World of Warcraft gold sellers might be legitimised

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard is considering introducing a legitimate channel for players to buy and sell gold.

WoW players are forbidden from buying or selling gold, but as with any popular MMO the practice is widespread - and unregulated, meaning many gamers get scammed.

In a Battle.net post, Blizzard opened discussion on whether players would like the option to buy and sell gold in exchange for game subscription time, something other MMOs such as EVE Online have already embraced.

"We’re exploring the possibility of giving players a way to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold," the developer said.

"Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system.

"A few other online games offer a similar option, and players have suggested that they’d be interested in seeing something along those lines in WoW. We agree it could be a good fit for the game, and we look forward to any feedback you have as we continue to look into this feature."

Of course, those hoping to make real world money would no doubt just start flogging off subscription tokens instead, so there'd still be plenty of avenues for cheating and scamming, but it'd be nice to give genuine gold sellers a safe venue.

Worth having a chat about, anyway. I wonder if these tokens could be destroyed, as in EVE Online? It would certainly help drain excess gold from the economy if so.

Thanks, Ausgamers.