Have you heard the horrible news? Gold farming ruins the game. Rich players have an unfair advantage. Buying gold causes pedophilia. Every article I read about RMT (real money transfer, which infers WoW isn’t real or something, ridiculous!) says the same thing, but for every top player I’ve talked to, each has stressed that they don’t need to buy gold. The top players get gold and items because they’re good, charismatic, respected, and unemployed with greasy keyboards and mustard stained boxers.
This got me wondering, could a rich person really buy their way to the top of the server? Can wealth compete with mustard stains? Money can make people do many things, but what kind of money are we talking about? How much would it cost, using available services, to create THE BEST equipped character? Google revealed a powerleveling service that will sit in WSG and AV for half a year until you’re Rank 14, for just $2,700. A quick search of playerauctions and ebay unearthed a few exceptional accounts for around $3,000. While these are decent characters with full tier 2, perhaps a tier 3 item or two – none of them are the absolute best on their servers – not even close. And this article isn’t about buying the best account – it’s about creating the greatest your server has to offer.
Let’s get down to business Mr. Rich guy, you want the best and I’m here to give it to you. To start off, you’ll have to buy the World of Warcraft.
$40
Since we plan on breaking the rules, we better use gamecards instead of a credit card. As an added bonus, gamecards are cheaper than Blizzard’s best subscription rates. $12.50 per month, and let’s assume you stick around for 6 months.
$75
You made an orc named “Zzugzugg”, genius! A level 1 can’t very well be the best on the server, so we need to get you level 60 and fast! Since you’re rich, we don’t have to resort to buying a bot program – or even worse, playing the game. We will find someone to get level 60 for you.
$180
You’re level 60 and ready for the top dungeons, right? Sorry Zzugzugg, you still need to finish the quests to get attuned for each dungeon. I mean, pay someone to finish the quests. A leveling service offers the following attunement prices:
Onyxia - $50
MC - $30
BWL - $30
Nax - $50
Now that you’re keyed it’s time to get the best equipment. Thankfully there are many ways to get equipment in WoW,
- Auction House
- Tradeskills
- PvP
- Raiding
Unthankfully, only one of those can produce the absolute best equipped player, and that is the 4th option – raiding. And to be the best equipped player you’ll have to go on the best raids, which are only experienced by being in the best guild.
$??
The problem is that you can’t pay a leveling service to join the best guild for you. I googled and googled but none of them offer that service, likely because no top guild would invite a gold farmer, non-ironically anyway. There must be some way around this, money can buy anything right? Since I don’t have top guild experience, I decided to ask someone who does: Traguna of Kinetic, Frostmane (aka my sister).
Frybread: Someone who purchases gold is limited to Auction House stuff, so they’ll never be able to come close to anyone in your guild – I mean they can’t get raid gear, right?
Traguna: Well no, that’s not true. If someone gives us enough gold, we’ll take them on a raid and let them loot. Blackwing Lair gear for sure, we sell that stuff a lot.
Frybread: But I’m talking about THE BEST gear –the first of its kind on the entire server, the rarest items from Naxx, the toughest bosses and whatnot.
Traguna: Oh, then no, I doubt they can buy that. That’s for us, I mean, that’s pretty much the entire reason we play.
Frybread: What if they paid 10,000 gold?
Traguna: That could buy us a lot of potions… (thinks) well, our guild bank is kind of empty right now… only nineteen thousand gold or so (laughs) so yeah, I bet they could get a server first item for 10k.
Frybread: What about 5,000 gold?
Traguna: For a server-first? No way we’d sell it for that cheap. 10k is the lowest I’d say.
According to Kinetic,10k gold would be the minimum for THE BEST item possible for a certain item slot. 10k gold (as of 9/20/2006) has a value of around $1,000 US. There are 17 item slots on your character that need to be filled with server-side firsts.
$17,000
Don’t forget bags and spells, which we’ll assume will only run you 5k each – being the first of their kind and all.
$3,500
Since you’re too rich to waste your time raiding, in addition to the gold you pay Kinetic, we’ll have to find someone to go on the raid and loot the items for you. A google search brings up such a service for $30 per raid. For all of the best items to drop, let’s assume each boss has to die 12 times (since the rarest raid drops are around 7% or so.) and we’ll give Kinetic the benefit of the doubt and assume they never wipe and only spend 1 night per dungeon. That’s 12 runs for each dungeon.
$1800
We’re still not done. The best characters don’t just have equipment - they have potions and expendable items. How about 2,000 gold for a month’s supply of potions,
$200
and a couple bag’s worth of expendables like Tubers and Dragon’s Breath.
$60
Total:
$23,015
Frybread: So let’s say someone actually does this. They pay $23,000 and create the best-geared character on the server. Does anyone respect them?
Traguna: No! They’d be laughed at. They're worse than an ebay'ed character. And the expansion is coming up soon which will make that gear obsolete.
Frybread: Would the other team corpse camp them?
Traguna: (laughs) yeah allies would take screenshots too. Since the rich guy paid someone to play all this time, he probably wouldn’t be very good either.
If you want the respect to go along with the top character, you’ll have to pay off everyone who knows what you did – which means everyone with a non-banned forums account.
$100,000
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| anyone want to date my sister? |
And you should pay someone who is good at WoW to play for you once in awhile (LIKE ME), to keep that reputation golden.
$3 or bag of cheetohs
Congratulations, you have bought your character’s way to the top. You have the best items and everyone's respect to go along with it. Now the challenge is finding something to do when you log in. Help newbies? Kill under-geared players in AV? Make sure you enjoy it, as your time at the top will end with the next expansion or dungeon, which (no matter when you’re reading this) should be within the next few months.
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