Can I Get Banned For Buying WoW Gold?

March 19, 2007 by Apadwe  
Filed under General, WoW Gold

I see everywhere places advertising World of Warcraft gold for sale and even some of my friends have recently started buying WoW gold. They say it is a whole lot safer than getting your character powerleveled and I shouldn’t be worried about getting banned for it. My question is can I really get banned for buying WoW gold and if I can what is the odds of them banning my account?

Great question! It really is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to buying gold in World of Warcraft. As always you really need to take caution if you decide to and yes it can get your account banned.

Purchasing gold is against the World of Warcraft Terms of Use (TOS). Here is a tidbit from the main World of Warcraft site about this specifically.

Ownership/Selling of the Account or Virtual Items.

Blizzard does not recognize the transfer of Accounts. You may not purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, or offer to purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, and any such attempt shall be null and void. Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appears in the Program. You agree that you have no right or title in or to any such content, including the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in the Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service. Blizzard does not recognize any virtual property transfers executed outside of the Game or the purported sale, gift or trade in the “real world” of anything related to the Game. Accordingly, you may not sell items for “real” money or otherwise exchange items for value outside of the Game.

As you can see there isn’t any grey area in which you could get around it. Since it can get you banned, what are the odds that it will?

I believe the odds of it getting you banned to be very low as long as you are smart about it. Selling gold and other virtual items is quickly becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. I believe it would take way too many resources in order to ban all the buyers so that is why they seem to be focused on banning mostly the sellers.

I believe you will be ok as long as you don’t purchase insane amounts of gold at one time (over 5000g) and you don’t want to do anything in-game that would bring attention to yourself. I know a lot of people that have bought gold many times and have never had a problem with it.

Ultimately the choice is yours so choose carefully. Just remember that some of my opinions stated above is not professional advice at all and I will not be held responsible if you do decide to purchase gold and somehow get yourself banned. (I had to throw that in there. :) )

Comments

31 Responses to “Can I Get Banned For Buying WoW Gold?”
  1. Wally says:

    Thanks this helped a lot, I might by some gold then lie low for a while..
    you know, keep my head down until things blow over :D

  2. me says:

    well I have to say blizzard is prolly not going to ban you I have had a powerleveling and I got a 48 hour suspension but never bought gold though On other accounts I have and really theres like a 7 or 8% chance that you will get banned and a 20% you will get suspended the only reason they bother suspending you is because then most people would get scared and never do it again thinking they would get banned next time but nothing to worry About

  3. =-( says:

    I just got banned for buying gold, they ban you for a whole 72 hours, the 2nd worst punishment on their “penalty volcano” next is permanent ban..

  4. Pecoso says:

    I’ve bought about 2000g in 500g increments over the course of a month and no one really suspects anything. I’d say it’s pretty safe as long as you don’t buy insane ammounts of money at once.

  5. wena says:

    if u get banned do they take ure gold away?

  6. Chris says:

    They take your account…forever…its happen to me. i bought gold and got banned, not suspended, banned. I think the reason i got banned is because i spent to much money to fast. i am not sure though so be careful. i only bought 500g too. Also, i think Blizzard bans in “waves” meaning they ban a lot of accounts at once rather than say one or two a week or a day. I believe the last wave they banned like 10,000 account, someone can correct me if im wrong. But i have used power-leveling and only got a suspension so i dont know what that tells you…

  7. Zach says:

    Damn dude serioulsy Just got email back FRICKEN sweet GM XD i got 3 70’s on real world servers KICKASS

  8. wow gold says:

    Purchasing wow gold is actually a very small offense even if blizzard does catch you. The odds of you getting a permanent ban are very minimal. It is in blizzards best interest NOT to ban accounts. They are really looking for gold farmers and exploiters which ruin the experience for other players. You purchasing wow gold doesn’t really ruin the experience for other world of warcraft players.

  9. frank says:

    I’m looking to buy some thanks for the comments

  10. cheese says:

    No, you won’t get banned. Buy from a safe site, like MOGS. It might be a little more expensive but they are the safest site out there imo. A new way to get gold is the gold seller will invite you to a gold and tell you to withdraw it from the guild bank.

  11. Avoidlol says:

    I am not sure about this, but I sold a stackload gold on my account. And I did powerleveling 32-60 2 days after I got permanent account closure. However I sent them a mail that I were phished and I was on vacation and I was confused, they unbanned me and gave me FINAL warning. They said that they had no way to suspect my account for being compromised (hacked) but they said that my password was indeed shared. But they gave me last chance.

  12. Ger says:

    I was silly and brought 2000 gold for the first time ever last week, a week later while raiding eoe i was disconnected, i tried to re-connect and and got a message sayin my wow account had been closed and to visit a wow website for further details, did that and check my emails where i have recieved a notice of account closure for economy exploitation. So i have sent a email off to blizzard apoligizing for buying gold and with a promise that I’ll never do it again. I was just wondering if others have had there accounts closed for buying gold and if so what the sucess rate of having the account re-open is, also does anyone know how long it can take for blizzard to get back to me on this. Any help would be great thanks.

  13. scarred but smarter says:

    I finally succumbed to the temptation and bought 5000g. The next day my account was hacked because I’m so stupid I used my same password to order gold as my wow password (i really deserve a special achievement for that kind of stupidity). My account was then investigated and suspended. I also sent an apology letter with confession and am waiting for a response.

  14. arkanna says:

    TO GER:

    Yeah dude I bouth 20k gold and 3 days later I was perma banned for buying gold, I have also sent an apology letter to blizzard thrwoing myself at their mercy, lets see what happens.

    Have you heard anything back?

  15. Busted says:

    It’s hard not to buy the gold especially when it is being broadcast in the game. I mean every 10 minutes you see someone saying “XXXX gold for XXXX dollars.” I bought 9000g so that my wife and I could get our epic mounts without having to spent countless hours grinding. The next day my riding skill was taken away resulting in a 5000g loss.

    It’s pretty disappointing given the fact that this is just a silly little game. Taking this too seriously is kinda pointless. Basically it all comes down to time and how much of it you want to spend in the game. They should just remove gold as a factor in the game and have you spend “gametime” instead. ie) it costs 90 hours of gameplay to buy a flying mount. This is really what the formula is anyway.

  16. scarred but smarter says:

    account was reopened –took about a week

  17. jmac says:

    I bought gold through a website I thought was pretty reliable and was reputable. It was two days ago now and I havn’t yet been banned/suspended. I am curious, how long will it take for them to catch on? if ever?

    I have also even talked to a GM through a ticket about a quest problem I had and they serviced me with no clue that it had happened. Any input would be great.

  18. 0: says:

    My friend just bought 20,000 within 2 weeks. We’ll see what happens.

  19. 00ron6 says:

    dont….do…it… O_O

  20. Xitium says:

    Not sure if maybe I read that excerpt wrong but I only see mention of selling not buying .. I don’t honestly see why they care.

    1) If they ban your account they lose $15 per month, might not seem like a large loss but over time and enough accounts lost and it adds up. Sure some people will buy the game again and pay for another account but as the expansions come out thats a lot to pony up to replace it. Most would move on. Blizzard knows this.

    2) All you do with gold is throw it into the gold sink that is wow. It doesn’t translate into any in real life and blizzard owns all your virtual property anyways.

    3) To solve the problem would be to allow people to buy gold from them. It would cost them nothing and create more revenue.

  21. Lol says:

    Where in the ToS does it sate YOU yourself can’t buy the gold… it says you can’t sell it but purchasing it your aren’t selling. and I mean how can they claim you bought it maybe it was a friend giving it to you. thats why to be safe have 2 accounts… one you buy gold on and use that account to trade it over to the account you want the gold on :)

  22. Jack says:

    I have been buying gold for a long time now and have been Banned once. Unfortunatly i’m only online to Raid and i dont have the time to gather the gold for repairs ect..

    Basicly if i couldnt buy gold i would most likely stop playing wow as i would find it would suck up more time than i have to offer.

    When i buy gold though i usually buy a nice Epic off the auction house and trade it to the gold seller when he trades me the gold so it looks somewhat legitimate.

  23. oogabooga says:

    I just bought 1000, feel very guilty. But i will post something in a week to let yall know what happened.

  24. Imperial says:

    Don’t think they keep much of an eye honestly, a friend of mine has bought maybe over 50,000 gold over a year for him and his wife and has yet to be banned and i have bought maybe about 15,000 gold but i often wonder why they don’t just sell would probably double what blizzard makes now but unlike other games that take more skill to play its the more time you play to be better geared just sucks for all those who have an actual life and get no where

  25. Bob says:

    I bought 4k gold . I tried to log in a few days after, and i got perma banned…

  26. 1010001 says:

    Lol says:
    September 18, 2009 at September 18, 2009

    Where in the ToS does it sate YOU yourself can’t buy the gold… it says you can’t sell it but purchasing it your aren’t selling. and I mean how can they claim you bought it maybe it was a friend giving it to you. thats why to be safe have 2 accounts… one you buy gold on and use that account to trade it over to the account you want the gold on :)

    They have that in their database. Everything comes down to 1 and 0. Everything you do even with a BILLION accounts the can easily track you down and ban you. So don’t be fooled, i think Blizzard has pretty good programmers that now how to backtrack you.

  27. cool guy says:

    im gona buy 1k gold at once wts the odds of geting banned i dnt rly care about suspencion

  28. Banned123 says:

    Hi ppl, i recently got banned on my wow account. I got a permanet banned for buying gold. What should i do to get my account opned agian? I have played WoW since day one, and have never gotten a single warning for anything ingame! I would love to get some good tips :) Thanks all.

  29. ben says:

    damn i just noticed i was banned for buying gold a week or so ago thats some bullshit!!!

  30. pw says:

    I bought gold…once..about three years ago. I got an email in march that
    my account was getting closed.

    Account Action: Closure
    Reason for Action: Terms of Use Violation – Economy Exploitation
    After a thorough investigation, we have found that a player of the account listed above participated in activities designed to gain an unfair advantage in the World of Warcraft economy. These activities violate the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask that you take a moment to review these terms at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html.

    so… it took them three years and it says its permaban. i have not played wow in like 18 months but was about to start playing…when i pulled up my old email adress to read this.(after trying to login)

    i have emailed them.we will see whats up

  31. Joseph says:

    The Blizzard WoW ToS state they can suspend or terminate your account “for any reason or no reason.” So, even though neither the ToS or EULA specifically mention buying gold, that doesn’t mean they cannot suspend you for it.

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