World of Warcraft: on gold spammers and trial accounts

We’re sure that World of Warcraft players are simply tired of gold spammers and their mail in their inboxes, and while it’s easy to say that Blizzard isn’t doing anything about it let’s check out the basics of the problem. Sutekra from the WoW forums raised the question: Can Blizzard ban in-game gold spammers?

Tseric was on hand to address the concern. He informed players that “it is an ongoing process, with each side always developing new tactics to outwit the other side. The thing is a “magic bullet” does not exist for this type of problem. He continued, “We’re in the works of developing more tools to address the problem of gold selling spammers and we expect to add more tools for our hacks team to use, as time goes on.”

This was met with infernal rain – as usual, as anything coming from Tseric usually is. Players pointed out that the problem comes from the trial accounts that Blizzard is offering since that doesn’t require anything but a download of the client. Some players said that the trial of the game should be limited – meaning trial players should not be able to whisper, send mail, or chatting. Tseric answered this with:

I realize it may be simple to say “everybody under level 10 shouldn’t be able to whisper anybody”, but that seems like you simply forgot what it was like to be new to the game. The first fifteen minutes of a game are probably the most crucial moments of a gamers life. That is when people decide to play or not.

We’ve already placed large restrictions on trial accounts and may continue to add more. However, there is a point at which you are demoing a broken game, because you deliberately broke it to prevent this.

Also, don’t assume that trial accounts are the sole source of this problem. The issue wouldn’t go away even if we discontinued trial accounts completely. I’m hard pressed to say how much that would actually do to the problem. In the end, I think Blizzard would have more to lose than the gold sellers.

That’s pretty logical, Blizzard-wise. Offering trial accounts are basically for the purpose of luring newbie players to the World of Warcraft. Limiting them to something short of not playing at all would defeat the purpose, right? We’ll see what steps they’ll make in the future about the problem. But as it is in-game and in real life, scammers and law enforcement dance a cha-cha. Each side is continuously developing more tactics to outwit each other.

We’re sure that World of Warcraft players are simply tired of gold spammers and their mail in their inboxes, and while it’s easy to say that Blizzard isn’t doing anything about it let’s check out the basics of the problem. Sutekra from the WoW forums raised the question: Can Blizzard ban in-game gold spammers?

Tseric was on hand to address the concern. He informed players that “it is an ongoing process, with each side always developing new tactics to outwit the other side. The thing is a “magic bullet” does not exist for this type of problem. He continued, “We’re in the works of developing more tools to address the problem of gold selling spammers and we expect to add more tools for our hacks team to use, as time goes on.”

This was met with infernal rain – as usual, as anything coming from Tseric usually is. Players pointed out that the problem comes from the trial accounts that Blizzard is offering since that doesn’t require anything but a download of the client. Some players said that the trial of the game should be limited – meaning trial players should not be able to whisper, send mail, or chatting. Tseric answered this with:

I realize it may be simple to say “everybody under level 10 shouldn’t be able to whisper anybody”, but that seems like you simply forgot what it was like to be new to the game. The first fifteen minutes of a game are probably the most crucial moments of a gamers life. That is when people decide to play or not.

We’ve already placed large restrictions on trial accounts and may continue to add more. However, there is a point at which you are demoing a broken game, because you deliberately broke it to prevent this.

Also, don’t assume that trial accounts are the sole source of this problem. The issue wouldn’t go away even if we discontinued trial accounts completely. I’m hard pressed to say how much that would actually do to the problem. In the end, I think Blizzard would have more to lose than the gold sellers.

That’s pretty logical, Blizzard-wise. Offering trial accounts are basically for the purpose of luring newbie players to the World of Warcraft. Limiting them to something short of not playing at all would defeat the purpose, right? We’ll see what steps they’ll make in the future about the problem. But as it is in-game and in real life, scammers and law enforcement dance a cha-cha. Each side is continuously developing more tactics to outwit each other.