Gold Farming in World of Warcraft, is it right?

Everyone knows that farming and selling online currency for real money does happen. Now is it justifiable? Those who play  Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft are polarized when it comes to this rather controversial question.

The demand for in-game currency has become so huge that companies have started farming and selling their gold online. At almost US$ 1 per gold, the price can be pretty high, so why do people buy gold? A gold farmer working for Ucdao.com has said that a lot of the white-collar workers would rather do it themselves, unfortunately time constraints prevent them from doing so.

From the players viewpoint, their answers did not differ much from the given answer by the gold farmer. A player said that he does not want to grind (a term used for those who would kill monsters over and over again for either money or experience points) since he has better things to do.

While some would think that it is ok to participate in this, the creators of the game do not. Itzik Ben Bassat, Blizzard VP Business Development and International, spoke on this and relayed the actions Blizzard has done regarding this issue: “It’s like in the real world – in the real world there are people that try to cheat and last month alone we banned 100,000 accounts for illegal gold trading or cheating in the game, and it’s very important for us to keep a fair gaming environment”

Now, this is a very sensitive matter and a lot of people believe that this is a very gray area in terms of the legality of selling gold for real currency. Both sides have brought up valid points and have been going at it for quite some time now; however, there are no signs of the gold farming stopping any time soon.

Via BBC

Everyone knows that farming and selling online currency for real money does happen. Now is it justifiable? Those who play  Blizzard‘s World of Warcraft are polarized when it comes to this rather controversial question.

The demand for in-game currency has become so huge that companies have started farming and selling their gold online. At almost US$ 1 per gold, the price can be pretty high, so why do people buy gold? A gold farmer working for Ucdao.com has said that a lot of the white-collar workers would rather do it themselves, unfortunately time constraints prevent them from doing so.

From the players viewpoint, their answers did not differ much from the given answer by the gold farmer. A player said that he does not want to grind (a term used for those who would kill monsters over and over again for either money or experience points) since he has better things to do.

While some would think that it is ok to participate in this, the creators of the game do not. Itzik Ben Bassat, Blizzard VP Business Development and International, spoke on this and relayed the actions Blizzard has done regarding this issue: “It’s like in the real world – in the real world there are people that try to cheat and last month alone we banned 100,000 accounts for illegal gold trading or cheating in the game, and it’s very important for us to keep a fair gaming environment”

Now, this is a very sensitive matter and a lot of people believe that this is a very gray area in terms of the legality of selling gold for real currency. Both sides have brought up valid points and have been going at it for quite some time now; however, there are no signs of the gold farming stopping any time soon.

Via BBC