World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment announced today that it has recently banned a number of accounts. The owners of the accounts sold the participation in raids for real money and thus traded against the terms of use.

A trend in World of Warcraft is for guilds to sell seats on their raids. With this, people who do not want to invest the time to learn and kill the raid bosses themselves can buy a ticket to the final content. Usually the participation is sold for the ingame currency gold. And depending on the conditions, the "tourist" gets items or mounts that drop in the raid.

This is also perfectly legal and not new. Blizzard does not take action against buyers or sellers when it comes to gold. Blizzard only steps in when real money comes into play. This is a violation of the World of Warcraft Terms of Use.

Many of the blocked accounts belong to members of top guilds. Blizzard assures that it was clear to those concerned that they were violating the terms of use. At the same time, Blizzard also announces that it will pay more attention to such incidents in the future. In addition, this does not only mean trading for real money, but also account sharing, for example.

Account sharing is using or making the World of Warcraft account available to other players. So far it was actually considered a peculiar offense and is currently the order of the day in top guilds.

How do I spot suspicious listings in World of Warcraft?

The developers also ask you to report suspicious offers. As soon as someone refuses to discuss the trade in-game and pushes for means of communication that are not logged by Blizzard, this is the first sign. Likewise, if a middleman who receives the real money and who then pays the guild in gold is risky. To protect your own account, you should definitely refrain from such offers.

The in-game reporting function will be improved with Patch 7.2 and will receive new categories to make reporting clearer and easier.