Gnome corpse advertisement in WoW by gold farmers
Looks like Blizzard's latest World of Warcraft patch which had a spam filtering component to fight gold sellers is working since gold farmers are now resorting to sacrificial gnome death for advertising. The gold farmers are forced to stick to the creative since their free advertising power was diminished. As Raph Koster reports, "using the age-old client-side memory hack," farmers dropped Gnome bodies from the sky to spell out their website's name in front of the Ironforge bank.
Blizzard was aware of the incident and sent in their team to repair and wipe clean the matrix. Blizzard rep. Auryk wrote on the boards, "I ask that any player that witnesses these to report them strait [sic] away. If you feel so inclined, you can also post the realm name, and zone here and I can see what can be done about getting them handled that way. Please, once they are reported, leave the bodies alone, and do not linger around, or huddle near the bodies." Yeah, don't poke the dead Gnomes with sticks and what not.
[Via SecretLair]
Blizzard was aware of the incident and sent in their team to repair and wipe clean the matrix. Blizzard rep. Auryk wrote on the boards, "I ask that any player that witnesses these to report them strait [sic] away. If you feel so inclined, you can also post the realm name, and zone here and I can see what can be done about getting them handled that way. Please, once they are reported, leave the bodies alone, and do not linger around, or huddle near the bodies." Yeah, don't poke the dead Gnomes with sticks and what not.
[Via SecretLair]











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Game Artist @ Jul 5th 2007 11:17AM
As much as I hate gold farmers, this has me a little impressed.
Dracula Jones @ Jul 5th 2007 11:19AM
I noticed a perfectly straight line of girlgnome corpses in front of the IF bank last night. GMs must have caught them mid-creation on my server.
Zertoss @ Jul 5th 2007 11:19AM
"It's rainin' men! Hallelujah!"
Dustin @ Jul 5th 2007 11:22AM
Gotta give props for this, I say anyone that would go to these lengths deserves to make a few bucks off some gold.
Matt @ Jul 5th 2007 11:23AM
Hahahahahahahahaha.
Miharu @ Jul 5th 2007 11:24AM
It's sooooooooo annoying, now the gold farmers in my realm have started to auto invite everyone into their raid group and once you join it's just spamming the same message.
synce @ Jul 5th 2007 11:35AM
Reading about WOW gives me that extra boost of self-confidence I can always appreciate. It's nice knowing you're better looking and more successful than at least 8 million fellow gamers.
Matt B @ Jul 5th 2007 11:56AM
Blizzard needs to start perm banning some IP ranges for this crap. It is ruining their pristine world
of warcraft.
Wilson @ Jul 5th 2007 12:19PM
@7
HAHAHA
I really find this comment very, very stupid and funny XD
I know of lots of people, even girls, good looking girls who play WoW and every player that I know, has a good stable job, so let me tell you something: not all stereotypes are true.
Skenska @ Jul 5th 2007 12:21PM
Gnome Corpses? well thats fine, I guess, but you have to use minotaur corpses to impress me.
Jonathan Tran @ Jul 5th 2007 1:05PM
oh man I am so glad you never see this BS in Guild Wars. In fact since 90% of the "best" items are cheap as hell, nobody needs gold farmers.
Maybe we will put something like this in a future episode of Life in a Game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyXUVd2c83c
Jonathan Tran @ Jul 5th 2007 1:10PM
wow i am REALLY sorry about that triple post
h8rain @ Jul 5th 2007 2:01PM
Your skilling in Advertising has increased 1 Point
Beaudry @ Jul 5th 2007 2:03PM
You say it, Jonathan Tran!
yifes @ Jul 5th 2007 2:34PM
synce: "Reading about WOW gives me that extra boost of self-confidence I can always appreciate. It's nice knowing you're better looking and more successful than at least 8 million fellow gamers."
If reading about WOW can boost your self-confidence... wow.... you must be really pathetic.
Timmay! @ Jul 5th 2007 3:00PM
I find this highly entertaining, both for the concept itself (advertising via dead gnomes) and the fact that gold farmers are getting this desperate to advertise in game, but the fact that putting that concept into practice could mess with a server, and potentially crash it if it's on a heavy load, makes me want to see this stopped for good ASAP.
Chuck @ Jul 5th 2007 3:59PM
@7. Not everyone plays WoW like an addict. Lots of people are casual players too, like myself. Lots of us have stable jobs and don't live in Azeroth. I don't.
The only thing that actually costs a hefty amount of gold, is the epic flying skill. But i'm glad that the gold spamming is finally coming to an end soon. Imagine getting a tell every 5 minutes for an hour. It sucked.
Airan @ Jul 5th 2007 6:38PM
Christ, is that one gnome per account?
n_revolution9 @ Jul 5th 2007 10:12PM
No, this was a straight hack. Every gnome didn't give any corpse information when I clicked on them.
Elizebath @ Jul 21st 2007 7:19PM
World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment has filed suit in U.S. federal court against a popular gold-selling operation for spamming players with ads for virtual gold, according to the Warcry Network and other sources.
In its post, Warcry's Razorwire blog quoted a Blizzard employee as saying, "We felt that it was important to share with the community just how serious we are in our efforts to combat (in-game gold spamming). Blizzard has filed a federal lawsuit against the operators of Peons4hire, a popular gold-selling organization."
Blizzard spokesperson Shon Damron, in an e-mail, confirmed the lawsuit.
It's interesting that the company is going after a small outfit like Peons4hire. After all, huge outfits like IGE are making enormous profits buying and selling WoW gold, as well as virtual assets from other online games.
As Warcry put it, "Don't worry, Blizzard and the rest of the (online game) companies still don't have the (guts) to sue (outfits like IGE) for actually selling gold."
for more at http://www.vicsale.com