There is a lot of misinformation on the internet. In this day of “Acai Weightloss Secrets of the Indonsian Ancients” it’s important to read the fine print some times, or do some investigating before believing everything some random person on the internet says. So when I go to buy some gold from a company, and they tell me theres a 0% chance I’m going to get banned, I’ll have to admit that makes me a little nervous. To be honest I would be far less nervous if they would just be honest with me, but telling me there is a 0% chance for me to get banned if I violate the games EULA, an agreement I signed and I know is enforced, is a little optimistic I think.
So many of these companies are overseas, funded by venture capitalists who just pour money into these operations enabling them to spread in hopes that they can gain a customers trust long enough to take their money. Due to lack of service quality these companies cannot grow organically. They can’t retain customers so they must resort to in-game advertising, click-jacking and fake web storefronts in order to generate sales. One company might have over 20 fake storefronts that just directs orders to one “global” system. As soon as one of the storefronts tanks they just shut it down and open up another with a new domain name.
So how safe is gold buying really? What common questions do most gold buyers have before making a purchase and which gold sellers can you trust with your account?
Is Going Buying Illegal?
No, buying World of Warcraft Gold is not “Illegal” in a “legal” sense of the word. Swat won’t be kicking down your door for buying your kid a couple thousand gold for an Epic Flying Mount. There won’t be any court costs, no long drawn out meeting with Social Services. However, it does clearly violate the games Terms of Service (TOS) and End User License Agreement (EULA), as shown in the quote taken straight from the WOW Terms of Use:
Ownership/Selling of the Account or Virtual Items. Blizzard does not recognize the transfer of Accounts. You may not purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, or offer to purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, and any such attempt shall be null and void. Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appears in the Program. You agree that you have no right or title in or to any such content, including the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in the Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service. Blizzard does not recognize any virtual property transfers executed outside of the Game or the purported sale, gift or trade in the “real world” of anything related to the Game. Accordingly, you may not sell items for “real” money or otherwise exchange items for value outside of the Game.
As you can see there isn’t really any gray area in which you can get around it. Since it can get you banned, what are the odd that it will?
Will I Get banned for buying Warcraft Gold?
Selling gold and other virtual items is quickly becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. I believe it would take way too many resources in order to ban all the buyers, so that is why they mostly seem focused on banning the sellers. Ultimately if your an average player and you haven’t been doing anything else stupid on the account, your gold will be “pulled back” and whatever items you bought with it will be removed. Often times they wont even remove all the items you bought, but will strip your flying skills just out of spite. True story.
World of Warcraft Support Article Base:
Exchange of World of Warcraft Currency/Goods/Services for non-World of Warcraft Currency/Goods/Services, and Vice-Versa (Buying/Selling Gold, Items, Characters, and/or Accounts)
Questions to ask your Gold Seller before you buy
Ultimately it all boils down to one question, “How good is the company you are buying gold from at their job”. Until you actually use their service it might be hard to find out, but really all you need are a few questions and a live help representitive and it should be fairly easy to find out who knows what they are talking about, and who is just using canned responses. Heres a few questions you can ask your gold seller before you buy from them in order to make sure they actually know what they are doing.
How do you make your trades?
Right now, the only safe method of trading in World of Warcraft is called “Face to Face” trading. It’s exactly the same as normal player based transactions. If you have ever bought something from trade chat, or given someone mats to enchant your new purple bracers, you have done a Face to Face trade. The auction house and in-game mail trades may be more convenient, but they WILL get you flagged and you WILL get caught.
Where should I trade?
Orgrimmar or Stormwind are fine, but I highly recommend not trading in a “high traffic” area in the cities. Scammers often park in these areas on popular servers looking for gold trades and will scam your gold right back from you if you aren’t smart. “Hey I just traded you some gold, I need it back real quick so I can screenshot it first”. Don’t fall for it.
Where is your delivery team located?
Good luck getting an answer to this question. The only company I have ever had give me a real response were the guys over at Mogs.com, who quickly responded “Ohio” and very efficiently destroyed me in a game of “American Pop Trivia”. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter if they are in the US or in Guatamala as long as they are connecting out on a US IP. Using a VPN, secure gold sellers can connect out through a US based IP address from anywhere in the world, limiting the risk your account will get flagged for trading with an overseas account.
What will you do if I get banned?
Again, very few companies offer any kind of real guarantee for their services. In they end most of them end up saying “You knew the risk, there’s nothing I can do”, which is a far cry from the sales pitch I got in live chat before I ordered. Ultimately, as long as they guarantee to refund my order should anything happen, I’m happy. And hey, if they will work with me on getting a new account or provide some CD Keys, even better.
What do you do in order to make sure my account doesn’t get banned.
This is the most important question out of the five. Even if you’ve asked the other questions, which pretty much lay out the response for this question, it is still important to ask. Why? Because whoever is sitting there at the other end of live chat is going to have to answer that question, and whether they give the same canned response over and over or actually form a new sentence for each question can really separate the scrubs from the gold selling heros.
Who sells safe WoW Gold?
I hate to sound like a broken record, but for Warcraft gold buying at least, I have yet to find a better provider than www.mogs.com. Nearly Instant Delivery? Check. American Support? Check. US Based Delivery? Check. No-hassle Refunds? Check. No spamming, scamming, upselling, general RMT crap? Check!! I highly recommend just popping into their live chat and asking a few questions about account security, they are always professional and actually know what they are talking about.
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