I have seen a few posts regarding selling gold in WoW and how to do it safely so I’ve decided to write a guide outlining what I know to be safe practices. Some of this is a repost from a response of mine in another thread but I thought it would be better to have it a bit more organized and detailed. Not included are the PayPal/customer verification side of the sale, as there are numerous guides that cover that topic better than I could.
I’ll start by saying that blizzard does indeed look for and ban for gold selling, dubbing it “Economy Exploitation.” Fortunately at the moment they seem to be first issuing a 72 hour suspension and final warning if caught (however if you’ve had ANY previous offenses it’s a permanent account closure…this includes swearing.) That said many people and companies still sell thousands of gold every week, it all comes down to the precautions you use, here are the general rules that I’ve found.
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">Transferring the gold</span></span><ul>[*]Do face to face trades. Both the AH and in game mail are heavily monitored for economy exploitation[*]Transfer the gold incrementally, having the other player put an item in each time. For example if I was selling 2000g to a player I would transfer him a stack of Netherweave cloth and have him put 1 in and me put 100g, repeating 20 times.[*]The exception to doing face to face trades is doing a guild bank transfer wherein a fake guild is set up and the gold seller deposits the gold to the bank and the gold buyer withdraws it. Guild banks are free for gold and guild banks seem to be only monitored if a GM ticket is created about item theft. [/list]
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">In-game safety</span></span><ul>[*]Do not talk about the trade in-game, all in-game chat is recorded and kept for an unknown period of time. If your account were for some reason to be investigated GMs would be able to read the discussion. Organizing the trade (which city, trade procedures, payment etc…) should all be done out of game.[*]Both the buyer and seller should be high level characters. The safest trade would involve two level 70s, face to face. [/list]
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">Out of game safety</span></span><ul>[*]Do not browse MarkeeDragon or other trading sites/gold selling sites while you have WoW open. Warden, WoW’s security tool, scans window titles, URLS, web history, running programs, and even IM conversations. If possible try and use two computers, one that you do the in game trade in and one that you do the out of game trade on.[*]Playing on a North American IP address is safer, accounts playing on Chinese or South American IPs logically will be more monitored.[/list]
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">Common questions</span></span><ul>[*]<span style="color: #FFFF00">Is it safe to use the neutral auction house to transfer gold? </span><ul>[*]It is subject to the same moderation that the regular auction house is. In addition to that it can be a large headache getting characters to them, and they take a larger cut than the one faction only AH. So as a general rule I do not use the neutral AH[*]If you insist on using the neutral AH, the safest way that I can recommend is to use it not to transfer gold but to transfer valuable items which can be sold on the opposite faction’s AH. Such things would include rare patterns or enchanting mats (work great because there is no AH deposit on them.) This does mean that it may take a while to sell the items to get the gold back but it is safer, and reduces that nasty 10% neutral AH cut.[/list][*]<span style="color: #FFFF00">What about selling to a gold selling company?</span><ul>[*]mmoexchange.com is a very popular site that connects gold sellers with gold buyers, there are also many companies that will buy your gold at a reduced price, a good list of them can be found here. I will outline the pros and the cons as I see them for going this route.[*]Pros:<ul>[*]Virtually no chance of fraud[*]Generally much quicker/easier, you just go to their site, chat with someone, and sell it. No creating a thread and bumping it, dealing with partial sales etc…[/list][*]Cons:<ul>[*]Severely reduced price to what you will get selling to a customer[*]Usually you will be transferring to a level one[*]They may require mail transfer (don’t do this) or not want to do incremental transfers[*]They will often be playing on Chinese IPs and yes if they get banned from the transaction you do too.[/list][/list][/list]
Following these general rules should make your trades safe but bans still do occur and Blizzard has been known to change their detection methods without notice. Happy gold selling /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif
I’ll start by saying that blizzard does indeed look for and ban for gold selling, dubbing it “Economy Exploitation.” Fortunately at the moment they seem to be first issuing a 72 hour suspension and final warning if caught (however if you’ve had ANY previous offenses it’s a permanent account closure…this includes swearing.) That said many people and companies still sell thousands of gold every week, it all comes down to the precautions you use, here are the general rules that I’ve found.
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">Transferring the gold</span></span><ul>[*]Do face to face trades. Both the AH and in game mail are heavily monitored for economy exploitation[*]Transfer the gold incrementally, having the other player put an item in each time. For example if I was selling 2000g to a player I would transfer him a stack of Netherweave cloth and have him put 1 in and me put 100g, repeating 20 times.[*]The exception to doing face to face trades is doing a guild bank transfer wherein a fake guild is set up and the gold seller deposits the gold to the bank and the gold buyer withdraws it. Guild banks are free for gold and guild banks seem to be only monitored if a GM ticket is created about item theft. [/list]
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">In-game safety</span></span><ul>[*]Do not talk about the trade in-game, all in-game chat is recorded and kept for an unknown period of time. If your account were for some reason to be investigated GMs would be able to read the discussion. Organizing the trade (which city, trade procedures, payment etc…) should all be done out of game.[*]Both the buyer and seller should be high level characters. The safest trade would involve two level 70s, face to face. [/list]
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">Out of game safety</span></span><ul>[*]Do not browse MarkeeDragon or other trading sites/gold selling sites while you have WoW open. Warden, WoW’s security tool, scans window titles, URLS, web history, running programs, and even IM conversations. If possible try and use two computers, one that you do the in game trade in and one that you do the out of game trade on.[*]Playing on a North American IP address is safer, accounts playing on Chinese or South American IPs logically will be more monitored.[/list]
<span style='font-size: 11pt'><span style="color: #FFFF00">Common questions</span></span><ul>[*]<span style="color: #FFFF00">Is it safe to use the neutral auction house to transfer gold? </span><ul>[*]It is subject to the same moderation that the regular auction house is. In addition to that it can be a large headache getting characters to them, and they take a larger cut than the one faction only AH. So as a general rule I do not use the neutral AH[*]If you insist on using the neutral AH, the safest way that I can recommend is to use it not to transfer gold but to transfer valuable items which can be sold on the opposite faction’s AH. Such things would include rare patterns or enchanting mats (work great because there is no AH deposit on them.) This does mean that it may take a while to sell the items to get the gold back but it is safer, and reduces that nasty 10% neutral AH cut.[/list][*]<span style="color: #FFFF00">What about selling to a gold selling company?</span><ul>[*]mmoexchange.com is a very popular site that connects gold sellers with gold buyers, there are also many companies that will buy your gold at a reduced price, a good list of them can be found here. I will outline the pros and the cons as I see them for going this route.[*]Pros:<ul>[*]Virtually no chance of fraud[*]Generally much quicker/easier, you just go to their site, chat with someone, and sell it. No creating a thread and bumping it, dealing with partial sales etc…[/list][*]Cons:<ul>[*]Severely reduced price to what you will get selling to a customer[*]Usually you will be transferring to a level one[*]They may require mail transfer (don’t do this) or not want to do incremental transfers[*]They will often be playing on Chinese IPs and yes if they get banned from the transaction you do too.[/list][/list][/list]
Following these general rules should make your trades safe but bans still do occur and Blizzard has been known to change their detection methods without notice. Happy gold selling /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif
