Is selling gold legal?

The legality of our mission to make real-world cash from selling gold and items in World of Warcraft is something that has been weighing on my mind for some time now. Are all of our efforts seen as damaging to the game and illegal according to Blizzard's EULA? Are we subject to termination of our character and with it all the hard-earned gold we've accumulated? Even worse, can our CD-key be banned rendering our game useless? Let's examine both sides of the issue so I can come to some sort of personal decision.

Section 8 of Blizzard's World of Warcraft EULA states the following:

Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were "licensed" the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was "limited"? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale, gift or trade in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft.

That seems pretty straightforward to me, right there in black and white "you may not sell items for 'real' money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft." In Blizzard's eyes we are clearly violating their license agreement and subject to immediate account termination for doing what we eventually plan to do. Maybe that's all that counts as they are the omniscient and all powerful judge, jury, and executioner in our online world. Digging a bit further on their site reveals yet another strong anti-selling decree simply titled, "Selling World of Warcraft In-Game Content for Real Money." Can't get any plainer than that. I wouldn't be too surprised if this blog started to really take off I get a nasty cease and desist letter from Vivendi's (Blizzard's parent company) legal department. Finally, a more recent news item from Blizzard touts the suspension of 10,000+ accounts and banning of 5,000+ for violating license agreements and reiterating their aggressive stance toward the use of bots and selling items and gold:

World of Warcraft Accounts Closed - Ordinn on 4/12/06

In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we have since patch 1.10 banned over 5,400 accounts and suspended 10,700 more for participating in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to hacks@blizzard.com by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.

Thank you for your continued support, and good luck with your adventures in Azeroth!

-Blizzard Entertainment

Dissecting this post yields some interesting nuances as it suggests accounts were definitely banned for using bots (automated programs to play WOW unattended) and bans "can" result from selling gold and items. Why not use the word "will" to make the statement stronger? My suspicion is that detecting in-game bot behavior is much easier for Blizzard to do than find out if an out of game deal to transfer 500 gold was with a friend or gold selling service. In any case, I'm sure if there was a way to detect gold selling transactions they would ban accounts on both sides of the transaction without hesitation.

Blizzard licensing agreements aside, there are a huge number of very professional looking internet sites eager to sell people gold on any server, any time. A quick Google search for "wow gold" yields hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unique sites willing to sell anyone with a valid credit-card any amount of gold they want. Some of the biggest players in the market like IGE run slick web sites with 24 hour instant delivery. In fact, they make it pretty simple to sell your gold to them. Why doesn't Blizzard go after these sites that are blatantly violating their EULA? Is the effort to find out which characters these companies use just too tedious? Besides, if these companies make enough money a few account bans are nothing - they'll just buy new copies of the game and be quickly up and running again. The only way Blizzard could shut them down would be to ban accounts faster than they could make up the cost for a new game.

Aside from the big operators, there are thousands of independents selling on EBay making it almost impossible to shut down the whole market. The demand to buy real-world items is not going away and where there is demand someone will always be ready to satisfy it. Maybe Blizzard will accept that the secondary online gaming market estimated at $880 million a year is inevitable and try to tap into it rather than suppress it. That's exactly what Sony did with their Station Exchange site - make the secondary market safe and legal to satisfy the demand for online currency and items.

Only time will tell whether the market for selling World of Warcraft gold and items will remain a tolerated underground, get killed off, or go legal. I think Blizzard should capitalize on an opportunity to make more money from legitimate trades while cracking down on farmers using automated bots. That will serve the purpose of not ruining the in-game economics and satisfying the demand for purchasing gold and items. Not to mention provide another revenue stream for great company making an excellent product. For now I have to think about where I stand.

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Hunt for the next wool cloth

Aside from all of the auctioning, I've still been spending time playing with our level 31 Hunter. I'm looking for the next great way to make money outside of trading. My leatherworking skill is up in the mid-100s, but still not high enough to make elite armor to sell. Skinning is up to the mid-200s and is a great feeder for our leatherworking, but not much of a money maker on its own. Doing instances with a party is hit and miss depending on how you roll for the top quality items. Anyhow, many of the rare items dropped in instances bind to you when picked up so they are unsellable. Wool cloth is still the top sellable item we can get from killing mobs which seems kind of crazy as its been that way for 19 levels now!

In an effort to try and break the cycle, I started to explore the more remote pockets of Ashenvale. Perhaps I could find some higher level trade goods to replace the lucrative wool cloth hauls. I poked around Demon Fall Canyon - the kills were yielding good experience, but still no high level trade items aside from some silk cloth drops. I swung north the Xavian/Forest Song area and trashed some Satyr's, but again nothing useful. I then embarked north-east to the boundary of Bough Shadow when I saw some interesting Dragonkin creatures. They were clearly way over my level as I could not even identify their level - only ?? showed up in their thumbnail. Maybe these guys would drop some Dragonscale used in the highest level leatherworking which sells for top price in the auction house. My curiosity got the best of me and I meandered a little too close to them and was decimated in one swing. So much for that. The hunt continues...

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High turnover items?

We've been spending a considerable amount of time wheeling and dealing in the auction house lately. We're starting to get a little taste of which items strike that nice balance of high profits and turnover. We have a couple of item flipping case studies below and we're very interested to hear any tips our readers might have as well.



Case 1: Traveler's Backpack

A callout for 3 packs for 30g went out over the trade channel. We clicked on the item and our Auctioneer scans showed recent buyouts at 13g-15g. We jumped on the offer and within a couple of minutes were the proud owners of 3 Traveler's Backpacks. The seller was likely a farmer from some asian country as he tried to speak to us in Mandarin. Guess he was looking to cash in for his quota. Anyway, we relisted the packs at the auction house for 24h at 12g starting bid and 15g buyout. One sold for the 15g, and the other two for 13g each for a total profit of 11g. Pretty sweet for a 5 minute job. We've had repeated success with flipping these packs; we can only assume they're usable by all classes and increased inventory space cuts down on annoying town runs.




Case 2: Doombringer:

Again, as we were posting items and scanning the auction house, an offer to sell the Doombringer went out on the trade channel. The seller was asking 35g and we countered with 29g. Sold. The Auctioneer data showed buyouts as high as 50g and the average floating around 40g. Seemed like a good flip opportunity, but it definately did not turn out that way. After 2 24h auctions we had still not sold the thing. With such a high price, the auction deposits were killing our profits knocking off about 4g each time - a lesson we unfortunately learned the hard way after the deposit price dawned on us when about to list it for the third time! We then resorted to hawking it over the trade channel, but after several sessions it became clear that this was not a hot item on our server. People were simply not willing to pay the price we needed to make a profit off this thing. Perhaps a sword is less usable by the general population, reducing the market? In any case, the shiny relic is still collecting dust in our pack. Perhaps we can sell it sometime later, but its nowhere near as flippable as the packs.

Anyone have some good advice on items to flip?

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Auctioneering 2.0

Thanks to a great tip by one of our readers, we've taken our auctioning to the next level. The Allakhazam site is a decent general reference for prices averaged across all servers in the Warcraft universe. However, as pointed out by our reader, prices can vary by server age and population. The Auctioneer addon provides the player with an extremely powerful tool. Essentially, the tool enables us to scan the auction house whenever we log in and build up a database of prices in which to gauge the true value of items on our server. Read more features at the Auctioneer site.

Our results so far have been impressive. A decent portion of the population either doesn't care to use the tool, prefers to spend their time playing rather than trading, or buys their gold from websites or independent operators like us (or like we hope to be one day). The real hardcore farmer shops overseas also typically work on a quota system, so they'll be more likely to move items quickly rather than maximize their profits. The result is a major advantage in spotting deals and pricing goods correctly. We've made 30g profit alone on only a couple of transactions by buying from anxious sellers looking to cash out their high quality items quickly. We've yet to try, but putting this technique together with the timing strategies we outlined in an earlier post should amplify the results even further. Seems like trading may be even more profitable than building up a character and farming, but the jury's still out on that one.

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Savvy auctioneering

I got our first blue (rare) item today and it was quite exhilarating. I was in Thousand Needles taking down some water elementals and much to my surprise one dropped a mace called the Looming Gavel. I hurriedly mailed it to our auctioneer character in Orgrimmar. After a few hours I logged into the auction account and received the item. In my excitement I began hawking it on the trade channel (shift-left click the item when typing a message in the trade channel). I started asking for 7g, but no one was biting. I quickly modified my call to "[Looming Gavel] 7g or best offer". I got a couple of bites at 5g, and I negotiated up to 6g. Not bad I thought. As an afterthought, I logged into wow.allakhazam.com to check on the latest auctioning process for the Looming Gavel. Oops. Looks like in my excitement I had sold it way low. Average price was 15g at the auction house! I felt like a total newbie, and I actually went against some key lessons we had already learned, but clearly not well enough. Here's the summary:

1. If you don't know the price on an item, look it up at wow.allakhazam.com. Average, median, high, and low prices over a couple weeks are listed. No need to ever sell yourself short - especially on rare or better items.
2. Patience. If your item doesn't sell right away for the top price, wait it out. Re-list if you have to, it will be worth it. Also remember to list at peak weekend times.
   

Update: Got some good advice from one of our readers, check the comments. Looks like we have more to learn. We'll post a follow up after we try out the Auctioneer add-on as suggested.

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Growing pains

While attempting to slim our overflowing quest log we found ourselves in Ashenvale. This Alliance area has been quite a challenge to us. We have found ourselves a new hunting ground where we have some difficulty killing the monsters and quickly leveling up seems more promising. As our levels increase we realize we need to stay in an area where taking down monsters is difficult. Even though it might be faster and easier to kill lower level monsters they don't give good experience. When fighting higher level beasts you do get injured more often and even die, however you can gain triple the experience which optimizes leveling speeds. As soon as you can take on two or more monsters without worry it's a definite sign you have outgrown your area and need to move on. Another sign is when you receive low experience for killing beasts or none at all. The small monster icon in the upper left corner of the screen will show you the level of the monster in a certain color. Grey means they give no experience, green some, yellow good, orange great, and red is huge (if you can manage to take them down, which isn't likely).

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Auction timing

We're quickly learning that what day and when you put items up for sale at the auction house is almost important as what you put up. To really amp up your profits, weekends are the best time. Obviously more people are on during the weekend, and those that do only log in on the weekend don't want to waste their game time gathering up items they need.

That's where we come in. First of all, like we noted before, always put the auction up for 24 hours and make the buyout price 3x-5x the initial bid. This encourages the impatient (who wants to wait 24h to win some wool cloth?!) and the rich ('aww, I can spend 3 gold on a 20 stack of wool cloth' - and yes, we are selling many that high). Not all times on the weekend are optimal, although anytime on the weekend is better than early in the week. The best time we've found so far is to put your items up for sale late afternoon on Friday. That way when Friday night's rush comes in your wares are available, but the auction won't end until late afternoon Saturday. By late night Friday, the auction house is packed with items that the Friday night players want to sell. Wait to post your wares again mid-morning Saturday (again for 24h long) to hit the afternoon and night crowd. Finally, Sunday morning is good as you'll want all day Sunday to ensure your stuff sells as most people don't play too late Sunday night.

We've been able to pull down sick 3g per 20 wool cloth this way, as well as get a premium price from 3g-5g for upper teen level quality weapons and armor. We're up to 60 gold and have hit level 25 with our hunter. Things are going pretty well and we can't wait to start exploring the great money making methods in the higher levels.

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Party etiquette

Today I picked up our first dungeon journey. The typical chatter of "LFG WC" (looking for group, Wailing Caverns) was crackling over the Barren's channels. I decided to give it a try as I figured there would be some decent items to pawn from the dungeon. I noted my interest on the group channel. My first attempt to form a group was with a fellow named Powderedhulk. He invited me to his group; I accepted and began the trek over to rendezvous with him in front of Wailing Caverns. Other invites quickly came up and I responded to each inviting them to join up with Powderedhulk's group. Several other players responded saying that Powderedhulk was a 'ninja looter'. I had no idea what that meant, but it proved to foreshadow an interesting event in my cavern adventure. I eventually joined up with another band of players as no one seemed to be joining the Powderedhulk group.

We charged into the dungeon and hit the first few enemies. Boy, I was glad to have 5 companions on this trip as all the beasts in the caverns were extremely tough to bring down. Although they were of comparable levels to the simple beasts outside the cavern, they were all elite and could soak up a huge amount of damage. When our enemies would drop quality items (item name highlighted in green) a small box would appear. I could choose either 'need' or 'greed'. We had agreed before joining our group that we would only choose 'need' for items that we really needed. The 'need' requests automatically won over the 'greed' requests. If there were more than one 'need' request, the highest random roll won. Most of the time I chose 'greed', as did the rest of the party.

The drops were good, and the experience was fantastic. Everything was clicking, that is until we came upon a chest deep in the caverns. Slayman (our party's warrior) called out, "Chest." We had a few more beasts to fight off near the back of our group, so I didn't pay too much attention at the time. As a couple of us finished off our Shambling beast, everyone else was standing around the chest healing up, eating food and the like. No one was moving to open the chest. With a pang of greed I ran up to the chest and popped it open. Cha-ching. A quality sword, magic wand, 8 slot bag, mail armor, and a handful of other items were inside.

"What are you doing?" Slayman asked angrily.

"I don't need the sword," I responded.

"That wasn't your chest - it's Maris'," he replied. "You are supposed to roll," someone else added.

Roll? I assumed when I opened the chest the little box for quality items would pop up and we would choose like before. Wrong. I scrolled up in my message box and it looked like everyone had 'rolled' a number between 1-100. Now I felt the pressure. Would they turn on me, leave me in the dungeon to rot? Now I guess I knew what 'ninja looting' meant and I had done it to my own fellow party by accident.

"Ok, sorry I'll give everything to Maris," I pleaded. "How do you roll anyway?"

"Man, just type /roll and the guy with the highest roll gets the chest - its only fair," Maris said.

"Sorry, here is all the stuff."

Only I didn't give Maris everything. Oh sure, I did give him the shiny sword and armor but I greedily kept the 8 slot bag to myself. I had successfully appeased the party by giving back 'all' the chest items, but I also knew they would never know that there was one thing I did not give back. I had a pang of guilt and started to wonder - in a game where I can hide behind a virtual character and do as I please with no repercussions, does one's true nature come out? I knew no one would ever know I had kept the bag and I had done enough to keep the party from cutting me out. However, I did lie and break the honor of the party. Oh sure, some of the members chose 'need' one too many times on the best items, but I still felt bad. We finished off the last few beasts, left the cavern, and went our separate ways likely to never meet up or speak again. If one of those guys had been my friend or coworker in real life, would I have done the same? Is the knowledge that we have to interact with people daily what keeps us honest and willing to respect each other? Does total anonymity in an online game bring out the worst of human nature? Interesting...

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For the Horde!

I found out players from opposing sides can wander in enemy territory first hand today. Comedy and hostility ensued.

Encounter one:

So, as I made my way down the Southern Gold road getting ready to complete a quest, I spot what I thought were two players on their mounts. I take a second look and realize that they aren't Orcs or Taurens, but players from the Alliance! Instinctively I right click to annihilate these enemies but it says they're friendly. Friendly? Confused, I decide to ignore them and go on with my grinding. I get back to killing and as I am about to finish the Thunder Lizard I was fighting, a roaring tiger flashes on the screen. I finish off the Lizard and boggle at this creature and it's female Elf master standing in front of me.

"What are you doing?" I type.

"Fugarah," comes the response.

"Why are you two here?" I ask.

"Bugah sa amiah," (or some such nonsense) responds the Alliance member.

At first I thought the elf was kidding but I then realize the language barrier between us. Maybe I can learn to speak elvish if I keep talking to this person. It goes on...

"So you don't speak Orkish?"

"Bugah abagi bugah"

I decide the only universal communication we have is the emote actions.

I roar furiously.

The Elf's mount roars back.

I laugh hysterically.

She laughs back, and then began to weep.

I clicked on the elf player then typed /flirt just to see what she would do. She responded by flirting with our raptor. It was quite comical.

After this I decided I had, had enough laughs with the elves and I decided to move on.

Encounter two:

I often try and explore distant lands just to see how strong the monsters are and what kinds of items they drop. I was making my way towards Blackthorn Ridge, taking my time, enjoying the scenery when a player (Alliance) runs past me and slaps me straight accross the face! Baffled, I quickly switch to Aspect of the Cheeta (which makes Hunters run at a faster speed) and chase after this hooligan. The audacity. I had no idea how to slap him back, so I just run past him as if challenging him to a race. He falls back but not for long as I see he has the skill to morph into a wolf. He accumulates enough speed to easily pass me. No! I can't let him win and I managed to cut him off forcing him into the mountain. I had won. Juvinile? Definately. However, it was well worth the sweet revenge.

Encounter three:

This encounter was swift, violent, and was finished within seconds.

I was making my way back from my hourly visit to camp Taurajo to sell vendor trash when I spot two Elves on their mounts. Them again? I went to see what they were up to, maybe we can converse through our emotes again. I run up to the mounts to greet them. Their mounts both instantaneously disappear and two Elves stood before me. What is going on? My raptor immediately begins to attack. But...I thought they were friendly - oops these are different Elves. Were they players? The whole situation was still processing, and while I was trying to understand what was going on my Raptor falls over and dies. So fast?! I right click on the Elves and make my last defensive stand. Level 25 their profiles read - well I'm doomed. One level 22 Hunter against two level 25 Elves who not only have cornered me without the protection of my pet, but I'm not sure they were even players. I was slaughtered moments after.

All in a few hours...

-Anaiya

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Wool cloth = mad cash

Well, we've finally found our new cash generator to replace the linen cloth we've been doing so well with at the auction house. Wool cloth. This stuff has been starting at around 1 gold and buying out upwards of 1g 50s. In about an hour we can net close to 2 full stacks of 20. Add in the vendor trash (stuff that has no value to players, hence is worthless at the auction house) and we can pull down almost 3g per hour if we stick to grinding. Not bad for our level 20 hunter. The best place we've found so far is the Bramblescar area north of Camp Taurajo.

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Of course!

As I was grinding away in the South Barrens and going back to the auction house in Orgrimmar time and time again it hit me. I need an alternate character who will live in Orgrimmar right next to the auction house. He'll never leave, eternally executing transactions on my behalf at the auction house and mailing me the cash from the sale through the in-game mail system. I'll just have to mail my alternate character whatever I want him to sell - saves me the drudgery of going back and forth myself. I actually think we read this somewhere before, but it didn't click until now. Now if I could only come up with a witty name for this obedient extension of myself...

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Let the games begin

Quests, grinding, auction house... quests, grinding, auction house... hour after hour is what World of Warcraft has been to Cassius and I. We decided to find a way to stir things while maximizing our gold profit. But how? The answer was simple, adding a little thing which in the words of David Sarnoff "...brings out the best in products and the worst in people," - competition.

A while back Cassius thought up the idea of having a competition between us to see who could make the most amount of gold in an hour. We were free to do whatever we wanted to maximize our profit, the only problem was we hadn't even made our first gold piece. So, the idea was put aside for the time being. Today we found ourselves falling into the same old routine when Cassius brought up the old idea.

"Now that we have our first few gold pieces we should compete to see who can earn the most gold per hour," Cassius suggested.

"Sure," I replied.

That's how it began, our games for the gold. To start we realized we needed serious guidelines to keep the games legit. There would be a time limit of one hour which would have to be supervised by the other player to make sure no cheating would take place. Another thing we did was set reasonable prices on items we would sell at the auction house, even if we both knew we could possibly earn more at the auction. This helped keep earnings fair and calculatable. The initial gold, silver, and copper would be recorded so we could compare the ending amount of earnings.

With these ground rules we were off; Cassius went first with a concise strategy. He ground (past tense of 'grind' - sounds weird) in the area where the beasts dropped the fastest selling and most profitable item we know of at the moment, linen cloth. This area was Thorn Hill (coordinates 59,26) located near the Crossroads in the Barrens. This was a good spot for our level 15 hunter. He first looked up which beasts dropped linen cloth close to 100% of the time (the Razormane Mystic) and proceeded to the village. Using the hot-key for auto loot (holding shift and right clicking the monster) and pounding the beasts with all the spells in our book while our pet soaked up damage helped make things efficient. Speed in killing and looting was key. Cassius did very well, he managed to get 3 1/2 stacks of linen along with a a plethora of magic items and other junk. His total profit made was a whopping 2 gold, 8 silver, and 23 copper in one hour.

I was up next. For my strategy I initially planned to grind in an area with some Kolkar villages near the Stagnant Oasis. This strategy was risky because there are many other animals inhabiting the area which will attack aggressively so you can get easily bombarded. However, Cassius told me that Kolkars had a high linen cloth drop rate. I made my way over to the Kolkar area and killed a few stragglers which didn't drop any linen cloth. High drop rate - yeah right I thought to myself. A few minutes later I started getting in trouble as I went deeper and deeper into the Kolkar area trying to find any Kolkars that would drop linen cloth.

I eventually ended up in the Oasis and there I found a few promising looking Kolkar victims. My pet and I were in the process of fighting a Kolkar Hunter when a Hyena nonchalantly joins the fight. So now my pet (who is always front line defense) has three men on him (the Hyena, Kolkar, and the Kolkar's guard dog). In an attempt to save his life I shoot the hyena who then attacks me. Our character is a skilled in long range attack, but unfortunately has relatively poor hand to hand combat skills. So, I was quickly killed by the Hyena.

I find my body and resurrect, in the process losing about 6 minutes, which is equal to a lifetime during this competition. I plan my next move, recuperate, heal, and attack! However I forgot about one thing, my pet which I neglected to resurrect but didn't notice until later. I began to carry out my strategy by eating to regain full strength and proceeded back into the Oasis. I am attacked once again by a Hyena and try to send in my pet, but like I mentioned before I forgot to bring him back! Another death at the hands of this mottled, ugly beast. My sorrowful story continues as this happens one more time when I resurrect and attempt to leave the Stagnant Oasis land. After three deaths I finally manage to escape.

Trying not to waste any more time in vain I make my way back to Razormane Village where I hope to have some good luck. I kill as many animals as I can on the way and spend what I have left of my hour in the Razormane Village. My total profit came out to 1 gold 58 silver 68 copper. Even though Cassius beat me, I still did pretty well considering what I had gone through. Revenge will be mine...

-Anaiya

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