Rhyme and Punishment Forums

Voca wrote:Well because there's a precedent set now, it'll be far easier to just lay the smackdown on other spam companies.

In theory.

Unfortunatly, the article states it`s part of a settlement so no precedent was set, meaning every other Blizz vs GameRuinerServiceForLamers will ned to be a re-trial starting from zilch over and over again...

Or at least, thats how I interpret it, as i`m not an expert on the american law, only have minor knowledge of (various) european business laws, none overseas

Dammit, oh well then. Still, we at least know it can be done.

Well done Blizzard!

Apart from the annoying spam, exactly how do these companies raise the gold they sell?

Botting and hacked accounts come to mind. Two more things we can do without in our beautiful game.

Which reminds me, some these web sites where you can sign up for gold and power levelling services have been flagged as having malware that will try to silently install itself onto your pc if you visit them. Great going tossers! They sell you the gold then hack your account later and take it back. Bottom line is never go to any of these web sites even if you are curious.

They tend to have farms (but instead of a field and sheep, think of a building and loads of computers.)

They then employ people who get paid peanuts to grind their gold etc, how much they make (real life) is usually tied into how much they make (virtual.)

This practice is quite often conducted by chinese, hence the bad reputation the nation now has with the online community.

The other way is also as you mentioned through hacked accounts etc, one big rule of thumb, is to always be careful where you download your addons, as quite frequently you will end up downloading more than you bargained for.