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Blizzard Cracks Down on World of Warcraft Ebaying
Last Friday Blizzard put up a message on the World of Warcraft site stating that Ebaying of in-game items would not be tolerated. This is the first time a MMOG developer has come out of the gate with so strong a policy, and combined with their tough policy on hacking is a heartening sign that community infractions will be taken seriously. TerraNova has commentary on the development as well. From the article: "If they do [succeed], we might have to start thinking of World of Warcraft as the first of a new generation of virtual worlds. It may not seem all that different in terms of some design aspects, but if its war against eBayers succeeds, it will end up being very different in terms of atmosphere."
people should have to earn their rank and position.
The problem with this mindset is that it ensures that the *only* way of investing yourself in the game is by investing time. This gives a unique advantage to the kids who find the time to play the game 40 hours a week, and 18 hours a day during the summer. Which in and of itself isn't bad, except that it alienates the "older kids" among us, myself included, who have full-time jobs and many responsibilities beyond that, because we're lucky when we can fit in a few hours a week. We're willing to pay for our entertainment, or at least I am, but with no way of improving our characters beyond time -- which we don't have -- we remain eternal newbies. Which is really not that fun, no matter how you try to spin it.
The people who purchase equipment and characters and experience and gold and whatever else, are typically not doing it so they can roll into your zone and start hogging all the loot 24 hours a day and get an unfair advantage over you... some do, but they're not the majority.
Random and weird software I've written.
I have maybe an hour to play each day at most. And Blizzard has specifically designed this game to be played by people who don't have that much time to devote to it. For example, the more time your character spends logged out and resting at an inn, the longer the amount of time that character will receive 200% of the normal XP given by quests, discoveries, and monsters. So I'm going to have to disagree with your argument.
Because of how they've balanced the game, I've managed to get to my 24th level already with as little as I've been playing. Sure, there are people that are already at level 40, but it's not a grind, and it's fun.
Besides, I feel my opinion is just as legitimate as yours given that i'm no "kid" either at my age.
And before you use the old fart argument, my guild leader is 55 years old. I'm only level 24, and he's level 41 even though we've both been playing since day one.
Oh, I'm sure they could capitalize if they want to. Other games have. Blizzard has made a concous decision that they want their game to be different. Why must you assume the worse?
I think you're overestimating the difficulty here. Blizzard is banning accounts, a rather large cost to being caught so their rate of catching people doesn't have to be very high. Imagine they employ a single clueful techie even half time to find any infringements. It won't stop all sales obviously, but it would stop most sales between people who didn't know each other already, reducing item sales by several orders of magnitude. Would you buy/sell something if there is a non-negligable chance you'll lose your account because somebody who knows what they're doing has bots scanning the USENET?
No, no. Why do they need to sue? Simply terminating accounts, deleting characters, and banning people accomplishes the same purpose with less backlash.
The problem is that the items that folks buy off of ebay have to come from somewhere. ...That means that when I (a casual player) enter the Tomb of Dread in search of the (Ultra Valuable) Short Sword of Uberness, there is already some clown standing ther waiting for it to drop. And when it does drop he'll log that character out and log in another character to wait for it to drop again.
Of course, in WoW the major dungeons are instanced -- meaning you get your own private version of the Tomb of Dread, just as the ebay clown does, and both of you get your own uberloot without stepping on each other's toes.
So, no, that argument does not fly at all.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
It's called the 'Its My Sandbox' principle. If you don't like how Blizzard runs their game, there's a good half dozen others out there.
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
Your first few lines confuse the transfer of physical property and the transfer of intelectual property. Had Wizards of the Coast licensed their Trading cards in a manor that did not transfer ownership then people would not be able to sell them. The best example of this type of situation applies to leased cars. When you lease a car you do not have the right to sell or transfer ownership of the car because you do not actually own the vehicle. In the case of an MMOG, the player or licensee does not actually own the characters or items, ownership is retained by the creating, or publishing company. See the follwing quotes from select World of Warcraft documentation.
From the Blizzard EULA
All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Game and all copies thereof (including, but not limited to, any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, storylines, character likenesses, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, and "applets" incorporated into the Game) are owned or expressly licensed by [Blizzard Inc.].
From the Terms of Use of The World of War Craft:
7. Selling of Items.
Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were "licensed" the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was "limited"? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported "sale" in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or trade items for things of value outside of World of Warcraft.
Just trying to make people aware of what they are actually agreeing to when they click the big yes at the end of and EULA.
Blizzards EULA states that everything in game is their property (Items/Coins/Characters) and users are not authorized to tranfser Blizzard's property in exchange for real money.
I think Blizzard probably could win a court case based on someone else making money reselling what does not belong to them.
The "selling my time" argument wouldn't really hold up either. It's like me saying "When I sold company X information from company B's database they were paying me for my time. Oh um no Company B didn't say it was ok for me to do that - actually they told me I couldn't do just that in a legal agreement I had to accept before I could access the database."