Let's face it allot of games can make you addicted and if those addicted people could buy stuff with real money you will have a problem at your hand. I see it in allot of F2P games where people pay way more then they can afford.

The real strategy is to get gangster...Let me explain!

blizzard as said might have some very hard hoops to jump through with laws and regulation when it comes to selling gold.

Also the fact they could lose a huge amount of playerbase. It could go either way..It could do really well , or blow up in there faces.

So maybe blizzard plays it safe?.... Maybe they do actually make money off of selling gold. In other words they actually control the gold selling through unknown resources. Kinda like having a private swiss bank account.

To avoid many complications , of coarse they would say . We dont allow gold selling. buying or selling gold can get you banned .

So for the most part they just turn there heads the other way while gold is being sold. Set up false bust . to make it look legit. Now i cant say for sure if this is how it is , but if i were blizzard i would probably do it.

Blizzard maybe just a game company , but money talks. with money comes power.

with power you can get away with anything. just ask OJ.

This is just a personal speculation..In no way or form am i saying that these statements of ilegal activity are being performed by blizzard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWvHcoqru7I

word.

as i said from the day one , the so called chinese gold farmers were blizzards employees just making more money to company.

Goldsellers are everywhere, I don't exactly doubt blizzard has some profit in this.

Selling gold is for losers, none who has any control over market really does that.

To sell gold you have to have valuable game assests aviable for gold and virtually unlimited demand for them. That is not the case in WoW.

Game developers do not sell gold, they sell other goods than gold, goods more valuable and important than gold, so that gold farmers cannot compete. Not just because publishers can make the goods out of thin air but also because goldfarmers cannot make them at all.

BTW: Money is not what it used to be, not in game and not in real life. In my childhood money was gold, it is not even worthless paper any more. Game money buys you most things in EvE but very little in most other MMOs and money are used only because they are forced as trade medium not because they are desireable by itself. Selling gold would make this painfully obvious.

Interesting thread. As an anecdote, the only player I knew who bought gold and PLs in WoW was a casual much like Emergence described in one of his posts (and no, it isn't me before anyone asks).

Let's figure out first what we mean when we say 'selling gold'. Is it an RMT shop style idea where the game is free to download and access but past a certain point people have to start forking out or play with limitations? Is it a special subscription-based server that people can do RMT for? Is it only certain items that players pay real money for and then sell on to other players for ingame gold? Or is it running a business on the side that sells gold legitimately for real money? I see some confusion on this in this thread.

If we look at RMT cash shops, we can see this would be an easy way for Blizz to sell an effectively ingame currency for real money. However, would Blizz win out if it did this and pulled the plug entirely on its P2P model? I guess it depends on what restrictions go with it? How would you feel as a player if Blizz suddenly decided that you have to pay to unlock former areas you used to have access to? Or that you have to buy bag slots, bank slots, etc. because now that everyone is no longer a paying customer who you have to start out from scratch? Or that you would have to fork out more money to buy expac-like content because I have noticed that RMT shops tend to charge more for that kind of thing. I am sure that people would fork out money for cosmetic pets, gear, etc., but if their WoW habit got really expensive, they might not want to stick around. If they're serious PvPers they might not want to stick around either if they have to pay to compete and that could destroy the whole aspect of arena fights as we see them now.

A hybrid F2A/P2P model might work out to Blizzard's benefit, but remains to be seen if it works to the benefit of the players.

Looking at keeping some servers RMT and others normal P2P, well as someone already pointed out, that didn't work out so well in EQ2. Since WoW is a competitive game for many, you would effectively have some servers branded as pay-to-win servers, which is not the most attractive reputation a server can have. I doubt that Blizz would gain much, and in effect might lose out especially if they open new servers to accommodate that kind of play (new servers cost money).

Special items sold on for ingame money? Well, I think that could actually work depending on what these items were for. This has worked out in EVE keeping in mind that the PLEX is sold on a player-run market. Maybe something similar could be done in WoW with game-time?

Running a second business on the side? I am not sure how to reply to that one. I guess it would depend on how much Blizzard would advertise it ingame too. If you're getting spammed legitimately all the time to buy their gold, wouldn't you get fed up after a point? To me the goldspammers ruin my game immersion and it's one thing that will drive me away from a game if it gets too annoying. I am sure there are others like me. It could also have dire effects on the game's economy, especially for those who want nothing to do with RMT. Then there is the PL aspect: would a legitimate Blizzard-run goldseller site sell other services like PLing? If it didn't, then players would still resort to the illegal service-providers. If it did, then what would it be saying about its own game: it's too annoying and dull to be played the proper way?

If Blizzard sold gold they would loose subs... so no its not a good business decision

Problem with the EQ2 exchange servers, is who wants to cheat on a server where everyone cheats? People who buy gold wanna do it on normal servers where it might give them an edge.

I've thought about it before, and blizz could make tons of money selling gold to players, but I think ultimately it would destroy the economy and thus the game. It would not last, and seperate servers like EQ2 has dont work well as I stated previously.

Best way they could do it, is to set up their own gold selling site, secretly, and sell gold at crazy low prices and snuff out the competition.