Cataclysm beta invite - OMG I don't even play WoW WTF???!!!

[armerius]

did anyone else get a cataclysm beta test invitation e-mail from blizzard? i don't even play WoW

[Creole Ned]

Are you sure it's a legit e-mail? There are roughly a jillion scam e-mails out there that are WoW-related.

[Tick]

There's no way it's legit if you don't have an active wow subscription (or at least an inactive one). You have to opt in through your battle.net account.

[armerius]

hah.. they got me. chrome warned me it was a phishing site at the link. i never even bothered to click it.

that's hilarious.. phishing e-mails to steal WoW accounts. i had no idea, but i should have known better.

[samuelk]

Don't feel bad, Arm. Those phishing e-mails can be pretty sneaky.

Send me your WOW login and password and I'll check to make sure your account wasn't tampered with.

I work at Blizzard.

[Tick]

My guild has about 40 active people and we get like 1 hacked account per week. The hackers get everything they can off the character, turn it all into gold, get it laundered off server as fast as possible, and turn around and sell it. Most of the gold on gold sellers websites is from hacked accounts these days, I'd guess, since it's really rare to see anyone farming anything.

[armerius]

That's really just a sad state of affairs, but i suppose the less honest elements will do ANYTHING to make that quick buck

[Tick]

The other day in trade chat I saw what I can only call Organic Gold Farming. The spammer promised that his website sold 100% hacker-free gold. I've never seen anything like it before.

[Kermit]

So it's cheating in a slightly more ethical way?

[Tai]

The other day in trade chat I saw what I can only call Organic Gold Farming. The spammer promised that his website sold 100% hacker-free gold. I've never seen anything like it before.

That's really a treasure :)

[Tick]

EVE Online has something called PLEXs, which are Player License Extensions...basically, they're in game subscription cards. They can only be created by buying them with cash, but they are tradable (and destroyable - a cargo ship carrying just over 6 years worth was recently destroyed and all PLEXs were lost) in game. So you can basically buy gold from other players in exchange for paying for their account.

I think if Bliz did something like this it would get rid of about 90% of the secondary market for gold, and in effect kill off most of the profit margin for hacking accounts. Especially if they could go on the AH. No idea why Bliz thinks this is such a terrible idea.