f13.net

According to this blog post on stupidfuckbags.com:

[[Do not be a tool, tool.]]

(**Note: The Above Link goes to a site that I own, and could profit from if you happened to use our vendor reviews/price matching to purchase virtual currency which runs through affiliate links**)

“A massive covert banning by blizzard targeted at gold farmers has crippled their operations causing the price of World of Warcraft gold to skyrocket within the past week”

The article goes into details as to how a massive covert banning operation by Blizzard has caused the price of gold to double (includes some cool live charts to show this as well) within a matter of the past few days. It also presents some damming evidence and internal memos that some of the shops/suppliers are a bit worried about these recent actions by Blizzard.

I know that it’s a constant game of cat and mouse between Blizzard’s bans and the gold farmers, but it seems like they are a bit worried that Blizzard may be way ahead of them. If Blizzard can keep up with these bannings and it cost a ridiculous amount of money to purchase gold, obviously it’s no longer going to be a major factor in the game.

Is this the beginning of the end of the gold market?

Only for the companies who can afford to have a dedicated set of people to hunting down and banning these people. Blizzard could afford to have hits put out on every Gold Seller.

Suspicious first post that links to a site that links to all the gold sellers for all MMOs.  Linking to an article could be an interesting way to get around a ban.

good link

moooooooole

Anyway, a few weeks ago Blizzard did another ban wave that took out some key members of my guild's WoW chapter (which I'm not in). Turned out they had all cheated by using WoWglider to level up an alt. They all accepted the ban as they deserved it, but it was quite a shock to lose their long-standing accounts.

But it demonstrated to me that banning players is a very effective commercial activity. They seem to just buy another box and come back as paying players again, their motivation refreshed.

Modified the post and put in a little disclosure below the link. However, the intent of the post isn't intended to really sell you anything, mostly just to look for some comments/opinions on the topic area which I've been interested in for some time now.

The actual goal of the site (besides hopefully at least being somewhat profitable) is an attempt to sort of reform the currency industry through self-regulation and exposing sites that continue to engage in unethical operations that are harmful to the playerbase. (A bit more information about our goals at: [[Your site is dead to us!]].

Taking a realist look, that secondary markets ares most likely going to exist, (although this does appear a decent effort to curb it) the best thing to do is to ensure that it's effect on the games/playerbase is minimal. This means that sites which by proxy or directly steal accounts, spam, use exploits, create holding companies to buy out fan sites and turn them into propaganda machines, or just provide awful service, etc. should no longer be tolerated and as long as we can get the information out there, there is little reason why a player shouldn't choose an ethical alternative (which often *surprise* provide much better customer service and are much more reliable to deal with).

In before da den.

The profitability of gold farmers isn't a concern for me, aside from a vague sort of hope that failure and ruin greet them all.  I have no beef in theory with people who sell gold, or buy it, but I have a great big problem with cheaters, exploiters, botters and resource-hogs.  If WoW had EvE's 'trade game time for gold or characters from another player' system, I'd have no problem with it; legit players having transactions between each other doesn't distress me.  It's when jerks come and mess with the game for everyone else that I become irked.  And WoW's goldsellers are definitely working overtime to mess with the game.

everguide you are scum - I hope your links are removed. No, I haven't followed them. You are scum because you profit from people breaking the rules of the games I've played, which has caused interruptions to my fun.

I have been blocked from completing in-game activities because there are professional gold farmers in my way. I have been excluded from auctions because other people have impossible amounts of gold due to RMT. I have had key moments of gameplay interrupted by gold-selling spam. I have lost in-game friends who have succumbed to buying their way forward to skip things we would otherwise experience together.

While demand from cheats is the root of the problem, anyone involved in meeting the demand is responsible for the above interruptions to my gaming. Maybe it puts food on the table for your kids, but it's weak, man. I've no time for you or anything you want to say.

Hmm, I actually found this interesting.  Considering that these operations are generally trying to operate under the radar, any public disclosure of information is useful.

Banning this poster or deleting this post would be like banning a discussion of drugs or sexual activities.  The more light that can be shed on these activities the better.

I kind of wonder if Blizzard isn't going to just cut out the middle man with Lich King and nerf (is that the right word?  Devalue, maybe?) gold altogether.  They already started giving players more coin than they'll ever need in BC for anything other than the epic flyer, and then they opened up the faucets even further with the dailies, and then further still with the Sunwell.  There are a bunch of ways to get nice gear now, but they're all tied to BoP Badges/Rep grind/Honor points/whatever, more than they are to gold.  Right now, all you need gold for is skill training (not normally a concern by itself), mounts (and they are already dropping the price of the L40 mounts on the PTR), and maybe trading cheap junk on the AH like potions and BoE blues.  If they lower the gold cost of mount training in Lich King, then all that's really left are AH items. So, I gotta wonder if there's going to be a significant market for someone willing to pay US$20 for some Mageroyal and a chance at an account ban.

He's taking commission on sales from links through his site. That disqualifies anything he has to say.

RMT is corruption.

My family could be richer now, but an application to subdivide our property and build another house was rejected due to the area falling 50cm short. It was hinted that everybody in that situation greases the wheels with a corrupt payment, but we chose not to do this.

My team could perhaps have won the local community soccer league if I arranged some business favours for a certain referee. Some offsides and fouls could have been ignored, and corners/throw-ins called for our team instead of the other. It wouldn't really matter, because it's just a community tournament, and basking in the glory of winning is worth it.

Perhaps I could have set up a website looking at this phenomenon. Because whatever I say, there's a real demand for these corrupt methods of self-advancement. And on that website, I could sell hints at the best deals in development applications and sporting glory.

But then I'd be scum.

I think you missed something here...

WoW is a game.

It is something people are supposed to do in their spare time for enjoyment.

If you're taking the 'realist' view that there will be a secondary market, then I suppose the games companies should do the same, and simply sell direct to their customers.  Nobody can do it cheaper, and nobody can do it more secure than the companies.

Yes, YES let's open this marked wide open, and encourage all game devs to sell gold, items and even characters to their customers.  Thanks for the brilliant idea.

Oh wait.. that'd kind of screw those poor rmt farmers. Ah well.

Baseball is a game, it's also against the rules to use steroids. By this logic we should just let all players dope up if they want to because it's just a game.

So is a community soccer tournament. But whether it's soccer or computer games, some people take it too far. They cheat, and they think they get more fun if they cheat.

I play these games in my spare time for enjoyment. I agree to play by the rules of the game and I never cheat. Meanwhile, my enjoyment is reduced by the impact of those who do resort to cheating (see the points I made about the impact of RMT on legitimate players, two posts ago).

Agree to play by the rules, or don't play at all. If you can't have fun without cheating to get ahead, you have a personality problem - it's not about game design, it's about your destructive effect on the gaming community as a player who brings corruption into play.

Baseball is a professional sport with a large legal sports betting system supported by governments.

Try again.

Hmm...what to do with this thread?

I suggest Everguide paypals you a per-view commission and you keep his links up. If not, maybe they should be non-functional?

His intellectual approach doesn't alter the fact he's linking to an RMT service from which he gets commission. At the very least, he transgressed by linking to his blog instead of posting his writings here. But his site is also to RMT what a mortgage broker is to mortgages.

Deleted the links.

Oh goodie now I don't have to decide what to do :awesome_for_real:

If Wow Gold is now like Oil, do we invade China ?

I'm confused.

The first line of his post still takes you there.


Highly trained teams will begin efforts to recover gold from China on August 8.

Weak, pathetic even. Sorry. (http://users.on.net/~svandore/pics/olympic_rings.jpg)

I find the idea intriguing where Blizzards takes out all gold sellers with Assassins. Hell, give away free Diablo 3 betas for proven gold seller heads and the whole thing won't cost them a dime.

Most of the people who rule the AuctionHouse with an Iron fist, do it the legit way. By establishing an Alchemy Empire!  :grin:

Wow, what a little bitch.

Is it true what he said though. Gold prices have at least doubled in the last couple weeks, getting closer to tripling.

I love glider ban waves.  Time to check out their forums for a nice wallow.

Can I ask honestly if anyone has ANY trouble getting gold in WoW ?

I mean, the dailies alone are a non-stop pissing fountain of gold.

I don't get it.

Way back when, maybe.  Now ?  Not so much.

There are always people with more money then sense. Fools soon parted and all that.

I think this is the main reason why gold is so expensive. Not that it's hard to get but there is so little market for it sellers have to jack up their prices to cover operating costs/standards of living and rely on the handful of people so lazy they cant do a few dailies or need that boe epic NOW

I have to agree with this statement.

Im pretty sure that every single AuctionHouse magnate is secretly an EvE player who wanted to try something new.  They rule the Auctionhouse with impunity because they have what 95% of the WoW playerbase does not: a thorough grasp of how to properly manipulate a market, and enough time to log on frequently to check their auctions.

I also second Ironwood's question: How the hell do you have trouble getting gold?  Just stop buying EVERY single fucking little thing you think you need for your character (especially if you KNOW you are going to replace it in like 6 hours of leveling anyway) and maybe go out and farm a few mats yourself and you will save a bundle.  And dailies are a licence to fucking print money once you hit 70.  

Hell, I have somewhere around 24k gold banked between 3 level 70 characters and a bunch of assorted low level alts i use for crafting (and thats AFTER buying three sets of epic flying skills), and i have never purchased a single copper piece in my life.

I would probably put myself somewhere in the category of being slightly more of a casual gamer then a hardcore gamer (i dont do any major raiding, have never set foot in an arena) but i probably play more then some of the truely casual.  But i can still manage to easily make 200 or more gold profit every 2 or 3 days with just doing dailys for an hour or two a night on weeknights.  If i REALLY wanted to make money, i could easily rake in 1kg a day doing all my dailys on all 3 characters on a saturday or something.

About the only thing i really ever do is try to stay self sufficient.  One 70 is an alchemist / herbalist so i can make all my own pots, another 70 is mining / skinning,  and 2 characters who i leveled to 60 from mid 30's after BC came out who i trained tailoring on just so i could make my own spell / shadow / primal moon cloths.   My current pet project is leveling up a jewlcrafting / enchanting alt so i never have to pay through the nose for my own raw gems / enchanting mats.    Those things alone probably save me BUTLOADS of cash since i never have to pay the gougers for stuff i want / need.

I have trouble getting gold in WoW. To get gold in WoW you have to spend time. It may be easy, but it's all time.

My impression is that gold is sold to the "need it now" crowd. They reach level 70 and want flying mounts NOW. They want the highest price auction items NOW. They want to grind up a different tradeskill NOW. They want expensive faction bonuses NOW.

All of these things are utterly pointless and worthless unless you've enjoyed the journey to obtaining them. So the sane attitude is to accept that you're moving through the game at your own pace, and it's only a game so it doesn't really matter when those things come, because they will eventually. But there's a wider perception that these things do have a point and are worth something, so ... need to experience it now, will pay.

That argument just doesn't hold up anymore.  Really.

The dailies, including the pvp ones, take literally five minutes.  Sometimes a lot less (the demon flag Sunwell one, for example).

They give up to 24g a pop.

Also, levelling to 70 these days should have you well on the way to epic mount unless you've been an impulse ADD victim at the AH.

Also Blizzard is pretty upfront about its continuing efforts to ban/sue the crap out of RMT operators so calling it a 'covert ban' isn't really appropriate.

I Impulse ADD'd a few items on the AH while leveling Jewelcrafting on my new, fresh-server Warlock.  I STILL managed to hit 70 with 2009 gold on the character.  Then add another 700 on the auctionhouse/ bank alt I started using at 66 because I was sick of traveling to Org. every day to relist the stuff I picked-up while leveling.

Yes, it really IS that easy to get money.  If you can't get it because you don't have the time (~1h) to run ALL of the Quel'Danas dailies, then you don't have the /need/ for the shiney, either.  Because after all, you're not going to be able to hang out in front of the banks in shat looking cool which, other than raids, is the only reason for the ubergear.


I think it's "covert" because they didn't announce it this time, and it seems like a pretty large ban to have affected the price of gold.  Kind of like back in '06 when they banned 30k at once and the same thing happened.

I usually make about 150-200g doing just the QD island dailies, selling the greys and auctioning the greens.  No clue how much I would make if I did all 25 dailies available, but the island funds are more than enough for me to fund two alts and my nasty habit of jewelcrafting.

Buying gold now seems rather silly since even the epic mount is pretty useless unless you have a harvesting tradeskill.

This kind of "Why can't you play like me" makes me laugh.

RMT isn't corruption...this isn't the local zoning laws and its not a soccer match with winners and losers.

People who use RMT don't have a "personality problem".

Get some perspective.

You may not agree with the specific points raised by Tale and I guess they are kinda subjective and open to debate. What isn't open to debate however is that RMT impacts everyone else on the server in some way regardless of whether they choose to avail themselves of it or not. The people who justify their actions with 'why do you care what I do with my money' are the ones who need to get some perspective.

RMT as a concept is not disruptive.  RMT as a real-world practice, with all of the bad behavior that comes with trying to make it most profitable, is very disruptive.  People who use RMT don't have a personality problem, but they're either failing to understand or failing to care about the consequences of supporting that market.  Most, I expect, are the latter.

Yes

I would add that the bad behavior of the real-world RMT trade stems equally from flawed game design. Kudos to Eve and EQ2 for trying to make some progress in this area.

The Spam and the Efforts to counter RMT are what bother me.


The whole 1 hour before you can receive your auction money? That sucks. :(

I
With auctioneer, I honestly have no idea how people can't have money. I rerolled on a new server to group with a friend. I'm 10th level, started this morning, and I'm already speculating. It's so insanely easy. You just need a week of data and a pigeon who decides 50sp is the right price for a stack of runecloth.

Not everybody has Auctioneer, and if everyone did have auctioneer, it would be far less profitable (if I understand it's function correctly).

I don't have Auctioneer (though I realize I should probably get it), and I am to high finance what Homer Simpson is to Automotive Engineering.  I have a fair amount of trouble with money while I'm levelling.  My furthest Alliance character is level 49 and still doesn't have a mount.  In general, I find it fairly difficult to stay wealthy while levelling unless I forgo taking a crafting skill in favor of two gathering skills or something.  It seems like I can't sell anything on the AH (because no one is buying lowbie stuff with any regularity), and can't buy anything on the AH (because it's all listed at a price that someone with a level 70 alt would feel comfortable paying for), which means my only source of income is just through regular quests and mob loot, which doesn't always keep pace with training costs.  I suspect this is why even the new 1-20 areas in BC have had their gold rewards pushed through the roof compared to pre-BC stuff.

After hitting outland, I generally don't have money problems (after I absorb the hit that training my trade skills to max incurs), until I hit 70 and need gold for the epic flyer (none of my characters have one; the richest is sitting on something like 4.5k).  I can make something like 150g/day with the dailies, but even there, I'm looking at something like two months of running Sunwell quests over and over again every single day before I can afford it.

Why don't you offer me some perspective then, instead of just saying "you're wrong"?

Do you use RMT?

I don't use RMT but I have no problem with it at all. I do have a problem with people spamming me shit, but that's not RMT per se.

Yes.

Here's the thing I don't get: why external RMT is even an issue when MMO devs could provide the same services cheaper, easier and be officially sanctioned. To count it up:

1) There are apparently a lot of people who buy things through unauthorised RMT services with real money, but this can get them banned.
2) Devs can magic in-game stuff out of the air.
3) Devs offer to magic in-game stuff out of the air for players and not ban them for doing so.
4) Profit!

I know this model exists for F2P games, but it would work for sub-fee models too. You have the option of either letting something drop normally (so, if you have the time, you can get it) or in buying it from an official store (so, if you have the money, you can get it).

Before anyone complains that this means players won't 'earn' their way - it's meant to be a game, not a martial arts dojo. If the guy next to you bought their lvl 9001 Barbaric Half-Gnome, who cares? You've got the experience of playing the character for all those hours; they've got where they want to be in order to start playing.

All RMT spam would stop tomorrow if such services became economically unsustainable. Until then, spammers will do what they need to do to get business - gold farm, exploit, drop gnomes, whatever.

That same old discussion again?

It means shit what cheating you the players feel or don't feel appropriate or disruptive to the environment.

The game provider decides. In this case Blizzard. They ban you for it. End of discussion. If you can't abide by the rules of a game you play, don't play the game.

Because a lot of people won't play a game which is as aggressively and overtly monetised as that. If paying X dollars buys you a full suit of top line gear then paying X dollars becomes the new baseline. People who aren't willing to do that for any reason effectively can't play at a meaningful level. Your hardcore will pay it but the casual majority who are making you money-hats from subs won't and they will leave when they realise the buy-in is greater than they are willing to commit to.

Do you really see games so coldly and mechanically? Don't you value the creativity and suspension of disbelief in imaginary adventures?


In an imaginary world where everyone is created equally, your imaginary life's journey is separate from reality, so players should not be separated by real life money. A 12-year-old kid who earns pocket money can be a tank, grouped with a healer played by a 60-year-old billionaire. They can be peers unless you bring a real world factor into it.

"We create worlds" - "You're in our world now" - the whole thing works by isolating you from real factors. Even now, if the guy next to me bought his stuff on ebay and I find out, I don't want anything to do with him. Because that player is no longer in the same game as me - I've lived my character's life and he hasn't.

If it was a commercial part of the game and somehow worked, I would still feel it cheapened the imaginary world. I wouldn't want the RMT types on my server, because they're not really playing.

I only feel that way Tale, when I have to directly or indirectly compete against the person purchasing something. It's the same reason I stay away from Collectible Card/Mini games and the like.


Otherwise I see RMT much the way I used to see the Kids with the 100 dollar Hockey Sticks when I played street hockey. They might have had bragging rights and 'teh shiny', but their fancy stick didn't really preform any better then my 15 dollar one. We were still playing the same game, at the same level.


If you can have RMT without the side effect of spam and the like, I really don't give a crap, as long as it's cosmetic or auxiliary.

Unfortunately when you're playing in PVP server that hockey stick is not really a matter of 'technique' anymore.
It's just that simple. I avoided PVP-centric games that allows outside money to play a part. It's hard enough to invest time to catch up with the grind for EXP & Gears, now they had to let money matter. I can't compete. PVE server wise, I'm not too concerned about it. It sure made gold-skill-ups materials more expensive to buy, but it has the side effect of making it easier to rake in gold if you're an active harvester-seller.

Once you're 70, you can do the Quel'Danas dailies. If you just do the ones on the island, you can make over 100g for an hour of playtime (hardcore probably have it down to a half hour). It really can't get much simpler. I've been funding a tailoring habit this way (netherweave don't grow on trees) and I'm about as casual a WoW player as it gets.

Simply put, if blizzard allowed RMT they wouldn't have 10mil subscribers, it is not a popular system in games.

RMT in WoW doesn't bother me one bit.  I've been playing since launch, and I have never, ever been inconvenienced by farmers.  Sure, I've run into them.  I've even killed them, repeatedly, for sport.  I've never bought or sold gold or items or engaged in any kind of RMT.  I'm pretty sure I haven't been affected by them at all.

Getting money in WoW is easy, and has always been, except the first few months.  I've won the AH game (yes, alchemy was key, but now it's mining and/or JC) more than once.  One of my toons has 33k gold, and with inventory between all toons on that server, probably 50k.  And yet I have nothing to spend it on. 

(Where's housing!?!)

Starting on a new server, gold is even more stupidly easy to get now than ever before - just find a market and exploit it.  Some people on Venture Co. lately are selling Netherweave bags for 15g/each.  With netherweave costs at break even (3g/stack), they're making good gold.

I'm sure there's a game that's severely impacted by RMT, but WoW isn't.  Since I'm not affected, I'm agnostic on the issue in WoW.  If Blizzard wants to sell gold directly, I don't care.  I just want them to make new battlegrounds.  Or give me something to spend my thousands on.

To be fair, this is your experience with Blizzard actively spending resources against RMT.  We really can't know what it would be like if they let the doors open.

I've had much the same experience as you, but I will remind you of the general spam in tells, says, and mail that they have nearly erased.  Just before they implemented changes in the game to get rid of this, it was really quite obtrusive.  Yes, you could shut all of your communication lines off, but then it wouldn't be much of an MMO.

Those are the things that I do know and were quite evident.  All of these other stories of bannings, etc. means there is much more going on that I don't know about.  The WoW of today could be a lot different than it is if they stopped working against RMT all together.

I won't play a game with ingame RMT.  There is just too much opportunity for it to be taken just a bit too far.  They could always start off with a seemingly balanced solution to it, but over the long term that cash will just look too good and RMT will be made into a necessity to get further in the game.  I'd rather not be led into that kind of situation, so I won't start it.  I'd much rather they just jack my monthly sub price up.  At least that is something I can understand up front and decide for myself if it is worth it.

In principle, I agree with Tale.  RMT at its root just allows people with money to gain an edge.  That is as basic as it gets.

If you want to continue down the sports angle, try this.  Kids little league.  One team has a player that comes from a very rich family.  They paid for the whole team to go to 2 weeks traning camp led by Major League players.  They get the best bats, gloves, shoes, etc.  All the other teams couldn't come close to affording that.  This practice isn't illegal.  Some would even argue that it isn't really unethical.  How do the other teams feel when they consistently lose to this team?  Does the actions of this one team take anything away from the others' enjoyment of the game of baseball?

Not really. RMT doesn't exist in the way we are talking about it here in most cash shop games. The things you pay for with out of game money in cash shop games are usually things that speed gameplay by a minor amount: runspeed potions, minor healing potions for between fights, 10%/20% xp enhancers, "subway passes" that allow free travel. Second, are required items that end up being a type of subscription--access to the cliff of honor where you need to talk to a trainer getting level X, a key to the whatever region which is the only place you can level above Y.  And most of all vanity items: really attractive appearance slot items that have no effect at all on the game.

Correct. Most F2P games have two different item tracks. Stuff you buy from the shop is entirely different to stuff that you get via ingame means. It's not better, it's not 'alternate', it's entirely different set of options.

This is all true, and I agree.

I'm not in favor of RMT being sanctioned, but my point is that as things stand right now - given what Blizzard has done so far, RMT has impacted the average WoW very little.  It's entirely possible to play the game and get nice things and get rich in game without ever buying gold or leveling services or anything else.  Gold is extremely easy to come by, just by playing the game.

I have similar financial skills. I just run auctioneer so I know the prices on things. Then once a day I do a run with my bank alt and let it find bargains mostly on cloth, skins, and ore, and I resell them.

I rerolled six days ago on a new server. I took skinning and sold my first stack for 90s, I spent 45s on a new weapon and sent 45s to my bank alt. I now have 33 gold and my character is only level 17.

That's without dominating a market or any of that other stuff that the eve/auctioneer high finance people talk about. That's just from scanning the market and finding a few stacks of herbs and ore that were being sold for 20s and were worth 5-10gp then buying and reselling.

My brother just got keylogged today and all his stuff taken, as well as 3 characters deleted (the ones they used to rob the gbank, to cover their tracks I guess). That's the real cost of WoW's underground gold market.

The reality is that while people say RMT has not affected them at all, it has. If you have any kind of simple customer service or in game ticket issue, it will not be handled as quickly and effectively as you would like because a large part of Blizzard's customer service work right now is restoring "hacked" accounts and trying to track down the factory gold sellers. It is also the reason why they decided to up the number of dailies allowed per day and to give you more money for the new ones they add in: it makes legitimate gold so easy to come by that you have to be extremely lazy to find it absolutely necessary to buy gold.

I got hacked and had most of my stuff returned within hours. The rest was a day or two later.

And it's not the "real cost". That's just hyperbole. The "real cost" of driving a car includes the pain and discomfort of those few who have it stolen? Wheeeee.

 :uhrr: :oh_i_see: :awesome_for_real:

No, that's the real impact on your tax bill, as more police are needed.  Blizz polices this themselves so it affects their customers in cost, content and customer service time.


Anywho, what the fuck are you all doing that so many people get hacked? Downloading shit? Following links? Flash-Based programs running willy-nilly? Stupid logins and easy passwords?

Yeah but since things have been hacked alot my monthly fee hasn't gone up and the response time to hacked accounts has gone down.

 :awesome_for_real: :oh_i_see: :uhrr: :ye_gods: :grin: :drill: :drillf:

Say what?

No, that's the real cost of buying stolen cars.

He still hasn't got his stuff back btw.

He also hasn't got WoW fully patched yet. Hours of computer time spent copying files to DVDs, reformatting and installing Windows, installing other programs, putting his data back ontot he computer, then installing updates for every program including over a gig of WoW downloads alone. It's a massive bitch.

That's a shitty analogy.  Unless your car is full of delicious cake, and there's a market of people who'll buy delicious cake without asking any questions about where it came from.  And even then the proper analogy is that the real cost of owning delicious cake includes assholes who go around making their living from breaking into peoples' cars for the cakes to sell to people who know that the cake is likely stolen.  From cars.

See?  Much better analogy.

I need to get some cake now, thanks.

bah, changed mind delete.

Every been to Wowhead/Alla/Thottbot without a popup-blocker, scripting disabled and no ads? They you might have got a trojan from one of the ads.

Yeah.  While it used to be that only twits who gave out their password for powerleveling or to guild members were 'hacked', now that an industry has sprung up for stealing gold there are honest to God WoW-password-stealing malwares out there.  It's possible for an innocent person to wind up with their account stolen, through no fault beyond not knowing to have sufficient security on their computer.

That's why the authentication token that Blizzard's selling is such a necessary item.  They should pack those in the retail boxes.

It's pretty hard to get one of these keyloggers if you keep your OS and browser up to date right?

And if you're using noscript, popup blocker, and so on.
i.e. not the average person.

You need to turn off images too :awesome_for_real:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1361

(or stop using IE).

Security's a slippery thing.  You have to keep the OS updated to protect you from worms or hacks that try to wiggle through port vulnerabilities.  Once you're covered from outside people coming in, you have to protect yourself from stuff that lurks on the net and waits for you to pick it up.  Most people use Firefox with No-Script and Ad-Blocker Plus addons for that, and it's a pretty solid deal.  If a site can't run a script, it's hard-pressed to attack you, and No-Script is smart enough to allow the honest site (say, Allakhazam) to run a script while blocking the malicious site serving an infected ad through Allakhazam's page.

Now, it won't protect you if you tell it to allow scripts to run from a malicious site.  If (hypothetically) thottbot decided to steal everyone's stuff for IGE and stuck a keylogger on their site, and you told No-Script to let thottbot run scripts so you can use the talent calculator, you could be in trouble.

If you're running XP, you're pretty fucked in that scenario.  If you're running Vista, and not logged in as an administrator, you should be safe.  You'll get a 'Do you want to let this site install a program?' popup, and unless you're an imbecile you'll click 'Fuck No.', and that's that.  Ditto for Macs and the Linuxes; even if the browser is compromised it shouldn't be able to install anything on your system without the user giving explicit permission.  There is a Mac vulnerability floating around out there now that actually can infect them and give a remote user root privileges, but I don't think it's in serious use, and Apple may have patched the hole in that update they put out last week.

In any event, it's not a bad idea to regularly run virus/malware scans on your system, just to be sure that nothing's snuck in somehow.

Yeah, I got my WoW account stolen about a year and a half ago, which I never thought would ever happen.  I pretty much figured that it was really only complete fools getting infected with keyloggers, but I managed to get it without visiting anything particularly shady (I believe there was some sort of temporary IE vulnerability with mouseovers or some crap a little bit before I got it, which I assume is what happened). It did make me stop being careless with malware scanning, though.

Then again, I am kind of an idiot, but not, like, THAT much of an idiot.  Just a little one.

That's the thing: little idiots can be victims now, whereas previously you had to be a gargantuan idiot.  WoW had plenty of gargantuan idiots to begin with, but it certainly has millions of little idiots.  Add in the joys of guild bank access and you're open to massive amounts of gold theft that can affect any player in the game, if the player's guilded.

Were I a guild leader, I'd require any officer with vault access to own an authentication token.  The sheer damage that can be done by a thief getting access to the vault is just horrific.  Once the guild had enough income to afford several tabs worth of vault, I wouldn't mind designating one tab as the junk tab and giving general access to it for people to dump basic ingredients and lowbie gear to help people level their characters, but any item of significant value would be kept under the strictest possible security.

The Trick is to not keep anything of value in the vault  :grin:

Probably the most valuable thing in my guild vault are our Primals, and we use them so quickly there's maybe 200 gold worth total at any one time.

Dammit, that got me. Yeah I use Firefox with noscript, adblockers, regularly updated antivirus, occasional malware scanning, etc. But I'm no expert, I'm not anal about these things, and my GF also plays WoW and I sometimes log on using her PC and damn but thees gold farmers are a business so they clearly care more about my WoW account security than I do and those authenticators are only £4 each, which is half of a single monthly sub.

So I just ordered 3 of them.

Speaking of security, I have an anecdote from this past weekend.

The wife decided to make her own guild, and shortly after she completed the charter and started looking for recruits one of our old friends from our previous guild popped into the guild recruitment channel looking to join a guild. Really cool guy (if a bit odd), published author of a couple zombie novels, something of an intellectual. She gave him a whisper asking if he wanted to join. The response?

"lol ya ur guys raid kara rite?"

At that moment we understood that our beloved druid friend was most definitely not who we thought. A quick inspection turned up a Darkmoon card that we knew our friend had, so we sent word out amongst the old guildies that their old druid friend was not who he was supposed to be. One of them e-mailed our friend who said that he hadnt changed his name, nor transferred off server, and in fact his account was supposed to be inactive.

A quick Blizzard investigation this weekend gave the druid player his account back with 28 days of free play time donated by the "hacker". Turns out that our buddy had his computer in the shop a couple of months prior to fix a crash problem, and that most likely one of the techs lifted his account information from his hard drive, and then E-bayed it to some unsuspecting kid. The poor sap who bought the account wasn't destructive at all, he had full access to a guild bank with thousands of gold in coins and items and didnt take a thing.

Haven't they been perpetually sold out since the day they were announced?

Poor stupid kid.

But to the best of my knowledge, no account information is saved on the host system other than the account name; nothing saves the password in any retrievable format.  More likely that the guy had a keylogger sitting on there.  Or one of the 'techs' put one on.  Something to investigate.

Might be one of those people that did the "I have a txt file with my username/pw that I copy and paste into WoW everytime I log in" kind of people?

I know a few of those.

People do that?

 :headscratch:


What's the logic behind that?

Have they? Didn't know that :/  When I ordered it the Blizzard Shoppe of Internettedness said "Your order should ship within the next 2-3 business days". I'll let ya's know if that turns out to be true  :-)

If you have a keylogger, then all that's being logged is ctrl-c ctrl-p.  Can't discern the pw from that.

Maybe they are periodically getting more stock.  Every time I've checked it it's said "Sold Out" and the purchase button is greyed out.  I hate these silly secureid things, but I hate the threat of keyloggers more so I think I'm going to buy a couple if it will ever let me (one for me, one for my wife).

Why did you order 3 of them? I have two accounts and use one on both accounts.  Unless you're logging in at different locations you really only need one authenticator.

Account name is all you need really if you have the guy's computer and he's local. It's easy to get e-mail information off the hard drive and if you have the account name and e-mail address, all you have to do is answer the secret question and Blizzard will e-mail the password. Secret questions like your mother's maiden name can be cracked with a trip to the courthouse, dogs names can be cracked from pics on the computers or e-mails, etc. Heck his e-mail password may have been the same as his WoW password, some folks just aren't very smart with security.

Might be a silly question, but does a G15 keyboard macro key function the same way, or does it actually send the keystroke signals in a way that a keylogger could read, or does it work like a copy / paste?

I'd suspect, for compatibilities sake, that the G15 keyboard is sending the key press events in the kernel level as if they are the keys that are being pressed, so that at the software level you receive a KeyPress event.

Short answer:  No, I think a keylogger would easily capture a G15 keyboard macro.

Really? Shit, didn't know that, I though it was one per account. Ah well, they were cheap. And they arrived this morning, so they've obviously sorted out their earlier supply issues.

Damnit, I've been checking the page 4 or 5 times a day at least, and they always say sold out to me.

This thread is still here?

You US or EU? Maybe only the European store has stock?

US, but I just checked the EU store and it says sold out as well.

EDIT: I can't figure out why they won't just let me backorder the damn thing instead of having to click the page 5x's a day hoping that it's the one time that there are some in stock.

You want one of my Euro ones? If I can use one for 2 accounts then I'll have a spare one. If the EU one works for US accounts then you're welcome to it.

Nah, thanks for the offer, I'll just wait till I eventually get one! :)

Not sure about the EU, but these things are now selling at over $100 on ebay.

I hope to hear about an ironic scam very soon where people entered in their WoW account info at some website which promised to ship them one of these for cheap.

That's mad! There's one on ebay UK going for £6 ($12) and one from Singapore with a BIN of £42 (hahah $84). With 0 bids. Wonder if Blizz are pulling auctions for them or if there's just not the same demand here?

They aren't pulling them on the US ebay.  The last 4 that sold were BIN for $70, $90 and $85, and one that went all the way bidding and sold for $132.50.

And the blizzard store is still "out of stock" and perplexingly won't let me back order the damn thing.

That's really stupid. Maybe the person responsible for that genius bit of design is the one selling them on ebay  :tinfoil:

Wrong wrong wrong wrong...
I can pull what's in your clipboard a lot friggen easier than I can your keystrokes... er... wait... no, they are both really super easy to get.
Basically, there is no way to prevent it... other than not getting infected with the keylogger in the first place.
I could write something in under 60 seconds that would send me everything you type, everything txt file you open, and eveything on every page, document, webpage or whatever else you have. INCLUDING secured webpages. We're talking less than 10 lines of code. The only part that would make it even slightly hard would be how to transmit the info to me without leaving implicating evidence arround (like my IP) but that's only because I'm not the evil sort of person that does stuff like that. But I'm sure that it's fantastically simple.

Would you like to play a game ?

My brother still doesn't have his stuff back btw. And by stuff I mean all his (6k) gold, 3 of his characters, and various enchanting mats, gems, etc. Just thought I'd update the "keylogging is only a slight and momentary inconvenience crowd".

That's really odd. I wonder what the difference between your brothers experience and mine was, did he not long on for a while? I logged off one night fine and logged on the next midday with stuff missing, and opened a ticket right away, parhaps mine being so much quicker was because there was less time for the hackers to move the gold around and left an easier trail for blizzard to stop.

That said, I got most of my items back right away (within one hour) so I don't think even that was a factor for those items either, just for the herbs, gold and stuff.

Really wierd that there would be such a different response for your brother and me, I wonder why.

He ticketed it instantly. As in, he couldn't log on, came into my room and said "that's not me online" and I changed his password and bumped the keylogger offline right there and sent off a petition. The only reason the keylogger was able to get so much was because he was in the shower when the guy logged on and I didn't know.

Part of it might be that there was so much taken. He has 9 characters on that account/server, all but 2 got stolen from, 3 got deleted, and they raided our gbank, so that's a lot of sources to track down I guess.

(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/gnomezuh11218459991.jpg)

wut