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Blizzard Punishing Griefing On Warcraft III Ladders
Thanks to RPGDot for pointing to a Battle.net forum post, in which Blizzard indicate they will ban Warcraft III teams for 'griefing'. This requires Blizzard acting on in-game tactics, rather than illicit software mods/hacks - they mention: "We have received reports and observed that certain Warcraft III players have deliberately caused their own teams to lose in team games. This goes against the spirit of fair play on Battle.net, and as such, we will take action on a case-by-case basis. In each case, if we determine that griefing is in fact occurring, the griefer's Battle.net account and access to ladder games will be subject to removal."
Couldn't they just force all the griefers to be on the same team?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Even though a lot of people seem to hate Blizzard, this just proves that they may actually care about their customers. I'm glad there's at least one game company looking out for their user-base.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
There's an easy solution to that one, don't make an ally you can't trust.
And here lies the problem: battle.net players are randomly paired with a partner (or 2 or 3 ) for team ladder games.
There is nothing preventing the little griefers from organizing their own games on open or non league servers, so if they want to throw games there is nothing stopping them. But in league games?
Blizzard owns the servers, so you play the way Blizzard wants you to or you can go play by yourself. Getting the boot from battle.net does not make Warcraft unplayable, it just denies access to their matching service which I think is fair. Now is this whole thing going to blow up in their face? It could, we shall have to see.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
You mean like Diablo 2's Open Battle.net which is run largely by hacked characters? Yeah, I tried it before. It sucks. People either cheat or hack... and then they kill you... repeatedly.
I can understand not wanting people to mess up the ladders. So why not have ladder bans? There are systems for this that can work without keeping people off B.net as a whole.
Because its not just the ladders. Have you even played Warcraft III online? All regular melee games are setup so that you're randomly assigned teammates and opponents. YOU DON'T GET TO PICK YOUR TEAMMATES. If you're playing a 4v4 and your teammates decide to be assholes and force attack your base, tough luck you just wasted about 20 minutes of time and lost the game. Its not like Starcraft where everyone gets dropped into a room beforehand and can chat it out before starting.
Banning a huge sum of players on the off chance that other players will have a better time is a flawed business model, and no competent business would ever do it.
It WOULD be a flawed business model if you weren't ignorant. In this case; Step one, YOU buy the game. Step two, YOU go on Battle.net and get yourself banned. Step three, YOU are now screwed. Now where does Blizzard get YOUR money? The answer: Step one.
Battle.net is NOT a pay-to-play model. Once you get past Step one, Blizzard doesn't care if you decide to destroy the CD in a microwave, they already have YOUR money. If it wasn't for the advertisement banners and the low bandwidth necessary to run the servers, Blizzard would be in deep financial trouble considing the fact that people are STILL playing Diablo 1 on Battle.net for FREE.