Wait...

IGE: "You can't sue me. You don't own anything in this world"

Players: "Neither do you, that's kinda the point. You made money on something you just admitted you don't own. In the REAL world, officials would call that stealing."

IGE: "That's different"

Awesome.

Interestingly IGE's website is still selling WoW gold, despite their claims.

hmm? http://www.ige.com/wowus/gold/worldofwarcraftus_en.html

What were you saying again IGE? You claim one thing but you do something else.

Also, with all those other games that you guys illegally sell cash in, I wonder how much of a reputation you would have after Arena.Net, CCP, Blizzard, etc etc take you guys apart for illegal activity.

I'm just gonna sit here, far away from WoW, and lawl at the whole situation. Hardcore WoW gamers sure crack me up.

Are'el, I don't think so. I have been playing BS for a while, and I had no problem gathering Iron, Copper, Mithril, but when it comes to the stuff Gold Farmers use like Thorium and Fel Iron it's damn near impossible, always one of their agents is getting to my viens first.

Doesn't the best stuff in the endgame come from raid encounters and earning honor points in battlegrounds and so on? I agree with Are'el -- if there was a hard monetary cap on the WoW economy, the situation would be different, but as there's no limit to how much virtual gold gets pumped into the system, they're effectively working with perpetual inflation.

Actually, it reminds me of Zimbabwe.

......Wrong Topic, sorry.

On Topic post.
@Freak

They may not think its worth the time or their lawyers said it was a dead end lawsuit.

I hate to say it, but IGE is right.

They player can't sue, because he doesn't own it.

Blizzard does. Blizzard needs to sue, not the player. The player won't win.

At first I thought the headline read

"Florida Paper Details WoW Golf Lawsuit"

I began thinking
"I didn't know WoW had golf in it or maybe it's over Wow's use at a golf range".

I was dissapointed when I learned what it was really about.

Hey, if it's that bad, stop playing. I personally don't have the time to keep up with the addicts I find online in any game now. Why should I be punished for having a life? I don't play WoW because I want to keep my soul, but when it takes hundreds of hours to unlock ANYTHING in a game, it's getting a little ridiculous.

I haven't played any MMOs since Runescape was completely free, but even from that I have experience with players with too much time.

I say that if you have enough time to get all that gold for free (minus your monthly fee), more power to you. Why should we punish players with the opposite, more money than time? MMOs are the second biggest scam in the video gaming industry (next to X-Box Live, where you get to buy maps that are otherwise free on the PC), so if have the power to beat the system, and you actually want to pay real money for fake money, go for it.

One thought pops into my head reading this, um...doesn't this guy think that if Blizzard could ban gold farmers, they would??

What I can't understand, is that if Blizzard really was interested in shutting down gold farming, why don't they just go into it themselves? If you want some gold, you'd pretty much have to be completely out of your mind to not buy it from Blizzard. All the crazy fly-by-night web sites would lose their buyers overnight.

Jesus Christ, this is absurd. MMO players need to get a damn life already.

@kaemmerite

According to the GOP that's how the real world economy works. When you need more money you just ask China.

Wait, if Blizzard is interested in a win.. Why can't they just do something about it as the developer. They're the only one that owns a real product here. Can't they just add a "Report Money for Gold" button? Especially if they're interested in it going away.

See, I see this differently then some of the players here. I was a WoW player for a while, on both PvP and on PvE, and gold farming hurts the game play on both. Now some of you will be going "Wah wah, he annoying me in teh game! Waaaah!" in parody of the slighted player, but keep in mind you are talking about a game that people pay $144 annually to play, for each account, and some people have multiple accounts (especially if your spouce plays).

In PvE, the effect you have is a group of players monopolizing certain resources. Think of it similar to a hurricane relief effort handing out food, and someone pays a group of people to stand in line over and over to collect all the food, then opens a tent selling the food. Since food isn't as important as water, some people are saying, "Stop bellyaching, it's just capatilism at work. It's not as if they are doing it with water!"

Next, imagine our economy if a 10% of the people got machines that could create gold. Suddenly, the value of gold would go down the tube. Of course they would be illegal, and your money would be taken away if caught with it, but people would still do it. Suddenly, that car you need to get to work costs $75,000, and they don't mind charging that much because they know that people are able to get that much money, as long as they don't mind breaking the law.

Now, on PvP servers, things are worse, because they aren't just selling food after the huricane relief, they are selling uzi's. What's the matter? Can't keep your food because people keep shooting at you? No problem, buy an uzi, too? Except they now cost $120,000 for an uzi since the economy is screwed (I'm assuming uzi's don't cost this much normally).

So you are paying for this game, but even pumping money into it isn't enough, you can't keep up with everyone who is breaking the licencing agreement. You loose time that you paid for every time someone with an epic this or that walks by you and decides to gank you. You can't get the drops you need for your quests because people are bot farming the mobs you need.

And none of this even touches the illegal side of gold farming, such as the stolen accounts to get gold to sell, accounts created with stoen credit card numbers to run bot farms, etc...

"Well, if you don't like the game, stop playing!" But I DO like the game, I don't like the people CHEATING at the game that is ruinging my moneys worth. It's like people talking loudly on their cell phone in the theater, I don't hear people justifying it by saying "They paid money to be in here just like you did, if they want to spend it on their cell phone, why not? It's a free country!"

So yes, I feel that botters and gold farmers should be stripped of virtual posetions, kicked, banned, their web addresses and all itinerations of their addresses be filtered from the chats, and even up to and including IP blocks banned.

"If Antonio Hernandez wins his lawsuit against IGE and the judge rules that IGE caused “economic harm….in the millions of dollars” does this now pave a way for government regulation and taxation of virtual property since a court of law has put essentially a monetary value of WOW gold hold that companies can be held liable for such loss? "

That's one thing I am afraid of. Should I have to pay taxes on the gold I took the time to earn just because some farmers and slackers took an easy way out? Will I be paying a 'flight' tax because I have an epic mount?

Ugh, I play the game to have fun, not worry about taxes. -_-

Cheaters suck monkey balls. Don't be a cheater other wise you suck monkey balls. That is all I have to say.

Who cares if people sell or buy gold, it does nothing to the economy in game. Blizzard has changed their model for making gold in game. Players really don't need to buy gold anymore. Hell i have over 20k gold in game and nothing to spend it on. In the original game gold was hard to get but not anymore, look at the prices on IGE 5000 g for 200 bucks. 2 years ago 5000g would have been over a thousand real dollars. Blizzard is basically taking away gold as a commodity since its so easy to get now.

Well.. Blizzard should be suing those bitches, not some random consumer. That's lame. Why doesn't Blizzard care about the economic damage from these gold resellers?? I don't see any of them getting sued, even though they ought to be...

This is absolutely stupid that there is even a lawsuit about this. It sounds like this kid is trying to take his whining in game to a whole new level by trying to have something like this go through. Everybody that reads this knows that if someone offered you $50 for 1000g in game you would do it for sure. IGE and the countless other websites out there like them selling in game gold have just capitalized on selling a product which no one really owns but Blizzard. Personally I feel that if someone is dumb enough to pay you for gold and items, then let them its a waste of their money for something which is available to them in game anyways. So the economy in the game goes up so what?!?! The vendor prices dont go up, and you arent paying ridicious amounts of Gold to get the items that you need. Go out and quest, or PvP if you want the best gear, and let people pay what they want on the AH.

If anyone has the right to bring up a lawsuit it is Blizzard and no one else. They have the say on what goes on in the WoW. While they are always trying to make changes and make WoW better, will it honestly help all that much if you take Gold and Item re-sellers off the market? So AH prices go down, and you have to farm more to get your mounts and skills. To me that isnt really much of an impact of the overall gameplay. The Final words. BIG DEAL!

I play this game on a regular basis. Making gold is so easy that I've never even thought about buying it. I laugh at people that do. If you stop being lazy and play the game you make money. Enough even to buy the high end items at "end game status". Between the professions you have to chose from or just gathering materials. Most players are lazy and just want to chat or fight against other people. (Which will make you NO money) People just need to go do the "work" of the game or if your that lazy or just want to be a high end player from the begining go buy your gold or characters for that matter. Anyway who cares if people do buy it? It has never affected my experience with these "gold farmers" that run around.

Joe Blow Says:
April 7th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

Most of you people are completely clueless. This is all based around the economics of time. In the real world as well as the virtual world, money = time. IGN isn’t selling gold, they’re selling you the time they spent collecting the gold. and Blizzard isn’t going to do anything, cause they’re earning lots of money from these guys farming.
__________________________________________________________

Unfortunately, this is exactly how they've been getting away with this stuff in all mmo's for so long - they claim they are charging you for the TIME spent collecting the gold, not the gold itself. Two things put the lie to this: The in-game advertisements stating in no uncertain terms you can buy gold, not "pay us to earn gold for you," and the fact that some people earn gold faster than others - so it should be sold in increments of time, not increments of gold if this claim is true.