So.. this post is a little bit more in contrast (ie, evil) to the others that I've written.

But, I'd like people to be aware about just how easy it is to get a player banned, point out flaws in Blizzard's investigation process, and just how important it is to play nice and not piss off other players. In fact, these 2 methods alone have been tested and have worked for many years.. and there are even more advanced methods available.

If you're going to do this: please only reserve for your worst enemy. And they have to be completely terrible human beings too. So if someone is better at PVP than you or they consistently undercut your auctions, please just leave them be.. it might be me after all. =]

If it's a foul-mouthed brat though, go ahead and "give him the business" since it's probably not me (I'm actually very polite and helpful to players in-game.)

Blizzard Banning Policies

First thing I want to do is bring you up to speed on Blizzard's policies regarding suspensions and perma-bans.

Here are the links to their Terms of Use (TOU) and End User License Agreement (EULA).

Basically, they state:

- The game belongs to Blizzard. You're not the owner, just the guy renting the service from Blizzard.
- They can monitor you and your PC, you have no rights and no expectations of privacy.
- They can make any changes to the agreement whenever they want.
- Blizzard can do anything to your account, at any time for any reason or without any reason at all.
- If you look at a Blizzard employee sideways - you can get banned.
- If you question Blizzard on their forums (like this poor guy) - you can get banned.
- If you drink skim milk on a Sunday - you can get banned.
- Blizzard doesn't have to provide notice of any kind, you're on your own.

There are notices in big bold letters just so that you don't forget: "BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."

Who Does Blizzard Typically Ban?

Blizzard will ban you even if they suspect cheating or exploitation. Investigations by Blizzard are very fast and limited in scope, so action is decisive even when there is no supporting evidence.

Blizzard typically bans players for hacking/botting, harassment/spam, buying/selling gold, and buying/selling characters.

Since you can't force a player to hack/bot and it's difficult to get them to harass other players (but not impossible for a talented troll who can get them to say something offensive), that leaves us with the "shady underground activities" such as gold buying and character selling.

The thing is, most players are guilty of something already.. so if they're investigated, Blizzard always finds something. These are all dangers that completely innocent players can face.

Preparation Steps

- An anonymous Gmail account. Gmail doesn't attach originator IP addresses to email headers, which is an extra level of security for you when you're emailing the "hacks@blizzard.com" address.
- Firefox with FoxyProxy installed. (Proxy redirect software to mask your IP address.)
- You'll need time (You need to research the mark.)
- You'll need gold (About 10k or 15k gold. The more the better and you can use my gold making strategies.. it'll take a couple weeks to hit 10k gold.)
- You'll need a wireless laptop and real money (One method involves purchasing a new WoW account.)

Consider the costs first before making your decision.. is it really worth it?

Note: The use of FoxyProxy is optional, it might be a little overkill but it's always a good idea to mask your IP address when researching information or accessing wowarmory.com. The "hacks" department, GMs and Support Personnel don't have access to that level of detail (ie, wowarmory IP access and logs), but you never know when you might come across an overzealous IT security manager.

If one were so inclined..

Technique #1: I'm New At Selling My Account

This one has about a 60-70% success rate, and just requires an investment of time.

First, investigate the mark - the most important information you should find out is if they have any alts on the same account. Check their guild (he might be in his own guild, and all members are alts), add them as a friend to track movement, check AH auctions to see if they have any alts selling similar items, check arena partners (might have alts as backups), make friends with them on your own alt, or even join their guild if you can (learn more about them from fellow guild members).

Wowarmory.com is also an extremely useful source of information. You can actually get away with this method just using information from Wowarmory.

You see, Blizzard has a team of employees who monitor common hacking/trading webpages like MMOWNED.COM and ELITEPVPERS.DE. They're looking for new exploits or hacks, and occasionally come across players selling or buying accounts.

You will need to sign up with a new account (on the account selling forum) and pretend to be a "noob" selling his WoW account. You'll want to sound innocent, and sound like you're trying to protect your account and privacy as much as possible. Throw in some spelling mistakes too.

For example,

"hi everyone. i'm new to this, but i'm getting really bored with wow and wanted to sell my accounts. i hear its hard to sell an entire account so ill prob just sell my characters one at a time. what's a good price for this character?

*Link to their WOWARMORY.COM account*

i've been running him through ICC a lot recently, and do a little pvp. I got a ton of gold selling flasks and elixirs though and my character has 450/450 herbing.

how does $100 sound? please email me at xxxx@xxxx.com for more information

i want to make this transaction as safe as possible since this is my first time. i have a list of rules that the buyer must follow and i intend to use paypal"

Don't overdo it too much though, but try to make the person sound as "new" as possible. You can even research posts made by other users (from character selling forums) to get an idea of what exactly to write. You want to make sure their wowarmory.com account is linked, and add their alts if you're CERTAIN they're linked to the same account (adding their alts as "friends" will confirm this for you.)

Be polite, stress the importance of SECURITY in selling your account (ie, you're new so you're very afraid of selling your account for the first time.)

You also want to "poke a stick" at Blizzard employees since they'll be reading it. The idea is to upset them. For example, "Blizzard employees are so fat and lazy and they're no help at all.. I just want to get out of this game." You can say something even worse if you want. Just keep in mind that personal ego plays a large decision-making part of banning a player.

This method actually works surprisingly well, it just depends if someone from Blizzard reads it or not. I know a group of users that have been doing this for YEARS successfully. I'm not sure how well it will work now, though, since Blizzard reads this blog. =]

Try selling the target's account on Elitepvpers.de, wait a couple weeks, if the account isn't banned yet, bump it to the top and post it on MMOWNED.COM. If there's still no account activity after 2 weeks, contact Blizzard's (hacks) email address and notify them that you know someone who is selling their account. Don't link to the elitepvpers.de or mmowned.com websites though, just give them the toon's name. If they search Google for the wowarmory link, it will likely redirect them to the forum webpages where they were trying to sell their account.

The idea is not to tell them too much, but rather have them come to their own conclusions through their own investigations.

Technique #2: Pleasure Doing Business With You, Mr. Gold Buyer

This one has a 90% success rate and requires an investment of time, money and a lot of gold.

Build up enough gold, until you have about 15k. The more the better.

Access an open/public wireless access point from your laptop (desktop with wireless card would work fine too) and create a new WoW account with fake information.

Launder gold through the Auction House so that you can get the 15k gold to your new account. (e.g. buy out items 50-100g at a time, or transfer items that they can resell for much higher values. My cross-faction guide for example can quickly net the new account several thousands per day by just selling rare and limited supply items & pets, without actually involving your original account. You want to separate yourself from your original account as much as possible.)

Take your time doing this, build up a ton of gold on the fake account.

Then, all you have to do is walk up to the mark with your fake account, open up a trade window, and just GIVE THEM 10,000G. You can log out immediately after handing over the gold, or if they whisper you just say "plz follow instructions of what we told u 2 do" and logout.

Then after they go offline, transfer another batch of gold (e.g. 5,000G) to their mailbox from another toon on the same account. Delete both characters (Level 1's) after you transfer the gold, and stop using the account for a while.

Plan ahead for when you know they'll be raiding or running dungeons (humans are creatures of habit), so that on the next day you email Blizzard and tell them that a "player named x on y realm was bragging on vent about how they just bought out a bunch of gold from some gold selling webpage". You can use their armory information to find out which dungeon/raid they were in (and during which days/times) to give further confidence to your story. For example, "this past saturday at around 2PM he said.."

Typically, they'll keep the gold and not report it.

The gold transfer alone will raise some red flags (they monitor that sort of thing), it's highly unusual, and if a third-party reports the "inappropriate behavior" to Blizzard it will give them the excuse they need to ban the account.

In Closing..

There are a lot of variations to these social engineering methods too (for example, ensuring that the mark will keep the gold and not report it by convincing them it's a prize or reward from the guild. Communications of the "prize" cannot be made in game though. Most players are very greedy though and they never report it.)

There's a bunch of other methods, but these are the easy ones that anyone can do. It's scary to think of how many players have been banned for not breaking the rules but rather for being obnoxious assholes. This is just karma support.

One of the biggest problems with new expansion packs, is that it makes all previous dungeons completely useless.

When TBC came out, Old World dungeons/raids were no longer visited. When WOTLK came out, TBC dungeons/raids were no longer visited. And when Cataclysm comes out, no one will be visiting WOTLK/TBC dungeons any more.

A ton of hard work went into the design of these instances, it's a complete shame that they're no longer experienced.

Sure, they're fun for nostalgia, power leveling with help from high levels, and for twink gear - but let's be honest: they're complete ghost towns. When was the last time you saw "LFG RFK", "LFG ramps", or "LFG seth" in chat or tried to join a group using the Dungeon Finder?

Everyone skips old dungeons for leveling, because it's much faster just to quest or AOE grind - and the dungeon gear is a waste of time (if you can even find a party to help you out).

Cataclym will be introducing 6 new level 80-85 dungeons and 2 remade old instances. It's nice that they've remade a couple old instances but they still have the same problem. And, there are other ways to fix this issue rather than just releasing new dungeons each exp. pack or creating revised point systems (e.g., Justice/Hero/Valor points, etc.)

Here's the solution: make all dungeons scalable to the player's level.

There can still be normal (original non-scaled) dungeons, heroic dungeons (special tailored instances with slight changes to drops and boss mechanics), and then scalable dungeons. They could be renamed to "Original, Normal (scaled), and Heroic".

Boss mechanics in the new scaled dungeons will not even need to be changed, but it would still require algorithms to scale mobs and items drops. (I hear Guild Wars 2 will be introducing randomly generated loot which will be very interesting to see how well it works.)

The obvious issue is, "Well if you just scale mobs, then there's no challenge." Let's be honest.. there's not really a lot of creativity in any of the current dungeons nor is there any innovation in the new Cataclysm dungeons/raids. It's always the same tank-and-spank strategy over and over, with a couple little movement or time-based DPS games sprinkled in here and there. There's nothing clever about it.

With scaled gear, you can still have the same old equipment look (with or without a slightly different name) but with different stats scaled for the player. They've already been doing this experimentation with heirlooms, so it shouldn't be that hard to do it with old instance drops.

Just like player classes, dungeons should also have a "paper, rock, scissors" attitude. If you want players to visit old dungeons, give them a reason. For example, players can visit old dungeons to collect lower tiered gear that are required for special mechanics in higher-tiered instances. (Like collecting fire resistance gear for other instances - make it optional.)

Dungeon gear could be scaled for the player, just like quest gear (at the same level) is made available. Because of the challenges involved, there could also be small chances that more powerful gear stats would be dropped. There could also be special gear (for certain classes) dropped only in certain dungeons, encouraging players to try and find groups to visit specific old world instances. This would all be optional too - making it easier for newbies to get geared up for higher level raids.

Mandatory dungeon quests, however, should not be making a return. =]

So, here are some of the benefits with this new approach:
- Get players to visit old dungeons again, have fun, free up space, get geared up properly, and give players more options.
- Introducing drops for specific classes encourages them to find groups or give them a reason to return to old instances.
- Make it fun for players to collect special gear that makes it easier to survive other high-level encounters.
- New gear aesthetics not required. This gives players a wide variety of equipment "looks" (with similar stats) to prevent everyone from looking the exact same in capital cities.

Blizzard's approach is to simplify everything - removing tokens, emblems, badges, marks, coins, shards, etc. and just making 2 point systems for PVE and 2 point systems for PVP. But this is still only applicable for level 85's in the long run. Something must be done for players between 1-85 who want to do something different.

An alternative option is to allow players to collect Hero/Valor points from old dungeons, but a smaller amount. Level 85 dungeons will give large amounts of hero points for example, but visiting a level 70 dungeon or raid will give you a less amount. But the points can still be used for purchasing equipment at your current level or level 85 when you reach it. This would encourage level 85's to still visit (or solo) old world dungeons for points.

I have a feeling that we'll still be stuck in the same cycle though.. new expansion pack = all previous instances abandoned.

Since Halaa has been very quiet since the WOTLK release, it can be very difficult these days to farm PVP Tokens. If you have a friend on the opposite faction, it definitely makes things easier to collect the 2 Talbuk mounts or PVP rewards.

But if you have no support, there's still a way you can collect PVP tokens all by yourself. It's just a little bit more time consuming then doing it with a friend too.

You need two characters on your PVP/PVE account, one from each faction. Remember, you can only collect PVP Tokens if the player you're killing gives you honor.

Here's how you do it:

1. Remove all gear from the toon you want to kill.
2. Bring both of your characters (Horde and Alliance) to a certain location. You can park on the GY or on the bridge, as long as you're within the vicinity of Halaa you'll get the tokens.
3. Open up two copies of WOW.EXE (you can open up as many as you want from one install folder FYI)
4. On one WoW window, just login and position them where your other toon logged out.
5. Alt-tab to your other WoW Window and login again.
6. Play your other character and kill your naked toon. (The naked toon will still stay logged in for about 30 seconds or so.)

A 58 DK for example can kill a naked 80 pretty quickly, so don't worry about your other toon disappearing. You'll get a PVP token and about 150 honor for killing yourself. =]

Now, the more expensive Talbuk mount costs 100 Battle Tokens (plus some Research tokens too) so you'll need to do this 100 times - you'll also end up with about 11500 honor in the end. This will take a few hours, but it is possible to solo. Since most of your time will be spent logging back in again, I would recommend copying-and-pasting your password each time (login name is saved).

You don't need to close out each window, just keep alt-tabbing back-and-forth and logging back in with the same 2 windows.

This also works for the other PVP tokens in Outlands, as well as the daily quests in WOTLK that require player kills (e.g. Ice Crown, Grizzly Hills, etc.)

And, you can use this method for obtaining the following achievements:

[City Defender]
[Make Love, Not Warcraft]
[That Takes Class]
[Wrath of the Alliance] or [Wrath of the Horde]

This technique has been around a while and I even wrote about it back on MMOWNED a few years ago. It's very useful for self-buffing your characters or de-buffing them (like during the Valentine's event where you need to remove "Broken Heart" from your own toons.) But, not many people are aware that it can be used for PVP tokens/rewards/achievements.

What's nice about this "exploit" is that it's even approved by Blizzard too. :)


You can mage port your own characters too, but it requires a 3rd party in order to invite the second toon. It beats paying for ports though. =]

Interesting Note: While we're on the subject of creating parties, you can also create your own Raid group without asking for help. Just play Wintergrasp until the end, and you'll stay in the Raid after everyone leaves (if you leave WG early though, you will be auto-removed from the raid group). Then you can head to ZG or solo any other raid you want.

The Next Level

If you're a hardcore (and patient) player, there's also a way to get two of your opposing factions into the same Battleground too. =]

This is especially useful for soloing the harder-to-get PVP achievements like [Wrecking Ball] and [The Grim Reaper]. All you gotta do is park your two (equally leveled) toons at a special low-traffic location, like Snowfall GY, strip them down, and kill them over-and-over until you get the achievements.

It's very difficult to get two characters into the same BG, and it used to be a LOT easier when you could select the BG number. But, here's how you can do it now in AV:

1. Queue up for a BG on one character, once you join the raid, jump to the other WoW window, login and queue up with your other toon. After a while, the first toon will appear as "disconnected" but will not be dropped from the raid. If it's very early in the morning and there aren't many players on, there will be a (small) chance that you'll join the same AV as your other character.

2. Queue up for AV on one character, and as soon as one player quits (report them all AFK and wish for the best), jump over to your other window and queue up for AV. Hopefully, that toon will join the same AV.

This works well if you've ever joined AV matches in the past when both sides are unequally matches during certain periods of the day. If you notice a lot of open slots after the raid is created, there's a probability to get both of your single-account toons into the same AV.

Keep in mind, that this is very hard to do, but once you get in with both toons - you can just jump back-and-forth between your characters (WoW windows), get the kills and achievements all in one AV match.

Of course, this is all much easier if you have a friend from the opposing faction to help you out. =]