I see a level 60 player of the Warcraft Smolderthorn realm who should have checked on his forum post and done a quick edit job, if not a complete deletion: “@ Malican of Transcendence (hacker)”. (Archive: Forum thread and screenshot)
They tried to sneak this one past me with a late Friday afternoon post on the Warcraft front page: World of Warcraft accounts closed! There was no need to sneak — not like I’m getting rich in this game, or off of this game.
Ordinn, Blizzard economist wrote:
In keeping with Blizzard’s aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms. The banned accounts were taking part in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items, which severely impacts 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!
I’d like to imagine that this was one huge sting, set up over the past few weeks, involving undercover GM agents and late night interrogations of suspected farmers. Probably it was far less glamorous: players ratting out some guys who were stealing spawns in Eastern Plaguelands.
One of our guild priests is relieved he bought his epic mount last week instead of waiting — supply and demand being what they are. And when I say “bought”, you know I meant he used some real life scratch to IGE the damn thing because who has the energy to farm 1000 gold for their second, third or fourth level 60? Nobody I know.
If your guild, like mine, is using the venerable EQdkp program to track guild raid points, attendance and the like, it’s time to patch a security fix. (DO IT NOW!) “A security vulnerability was recently discovered in all current versions of EQdkp that could allow remote code inclusion on specific server configurations, if register_globals is enabled.” More discussion is available here in a forum thread. You’re probably wondering how in the world did I run across this rather obscure gaming news? Is the AFK Gamer staff so on top of late-breaking news that nothing escapes their notice? Thank you. Actually, my guild’s DKP site got whacked last night, although we didn’t discover it until the guildmates started checking their up-to-the-minute DKP balances at work (as you do) and were greeted with this defacement (Flickr screenshot), which, loosely translated means … I cut off your American head and drink soup out of the skull.
