Why is RAF gametime for WoW so much cheaper than normal pre-paid cards?

yep.

 

Just bought 13 months + diablo 3 + tyrael's charger + 2x rocket mounts for 32$ from one of the guys on the first page on ownedcore. at this point I dont care if its against the rules, (well I would if it got removed) as I got 10 times the value I normally would've gotten from battle.net!

 

I was actually thinking of doing the 12 month annual pass thingy, but when I tried to start it, I got an error stating that I have no eligible accounts for it. I asked blizzard and got this as an answer

So they do actually track these things. Don't know why they don't take any action against your account though...

 

And then in 6 months time, Blizz finally gets off their asses and does something about it, and locks all accounts that have used RaF exploiting via stolen creditcards, until they pay for the annual subscription properly...

Didn't this same thing happen through ownedcore last year?

 

as far as i have heard from talking to the people i buy from its as simple as them using a fake cd key that works temp up to like 2 weeks and then from there all they have to do is add acc number to the account and 20 minutes later after the gametime is given they just cancel the account. dont know if this is true but just the version i heard so no there are no stolen cards or charge backs as this method wouldnt be happening stiil and we would all be banned if that was the case

 

I somehow doubt this is done with pure stolen credit cards. The sheer volume of precious RAF time that's being sold is just too large...

There must be a profit to be made. A battlechest is 10? for normal consumers if you buy in China... that means if you're buying wholesale you get a better deal even. So they sell the gold we give them, and they sell the account to chinese farmers.

All in all it must be profitable even if only 1-2 ? per month.

If this was indeed all done with stolen credit cards I would not be playing on 6 accounts right now... my time would be long gone.

Additionally, if you buy this time with cash and not gold... there's no way you can be called out for it as this is how Blizzard designed it. You will never be banned or otherwise harmed... unless they got proof you spent gold on it of course.

 

I guess it is something like.

(S)He gets 8k gold from me for one month+ he bought an account. (S)He sells the account to a gold spammer and I also guess (s)he used your e-mail and sells it for money to phishers.

Just a few bucks to make I guess.

Now with the cd-keys well those I do not get.

 

CD keys are just bought for gold that's then sold to the professional gold sellers. This is why the price fluctuates so much per server. On one of my servers they offered me cata for 80k, on the other he wanted 120k for it. With the current low prices on gold this wasn't even that absurd...

 

Even if it isn't stolen credit cards, they've made accounts ineligible for The WoW Annual Pass, if they've been involved in previous RaF exploiting. For those that have got the Annual pass with D3 etc, it is definitely possible that you won't be able to use certain b.net functions for it (like cashing out maybe?)

I dunno... it just seems to me, that if blizz knows about it, and it is this widespread, they will do something about it at some point. In which case everyone loses (except the guy you've given all your $/gold to)

 

Doubt it could ever be called a loss when your saving irl $ and spending pixels.

 

Think he's referring to the loss being if you get banned by Blizzard for abusing RAF.

 

Did you guys really read the posts above?
What exactly is a "fake" CDKey? Come on, dont be so naive.

First of all as I mentioned before, to earn free 1 month reward, recruited account should buy the standart edition and also pay for 1 month. That costs around 26€. (standart edition: 13€ + Paid 1 Month gametime 13€)
Hows this profitable regarding the 7K gold?
They are buying masses of Standart editions and 1 month gametime with those stolen cards, and thats a clean, easy way to launder that money.

I dont care about my botting accounts banned or anything so I'm using it but not on my main account.

 

Wrong, recruited account gets standard edition and 1 month free when they purchase 1 month. Total cost is 12.99€. They then sell a month to us for like 5$ and then sell the account to someone else, as a profit.

 

Could you provide a source or link to proof regarding that statement? I've never heard of that... or the term "RAF exploiting" anywhere on the blizzard forums/MMO-C.

Correct, as I already stated you get 1 month with the battlechest. You do NOT need to buy another month for the RAF trigger to give your account a free month. If you want the mount, then yes.

 

I'm glad that I'm not the only one that read lathrodectus's post and saw it clearly wasn't right. They are actually selling us something that doesn't cost them anything - that's why they are selling it cheap. AND as a bonus, they get a vanilla account with an extra month game time on it so it's actually a win-win. We get cheap game time... they get a vanilla account with extra game time that they can sell for a few bucks more.

 

Not a win win to the persons who credit cards are stolen, altought they could easily use a personal credit card from family members and just say it was unauthorized and call back, we get the months, they get the money, someone gets the account, they get the money again, and the credit card owner charges back. Blizzard looses.

 

Except blizzard removes the months.

 

I do this for over a year and never had a month removed, just the "unfrozen" codes...

 

Phones, why are you insisting that all of this is being charged to stolen credit cards? It simply doesn't have to be done that way - it can be profitable without a single credit card being stolen and if this was all using stolen credit cards, don't you think that Blizz would find a way to stop all of this... like putting a 2 day to 1 week delay on the RAF benefits? I can't see how hundreds of months of gametime are being sold daily (just figuring from the reports at Ownedcore) would go by and blizz letting all that gametime ride? I don't see that happening even for a multi-billion dollar company. It's just too easy to modify their procedure and immediately put a stop to it.

 

You need to read up on a concept called Opportunity Cost. Essentially, those pixels you spend (that will result in you being ineligible for future promotions (and likely the D3 RMAH), or at worst, getting your account locked until you pay with a proper source...) could also be spent to get you real $. So you are in effect, spending real $, by using the gold to purchase X instead of $.

It was actually these Honorbuddy forums I read it on. I believe I also saw it on ownedcore.

The free month a referal gets with a battle chest does NOT count towards the referer getting a free month. It doesn't. It says it plain as day in the RaF faq, that the refral must PAY for a month. I've also just done a legit RaF recently, who hasn't paid for any time, and is just playing with the free 30days from battlechest. I have not receive free time.

I still haven't seen any possible way this could be profitable for them, without being fraudulent (stolen cards / chargebacks).