Like it or not, gold buying, selling, and powerleveling have become rather lucrative businesses, particularly with the stratospheric rise in popularity of the MMORPG. *cough*WoW*cough*. So what is it? Is it legal? Ethical? Dangerous? Sally forth dear reader, and find out for yourself!

As unlikely as barbarian kings going around wearing Nikes is, this was the latest rumor to go around Funcom's upcoming Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (PC, Xbox 360) title. In a recent statement released by the developers, it was confirmed that the actual game will not support in-game advertising. Learn more about this story by clicking on the "read more" link below.

European Blizzard Community Manager, Issuntril notes in a post in the European World of Warcraft  Forums that thanks to an intrepid player named Cawo, they are now aware that a bogus e-mail is being sent to players claiming that they are accused of account trading. Allegedly, the victim, er, player is required to provide their account information to avoid a permanent ban.

Issuntril confirms that this mail is not from Blizzard and he advises that all European account administration related e-mails from Blizzard come from WoWaccountreviewEU@blizzard.com and all mails from GMs come from WoWgmEU@blizzard.com

Oh, and as always, the golden rule should be remembered: A BLIZZARD EMPLOYEE WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR PASSWORD!

Just to be sure, go check what the bogus e-mail looks like after the Jump!

The biggest attraction that EVE Online has to veteran MMORPG players, is that the experience is almost a seamless integration of "RP" and "G" parts of MMORPG. It's an arena of high intrigue and politicking.

Just how immersive is this cut-throat world? Well, when players - in this case the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate - start going public with a workable in-game IPO, you know that people are really getting into this space-based game of space-pirates, savvy galactic rogues, and Darwinian hyper-capitalists.

So the in-game businessmen are forming IPOs, what about the rogues you ask? Well, the year in the making GHSC heist was a completely "legal" in-game Ocean's Eleven-esque heist wherein people from the Guiding Hand Social Club (GHSC) corporation managed to infiltrate their target corp and run away with an estimated US$ 16,500 in goods.

Also, a few months ago news broke that yet another huge scam took place. Cally, the guy running the player-operated "EVE Intergalactic Bank", one day decided to just grab all the deposits and run away with the money. This not so intricate bank "scam" lead to 790 billion Isk being stolen – that translate to roughly US$ 170,000 – possibly the biggest "in-game" scam ever conducted.

But what happens when even the GM's - the people who are supposed to enforce the law - get involved with all the scheming and underhanded dealing? You get what The Escapist has amusingly called "Jumpgate".

Get more on Kugutsumen, the deepthroat of "jumpgate" after the Jump!

Heads up, guys! Today's a WoW mod day (like any other day), and we sure got tons of mods to share with you. What's today's WoW mod serving? Let's take a look:

First off, we got DragonScalePoints, made by varuul. This one's filed under the "organizer mod" category, because well, that's what it does. Basically, it organizes your RaidPoints. But of course, it offers a lot more than that. Go check the full list of features when you click "Full Article".

Next stop, we have WoW AddOn Organizer v1.36, from Stahlfaust. As it name suggests, it's another one of those "organizer mods", and it's rather nifty too, as it organizes all your WoW addons. Better get this one if you're really OC.

PassLoot by Odlaww, automatically rolls greed, need and pass. Also, it enables you to manually roll on three separate categories of loot:bind on pickup (bop), bind on equip (boe), and the coins/bijous/etc (specific).

Another mod that you might want to check out is Emote Pack v0.75, by Silromen. Basically, it adds cartloads of emotes (some even have sounds), which can be done by extracting the zip file to your World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons directory. Moreover, Silromen's open for suggestion, so feel free to contact this dev if you have zany ideas to add to this fun mod.

ChopLib by Chop (see the connection here?) is a function library for healing classes, while the last one's ES_GuildCheck by Tunhadil. This one scans your guild at your first login, takes notes of guild changes, and lets you view who left or joined your guild since your last time online. Pretty helpful if you're managing a guild of your own, don't you think?

Download: [DragonScalePoints]
Download: [ChopLib]
Download: [PassLoot]
Download: [Emote Pack v0.75]
Download: [WoW AddOn Organizer v1.36]
Download: [ES_Guildcheck]

Clcik "Full Article" to view the full list of features!

The World of Warcraft v1.9.3 patch has gone live on all realms today. It's not that exciting of a patch, as I still can't make a Gnome Paladin like I could in EverQuest 2. The main thing that will affect you due to this patch is that you will need to scroll through and accept the EULA, yet again. But, some of the highlights include full compatibility for Mac computers, Slice and Dice never misses for rogues (!), increased difficulty to remain out of combat while fighting bosses in Molten Core, and spawn reduction in Zul'Gruub. Maintenance is scheduled to be completed at 11:00am PST.

Full patch notes after the jump.