FBI Raids Students Over World of Warcraft Gold Farming

[ghostkitteh]

It isn't the fact that they were selling the gold. The bank accounts would be the main reason, however they could have been scamming people or hacking their accounts. Scamming is illegal, along with hacking. As stated, if it happens across state lines, then the FBI would be called in.

[Tehadam]

Recruit off of WoW? Are they fucking serious, LOL.

[FattyXP]

People forget that the FBI wasn't called because the kids were gold selling/farming/etc. They are suspected of fraudulent bank/credit accounts (ie identity theft) being setup/used to buy chinese gold.

[Slonato]

If you're wondering why the FBI is worried about gold-farming, it could be terrorism. There is a theory floating around intelligence circles, apparently, that terrorists are (or could be) using MMOs to communicate, recruit and raise funds.

Epic fail! Whats the most effective place for secretive communication? A public place that logs all chat and costs to attend!
If the terrorists have the capability to play wow to communicate, why not use their own chat system?

[FattyXP]

Recruit off of WoW? Are they fucking serious, LOL.

Yeah, I got a pretty big chuckle off this myself. Yeah, lets recruit pimply faced nerd kids to kill themselves. That'll work good the dorks would chicken out. Unless they told em they'll just res at the GY with the virgin spirit healer.

[Linaver]

Gold sellers cost Blizzard millions of dollars and I can't even imagine the legal mumbo jumbo that goes on when a Chinese gold farmer/hacker steals someones account or credit card from another country.

Blizzard doesn't sell gold, gold sellers cost them nothing. It's their effort to maintain quality in WoW. Hacker yes maybe, gold sellers no.

[FattyXP]

Epic fail! Whats the most effective place for secretive communication? A public place that logs all chat and costs to attend!
If the terrorists have the capability to play wow to communicate, why not use their own chat system?

Its actually not a half bad place, because of the fact that its a gaming network, the traffic of which being ignored by programs/people sorting through data to be spy'd on. For example if you have say 1,000 pages of intel in front of you, with origin/destination clearly designated a normal person would immediately discount the 500 pages of mmo gaming traffic, or just about any game traffic, just to half the amount of work they need to do. I mean, just think about it. say theres 300tb of internet traffic at once at any given time of day. 100tb of that is probably gaming traffic, 100 is youtube/netflix/itunes. and 100tb is random e-mail communication. To ease the amount of processing the mainframes have to do to log all the stuff that may be deemed sensitive they would immediately throw out the streaming media and gaming traffic.
Their own chat system would run through other servers that would potentially be monitored.

[Syntic]

Oh dear...

[Deleted]

And that is WHY i love to live in SPAIN.
No the man, no big brother(Gran Hermano is just a porn program)

[bolverick]

If you farm the gold, the terrorists win.

lol'd in class prof gave me dirty look, but anyways this is where all the us tax dollars have been going, stopping the union of gold farmers of america, STAND STRONG FARMERS STAND STRONG!

[spanishninja]

You make it sound like terrorists are spamming on trade chat:

"LFM terrorism full on melee DPS."

[Resentful]

You make it sound like terrorists are spamming on trade chat:

"LFM terrorism full on melee DPS."

Ahaha, oh I'm dying

[Toffie]

Probaly obama butthurt that some noob is undercutting him by a large margin.

[llcjay1]

Blizzard doesn't sell gold, gold sellers cost them nothing. It's their effort to maintain quality in WoW. Hacker yes maybe, gold sellers no.

It actually does cost them money because time and resources (which = money) are used to combat gold selling. Blizzard has to address people who have hacked accounts, investigations of bots and hackers, and the implementation of programs like The Warden. These examples plus aspects of game design that are intended to fight gold sellers, are all related.

It would be nice to see if gold selling was not a problem, how much revenue that would free up for other tasks--like releasing Diablo 3 this millennium >.>. Just kidding on the D3 thing, of course.

---------- Post added 2011-04-14 at 02:54 PM ----------

You make it sound like terrorists are spamming on trade chat:

"LFM terrorism full on melee DPS."

You, sir, are win.

[Evolixe]

I live in the Netherlands. I immume to the FBI. Unless they involve interpol :/

All terrorists will now come to europe, oh damn.

[Cursingmonk]

A little boy is walking down the street with a helium balloon, he is then taken into custody (as "anti-terror" laws don't need to give a reason any more) and kept in confinement, then questioned why he was walking around with explosive gas in public.

First off Helium is not explosive it is a noble gas that is lighter than air... I believe you are thinking hydrogen?

Secondly, there is a realistic threat with terrorists using MMOs as channels for laundering and planning because cell phones are so closely monitored. They can bury chat in an MMO very easily and using coded language can go unnoitced in MMOs. This really is not a media embelishment and has been discussed before now.

While the gov't does some funny things sometimes this one is probably justified. Fun article though =)

[Deleted]

Probably some of the FBI agents hade been ganked in WoW by the students while spying on the community

[Deleted]

Crazy thought, but I have a theory.
They were watching these students for whatever reason, monitoring chat logs and they see 'nuke the dps!'
FBI take this to mean a nuclear attack on the Department of Presidential Security.
They go full scale assault mode to take these kids down.

[underdogba]

I think a lot of people here are overreacting. The issue here is the fraudulent bank accounts, not the gold farming itself. That's a very serious crime.

[Train Heartnet]

First off Helium is not explosive it is a noble gas that is lighter than air... I believe you are thinking hydrogen?

Secondly, there is a realistic threat with terrorists using MMOs as channels for laundering and planning because cell phones are so closely monitored. They can bury chat in an MMO very easily and using coded language can go unnoitced in MMOs. This really is not a media embelishment and has been discussed before now.

While the gov't does some funny things sometimes this one is probably justified. Fun article though =)

Agreed. There has been stranger things that have happened.