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… as per the official World of Warcraft website.

There is going to be a good deal of excitement from folks about this.  People who innocently rolled their first characters on PvE servers, only to find out later on at 70 when they decided that they loved raiding, that most of the top raiding guilds are on PvP servers.

On the other hand it will undoubtedly create a huge uproar from the hardcore folks who put in the extra time and effort to level their characters on PvP servers.  And let me tell you - as someone who leveled my first character on a PvP server - it can be incredibly frustrating and take a lot longer.  You also gain a sense of pride for having done so and have no problem at all referring to PvE servers as “care bear” servers.

For those players, seeing the droves of incoming newly 70 PvE wimps with zero honorable kills transferring to their servers in quest greens is going to be maddening to say the least.

I went the other way though.  I got tired of the ganking and the PvP braggarts on Lightninghoof.  I spent most of my time on the edge of a paid character transfer.  Then I eventually just rerolled on a PvE server with some friends and coworkers.

Oddly enough, the PvP braggarts are even worse here on Shandris.  But I get a kick out of it because what do these people know about PvP?  This is a care bear server!  Try getting a quest done or even just getting to the front door at any raid instance when you can’t unflag and hide somewhere for five minutes. If you haven’t experienced it, trust me. It sucks.

I always wondered though, why would Blizzard not allow PvE to PvP transfers?  They’re missing out on a ton of income by not allowing it. I mean, that does seem to show that Blizzard really had the interest of the players in mind. Like they thought that the PvP server players deserved the honor of being the only ones on those servers.  If you wanted to play on a PvP server, you had to earn it.

And that is why I believe they’ve made this change now.  Money.  Imagine the spike in their bank account when this went live.

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So here’s a new one in the gold farming lawsuit category. Instead of it being a game developer trying to stop a gold farmer, this random guy, Antonio Hernandez (a WoW player) decided to bring a lawsuit against a gold farming company.

The case of Hernandez v. Internet Gaming Entertainment, Ltd was originally filed back in June of ‘07. Hernandez wants it to be a class-action against IGE. He apparently has Blizzard’s blessing on the whole thing too.

According to this article, IGE claims to no longer be involved in the virtual gold trade. That’s odd because I visited their website and I couldn’t see anything there that isn’t related to virtual gold trading.

Who is actually to blame for gold farming though? Is it the gold farmers just trying to make a quick buck or is it the players who buy the gold? Much like drug dealers. Is it the dealers that need to be shut down or is it the users? Without buyers there would be no sellers. Supply and demand.

In Blizzard’s case what really matters is the gamers that pay their monthly subscription. If they shut down every player who was caught buying gold I bet that whole “10 million subscribers” thing would drop at least 25%. That’s a lot of revenue.

So I imagine that we’ll always see gold farming companies come and go. As long as there are users willing to buy, and game developers unwilling to punish subscribers, there will be sellers to provide.

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