Diablo Immortal player uses $50,000 worth of WoW gold to absolutely flatten "cash whales"

Diablo Immortal ancient nightmare lord martanos shield shield altars zone event
(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

A judicious Diablo Immortal player is taking stashed-away World of Warcraft currency, converting it into general Blizzard points, and using it to turn his Necromancer into an unstoppable force who puts down pay-to-win "cash whales."

Meet Naecabon, who, if you happened to engage in PvP, probably deleted you in a matter of seconds. At the time, you might've assumed the only way someone could become so powerful was to use a great deal of real-world money to max out their gems, but in this case, Naecabon actually used about $50,000 worth of converted World of Warcraft gold to become a "proverbial powerhouse."

"Yesterday, on June 22nd 2022, I finished my project of using just over 600 million gold in World of Warcraft on purchasing WoW Tokens for Blizzard Balance, to use in Diablo Immortal for upgrading my gems," Naecabon, who goes by daymeeuhn on Reddit, explained on Friday. 

Ultimately, Naecabon was able to unlock four out of five of their Legendary gems' Resonance bonuses, but stopped before unlocking the fifth and final one due to the inordinate cost. They've been using their newfound and near-unmatched power to stand up to folks, specifically Diablo Immortal streamers, spending large sums of real-world cash to juice their characters up to levels far beyond what any free-to-play players could've achieved since launch.

Diablo Immortal

(Image credit: Blizzard)

"I thought it would be really funny to try and build a 'whale' character in the game using WoW Gold as the primary funding source," Naecabon said. "There's a sense of hilarity to me in dunking on a cash whale as a 'gold whale.'"

Naecabon's "project" began as soon as they learned Diablo Immortal would be coming to PC, which meant their WoW Token balance could be used at the Immortal shop. Fortunately, years ago they had purchased a load of World of Warcraft loot codes at various BlizzCons for around $1,000 to 2,000 in total, and the cards had been collecting dust in the years since. Fortunately, while they held little real-world monetary value due to predatory scammers, they had apparently skyrocketed in in-game value by up to 800%.

With that in mind, Naecabon swapped the codes in various virtual marketplaces - all legal and within WoW's terms of service, they add - for a metric ton of in-game World of Warcraft gold, which was then used to purchase World of Warcraft tokens, which were then converted into Diablo Immortal currency and spent on 2,165 Elder Rift runs. The result:

"As a Necro Whale I feel literally unstoppable at the moment. I have not fought another player 1 on 1 that has even come close to beating me in my current gear/loadout, and I flatten them in seconds, whale or not. I'm genuinely looking forward to my first encounter that puts me in check; I'm like that dude in 300 hunting for my glorious death."

Neacabon says you can catch them "dunking on cash streamers like jtisallbusiness (a self-declared $100K cash whale that streams on Twitch) with scary efficiency."

"There's no real point to this other than to get the laugh out of it. When you see me battling cash whales in Battlegrounds, know that I'm engaging them using World of Warcraft currency as my main funding source."

Sadly, Neacabon prefers to do their whale hunting away from the spotlight and therefore doesn't stream or even host a YouTube channel for their escapades. And now that you know the name, you can keep an extra watchful eye out for "the gold whale." Just be careful not to swim too close to their wake.

Meanwhile, Diablo Immortal players think they have a botting problem.

Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.