News Report: Turbine bans gold farmers while an ArenaNet employee reports secret deals with them



Last update: June 17, 2013 10:34

News Report: Turbine bans gold farmers while an ArenaNet employee reports secret deals with them

 
By PJ,
 
Warcry had an interview with Jeffrey Steelfel from Turbine Inc. about the Lord of the Ring Online new content update, Book 10: The City of Kings. Apparently, he is not a big fan
of gold farmers. When asked about gold farmers in the LotRO, he stated that Turbine is constantly banning gold farmers and it is a priority for the company's customer and data services team to track down both trial and paid accounts with suspected activities.

Another developer, ArenaNet who has recently announced 4 million units sold for Guild Wars, is under rumors that the company secretly supports gold farmers and dupers. The rumor was reported by Razorwire. The source of information claimed the company was intentionally involved in the exploit of the game's reconnect feature to create massive in game gold supply. Possibly, someone had leaked the insider's information of this bug, as a result high demand items such as Ectos or Armbraces of Truth were duped and sold.

A closer look to the ex-employee's blog itself revealed the relationship between the gold farmers and AreaNet. Behind what the players see as a fight with the gold farmers to protect their enjoyment of the game is a shocking truth that it was a setup.

"We initiated several 'ban floods', much like the publicly announced 26th May 2006 affair. Obviously this was just PR material. These were waves which bot accounts would be banned. The GFCs knew the accounts that were being banned. We provided them a list of accounts that would be banned."

After all it was the best for both parties; the gold farmers got to run their businesses, and the game company sold new boxes which became part of the $8.9 million revenue.


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