Blizzard has been in crack down mode, it seems. The mighty hammer of blue has shattered 18,000 accounts in the past 3 months. While this is drawing somepositive response in the forums, there is still backlash in the community about gold farming/teleporting.

Blizzard does mention that most of the tips came from in-game reports to GMs or emails to hacks@blizzard.com. I know a lot of people are frustrated that they don't get feedback from the reports, but Blizzard is hard at work running down all the cheaters! Keep the reports rolling in guys.

What other ideas do you have to help minimize the cheating issues?

Following today's trend of activities some find unethical, here's a head-scratcher for you. Many services have sprung up across the Internet offering in-game gold for real-world cash, marketed by gold farming corporations.  Scraping together enough for your mount may seem like a drudge at times, and especially for the casual player who hasn't the time to run thousands of instances, buying gold seems like an easy option to "catch up". What's your stance on buying gold?

Have you ever bought gold?
	Yes, in WoW
	Yes, in another MMORPG
	No, but I'm planning to
	No, I can't afford it
	No, I don't need to
	No, I don't like the idea

One of the reasons I enjoy WoW is because of the human and social interaction built into it. Grouping, questing, and raiding is one of the more fun aspects of the game, despite sometimes running into some pretty annoying group members.

So I've never been tempted to use one of the many bot programs available out there. Despite being explicitly prohibited by Blizzard, many people continue to use bots to level up their characters automatically, or to farm for gold, or to execute otherwise impossible maneuvers in the game. For instance, there's a hack that allows you to teleport to anywhere in the game, including normally off-limits areas and areas still under development.

TG Daily has a pretty interesting interview with Mercury, the programmer for the bot called WoWGlider, which allows you to level up your character with minimal effort. The bot is programmed to fight monsters and mobs in the game by itself and collect the loot.

I won't ever use a bot myself since I don't want to risk being banned by Blizzard, but I can understand why many people would be tempted.

For weeks now, you have been harvesting the level 60 raid instances to pop that sweet new BeastStalker Belt, but to no avail. Finally as you are reaching the end of your rope, the latest pickup raid group pops your belt! Everyone passes the roll and then it is decided it is down to you and another hunter to roll for it.  The other hunter doesn't speaky english, so you are getting a little nervous. Next thing you know the other hunter has snagged the belt and hearthed away. You have just been ninja'd by a Gold Farmer.

This is the first time I have started a new character on a new server in a long time, so I was curious to see how this gold buying works.  I went to check out Favgames and IGE today because I was curious how the economy of this new server would compare to my old.  Lo and behold, the new server is not even listed! I realize it is fairly new, but how long does it take for the Gold Farmers to move in to a new server? Stay tuned as we will unveil the server names soon for our shiny new WoWInsider guild!

Today's topic is flight paths! My group found itself needing to get to Desolace but none of us had the flight path there and so we asked around for a mage to portal us there instead.

Is this a common occurance for players coming up through the ranks? One of my coworkers is in a large raiding guild and his alt is now level 40, so I asked if perhaps he could have someone in his guild help us out by giving us a portal to the new flight path.

Do you guys abuse guildmates in this way? Do you consider this cheating? I personally don't because I feel it is relying on the good nature of your guildmates to help yourself go further in the game.

A portal is also a much faster way to get from Theramore to Auberdine, a flight path so long I can watch an episode of Wonder Showzen and still make it back in time to land.