In a painfully ironic turn of events, WoW Insider reports that banner ads for gold farming services began appearing on the official World of Warcraft forums this morning — an unintended side-effect of Blizzard’s recent partnership with advertising firm Massive. Though the practice of buying and selling in-game currency has long been outlawed in the World of Warcraft terms of use, the presence of these ads would seem like a rather contradictory endorsement to your average forum-goer.Fortunately, Blizzard hasn’t simply gone off its rocker. A post by a Blizzard employee with the forum handle Bornakk clears up this whole embarrassing debacle:
“Recently, there was a temporary error with our forum advertisements that caused a gold-selling ad to be displayed. At this time, we have resolved this error. Our stance, which is fully explained in the statement below, remains firmly against the buying or selling of gold, and we may take action against accounts that are involved in these activities.”
Go ahead and start counting your lucky stars that Blizzard only signed up for ad placement on their websites, and not the kind of in-game advertisement that Massive specializes in. Those gold farmers certainly have more than enough representation in Azeroth as is.
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