World of Warcraft: Gold Buying Risks

The World of Warcraft MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is one of a kind. There is no other game like it on the market. It's sales have made history, exceeding any other online game of it's kind, and for good reason. I was once a World of Warcraft player of two and a half years. World of Warcraft is extremely addicting and to be honest, it ruins lives.

World of Warcraft can also be very, very expensive. The in-game currency is gold, silver, and copper. One gold piece is 100 silver pieces; and one silver piece is 100 copper pieces. There is actually a black market of sorts that is based around selling massive amounts of this gold currency used in the World of Warcraft to players all around the globe. In the game, the players refer to these people as "gold farmers".

The gold farmers of World of Warcraft are usually people employed in foreign countries, those outside of the United States. They work in literal sweatshops filled with computers with World of Warcraft installed on them, and rotate in 24-hour shifts to farm gold so that they can sell it over the Internet. The leaders of these online gold farming sweatshop rings are usually business men of some standard, hiring people that will work for a dime who are so addicted to the game to work tediously to farm gold which players then purchase and receive through in-game transactions.

But why do World of Warcraft players even purchase this gold? It's because they have too, the game is so extremely overpriced, especially on older servers, that most players have no choice but to buy gold from these online sweat shops. How well you do in the game is about 95% based on the items and armor on your character. With this said, there is a huge demand for the great items in the game, and if you've taken any basic economics you know that if demand is high, firms, or in this case the players selling the gear, can charge ridiculous amounts of gold. So instead of spending hours and hours farming gold for themselves, the players simply log onto one of numerous websites that sell World of Warcraft gold and buy however much they need, and in 30 minutes to 2 hours they have received it and most don't think twice about it, nor the possible consequences.

They should however, because there are several risks involved when you buy from these online gold suppliers.

Blizzard, the company that produces and maintains the World of Warcraft, has a very extensive TOS (Terms of Service) that they enforce quite strictly. They state that buying gold from these online suppliers ruins the player made economy of individual servers (everything is bought and sold on an auction house and by real players) and they will not hesitate to instantly close an account that they have reason to believe is engaging in actions that violate their TOS.

In the World of Warcraft, an account is a huge investment, and if you buy gold you are adding an obscene amount of risk to that investment. Days and hours of your time, including your cumulative $14.99 per month you pay to play is all put up in the air. Your credit card information that you use to buy the gold is also put into the hands of someone across the world that is basically engaging in illegal activity (Blizzard has sued people and companies for things like this). There is also risk for identity theft and things of that nature when handing out your personal information to non-trusted websites.

Buying gold is just not worth it. I learned the hard way when my World of Warcraft account got permanently banned because I engaged in buying gold from one of these sources. I had had that account for a year and a half; I had multitudes of the best weapons, armor, and items. As I continued to try to be the best I had to have gold to get some of the latest items that would come out, I got caught in this horrible downward spiral of addiction and didn't think twice about buying gold. Then one day I tried logging on and it had been permanently shut down.

I lost a World of Warcraft account that would have sold for well over $1,000 on e-bay had I not gotten banned. Buying gold on the World of Warcraft is just not a smart move to make considering the investment of time and effort you put in to even get to the point where you would need to buy gold.

My words of advice, stay away from gold buying and play World of Warcraft honestly, if you play at all.