Hello.
What's this guide about:
This guide is about how to make your gold safe after you have scammed it. There are no way you can make it 100% safe as I know of, but there are plenty of ways to make your gold safer, and harder for Blizzard to spot!
I do know there are some other treads about this on the forum - but I thought we could summon it all up in here and I will add it on the thread.
Why is gold laundering important?
If you do not do this Blizzard will most likely take back the gold you've scammed. And/or ban it. It was much easier to keep scammed gold before, but to my knowledge Blizzard changed their policy about this and now they take larger efforts to catch scammers or scammed gold.
Blizzard scam policy
As you can read on the site, scamming is:
- Acquiring items or any other "possessions" from another player through misinformation, confusion, or fraud (Scamming)
Running a casino (invite others to bet a pre-determined amount of gold, use the "/random" command, and if the "roll" is within certain parameters, lose their money or gain winnings)
If you get caught doing this you will either receive a warning or a suspension from the game.
a quote from Blizzard update scam policy
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if you get scammed on the European WoW servers,
you can actually expect the Game Masters to help you.
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Until patch 2.3.0, according to the policies, it was completely OK and acceptable to scam people in-game, separating the fool and their money or expensive materials, on the European servers of WoW.
The scam policy in place stated that only persistent scam artists who repeatedly ripped people off would be investigated by Game Masters, and even then, you would not get your lost stuff back.
The scammer might get a warning and/or suspension, but that's it.
This policy was completely different on the US servers of the very same game - on the US servers scamming was completely against the policy,
and both bans and reimbursements were dished out routinely.
The EU policy made little sense to the players
(except the scammers, who liked it very much).
As you can see here, before 2.3.0 there was nothing that the EU servers would do, except give the scammer a ban or warning. On the US it was different.
Now here is the new policy of what Blizzard will do:
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Investigations into item and gold loss
While previously we did not investigate or reimburse any item or gold loss incurred as a result of an in-game scam,
we will now investigate fully all losses, and if we are able to verify your particular case, we will try to assist with the return of any lost items or gold.
Please note that due to the large amount of variables involved in verifying in-game scams, reimbursement of items and gold is not guaranteed.
Please be aware that while we will try to assist players whenever possible,
each case is viewed on an individual basis
- if it is deemed that a player is being overly careless with the security of their items and gold, then we may review our decision to assist with such cases for that player’s account.
Now on to the guide about actually laundering your gold!
Remember - This is not only bade by me, there might be a few tweaks around here and there. But mostly this is what I've heard of other people. And learned from my own mistakes.
First off - you need to have either a scammed account that you are willing to loose. Preferably two actually, if you do not know how to scam, learn it, get an account for free or just throw out 20 bucks for the base-game (Pre-tbc)
On your second account, make your way to the biggest city after you have made a character. Now do the same on your regular account or the one you've scammed/bought the gold on. The city must have an auction house and a mailbox. After you are done with this - put an auction of a basic item, can be gray or whatever on the auction house. The buyout price of this item will be all of your scammed gold. Let's say 3k.
I'll hand it over with a silver spoon to you: Make an auction with 3000 gold or the gold you have scammed as buyout. The item can be gray, white or even epic. Up to you, I would recommend gray, as using a epic would be unnecessary. Make this auction on the account you do not have the scammed gold on. Now, go on your account where the gold is and buy the item as buyout. Now all of your gold is transferred to your other account through the auction house and to your mailbox. You will not get the gold delivered before an hour due to the changes of the auction house.
Now to the vital step: Send your gold again after you have received it to another character on that account. It may or may not be your main, up to you. Log off - delete the characters on both accounts. Quit the game and delete the WTF folder and logs in your "World of warcraft" folder. I am not sure if this is vital but I do it every time. I do think the logs and the other info is also saved server side and not only client, so not sure if this is very important. As a side note: you do only have to delete the account you used inside the WTF folder, you do not have to delete everything.
But use common sense: if you have a lot of gold to move, break the auction up into smaller chunks.
Also - If you do have a third account you can trade it back and fourth in-game with that and your primary account, you can even use your second account so you'll trade it three times. This should indeed make it safer.
You can break up the bought/scammed gold and send it in the in-game mail system to your friends in smaller peaces and make them send it back after awhile. This is also a way to make it safer - and should not really affect your friends in a large scale if you do get caught.
Remember - there are other ways to do this, use common sense and find something new. I can also mention that this method described here doesn’t guarantee you can move money safely 100% of the time, but it’s definitely a lot wiser than just buying gold and having a stranger transfer it into your main account.
Hope it made you wiser!