by David Piner on Feb 18, 2007
Something that we often overlook during our war on the secondary market is the powerleveling services. Powerleveling (in this context) is when someone takes your account and plays it for you while you give them cash. I know, I know, it sounds outrageous but it’s something people who want to “catch up” find quite attractive. It’s also not as aggressive as buying gold, which ruins the economy. However, there is a catch.
This public service announcement is to let you know that, well, if you sign up for a powerleveling service then you’ll be banned. There is no way out of it, there is no way to avoid it, and Blizzard will know. Before you scruff off my voice as yet another “hater”, you should listen to a few of my reasons why you should never sign up for such a service.
First of all, the morality issue. If you are paying someone else to play for you, then what’s the point? I don’t pay people to play the newest Final Fantasy game for me (although a witty jab at the latest one that plays itself would be quite appropriate). The game is about leveling up, earning rewards, and getting to high levels with friends, guildies, or by yourself. It’s about those moments in Ashenvale when you face off against the other faction for control of a Furbolg camp. It’s not about sitting by idling while someone plays your account for you.
Morality aside, the next thing is, well, why it’s just a horrible idea. Most of your powerleveling services (which I will keep nameless) use multiple locations and people to level the account. Blizzard logs everytime you log in and where you do it from so they can easily tell an account is powerleveled by simply looking at where it has logged in from. If it shows Location A China, Location B China, Location C China, Location A China, Location D China, then Amercia it is obvious that there is no way this account is physically possible to be only played by one person (which is what the ToS allows for).
So if you ever are caught swearing in general chat, making someone mad who wants to report you, or involved in some kind of GM response then they will ban you. It’s a fact and the majority of posts where someone goes “hey guys I got banned for using third-party hacks HOW DARE THEY!!!!! I DID NOT USE THEM!!!” they are telling the truth. They didn’t use them, but the powerlevelers did to automate the account.
That’s right, it’s not some man in a business suit wearing a tophat and monocle upholding the game rules as he fights in your steed in battle. They have rows and rows of computers running third-party banned programs to level you up while people overlook them to make sure they are running properly. Of course, this already risks your account for a ban thanks to Warden and server-side bot watching programs.
Next up is the fact all of the gold you make while being powerleveled is sent to the gold sellers. This is where you’ll see a good few posts that go along the lines of “OH MAN!!! I got banned!!! They said I was exchanging gold with gold sellers I NEVER DID THIS BLUE!!!!!!” which once again is true, they never did it. The secondary market did it for them.
Of course, after that, there is the fact that a lot of accounts are hijacked during or after the powerleveling. The accounts are stolen back and used to farm gold until they are banned. New accounts aren’t cheap and the secondary market can’t just go out and get new accounts for gold selling for free. A good portion of them are hijacked/stolen accounts from people who willing give their login information to the secondary market. For more info on account security itself (NEVER GIVE YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE) see here.
So what happens if you get banned for power leveling? Well, the first thing you should do is plausibly deny it and post all around on the Internet with some long essay about how blue unfairly banned you. Then, accept the harsh reality that you should never, ever, ever try to get ahead in a game without using your own effort to advance yourself. Buy a new account and start over from scratch, casually leveling up. You can make amazing progress even if you spend a few hours a day or even a week. If you can’t fit in the time to play and get to the top asap then maybe that isn’t the playstyle for you. Casually logging on and leveling up is one of the great things about WoW, no need to worry about finding a group to grind away enemies like other MMORPGs.
Oh, and if a friend mentions about having his account being “taken care of” with a wink and smile, you may want to help inform him of the dangers. You may not be banned right away, but sooner or later Blizzard catches you. That moment could be in an instance no one has been in before about to defeat a boss no one has even seen much less scratched. Your fame, glory, and phat loot could all flush down the toilet for trying to skip content.
For more reading, see our Editorial by Ethec on Powereleveling: "Will Level for Cash"
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