I have very recently become furious at how many people in WoW buy gold or pay for power-levelling of thier characters. It's CHEATING, and it makes honest players like me (and, I hope, the majority of the WoW community) have to work ten times as hard just to keep up.
More importantly though, it cheapens the entire gaming experience. If a person can just buy power and wealth in the game, then there is no reason to ever work for it. This makes playing the game a worthless pursuit, and makes any accomplishments in the game worthless.
I know that Blizzard's official stance is that they do not allow or approve of these things, but it is still going on with no decline in sight. I just don't understand why they can't stop it, so I pose some questions to you readers:
What is Blizzard doing to stop this behavior, and why aren't they doing more?
I am using this forum post as an opportunity to spearhead a movement I'm going to call Honest Gaming. I realize that efforts to stop these cheaters can never be 100% perfect, and I believe that the only way to see any significant decrease in it is for WoW players to protest by ostracizing those who are engaging in these unethical practices.
My principle: I believe that the pursuit of power and wealth for one's character should be secondary to the pursuit of a rewarding game experience. In a game where many players interact, this means a rewarding game experience for everyone involved. I recognise that while the pursuit of power is the entire point of the game, it is that very pursuit which is rewarding in and of itself, and which makes accomplishments rewarding.
The Rules:
1. The initial purchase of the game and the monthly subscription fee for access to the game is all the real-life money I will spend on WoW.
2. Every item, every skill, and every piece of copper my character accumulates will be the result of my own effort and time, or a result of the effort and time of other honest gamers.
3. I will not associate with people who break the above rules. This extends to quests, instances, guilds, and all other interactive aspects of the game.
4. If I find I am in a guild which allows or encourages this kind of behavior I will work to stop it. If the offending parties are below me in rank, I will petition for thier removal from the guild. If they are above me in rank, I will quit the guild.
5. I will encourage Blizzard to be more aggressive in stopping these behaviors.
I made a special point of including #4 because I believeguild members who are familiar with each others' gaming practices is the best place for this movement to start. When encountering a stranger in the game, it's usually very difficult to tell if thier character is artificially improved in one way or another, unless they are forthcoming with that information themselves.
A word about Twinks: A Twink is a low-level character which has been made unusually powerful due to outside help. This can be done ethically, or unethically. To buy gold and spend it on powerful items to outfit your Twink is not ethical. However, you may have a wealthy character who accumulated thier wealth honestly, and decide to mail some of that wealth to a different lower-level character. That is still ethical. Because your first character acquired this wealth honestly, it is still in accordance with the first two rules.
I hope everyone reading this will consider what I've said and join me in this movement. I plan to post this on other websites as well, to spread the word.