Renting out accounts to gold-farmers?

[Hellcommander]

Hi!

I remember that back in the vanilla/TBC days, gold farmers would pay you for RENTING your account. Either in gold or $$$.

I rented out a lvl 70 druid I ebayed (and did not use) for one month, and got 14k gold for it. (in tbc)

Have this part of the gold industry died off?

Or is there someone who still rents accounts? If so, Who?

- Hellcommander

[zycamzip]

The industry no longer exists, or has turned into a scam, thus not allowed in most places. Botting is much cheaper then hand farming these days, and you can pretty much level fairly quickly.

Here's the run down for you though - any game which does not have bots, could be used to hand farm. However, if the accounts don't get banned, then Chinese farmers can do it themselves. They couldn't in WoW at the time, their IP would get insta banned (till a method was found to get around the crackdowns). Once the crackdowns were bypassed however they still had trouble leveling them fast enough, to take advantage of the gold which could be farmed at level 60/70.

Now 2 things plagued the farmers at the time... 1) scammers who would "rent the account to them" for a few days, then recall the accounts taking all the gold with them, and still demanding payment. 2) scammers who would take the accounts, farm on them, and then not pay the people who rented to them.

A 3rd problem also happened, when people's accounts were eventually banned, the people who rented their accounts out, wanted restitution - some of them were making $600 a month or more on their accounts, lasting upto 3 months... Was anyone's just leveled account worth $1800 at the time? Not really. They were being sold for $300 or so, for a new level 60.

So no, there is no legit company still renting accounts. This part of the gold industry DID die off. While other games might popup to take their place, if they don't ban Chinese farmers and their VPNs, or if botters popup quickly, then there will be no market for it. Pretty much any time, any game is announced, a botting company makes a game for it. Prime examples are Viper bots, Macro Goblin, and Buddy bots.

And if you haven't guessed by now, yes I was in that portion of the industry at that time. I even had someone who ended up being a "reseller" for me, who scammed all his customers. Left a very nasty taste in my mouth for a long time.

[Hellcommander]

Thank you for the answer

I was hoping to get to use my 24 accounts for something useful, instead of just rotting in blizzards database. But, I kinda expected it.

+Rep for you