Well you already have decent equipment from what you’ve said, we are talking about some of the best weapons in the game though. Sure, you CAN technically get them by yourself pugging your way through AV but of course its going to be a long and painful road and at the end you will be weeks behind everyone who did it in a group and you will definitely feel it wasn’t worth the effort and the system is horrible. Meanwhile the people who are doing it smartly spend a lot less time putting forth a lot less effort and get the rewards a lot faster and think the system is great.
Story of my life there. I have no real complaints of the system myself to be honest…I just don’t think its easy for the ‘noobs’ to do…nor for me and I’m no noob. I only started getting back into WoW about 3 months ago…I had quite for like a year when the PvP stuff first went in (I hated the queues when things were single server)…and I managed to get up to rank 13 and was 2/3rds of the way to 14 when it all changed. I should have my bow sometime next week if I stay on target.
Perhaps for the gangs of HK farmer raid groups things are easy…but then, for such groups as you guys are obviously a part of ALL the shit is easy. For the rest of us, low on the hog, its a bit more difficult. I think trying to gage how easy something is, one shouldn’t use the minority of people who are in such situations as the over all yardstick for how hard or easy something is. YMMV. 
You will all be gratified to know my friend has left the game and shut down his account. He will no longer taint The World (of Warcraft) with his foul presence!
-XT
That’s the only thing in the OP worth reading.
I still don’t get this WoW fascination. Wizards and knights and hunters and blah, blah, blah. The premise has been beaten into the ground and then some. Yet, somehow, this particular game is like a fiendishly addictive drug to so many people.
I know a girl who left her husband because he spent absolutely every free moment of his time playing it. What a waste.
Twenty minutes (and fifty wasted dollars) of play was all I needed to confirm that fact.
Hah, you think thats bad? i know a husband who left her wife so he could spend more time playing. You are absolutely right though, its a fun game thats miles ahead of anything else out there but some people really do take it way too far. When you realize this thread is about someone whos paying to play a game and then wanted to pay someone to play the game hes paying to play for him you know theres something seriously wrong with some people.
Well, wait a month and much more easily available equipment will outclass all but the very top of the current equipment. And from what I’ve heard it’ll come plenty quickly too.
I guess we just have different views on the problem. WoW is successful because it is one of the most casual-friendly games on the market, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t also throw a few bones to the hardcores. Something to shoot for once you’ve capped out your level. You don’t need the best gear in the game, and I have no problem making it really difficult to get.
Especially since the post-2.0 PvP has shifted the bar from “virtually impossible” to “really difficult”. Now someone can get this stuff, if they’re patient and persistent, and still maintain an adult relationship and/or a full-time job.
I agree…and I DON’T see it as a problem. My point was, it isn’t easy…unless you are a hard core player willing to devote serious time to it. For me its hard but not impossible…as I said, I’ll hve my uber epic bow this week (can’t WAIT! :)). The rest of the stuff will follow. The spear I want is probably outside of what I can do…40+k will simply take too long to grind for me.
-XT
xtisme, I seem to remember you giving me advice on Rome: Total War (in a M2:TW thread). In fact, I still want to make some replies to that thread to ask you some more, but I never find the time/motivation. You seem like a helpful person. You’re also a gamer, someone that I can relate to.
That said, I have to agree with most of the rest of the posters. Your friend cheated. He got burned. He gave his account information to someone who he knew was going to cheat and he paid them for the cheating. The fact that the scammers where using Paypal shouldn’t lend any sort of legitimacy to them. Paypal is much less hassle to set up than a merchant account.
It’s a tough break, but I can’t say that I’m unhappy about it. If the scammers and pharmers would just continue to get more greedy, maybe people will finally say no to them.
Evil Captor, others addressed your initial “She was asking for it” rant, which was really fucking stupid. You then shifted towards the center and went with the “it’s a victimless crime” angle (regarding paying real money for leveling or items). Who does it hurt, you ask? It hurts me for example. When I’m playing a MMORPG (I’m not right now), I don’t buy gold or platinum. I do my own leveling. I have to do this around the rest of my RealLife ™. So having levels and prices inflated by the pharmers definitely hurts me.
Btw, in over seven years of online gaming, I have only gotten one warning on one account (that I know of). That was in WoW for creating a guild named, “Azzhatz of Azeroth” (silly, but we liked it). 
OK, that makes sense. But it’s an awfully predictable thing, don’t you think, that with a hard “grind” required for weapons and such, and relatively wealthy European and American players, that enterprising Asian players wouldn’t hire some poor-as-dirt Asian kids to play 24-7 in shifts to make the money that the wealthier players are willing pay?
Furthermore, I would like any libertarian or conservative WoW players to respond to this thought: I have often spoken of the way that the wealthy game the capitalist system to give an unfair advantage over the rest of us. Very often the response is, well, that’s life. Some people have advantages from the start, others don’t, you can’t have a really fair system in life. It’s not like life is some sort of game.
I’m really disappointed to see such a low-quality response from a moderator. We’re all able to evaluate rules and laws and such to see if they are fair or reasonable or make much sense at all, and to point out if they are or aren’t fair. There’s a powerful precedent in American history of people breaking laws they thought were unfair. But I guess you have no respect for the founding fathers, bering cheaters against the British system of laws and all. Those wild-eyed radicals deserve no respect at all!
And frankly, responding to a post about whether or not a rule makes much sense by saying “Don’t play a game if you can’t play by the rules” is distinctly, well …
Un-Doperish.
As for a mod doing so? I think that deserves a full tut-tutting. So consider yourself officially tut-tutted.
There’s not much of a rush to feeling superior to a cheat. It’s just too easy, you see. But, somehow, I suspect that concept eludes you on a pretty basic level. What with you being a cheater, and all.
Personally, that’s not a message I want getting out. The more people like your friend who get burned by these services, the fewer people like your friend there will be in the game. This is a good thing.
No, fucks like you are stupid enough to pay money for a game, pay money for a monthly account, and then pay money for someone else to play the game for you. That’s a pretty mighty brand of stupid, right there. Which I guess explains why you started this thread and thought you’d get any kind of response other than the one you’re getting right now. People don’t like cheaters. Your friend cheats. You cheat. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you opened this thread, jackass?
I’m gonna do you the favor of assuming that you read my post and Bayledemon’s post hastily and carelessly, rather than slowly and without comprehension. If you’ll look at Bayledemon’s post carefully, you will see that there’s no reference in it to the victim cheating at WoW, it was all about how careless and foolish he was. It was indeed a case of blaming the victim. Therefore, my post was not stupid, much less really fucking stupid. It was intelligent and on point. Unlike your post.
Fair enough. But as I noted, it seems to me an entirely predictable occurence when people are willing to pay real money for virtual points.
You know, it seems we have a lot of WOW players on this board. Mabye we should start a guild “The Fighters of the Ignorami”.
Which is why there is a rule against it. If you don’t like it don’t play is the only acceptable answer here, you seem to think its ok to break the rule because you feel its wrong, thats simply moronic. You don’t get to “evaluate the rules and laws to see if they are fair and reasonable” in a fucking video game, you either play by the rules or you don’t fucking play. Its not a democracy, it has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the founding fathers or american values or any of the other stupidity you were sprouting, its an entertainment service provided by a company who gets to set the rules that they want and you have to follow if you want to enjoy their game. Taking your money elsewhere is pretty much the only recourse you have if you dislike a rule that bad, theres games out there that allow you to buy your way to the top. So please stop trying to rationalize cheating, its wrong plain and simple.
Guilt by association, ehe? My friend gets burned therefore I cheat too? Excellent. FTR, I’ve never used a leveling service, honor or regular. Nor have I personally bought gold or such for WoW…I’m so unhip I didn’t actually know about this kind of stuff as being this widespread, though I’d used such things (well, bought gold and once bought a macro program to help me level up mining) in UO a long time ago. In addition, I didn’t actually open this thread to get sympathy for my friend…good thing as the self rightous assholes like you would have come as a big dissapointment (it didn’t…I figured slime like you would be lurking around after all ).
-XT
I don’t believe I ever said I thought it was OK to break the rule. Officially, I’m undecided on the point. You see, I’m thinking about it. Is it a fair rule or is it not? Does it make sense or does it not?
I see you are a guest so you don’t get a tut-tutting for your post, which I know must greatly relieve you. Here at the Dope we take pride in examining things with a critical, analytical approach that gives no breaks to authorities, established tradition or anything of that nature. Just because it’s a rule or a law doesn’t mean we have to accept it as is. We are perfectly free to look at it from our own perspective and decide if it’s consistent with our own vision of what’s logical, reasonable and moral. That’s what I’m doing, that’s what a lot of Dopers do, especially wrt to laws about things like smoking dope, abortion, the death penalty, etc. Now, this little WoW scrimmage doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in relations to the big issues, but it’s perfectly valid to take the same approach to it. If that bothers you, you’re just going to have to be bothered.
How you feel about the rule doesn’t matter one bit, you agree to play you agree to follow the rules. If you don’t agree to follow the rules then you shouldn’t play, its that simple.
Well shucks, thanks. Im just a caveman and your fancy critical thinking scares and confuses, just like thunder and the cow god who lives on the mountain.
That doesn’t bother me at all, as long as you realize that if you come to the conclusion that you don’t like the rule the only thing you should do is cancel your subscription and find something else to play.
Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s a goddamned video game, and you’re ready to start a revolution? Get a fucking grip.
And even then, your logic could also be used to justify the very thing you’re ranting against-“I don’t like the rules, I think they’re unfair (to me), so I’M going to ignore them!”
I don’t play any MMORPG and don’t think I ever will, but your logic on this issue makes no sense to me. It’s a game. Games have rules. Rules are arbitrary. Are they fair or not, really, who gives a damn. That’s the rules of the game. For a game to work (and I mean any game, not just comptuer games), every participant must follow the rules, even the ones they may individually think are unfair or nonsensical. If they don’t like the rules, well, they go and play another game.
Where’s the dilemma here?
No, guilt by admission:
At least I’m honest slime, which is more than can be said for you or your friend.
How much thinking does this take? WoW is a competitive game. If Player A cheats by using a levelling service, buying gold, or paying someone to grind for him, he’s going to be much more powerful than Player B, who follows the Terms of Service. When Player A and Player B compete head-to-head, Player A is going to have an unfair advantage, and is going to beat Player B. It’s absolutely no different than hiding an ace up your sleeve while playing poker. It’s fundamentally selfish and dishonest, and (on a very minor level) destructive to other people. Blizzard’s pretty good about cracking down on this sort of thing in WoW, but other MMOs have been rendered unplayable by rampant cheating. It’s not a victimless crime. It fucks up the game for everyone.
Here’s my view: once people are willing to pay real-world money for virtual points, it creates an incentive so huge that it’s hard to imagine any sort of rule preventing people from accepting that money. Especially people in China who are so poor that many of them work in conditions that most of us would unhesitatingly identify as slavery. Some other method needs to be employed, if any such method would work.
I personally would not pay to play a game that bored me. I get paid for doing things that bore me in real life.
No dilemma. If I think a game rule is dumb, I am free to think so, and to say so. What’s YOUR dilemma?