MMO Players: If you could "legally" sell your accounts...

[KaOTiK]

guy gave me a ps3 and xbox 360 for my wow account a few years ago ... worth it! Met him on craiglist.

My BIL sold his account for a ps3 to a guy online (from NYC), surprised that actually worked out, haha.

The guy actually gave the account back to him about 10 months ago too, nice guy.

Yeah, some of the people that buy accounts are cool but really make you think wtf too.

I sold my original WoW account to a guy before burning crusade came out. The account had a totally decked out rogue (like second best equipped on the server), and a paladin and hunter both in full t2/t2.5. He paid for 6 months of game time, transferred the paladin off the account, transferred the rogue to another server and 3 months after he bought it, emailed me saying I can have it back.

I was like wtf? I wasn't complaining, but was and have been really confused by it ever since. First thing I would of done if I was him was try and sell it to recoup some of the money I shelled out for the account (he bought it from me for $950). Needless to say, I sold the account again LOL

 

[lord_emperor]

The first time I quit WoW I sold my account for $800.

About two years later I got an e-mail from Blizzard that "my" account was involved in suspicious activity, had been temp-banned and the password reset and sent to me.

Of course I had long forgotten the contact info of the guy I sold it to and he never contacted me about it. /shrug

 

[RPD]

I never understood why companies ban this anyways. Is it just because they don't get a cut of the sale, it would somehow cheapen the gaming environment or what?

 

[Grooveriding]

I never understood why companies ban this anyways. Is it just because they don't get a cut of the sale, it would somehow cheapen the gaming environment or what?

That may be part of it, I think another is that they don't a business being made of people creating accounts specifically for the purpose of selling them.

*shrug* I played WoW for about three years from its release and I sold my account via a service for $1300 when I left the game. Had zero problems with it. I paid for the game/expansions, paid the monthly fee and Blizzard is not setting down the laws of a civil society, just trying to regulate their game.

Nothing wrong with selling your account imo.

 

[Powermoloch]

I would.

 

[Zenoth]

Discretion is a big thing for selling an account. If someone finds out you sold the account and reports it, the company will ban the account and the buyer will try and get their money back if it happened shortly after buying it.

Also, buyers don't want other people to know they are an "ebayer" and looks for people who can keep it all quiet.

Selling an MMO account certain does requires a fair bit of trust in both parties.

Wow, this thread comes back and I didn't even remember I myself replied in it at some point, only to read his reply to my own post, and I inevitably laughed at his ignorance. I do appreciate that you came in and told him basically why it had to be done that way or otherwise seeing the risk of being reported since it wasn't authorized by the developers and the publisher of the game. Had you not replied to let him know I would have forced myself to type him a wall of text that he would have most likely have never read anyway.

You, sir, saved me time, thanks.

 

[PrayForDeath]

I was too lazy to sell my account when I quit WoW (just after Cataclysm shipped. didn't buy it.)

My main character was gold capped (before they upped it) at something like 214,000 gold. Was pretty decked out for an end of expansion (Wrath) toon. Had super-rare 10man achievements and titles (Herald of the Titans, Alone in the Darkness, Dedicated Insanity, etc...)

So I guess it was worth quite a bit. Sadly I was just too lazy to find someone who would buy it.

 

[gothamhunter]

Where did you guys sell your account at? I don't have anything spectacular, but I do have a level 85 BE DK that's pretty good. Main problem is that every once in a while I get an itch to play it again (about twice a year) so I break down and buy a month lol.

 

[Angelo Cameo]

I would have no problem selling my account, I will applaud the first developer to incorporate this feature.

 

[rivan]

if it were official and legal, they'd have minimal value given how many basement dwellers would do it as a soda & nachos job.

This.

That said, I've sold 3 accounts over the years when I was done with games. One wasn't even a max-level account (go go AC!) and netted me $800. That was my first one to sell, and I was solicited by my guild - they pooled their resources and made me an offer when I said I was done playing. I'd been running a bot a LOT of people had gotten used to, and they didn't want it to go away.

 

[rivan]

I never understood why companies ban this anyways. Is it just because they don't get a cut of the sale, it would somehow cheapen the gaming environment or what?

If someone buys an account, the dev isn't selling a box, and isn't getting the subscription payments while the person levels up.

Also, it's against the spirit of the game to buy your way to the top, imo. (Though, as you see above, that didn't stop me from selling )

 

[Craig234]

Long ago, I spent a lot of time criticizing the selling of accounts. Back then, it was more about the community and robbing people of the 'prestige' they had earned.

A group of players could know they had each put a lot of effort into leveling; having someone buy their way into that group robbed the people who had done so of limited guild, raid, and other resources in the game, and 'cheapened' it. It was also a violation of their agreement.

But I think that's changed as the games have changed, to a near 'who cares'. I've never sold any, in part just out of continuing the habit of not doing so, in part because it's not legal, in part because I don't want to (just as I basically never delete chars), maybe a bit of a packrat keeping them too.

There was a lot of bad logic by sellers though, that they 'deserved' to be paid.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

This.

That said, I've sold 3 accounts over the years when I was done with games. One wasn't even a max-level account (go go AC!) and netted me $800. That was my first one to sell, and I was solicited by my guild - they pooled their resources and made me an offer when I said I was done playing. I'd been running a bot a LOT of people had gotten used to, and they didn't want it to go away.

This makes me think of something else. I think it speaks a lot about the game's quality(or depth and lasting appeal anyway) and appropriateness of difficulty if people are willing to pay for a high level character.

If games keep getting faster and faster to level up, it's going to eat away the driving force for account sales from within.

 

[Feneant2]

I would do it in a heartbeat but because it's against the EULA the lack of protection bothers me so I've never done it. And allowing them to be sold (such as the Eq2 specific servers) made the value crash down to nothing.

That said, I did sell my platinum when I quit Everquest 1 about 8 years ago, had made 500$ for game currency only which was impressive. I had considered doing the same in Eq2 but the currency there was worth about 50x less than it was in Eq1.

 

[KaOTiK]

I would do it in a heartbeat but because it's against the EULA the lack of protection bothers me so I've never done it. And allowing them to be sold (such as the Eq2 specific servers) made the value crash down to nothing.

That said, I did sell my platinum when I quit Everquest 1 about 8 years ago, had made 500$ for game currency only which was impressive. I had considered doing the same in Eq2 but the currency there was worth about 50x less than it was in Eq1.

I made quite a bit of money off of WoW gold. I started playing again late into TBC expansion, when WOTLK hit I had made tons of gold and started selling it, took a break for a bit came back for Cata and made a fortune and had been selling it since Cata went live up till a month ago. I made a few grand since Cata went live selling gold alone in WoW lol.

 

[ayabe]

Wouldn't really care as I wouldn't sell any character to anyone. Not that I play MMO's so it's moot, but I could have gotten a lot for my WoW account back in the day, or my AO account.

I am just fundamentally not ok with other people running around with my chars.

 

[1ceHacka]

I made quite a bit of money off of WoW gold. I started playing again late into TBC expansion, when WOTLK hit I had made tons of gold and started selling it, took a break for a bit came back for Cata and made a fortune and had been selling it since Cata went live up till a month ago. I made a few grand since Cata went live selling gold alone in WoW lol.

Man, you are a billionaire in Eve and in WoW. Tell me your secrets!!

That said, I have bought/sold accounts since TBC in WoW with very few issues. I have been scammed and learned some lessons.

 

[RPD]

If someone buys an account, the dev isn't selling a box, and isn't getting the subscription payments while the person levels up.

Also, it's against the spirit of the game to buy your way to the top, imo. (Though, as you see above, that didn't stop me from selling )

Ah, good point, I can agree with that logic.

 

[Majic 7]

Got an email from Blizzard a few days ago about suspicious activity on my account. "it has come to our attention that you are trying to sell your personal WOW account" Trouble is I've never bought WOW or set up an account. May have got a copy with a video card years ago, not sure. The game never appealed to me so if I got a freebie I would have thrown it away. Sent a reply to them that I didn't know what they were talking about. Have not heard back from them. Kinda weird.

 

[gothamhunter]

Got an email from Blizzard a few days ago about suspicious activity on my account. "it has come to our attention that you are trying to sell your personal WOW account" Trouble is I've never bought WOW or set up an account. May have got a copy with a video card years ago, not sure. The game never appealed to me so if I got a freebie I would have thrown it away. Sent a reply to them that I didn't know what they were talking about. Have not heard back from them. Kinda weird.

Did you give them your credit card info and ssn at least?


Seriously though - scammers send me at least 5 of those emails every day; check the link to the "login" page - I bet it's something like us.battle-accountlogin.net.USA.com, whereas the actual page is us.battle.net.

 

[Dumac]

Whats up with the quotes?

 

[Dumac]

Got an email from Blizzard a few days ago about suspicious activity on my account. "it has come to our attention that you are trying to sell your personal WOW account" Trouble is I've never bought WOW or set up an account. May have got a copy with a video card years ago, not sure. The game never appealed to me so if I got a freebie I would have thrown it away. Sent a reply to them that I didn't know what they were talking about. Have not heard back from them. Kinda weird.

Did you check your account? I got one of those, and was surprised to see that I had a WoW Battle Chest on my account (which I didn't buy, of course). I guess someone hacked into my account and used it as a stage for their WoW account?

 

[Majic 7]

Did you give them your credit card info and ssn at least?


Seriously though - scammers send me at least 5 of those emails every day; check the link to the "login" page - I bet it's something like us.battle-accountlogin.net.USA.com, whereas the actual page is us.battle.net.

Actually the email is from Europe. Which did set off alarms, as did the red security border on the email. Probabaly related to the many emails I have received about compromised accounts lately. They got nothing from me.

 

[Majic 7]

To Dumac: Like an idiot I did click on it but got another red security warning about a dicey site and backed out. Then I hit reply to their email and said I didn't have an account.

 

[skace]

I never understood why companies ban this anyways. Is it just because they don't get a cut of the sale, it would somehow cheapen the gaming environment or what?

They ban it because they don't have a safe and accurate way of legitimizing the deals. I can sell you my wow account, then call Blizzard and tell them I lost my password and show them proof of my original purchase, they will give me the account back and you can't do anything about it. If the account sale was legal, you'd be able to then bitch to Blizzard as well that the account you just bought was stolen back and they'd have to sort things out as some sort of small claims court.

Now if they gave you a legitimate medium by which to sell accounts, say through the user interface. They would then have to deal with issues such as hackers hacking accounts to offload them for cash and casual hacking, such as friends or because someone left their account logged in somewhere, would get potentially sold in a short period of time for a quick buck.

The obvious answer is to make it illegal.