MMOBay purchased a paid review, and since I haven’t done review ads for some it’s about time we head for “commercial break”. (There’s some good stuff also for those who don’t care about the ad side of this post).

Site layout
I’d prefer a ‘warmer’ style for a MMO store. While MMOBay is clean, it has this bit ‘cold’ gray style, and it has quite a lot of content. On the good side, it’s good that they let players upload images. That’s a plus. No broken links and pages loaded fast so on the technology side things look good. Overall impression is fine: even the ads didn’t bother me on their site.

I wonder how long they can keep selling MMO accounts?
The first impression that MMOBay gave me was that there’s loads of games supported. You can buy and sell accounts for different games (World of Warcraft being the most popular). For example, there I saw somebody selling ’sexy priest’ for $500.

My initial thoughts were:

• I wonder how long they are going to keep selling these accounts? (since many games says it is against the game rules to sell stuff)
• Why people (and who!) buy these? ($500 bucks for some virtual guy? Where’s the fun of beating the game? Maybe I’m too old or something)
• Why aren’t developers getting into this area of business? (Well, some are)

MMOBay keeps selling this stuff
One thing is sure: MMOBay keeps selling (auctioning) these goodies. Their news item says that today they’ve made their 100,000th auction (don’t know if that’s true, but not saying it wouldn’t be). I think they are having a nice business there (can’t blame for that): they sell (help selling) stuff people want to buy.

Thing worth learning from MMOBay: free credits
Free is good, and MMOBay uses a nice tactic to get people to sign-up: they give free credits. This same method is used by many other sites (such as gambling sites, and very many different stores) where the user gets free credits when he signs up. It’s a good marketing tactic for getting people to sign-up and try your products.

So why aren’t developers doing this?
MMOBay keeps selling Warhammer Online accounts, Warcraft accounts, and so on and legally it’s fine - as long as they don’t scam people’s money they won’t go to jail for selling those accounts. On the other hand, for example World of Warcraft rules say that you cannot buy an account (at least the last time I heard about this) which makes me think why they aren’t getting into this account selling bandwagon? Some games are doing this, and of course there’s balancing issues, but since it happens anyway why not change the rules?

World of Warcraft could have its own marketplace for selling stuff - and it could work according to the rules of the markets. Prices could go up, inflation could take place… and people could buy more credits with hard earned dollars. If balancing is an issue, then perhaps make areas where only “non-sold” accounts could be used? It could actually get by getting sites like MMOBay to partner with them. If people want to buy something, why not sell it to them?

In this sense I don’t blame MMOBay (nor other similar sites) for selling/auctioning accounts. If it’s a good business and there’s clearly a demand, then it starts to feel more like serving the customer. There’s already systems in games that if you buy an account, your reputation might be gone - and you’d never get to do campaigns with others. So, the system for stopping selling is formed by the community.

Why are they pretending to be something they aren’t?
It says in their site footer that “MMOBay.net is the #1 MMORPG auction site to buy warcraft accounts”. From what I’ve learned about marketing I’d say this is a bad idea. The more sites I see having “the world’s greatest whatnot” I immediately think they are lying. I suppose if when your company is big as Microsoft you could perhaps sometimes say that, but otherwise it feels just sad.

In my brain it goes like this: if they are lying about small things, then are they lying about other things - and if they are lying, can I trust my money on them?

Why say something like this if it clearly isn’t true? In my eyes, the site value goes downwards (especially since every other MMO seller is saying the same thing - somebody must be lying there).

So, is it secure?
I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. The only thing they say in MMOBay about page that “MMObay.net is the #1 auction site for virtual gaming items, including all of today’s top MMORPGs. We offer a quick and safe way for users to buy and sell their items.” I suppose if you know them personally and have traded items there earlier it can be fine, but since there’s no company info, no business ID, no company address or any person names, it’s very hard to think it would be reliable place to buy stuff.

I’d recommend them to give information about who is operating the site. That would help make it more reliable in the eyes of the potential customer.

Another point to concern would be to explain how the site is trustful, and how the transactions are processed. For a somebody who hasn’t bought accounts earlier it might be quite difficult to know how the site operates.

Sexy priest
Almost forgot this one, so here you go.

The priest is in the middle of the picture.

Yes, he is in sale for $500. Poor fellow.

Bottom line
I’ve said it before and I say it again: This is a paid review ad and I recommend everybody to be careful when buying or selling accounts online. It can be against the game rules and might lead into banning your account - or even losing your money. I’m doing a review here, and expect you to use your own brain for what it comes to using their site. Yeh, I know you already knew that, but just wanted to make sure we both are on the same line here.

For those who want to buy Warcraft accounts or more information about buying game goodies, could check out their website.

That’s it folks.