Breakfast Topic: Scam or service?
A couple months ago, Daniel Whitcomb wrote a great post about maximizing your bag space which included how to get a 20 slot bag from Budd Nedreck (pictured above). In it he explained exactly where to go in a cleared Zul'Aman to complete Budd's Promises, Promises quest.
Zzmorriss wrote in to say that he was offering in the Trade Channel to run people through his guild's cleared ZA instance in order to complete that quest. He charged 10 gold to join the raid and be guided to the place to get the item for Budd. He then charged another 10 gold a person to run them through again to do Budd's follow up quest. He made a total of 180 gold for 15 minutes of work and then ran through 6 or 7 more groups before the reset.
Zzmorriss calls this an exploit and thinks that Blizzard will stop this at some point to prevent someone making so much money off of these guided tours of an empty instance. I disagree. I think that Zzmorriss is actually performing a service for casual players -- and a cheap one at that. There are many, many World of Warcraft players who are unable to participate in content like ZA. Zzmorriss is allowing these people to see a zone and obtain a really great item for only 10 gold and for another 10 gold, they can make their money back on the follow up quest.
Of course, friends and guildies will offer this service to you for free. And even strangers might do the same to help the underprivileged player without charging a fee. Also, if you have access to a ZA instance that is cleared past the first boss, you can find all the information from Daniel's post. But I think access is the real key here and not all players are on friendly terms with guilds who clear Zul'Aman regularly.
Now you know my thoughts. I want to hear yours. Do you think charging for access to a cleared ZA is taking advantage of people? Or do you think it is providing a service?
