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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."
I am so wonderfully happy to hear this. Like any game, people should have to earn their rank and position.
I don't have any problem with someone using the in-game auction houses to get items, and I think this will help foster a much better sense of community.
If nothing else, people will just turn to older, more obscure venues like USENET to engage in trades, or even do it over e-mail or in person. How can Blizzard expect to stop the black market trade if world governments can't do it in the real world?
Those who complain about affect & effect on
From my brief time in beta, I was under the impression that most of the good items can't be used until a higher level anyway, so the only thing you could really get that would be useful is money, and a newbie probably wouldn't make much use of a few million gold anyway one would think?
Still not allowed by blizzards policy. Sugar coating the legal language isn't going to help you. If you want to trde, use the in-game trading system, which lets you trade virtual-items and virtual-money for other virtual-items and virtual-money. Blizzard can afford kick the players that are only there to make money off the system, so they will do it. The other MMORGS would do this too, but they are probably scared of turning away subsribers, when in reality, banning this activity could ulimatly bring in new subscribers.
ebay, IGE, etc have trashed other MMORPG economies. There isn't any way to get it all. Most (I'm speaking from my experience with FFXI) won't do anything or very little to stop it because they don't want to lose a paying customer.
All Blizzard needs to do(and I hope they do):
-Sue a couple people ebaying money/items/characters.
-Kick about 200 or so accounts for trying to buy/sell to IGE.
-Threaten IGE with legal action and ask for a list of their customers/dealers (ban those accounts too).
This will put enough fear in your average player to being things to an acceptable level.
Oh, before anyone tries to say this is what the RIAA is doing - it's not. It might be if RIAA suing people for downloading an MP3, selling it to a web company, then sold to someone else marked up by 80%.
It might cost Blizzard some lawyer money and less in monthly reviews in the short term. In the long term they won't need to worry about players waiting for a new MMORPG with a fresh economy, and lack of high level ebay fuck-tards.
The problem is it sends them down a dark legal road where they admit items in game = real money.
Server goes down and characters are reset - somebody then sues Blizzard because they lost their possessions worth $4000; they also become responsible for losses due to scams, bugs, nerfs (hey my $2000 ubersword got nerfed and is now only worth $5), etc. It also changes the dynamic of the game from entertainment to profit.
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I can't say that I've stayed away MMORPGs strictly for such a simple reason, but getting rid of the ebay overtone to the game would definitely improve a game like this slightly.
The idea of people spending $$$ to get ahead isn't what intrinsically bothers me, it's just the fact that the suspension of disbelief is dispelled when what should be a fully contained alternative universe intersects at the most fundamental level with the real one.
Also, I'm willing to admit that the kind of people that are willing to farm in one way or another all day in order to make a buck I'd really rather see move on to another game. They have a vested interest to make all kinds of forum arguments that everything should be more scarce, time consuming and difficult, along with having the time and persistence to be a very vocal minority.
What's so bad about this?
Other than "It's not fair"
What's bad about this basically stems from what it means to be a "game" and not an extension of the real life economic market, and how the uncontrolled influence of real-world money into the picture destroys this separation.
For those of you who can't seem to follow the logical link from "it's not fair" to "it's wrong," think about the reasons why purchasing services from game players using real-world money leads inevitably to corruption and is not tolerated and strictly regulated in any game.
I strongly support Blizzard's attempt to keep World of Warcraft a place where people can continue to play and have fun without competing with sweatshop workers trying to make a living.
The argument that DOES work however is that Blizzard has set certian rules to "play in their sandbox". Much like Champion tennis player can't give me their Wimbelton trophy and I expect to just walk into the place...or a counrty club enforcing the golf rules. Blizzard is selling the "service" to play a "fair game" free from outside influances.
A better example would be an "all you can eat buffet" club...but where ten people [paying] come into the resturant and spend all day "hoarding" the ice cream and pies from the buffet then selling favorites back to your other paying customers. That's the similar thing to what's going on. If the "customers" were consuming the pies for themselves it would be an inconvenience, but part of the store's "offer" but in the MMORGS like my example, they are just there to take away from the other paying customers...which ruins it for everyone.