The Holidays and Life without WoW.

Like most people I took a brake from my normal life this past week and spent some time with family and friends. I also didn't play any WoW. It was a little strange not knowing what is going on with the guild and with the WoW community in general so I did spend a little time looking at blogs and such. As a result I found two things that I think are worth a comment.

The first is a search tool that I can't remember the name of. It listed people that had linked to my blog. More experianced bloggers are probably laughing at me right now and thinking something along the lines of me being a noob. Well, I am. I still can't get the Item Link thing to work that was pointed out to me a month ago. Anyway, I was quite supprised at how many people had found the blog. Its not a lot but more than I expected. Thanks to everyone for the links and positive comments. They are appreciated. Now if I could just find the search again. Apperently google on my dad's computer is different then google on my computer.

The second is two posts on Adventures in Azeroth dealing with Account/Gold selling and tanking money for blog posts. Here are the posts: First and second. The posts are kind of old so I thought posting on my blog made more sense then posting a comment on his. The posts touched on three topics: 1. Taking money for a blog entry, 2. Account Selling, and 3. Gold Selling.

1. Taking money for a blog entry: Amanna was very up front and said that he was paid to make a post about an Account Auction site, but as several other people did I have a bit of an issue with it. I don't think any of us should confuse blogging with actual journalism, but nobody likes to be fead a line of bull. Amanna's post did seem to be a very balanced view of the site, and I don't have a negative opinion of him or his blog. However, any time you admit that you were paid to make a post you have to wonder what the conditions where, and what might have been left out. Having an ad on the margin of the blog would have been ok in my opinion, but doing anything that looks like you selling your voice or maybe you opinion isn't a good idea. All that being said, Amanna says that he donated the payment to charity, so don't stop reading his blog.

These next to topics are very similar so I will get one point out of the way. I think Blizzard is doing the right thing to try and prevent Gold/Account selling. Both activities hurt the integrity of the game and would probably destroy WoW if allowed to go on unchecked by Blizzard. That being said I am not a 100% opposed to buying gold or selling an account. Here is a closer look.

2. Account Selling: First off, I think Amanna is wrong about Blizzards view of selling accounts. Allowing someone to permanently transfer an account is different then selling an account. There are several situations where it is perfectly reasonable to transfer an account or an individual toon. The main one being family members sharing an account. While blizzard cannot prevent money from changing hands or research each transfer, this doesn't mean that they allow accounts to be sold.

My opinion on the subject depends on who is buying the account. If you are new to the game or even to the class, buying an account is like using a cheat code in my opinion. Your not really experiencing the game and are not really interested in playing it. It takes time to learn the game and the class, and that is best done at lower levels. On the other had what if you have already leveled 5 toons to 70, and are buying a toon of a class you have already played? I have heard of several situations where someone wants to play with friends but can't because they play a different faction or on a different type of server. I have also heard of people buying a toon on the same server so that they can have one of a different spec without respecing ever few days. This is ok in my opinion because it doesn't hurt the integrity of the game much if at all. Finally what about selling my account? I have put a lot more time into this game than I would like to admit. What is wrong with trying to get a little of the money back? If you know you arn't coming back, recouping some of the cost isn't that big of a deal in my opinion as long as you let your guild and friends know.

3. Gold Selling: Mostly I think buying gold is just stupid. I don't know who the typical gold buyer is but I assume that most of them are just don't want to spend the time farming it. Buying gold is expensive and if you don't want to spend the time to farm the gold you need then you probably won't be playing the game long. Mainly, it is just a waste of money in my opinion. The only exception that I can think of is for some hardcore raiders. Raiding can be very expensive and I can understand how some people would have the time to raid or farm but not both. If high end raiding is what you enjoy but have to many RL commitments to do every thing that is needed to support raiding, then buying a little gold isn't a big issue in my mind.

Anyway, that is it for now. Thanks again to everyone that reads my blog and has linked it. There is no toon update this post since they haven't done anything.