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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
I just did a quick search and most of the things I saw were a couple gold pieces or something and the people were strictly claiming in the auction that the "item" is property of Blizzard and that the person is paying for the time to gather it and process the transaction...
I wonder what Blizzard thinks of that? Still bad, I assume?
Uh... when you are PAYING for a game, it is pretty important that the game be "fair"
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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?
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?
First of all, Blizzard will never be able to keep up if they try to catch and ban each party in a transaction.
What they need to do, is go after the major sellers/sites which are selling ingame goods. And from the wording on their site, it appears that they're going to start doing just that.
I don't think Blizzard will have any problem just outright suing/prosecuting anyone they catch selling ingame items. When you think about it, sellers are really committing fraud by selling something that's not theirs to start with.
They'd only have to bankrupt a few people before it'd stop real fast, or at least go far enough underground to make it a non-issue.
The real difficulty is finding the people doing the selling, and that's where the vigilantes come in. There are always TONS of people that get a mean hardon snitching out other gamers, so all Blizzard has to do is ask the "fans" for help in protecting their game, and they'll probably get more tips than they can deal with.
1. Auction site/Trading site/College bulletin board (take your pick)
2. Adverisement/Referal (its underground now, so expect to do some research to find it)
3. Paypal/bank/credit card (or equal, gotta have the money trail or its all hot air)
4. Connecting the auctioner's information with the buyer's and seller's WoW accounts. (Gotta know who to ban)
Take all this, web proxys, fake e-mail addresses, companies that are usually outside of the U.S., very little information, and the fact that you can't monitor this stuff in game (is XYZ players trading legit or did they buy it with real money?) makes this a very complicated business. Chances are the only reason why Blizzard is so successful right now is because its early, its fairly obvious and its learning from the mistakes of other games. Give it a few months and Blizzard is gonna start missing a lot of these guys or hitting the wrong people.
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.
As soon as any alternate route for sales like these becomes popular, though, it's easy to stop it. If they get a method where the seller is completely anonymous until the in-game transaction, they can just bait sellers with GMs disguised as buyers. They'll never STOP the sales, but they can sure put a very large dent in them. I just think that WoW is the first MMORPG popular enough, and popular because of the quality of the game and not the size of the community, where Blizzard can just say "screw the re-sellers, we don't care if we lose their accounts because we've got plenty others, including ones that choose to play WoW BECAUSE we are so vigilant with the re-sellers/botters." Although on the other side, I don't actually mind the re-selling much, and it really is an interesting economical phenomenon. Especially considering the gold in Ultima Online was at one time worth more than the Mexican peso.
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.
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.