Think oil prices are high? A massive covert banning by blizzard targeted at gold farmers has crippled their operations causing the price of World of Warcraft gold to skyrocket within the past week...
Every day crude oil seems to hit a new high. It is all over the media. Gas cost over $4/gallon throughout America and is even higher if you live in a major city. As such, this 4th of July weekend any traveling you do will obviously be kept to an economic minimum.
What’s one of the best ways to save gas money, limit your carbon emissions, and rescue the planet? Retreating into virtual reality and playing a healthy dose of World of Warcraft of course!
However, the mainstream media in its attempt to cover the surging oil prices and the subsequent effects on the “real” world have missed an even greater crisis! The exchange rate of World of Warcraft US gold has doubled from $20 USD per 1,000 gold to $40 USD per 1,000 gold in a mere week! The mainstream media with its reality bias has completely ignored this story and once again it is up to the internet to restore justice to Azeroth.
Although it has taken a year for oil to double from $70 a barrel to $140
It has taken a mere five days for the price of gold to double from $20 per 1,000 gold to $40!
Although truckers may be blocking roads in America’s capital, Washington D.C
Naked Gnomes are blocking bridges in the Dwarf’s capital, Ironforge
The MSM has been quick to cover the riots over rising fuel costs all over the world:
And yet they have remained completely silent about the protests by races and factions from all around Azeroth about the rising cost of gold.
Take this group of violent naked Orcs who have refused to stop their rampage until gold prices drop:
*Negotiations to at least make them put their clothes back on while they rampage have thus far utterly failed.
Similarly the naturally more hippie-ish Tauren have continued to protest our dependence on Chinese gold:
Tongue-in-cheek aside market insiders attribute the drastic rise in prices to a supply shortage caused by a covert massive banning operation secretly carried out by Blizzard within the past week.
As one worker for a major Chinese farming operation who agreed to speak on condition that he remained anonymous for fear of losing his job said, "We got hit hard. It always a game of the cat and mouse with us farmers and blizzard. Today they got us good. Where I work we lose hundreds of accounts and hundreds of thousands of gold. I never see banning wave this big. Some of the smaller shops may no survive or be able to pay workers."
As thousands of accounts were banned, fortunes virtually disappeared overnight. The true total cost of the bannings has yet to be determined.
For each account banned not only was gold on the account (and the cost of labor to acquire it) lost, but also the time it took to level up the farming characters along with the cost of purchasing a new account key. This drastic drop in supply levels along with a temporary setback in the maximum potential output of the gold farming suppliers have created a short term supply shortage triggering the price of gold to double in five days. This effect was further heightened by the previous historic low in gold prices due to a recent series of price wars (see IGE letter below).
Less than six hours ago IGE corporate had to send out an e-mail to their affiliates/partners (which you can view here) explaining the "lull in the supply market" from the "recent bannings" and that they were prepared to accept the higher prices of gold. The letter also shows a bit of worry that the price increases will cause conversions to drop which is a clear indication that the bannings have at least some effect on limiting gold sales even if temporary.
So far there is no official word from blizzard on how many accounts were banned. We will keep you posted as more information continues to come in.
