14 DAY TRIAL // On the Internet, no one can hear you scream. But everyone can see someone “scream” by writing a text in All Caps. Mark Jacobs, one of the most important people behind Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, recently told the world “I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING” on his blog.
He went on to detail how gold farmers tend to drag down the quality of the game, annoy players with their constant chat spam while also de-balancing the experience that some of the players have with MMOs. Jacobs said that they had been annoying him since he began playing MMOs and that, while playing World of Warcraft, he decided that when Warhammer Online launched, he would act tough on these people and make life really hard for them.
Since launch day, September 18, there have been more than 400 people banned in the game for gold farming and the action will continue. Jacobs says that Mythic, the developers of the game, have a special “strike team” that hunts them and even went to the trouble of implementing a “public ban message” which tells all the players that someone was banned for gold farming. So far, the players’ general reaction has been positive.
Jacobs stated that “We will continue this policy and expand it to the other servers. We are in for a real fight against these bottom feeders, and it will be a long and costly battle but it’s one we are going to take to them and this is only the first step. After all, this is WAR”.
The developer also says that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will not offer a sanctioned alternative to gold farming and that players will have to work in the game to get the currency they need. Warhammer Online is currently enjoying a successful and largely glitch free launch.