2nd Hand World of Warcraft • Gaming • MMO • Eurogamer.net

Ged42 8 Jul 2008 21:44:24 7,985 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 14 years ago

I recently saw a 2nd hand copy of WoW in a charity shop for Ł5!

But i thought will the game actually work, does anyone know if Blizzard have some copyright thingy in place thats locks (or soul binds) the WoW disc to a particular account?

Kami 8 Jul 2008 22:49:53 2,711 posts
Seen 9 hours ago
Registered 19 years ago

These online games come with unique keys. You can't reuse a key, so you'd likely end up buying one from Blizzard anyway as the one you'd have wouldn't work. Would be a waste of Ł5.

Thunderhead 8 Jul 2008 22:52:05 558 posts
Registered 13 years ago

Kill the shopkeeper for accepting it in the first place.

Micro_Explosion 8 Jul 2008 22:52:13 9,692 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 16 years ago

And give you access to all their personal information? Bargain.

Ged42 9 Jul 2008 09:01:07 7,985 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 14 years ago

Thanks everyone

I thought it would be to good to be true

After a bit of digging I found a post on IGN by a guy who had asked Blizzard what the situation was with 2nd hand copies of WoW. It says that you Authentication Keys can't be re-used and anyone selling their WoW accounts on is breaking the Terms of Use and will be savaged by Murlocs or something like that.

warlockuk 9 Jul 2008 09:35:42 19,519 posts
Seen 1 week ago
Registered 17 years ago

Aye. TBH I think they're legally in a grey area when it comes to refusing to let anyone sell their full WoW account. At least over here in "Europe".

But that charity shop copy will be absolutely worthless without the account info - and if the person gave that away in the box then it has their address etc in there. Scary.

...but yeah. Only of use to people whose discs are knackered and who want to do a re-install without downloading everything.

teamHAM 9 Jul 2008 10:16:03 3,847 posts
Seen 4 weeks ago
Registered 14 years ago

I think the general consensus is when someone sells their WoW software (box and discs) as second hand then they sell their login credentials aswell. As explained above this is because when you first install WoW you have to bind your CD Key to a new account in a one time process (you cannot play the game without creating an account that has been linked with a CD key), so without the account the discs and box are useless.

I dont think this is particularly frowned upon by Blizzard, its more grinding/powerleveling characters up to 70 and then putting them up for lots of money.

As Warlock says the only ever time you would consider buying the box without an account is if you already had an account but moved PC's or something and didnt want to download the client (a few GB's - once your account is activated you can download the client off the WoW site an unlimited number of times I think).

Bloodloss 9 Jul 2008 11:08:25 4,497 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 14 years ago

You can get the game brand new for only a few pounds more anyway.

GreasyWeasel 23 Sep 2008 11:51:30 468 posts
Seen 5 months ago
Registered 16 years ago

Does anyone have any experience selling a WoW account? I have both the original collectors edition as well as the Burning Crusade collectors edition but they are both linked to a single account. Now I haven't played it for ages and any characters I do have are completely worthless (I think the highest I got was in the 20's).
I see that the original collectors edition seems to be worth quite a bit and I could definitely do with the money at the moment but don't want to end up getting the account shut down or accidently passing along personal info to any potential buyer.

Shinji 23 Sep 2008 12:02:12 5,902 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 20 years ago

What you *could* legitimately do with a second-hand copy of WoW is this - get a friend to send you a trial key from within their account, create your account using that, install the game from the second-hand copy, and off you go.

No idea what Blizzard's stance on that is, but they probably don't give a shit given that you'll be paying the full subscription fee after the first month anyway. I can't imagine they make much cash out of boxed game sales at this point in time.

Deleted user 23 September 2008 12:10:58

Its cheaper just to buy the game new. You can get it for Ł5.99 from various online stores and in that you get your first months play aswell as a lot less messing about.