Banned for undercutting?

#0 - Oct. 8, 2009, 3:46 p.m.

My main is an alchemist and alt a JC. I make my own epic gems and sell them. I can only make one a day.

I also raid a lot, which means I often get new gear. Now. When I sell epic gems, I take into account the rarity of the gems and the average price they are in the AH.

Recently, I have been putting +30 stam gems in our AH for around 200g each. That has been the average price for a long time.. until this one idiot came along.

He bought up all my gems, and put them back into the AH for 300g each, obiously thinking he would make a 100g profit on each gem.

I didn't really care at the time, I got the gold I was looking for, and day by day, I will transmute my gem, cut it, and put it in the AH for 200g.

It's gone on for about a month now. All his stam gems are 300g and aren't selling. All mine are the average 200g and sell pretty well.

Others sell theirs for similar prices now too. So he spent about 1k gold buying mine up, attempting to take over the market and make a profit, but I have been simply doing what I always do.

Well, he sends me an ingame email last night telling me he is getting me banned for constantly undercutting, saying it is "against the TOS to do anything that manipulates the in game economy", and that he has tickets on 6 different accounts open on me, as well as his friends. 6 ACCOUNTS! Apparently he owns each account, and opened a ticket to a GM on each saying that I am ruining the economy of the server and how I have been doing it for a long time now, and his guildies and friends did the same thing.

I didn't manipulate the in game economy. I am doing what I have been doing ever since WotLK came out with the new epic gems.

Should I be worried here? I know it is in fact against the TOS to manipulate the in game economy (ie: gold sellers, etc..), but I'm not. He is in fact the one who did it first by buying all my gems at their AVERAGE price and selling them at a WAY over inflated price.

If it was just him, I wouldn't worry. But he said he opened tickets with 6 of his accounts, and that his guildies and other friends he has on the server opened a ticket against me too.

I did nothing wrong, but I know how Blizzard will easily ban an account (especially with this many tickets open from this many people), without even giving me the chance to explain my side of the story

I have a friend who got accused of being a gold farmer/seller because he spent his one month vacation farming ore and herbs one one area before the WotLK expansion. Someone in game accused him of being a gold farmer/seller just because they were mad that he was getting everything, and spending so much time there, and opened a ticket against them, and 4 days later, his account was banned. All attempts to get it unbanned were met with the usual generic Blizzard response

Should I be worried?

Malkorix

#83 - Oct. 8, 2009, 7:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Should I be worried here?

Nope! The economy in World of Warcraft is a free market, and assuming that no other exploitation is involved, you should be just fine.

To clarify - simply undercutting another player with your legitimate merchandise is not a violation of our policies. You may want to point that individual toward some of the examples we provide regarding economy exploitation can compromise of:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21507

Q u o t e:
Exchange of World of Warcraft Currency/Goods/Services for non-World of Warcraft Currency/Goods/Services, and Vice-Versa (Buying/Selling Gold, Items, Characters, and/or Accounts)

Anyone offering World of Warcraft content for sale is attempting to steal from and deceive you, as no one is EVER allowed to sell any aspect of the World of Warcraft MMORPG except Blizzard and its licensees. Blizzard will not recognize the transaction resulting from the seller's prohibited behavior! Attempting to circumvent this rule by selling "the time put into the character" DOES NOT make such a sale legitimate, as the transaction still results in the transfer of World of Warcraft virtual property (which is acknowledged by every player as solely belonging to Blizzard Entertainment and/or its licensors) and in the seller receiving money.

CONSEQUENCES:

Any evidence uncovered by Support investigations that the account has been involved in the exploitation of the World of Warcraft Economy by purchasing currency, items, characters and/or accounts may result in:

* Removal of any World of Warcraft content that was purchased from anyone other than Blizzard Entertainment. Note that the sale of existing accounts, currency, items, and characters, or any aspect thereof, is not presently offered by Blizzard or its licensees, nor is the availability of such services foreseen.
* Immediate Account Closure of any account found to have been transferred from the registered user to anyone else. Blizzard Entertainment neither recognizes nor permits the transfer of accounts.

Any evidence uncovered by Support investigations that the account has been involved in the exploitation of the World of Warcraft Economy by selling currency, items, characters, and/or accounts may result in immediate account closure.

Malkorix

#90 - Oct. 8, 2009, 9:56 p.m.

Q u o t e:
A friend of mine got a temp. ban after making 20k off the AH. He mainly got it for crashing his local server economy.

Nope, I'm afraid not. There are a lot of reasons that players will give for a suspension. On extremely rare occasions it's even possible for a suspension to be levied in error.

The above reason is not cause for a suspension, and anecdotes like this are precisely how misinformation on this kind of topic is spread.