If you’re a hard working adult, parent, or student who enjoys today’s MMO’s but have no time to grind to level 70, Blizzard’s recent actions scream “Your S.O.L.”
Earlier this week Blizzard banned thousands of accounts in a matter of days. Buying, selling, trading, and even giving away your account results in banning without a second chance. Instead of innocent until proven guilty you’re simply guilty. They even use their godly powers and ban any account associate with your credit card if you chose the monthly billing option. That’s not accounting for the gamers who lost their accounts using game time cards.
Those who haven’t been banned have their accounts on a temporary lockdown until an I.D that has been notarized is faxed in and approved. Even if they get that information to Blizzard it will take time for the hold to be taken off, leaving the account dead until they deem fit.
A majority of gamers believe that buying or trading an account is cheating, giving other players an unfair advantage. Although, what if you’re a casual player as opposed to a hard core player? Not every gamer has the luxury of being able to play eight or more hours a day. Casual gamers want to experience the end game fun without spending a massive amount of time away from reality and their responsibilities.
It’s well known that trading an account is a violation of the terms of service. Even if you decide to give your account away it will result in a ban. Some will argue that it’s not worth the ban and definitely not worth losing their other accounts that had nothing to due with the violation. The customer is still paying their monthly dues and Blizzard is still generating an income.
Blizzard has yet to release a statement on why the harsh crack down this week, but few have their theories.
Marcus Eikenberry from Markee Dragon Inc, a trusted guru in the online gaming community, gives his trusted opinion.
Blizzard Entertainment Inc
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www.Blizzard.com
Comments
The feel of WoW gameplay can be found at all levels. For the serious gamer who plays several hours a day to the casual several hours maybe a week player, WoW has a fit for all. I do not buy into the, well I just don't have the time to level to 70, so I needed to buy my character from someone else arguement. WoW can be appreciated at all levels. And not only that, but SHOULD be played at all levels in their entirety, to get the true wonderous feel that is only WoW.
I could go on a rant about the low-life, pond scum, bottom feeding spammers that have decided it wasn't enough to deficate defecate in our personal email accounts, but to bring it to the sanctity of my viewing screen on WoW. But I won't. Instead I would like to extend my support to Blizzard and doing what it takes to rid ourselves, the community of WoW, of this affliction. I feel Blizzard needs to go further though. Banning accounts that have been traded for profit isn't enough. Banning players accounts that offer WoW gold for real world cash denominations would be awesome! But Also and awesome undertaking.
If it's not being done somewhat already, maybe it's time for a special division of law enforcement for WoW itself. Whatever the case, I feel a more aggressive approach needs to be taken. How about getting websites shutdown?
Ummm Mr. OP whiner... It's Blizzard's game. They can do what they want. If you don't like it, don't play. Stop whining.
I can see why people don't want this here but it doesn't break any rules since it's filed under Editor's Notes, at least imo. :/
But we can rate it down if we don't like it, so let's do that!!
Thats ridiculous nimloth. As a so-called news site its up to you guys to show a little judgelment over what appears on the news page, This is just an op-ed piece backed up by little or no facts at all.
"If you’re a hard working adult, parent, or student who enjoys today’s MMO’s but have no time to grind to level 70, Blizzard’s recent actions scream “Your S.O.L.”"
C'mon, this isnt news, this is whining by some pathetic loser who got their account banned after they paid some power-leveling service to take them to 70.
"You rated this as trash.:
I already did, a shame I cant rate your responses as well...
then rate it down :)
It is not a matter of us tolerating this kind of posts. The power is in your hands... news with a lot of negative rating gets automatically deleted :) That is the whole point of our portal... we allow you to post news, and we allow you to moderate trash collectively. This is what Kody was hinting to when he was talking a bout ratings.
this is just Blizzard's way of trying to control the world.
QQ for the boo-freakin-hoo
I have no sympathy for the "casual gamer" who has to cheat by buying an account, gold, or whatever other shortcuts they take that end up with a banning. Ban em all. They knew the rules, and the consequences of breaking them, everyone does.
I'm sick of the gold sellers, and power leveling service spams disturbing my gameplay experience. Everyone should download the SpamSentry addon here and report every time they get a spam. The only way blizzard will take serious action against this behavior is if it costs them money, ie: GM's having to waste vast ammounts of time dealing with these reports.
I'm disgusted that Curse allows this item onto their news page with its pro-cheater slant. With all of the talk we read here on Curse about being anti gold seller, and then garbage like this gets posted as a legitimate news story. Where is the news? Theres no numbers, no hard evidence that this is anything other than the usual cheater purge blizzard does every month.
If your going to call yourself a news site, then show a little judgement.
I totally agree with Luckboy's opinion. It's not fair that players who invested 2% of the time you invested (i have around 150 days of playtime on all my characters) can get the same rewards just because they are willing to spend some real-life currency. That is wrong game-economics wise and just simply spoils the game for people. Kaldarion is right too. I don't even approve when people let their relatives or friends play their main characters. Imagine that you know someone for ages who is a good and dedicated player and today he just sucks. Afterwards you get to know that it's someone else playing the toon. For me it's disturbing.
I'm sorry Kody I wasn't aware. Won't happen again :)
Firstly, this article was about 10% news (the fact that blizzard is cracking down) and about 90% whine. =/
Secondly, you should understand the nature of MMO's.. they're designed for high play-time, they yield rewards to people who play more than those who don't. It's arrogant and insulting to demand that wishy-washy players be given the same cool features as the dedicated players.
Yes, it's just a game -- but players should be awarded for their skill and experience.
Sure, the leveling grind can be boring as hell sometimes. But it is not that bad compared to other mmorpg's. It has been tweaked so that even the most casual of people can still attain 70 with relevant ease.
The main problem I see with buying a premade level 70 char from someone is that you don't get the necessary experience of actually playing that class correctly.
It's not much good to anyone if you jump in at level 70, get a raid spot with an end game guild, and then don't have a clue on what to do with the class you've 'purchased'.
Hi Alexandra,
While Curse is a Web 2.0 website that allows anyone to post news, we also have to abide by guidelines laid out by Blizzard Entertainment regarding their games - especially World of Warcraft.
Your article itself is fine here; users will share their opinion of it by rating it, but what we can't allow is links to websites that display advertisements selling gold, items, and/or accounts.
As such, I removed the links you provided. If at some time the website in question is able to remove those ads, then you're more than welcome to display the links again.
Apologies for having to do this, but we want to ensure a strong, positive relationship with Blizzard and make it clear that Curse is against RMT and the secondary "black market" of gold trading.