In their latest battle against the farmers, Blizzard recently issued this press release: In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms. The banned accounts were taking part in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use,

including using third-party programs to farm gold and items, which severely impacts the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.Doing the math, that works out to only 1,000 gold per banned account. This is a fair chunk of virtual change for players at low levels, but it isn't that much for a higher-level player—an epic mount costs nearly that much all by itself, for example.