Yes, I am that guy. I am the one screwing up server balance and driving up auction house prices because I was willing to part with a little bit of my real-world money in order to make my virtual existence a little easier.
I’m not the only one. A Google search for “WoW Gold” returned over eight million results. Someone is buying gold and keeping all these websites in business.
The site I ended up buying from was mmogap.com. I chose them because they had the lowest price I could find. I bought 500 gold, a paltry sum in the overall scheme of things, but enough to get my character a decent head start. The gold was delivered overnight and my payment went through without a hitch. I actually started to think that the horror stories you hear about these gold companies might actually have been exaggerated.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I realized I’d made a huge mistake. I started to receive weekly emails in nearly-readable English about ridiculously bad deals on gold. Stuff like: get 100 more gold free, you just have to buy 10,000! I was able to unsubscribe from the email list, but I made the mistake of having the gold delivered to my main character, who was now getting almost daily spam messages via the in-game mail system.
I haven’t had any suspicious charges on my card, thank God, but I did find myself added to some kind of chain letter address list. I’m now receiving invitations to participate in pyramid schemes at my home address almost weekly.
