annoying legit subscribers, too. Quit punishing your players, dammit.

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@8
"If you can't stop it, make it really really annoying to do it...that'll impede 'em"

You seem to mean this argument as sarcasm, but it's the truth. This follows the same principles as security. Make the work greater than the reward.

The only way to completely end gold selling in WoW is to shut WoW down, no game == no gold. As long as gold is valued, people will find ways around. But as with security, the trick is to make the hassle of working around a system greater than the value of the items.

If I put a penny in a school locker, people probably aren't even going to try breaking in. If I put a million dollars in one, even I might try to break in. What if I put the million inside a locker and put that inside another locker and put that inside another locker, and so on until you had to get through 10 lockers. It's really not any harder to break through 10 than just one, but it's more of a hassle, and fewer people would try to do it. More hassle means more secure.

Or to put it another way, if it bothers you because you're sending virtual items and money, how much more will it bother someone whose REAL money is involved.

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