WoW Gold & Paypal: What Are The Risks?
Paypal is the most popular payment option for most WoW Gold providers, and quickly becoming the preferred options of many other online industries. However, there are some issues you should be aware of before using Paypal to buy WoW gold.
We hope the following information will answer your questions and give you the confidence to go ahead and make a purchase:
Credit/Debit Card or Your Paypal Balance?
Paypal allows you to choose the funding source for the payment you will send. The payment with either be sourced from your credit/debit card or Paypal balance (though you can also upload funds from a bank, but there is a delay of 3-5 days).
Sounds trivial? It’s far from it.
The first thing you should know is that using your debit card or Paypal balance does not provide you with any protection against fraudulent sellers. If you choose one of these payment options, you will need to go through a 4-6 week process to file a payment reversal if you do not receive your goods. But even in this situation, you are not guaranteed to get your money back.
Credit card payments, on the other hand, provide you (the buyer) with full protection against fraud or an unsatisfactory product. A quick call to your credit card company will ensure the payment is reversed immediately, without the need for the permission of Paypal or the seller.
The bottom line is simple – use your credit card!
What If I Don’t Have A Credit Card?
If you don’t have a credit card to make the purchase, you are at a disadvantage in terms of protecting yourself. However, there are some steps you can take and factors you can verify pre-purchase to ensure you’re buying WoW Gold safely:
1. Seller Location
The importance of location isn’t about time-zone, almost all companies are available 24/7 these days. What is important is accountability; if the company you buy from does meet your expectations, can you do something about it? There is much to say about legal accountability, international consumer law and various other factors, but our advice is simple - buy from a company based in the USA, Europe or your own country.
How can you be sure where the seller is from? Contact their Live Support, this will quickly tell you whether the company is a legitimate Western company or an outsourced Asian hub.
2. Verify Seller Credibility
Two independent comparison and review services that most sellers register to are MMOBux.com and BizRate.com. MMOBux provides excellent insider industry analysis, whereas BizRate is the most popular user review community for the WoW Gold market.
3. Is The Seller Paypal Verified?
This is a no-brainer whenever you use Paypal – make sure the person or company you’re sending money to is Paypal verified. This means the receiver has registered and verified their information, thus guaranteeing that they can be contacted and pursued by Paypal should things go wrong.
Our Conclusions
Whilst there are fraudulent WoW Gold sellers out there, the proportion is no higher than in any other online industry, and they are usually very easy to spot with a couple minutes of research. Use a credit card to fully protect yourself and rely on independent review and rating sources to find the best providers.
Good luck with your purchase!
Virtual Currency and the 2008 Presidential Election
Over 10 million Americans regularly indulge themselves in the gaming phenomena of the 21st Century; Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). The genre has developed into a global, multi-billion dollar industry with titles such as EverQuest, Warhammer Online and the infamous World of Warcraft. These virtual online worlds captivate the minds of players and act as a space from which people can escape the real world.
However, there are numerous examples of where the real world breaks in to inform, capitalize on or entertain the virtual inhabitants. Musicians, charitable organizations and big business have all made their mark “in-game”, often making a big impression on the masses of orcs, elves and post-apocalyptic humanoids.
But now there is an opportunity to reverse the roles. Players of MMORPGs are being given the opportunity to make a difference to one of the biggest real world events in history – the 2008 US Presidential Election.
Massive Online Gaming Sales (MOGS), an American MMORPG services company, have started a new initiative to aid with voter registration in the USA. They are enabling players of seven major MMORPG titles to donate their virtual currency to make a difference to the democratic process. Players donate their currency to MOGS which is then converted into its US Dollar equivalent and donated to the prominent voter registration charity Rock the Vote. The company claims this is a way for MMORPG gamers to influence the democratic process in a way that is relevant to them and meaningful to the spirit of democracy.
The issue of voter registration is one that has sparked civil rights action and wide-scale government inquiries in the past, and remains an important issue today. By enabling a wider section of the electorate to have their say, the end result is more representative of the population and reflective of their views. This gives the future President and the government as a whole a stronger mandate from the people on which to act.
Whilst MOGS claims the programme is a fair and balanced way to encourage participation without them showing any leaning to one candidate or the other, it can be argued that great voter registration favours Barack Obama. The Illinois Senator has a commanding lead amongst young voters, those who are more likely to be disenfranchised without the help of organizations such as Rock the Vote. Encouraging voter registration therefore improves the chances of Obama more than it does McCain. However, the company stands firm on their claim; “We recognize that our customers, and MMORPG gamers as a whole, have a vested interest in the future Executive and are equally eager to support the democratic process. It is through this process that we are granted our freedoms and develop our ideals, two things which our company relies on and could not succeed without.”
Partisan politics aside, if you’re interested in increasing awareness of voter registration or have some spare MMORPG currency you’d like to donate then be sure to check out the Donate Your Virtual Currency page for further details.
Blizzard’s Economy Actions Backfire?
Unless you’ve been hidden under a rock in the farthest corner of Azeroth, you’ll have noticed that the price of many vendor items have dropped over the past few months. This is seen as an attempt by Blizzard to curb what they see as a Gold farming/selling/buying epidemic. The principle was simple; reducing the price of core items requires players to have less Gold, thus lowering the temptation to purchase Gold from third parties.
The problem lies in the heart of the Azeroth economy; the Auction House. WoW players are finding themselves with a larger expendable income when they approach the AH, and are thus more able to pay higher prices for the items they want. This is reacted upon by sellers who no longer need to cut their prices to sell items, and infact opt to increase their prices across the board. Whilst Blizzard’s economic plan may have had good intent, it seems they didn’t pay too close attention to economics in school.
The result is two-fold; players need more Gold (to afford the higher priced items) and farmers are able to sell their farmed items for more, thus producing more Gold and becoming more cost-effective. This seems like another situation that will lead to Gold saturation on the main servers, and see another dramatic drop in Gold prices in the near future, regardless of the recent price hike.
The only thing that can seemingly save Blizzard from this situation is repeating the mass bannings seen recently, removing Gold from the economy and sending Gold prices shooting up once again. This is a proverbial game of cat-and-mouse, bust-and-benefit for both the game developer and RMT companies, but one must ask what the effect is on the average gamer.
Will we see constant fluctuations in the AH, where tools such as Auctioneer are rendered useless? Or have Blizzard simply preparing the landscape for another big change? Only time will tell, and we’ll certainly be watching closely!
WoW Gold Prices Surge After Recent Bannings
June 30, 2008 by admin
Filed under Gold Price
A wave of mass bannings instigated by Blizzard’s anti-RMT unit has shook the WoW Gold industry and sent prices soaring… well, kind of. WoW Gold has decreased in price month-on-month since January 2007 ($126/1000g) to it’s lowest point recently in June 2008 ($17/1000g). Prices have now doubled-up to the $35-$40/1000g range; a bitersweet blow for the Chinese farms that were hit. Whilst many have lost tens, even hundreds of account and thousands of dollars in lost Gold, the price hike will allow for double the profitability while it lasts.
Industry analysts predict this to be a temporary rise and for prices to return to the $20 mark within 2 months. Though some farms will have ceased operation after this latest Blizzard offensive, the rate at which new Gold farms are springing up will more than take up the slack.
Suprisingly the vast increase in price has not deterred the average RMT customer, with major companies only reporting a minor dip in sales. With the majority of gold-buying-gamers residing in the United States, this is an interesting turn of events when considering their economic fortunes in the real-world.
