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MMOG Currency Seller Owns Media Network ?
Ogaming is a hub site much like Warcry, with a sub-site about most of the major Massively Multiplayer Games out there. Some enterprising /whois work by the original author of the WowCensus thread led him to realize that OGaming was registered with the same street address used for IGE's New York Office. OGaming's registration information was updated on the 10th, and now displays the name and address of a proxy registration service. Further damning is the thought that at one point a page on the Ogaming site claimed to own Thottbot.com, a universally respected and utilized tool for World of Warcraft in-game information.
The page that once claimed this (an advertising page) is now blank, with the words "under construction" displayed there. The Internet Archive's last update for ogaming.com is this time last year, so there is no way to check on the authenticity of that claim. If it is true it's disquieting to say the least. Thottbot is a massive database of in-game quest, item, character, and drop frequency information. Thottbot's information was gained through the goodwill and work of World of Warcraft players. The popular UI enhancement, Cosmos, included a plugin that sent information from the user's playing experience back to Thottbot. This included locations of enemies, the types of loot dropped, items the character had, and other specific details. While Thottbot claims to only keep information that is pertinent to other players, with the revelation that they may be owned by the disreputable IGE their trustworthiness is out the window.
This revelation didn't stay quiet for long, with MMOG sites CorpNews, Grimwell.com, and Allakhazam all creating discussions of their own about this weighty topic.
The authenticity of this story is hard to prove or disprove at this point, with the OGaming.com and Thottbot.com domains having a proxy listed under their contact information. But if it's hard to believe that IGE would go to the trouble of owning a media outlet and a popular plugin, think again. Garthilk writes "Cindy Bowens, community manager for Sigil Games online and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, outlines their stance on secondary market items, and how they deal with IGE. Most interesting is the fact that IGE approached Sigil, and had offered to cut Sigil in on the revenue that IGE might make in the future."
Update: 02/15 20:07 GMT by Z : Drey pointed out in the comments that, at least for the time being, Google still has a cache of the page listing Thottbot as an Ogaming site.
Frankly this looks very disturbing to me. I'm not saying IGE is going to break into accounts. I'm saying they are getting lots of information they can sort to find the best spots to farm various items and then use that to flood the market. I for one will not be using thottbot any longer.
I'm a regular FFXI player. I just noticed an announcement regarding the suspension of accounts of known violators of the TOS on PlayOnline (the DRM-client-thingy that FFXI runs through). So I log in, do a few searches and not one of the usual known gil-sellers on my server is online. I wonder how badly this is going to hurt their margins.
... a faint trace of Brownian motion disturbs the surface of a tea-cup a billion trillion light years away.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
IGE owns it not IGN.
Huh, I just re-read the interview to be sure, and it seemed to me that IGE was quite reasonable in their responses. Even the "PR mouthpiece" ones.
Google's cache still has the page which is now mysteriously blank.
M J: www.ogaming.com/data/2115~VIPClub.php+thottbot+oga ming&hl=en
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:s7q2fzgQje
So, let me get this straight...
People will try and exploit other people for profit.
People will release closed source software that does more than advertised.
People in MMORPGs are asshats, and cause the more honest MMORPG players harm.
Right. Thanks for the heads up, I -never- would've known...
If everyone gets banned off ebay within an hour of their MMORPG item listing, but one seller mysteriously has 10 pages of gold selling on every sever, what do you think is the case. Especially considering the amount of gold being sold would be impossible to obtain without the main company creating it. Also consider this seller is selling this same style for two different MMORPGS(DAOC/AO).
My only guess is that some MMORPGS give selling rights and items to select individuals for a deal. I've done the math, the market this guy had was $100,000 a month, so it wasn't so trivial a company would ignore it.
So don't be suprised if these sellers are actually 'financed' in virtual goods by the MMORPG companies themselves. The key is that they don't want the public to find out or it could negatively impact the MMORPG's image.
God spoke to me.
Well, lets show a hypothetical situation that will cover who they are what they do and why they're bad.
Let's say that to earn a certain rank in Game X, you have to get a special item Blizzrt's Tail in order to prove your strength and valor, yadda yadda. Obviously, you get this by killing Blizzrt and taking its tail. The problem is that there is only one Blizzrt in the game world at any one time, so it becomes more a test of "waiting your turn" than of strength or valor.
Now, what IGN does is called "farming". They get 30 or 40 players to all stand around in the cave that Blizzrt lives in (where it appears every time its killed, this is its spawn point). Every time Blizzrt appears, they immediately start to kill it, and take the tail for themselves. Over and over, without respect for the other people who need to kill it in order to advance.
But thats ok, if you can't get a sword in edgewise to score a tail for yourself, the IGN crew will be more than happy to sell it to you on ebay for real money, since they seem to have just "stumbled across" a few hundred extra. Now getting that tail isn't about patience or valor, just about shelling out enough dough on an auction site somewhere.
Now whether this is bad or not depends on how much you care. If you say "its just a game" then consider it as frustrating as waiting in line at say... McDonalds. You have 11 kids in front of you, and they think its real cool to keep you from getting your food by ordering a glass of water, getting it, then getting their buddy in 11th place to let them cut in front for another glass. Unless of course you slip them a buck to get to the front of the line.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I still don't understand what makes IGE disreputable
They have found a niche market where they can make a lot of money. If it works, fine. Nobody's being harmed or spoiled - they are not breaking any law, so what's all the fuss about that?
They sell in-game content, which purchase the game provider prohibits? Well, fine again, don't buy it if you don't want your game account cancelled.
For all the rich idiots that buy 100 gold in World of Warcraft for 45 USD. Fine again! Have fun! Spend your money!
It undermines the spirit of the game "Monopoly". It does not undermine the spirit of the meta-game being played by (in this case) Parker Brothers against other board game manufacturers. If being able to buy Boardwalk for $5 makes Monopoly more fun to play, odds are greater that I'll buy Monopoly. (And if it makes Monopoly suck, I'll be less likely to buy the game.)
IGE (and SOE and Blizzard) are all playing the same MMMORPG, the object of which is to use the MMORPG market to make RL money. MMORPG Producers sell the ability to play WOW, SWG, EQ, EQ2, and so on. IGE sells the ability to more easily play the aforementioned properties.
If the MMMORPG were a game of Monopoly, I would start with representations of sheep (gamers), squares (producers such as SOE or Blizzard), houses/hotels (properties such as SWG or WoW), credits (dollars), bling (in-game loot, in-game credits), and bits (software).
The market has yet to the extent to which folks like IGE make MMORPGs "more" or "less" fun. Consequently, MMORPG producers are still experimenting with the question of whether to ban eBaying for credits, or to encourage it. (An interesting question: how many dollars would you have paid SOE for a Jedi out of the box, rather than craptastically grinding your way through a year and a half of, umm, craptastic grinding, only to find... well, more craptastic grind at the end of the tunnel?)
The MetaMMORPG - how to get the most bucks from the gamer, while not completely eliminating the fun and thereby killing the goose that laid the golden egg - has just begun. Game on.
people with lots of real-world money can achieve in games what normally takes hard-working players a long time to accomplish.
Sad to say, but it sounds just like the real life. Replace "game" by "university" and you get one such example.So basically, people blame IGE for being just one more company servicing the "rich people"? I don't see any difference with what I see everyday in the capitalist world.
One day, you'll grow up and move out of mom's basement. On that day, you'll see that the real world is not fair. People who wine about it generally get crushed.
3 1
You may consider it unfair that I can spend an hour on e-bay and get an item that took you months to earn.
I consider it unfair that I have to work 50+ hours a week.
So, I'll make you a deal: You spend 50+ hours a week doing something else besides Fishing and Skinning in WoW, and I'll stop spending real money for virtual items.
They say there's a PA for every moment in your life:
http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-12-
But look at this as reality. You and I started the day it went live. Now you have a nice mount and I just made 25.
Your unfair advantage is that you are willing to play constantly.
My unfair advantage is that I have a good job.
Until there is a law that says the world has to be fair, I guess we are both fucked.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Thottbot is a very useful web site containing data about in-game items, quests, monsters, classes, player profiles, skills, etc. in World of Warcraft.
How did they get this data? One of the more popular add-ons for World of Warcraft is called Cosmos. One of the many features of Cosmos is a plugin to Thottbot so that information that your player sees gets uploaded to Thottbot to improve Thottbot's data - if you see monster X at coordinates Y,Z and no one else has, Thottbot now knows that monster X can potentially be there, and what items you can get from killing it.
IGE is a well known online currency and item broker, and many people within the World of Warcraft community are concerned that once IGE and the so-called "Asian Farmers" get a large presence that the in-game economy will be permanently ruined - better equipment for your character will be out of your price range unless you go to an in-game gold broker, paying real money for game money. World of Warcraft is the only MMORPG I've had experience with, but I've heard that activities like this have made some MMORPGs unplayable.
Most people assume that the Thottbot service was benign, but with the news that IGE owns it is somewhat alarming to people. This means that IGE now has information on what a large portion of the characters in game have and get their items and money, which could be used to more effectively farm high-demand items, collect in-game money at a higher rate, etc.
I don't neccessarily see this as the end of the world, but it is a bit of a concern. I'll probably stop using the Cosmos UI enhancements, or at the very least disable the Thottbot data aggregation.
Among all the slashdotters having high opinions on that topic, WHO actually has the experience of using such a "service" to advance in a game?
As a hard-core player who just doesn't have time to play, I'm curious what exactly you really gain from it. Satisfaction? Time? What?
That's not to say farming won't become a problem and such, but Blizzard also incorporated enough in-game money sinks (buying skills, mounts, etc.) that I think inflation from farmers will be slower to develop in WoW that in other games.
Finally, keep in mind that the ultimate way to stop farming and such is to play on a PvP server -- because if you don't like the farmer, you can round up a group of buddies to put an end to the farmers.
I don't see any difference with what I see everyday in the capitalist world.
And that is exactly why so many are opposed to IGE and other such operations. When you start blurring the line between game and reality, you lose a lot of what makes a virtual world so exciting to begin with. I want to play a game, not log into "DnD sponsored by EBay". IGE, farmers, sweatshops, etc. just suck all the fun out of the experience for me. Particularly when you're talking about an RPG, as most MMOs claim to be, introducing such real-world influences just corrupts the feel of the world. I mean, roleplaying doesn't have to mean using "thee" and "thou" all the time, but it seems to me that at a bare minimum, you would "play the role" of a character within a fantasy world. When that character starts making financial transactions with beings from another dimension, and when the finances of the player have more effect than the actions of the character, it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.
How is that a problem with IGE? It sounds like the game's screwed up if it's possible for 30-40 people to prevent anyone else from getting the item.
If play like that is against the TOS, then the GMs should enforce the TOS. If it isn't against the TOS, then maybe it should be.
If the GMs aren't enforcing the TOS, then maybe people should just stop playing the game.
Sounds to me like this is a problem that the developer should be able to solve, not something that has anything to do with the market for in-game items.
Basically, it sounds like people are actually complaining against in-game griefing, not people selling items outside the game. Selling items outside the game should be OK. In-game griefing should be solved by the GMs in-game. If it isn't, then the players should simply quit playing the game, if the GMs aren't doing their job.
Totally flawed analogy. What IGE does is akin to paying off teachers so they give you good grades, not having the money to go university. Having the money to pay for university is like having the money to pay your subscription fee, you expect a level playing field from that point on.
Sadly, there's no such thing as a level playing field in Universities either. If you're rich and stupid, you can get by in any University. I've seen in in the Ivy League, I've seen it in the Pac10. Does is suck? Of course it does, but the parent poster is right on in his assessment.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Let me get this straight. Because there's someone that is performing perfectly ethical and legal activities which disagree with the twisted gamer philosophy and political bent (IE, that this is wrong), we're having a smear campaign of sorts on slashdot, pointing out his legit company in the field which can now be DoSed and who knows what by those that are immature enough to bitch about something this trivial?
Urg. My head hurts.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I don't begrudge the selling of accounts or in-game items. I think that if someone wants to leave a game and get rid of their in-game resources and make a few bucks, that's cool.
The problem arises when people make this a full-time job. They create new accounts or acquire them, then strip them or build them up, then sell them. One person sits in his room with 12 computers all running a program called MacroQuest farming high level items.
When this happens, the game is flooded by materials churned out at a rate much higher than would naturally occur, and the in-game economy suffers.
There are purists, who play for the love of the game, who love the staisfaction of a job well done and knowing "everything I have, I earned it through patience and time." These are the people who play MMORPG's in character, who don't ask others to guide them through quests without having to do the work.
There are (believe it or not) other people in the world, who just like to kick a**. Never mind whether I earned it or not--I want to be able to play with the shiny cool toy. These are the people who love first person shooters, with the cheat codes on please.
I don't think one group is inherently better or worse than the other. They simply have different objectives in "what they want in the gaming experience." Given that objectives vary, this seems primed for self-selection. Set up "purist" servers and "wahoo" servers, "nice" servers and "wild wild west" servers. Different rules for behavior and language, different levels of enforcement. And let players choose where to play (or, at least, which kind of server to play on).
Someone selling gold on a "purist" server will not have much of a market, and so won't bother--they'll be selling on the "wahoo" servers, where there is a larger customer base more willing to pay.
Of course, the issue here is with lamerz, who will play on the purist server just to be a jerk to everyone, hoping for a bigger reaction. But my argument is that having different levels of behavior being tolerated on different servers makes it easier to enforce rules--"purist" servers have less open tolerance of such behavior, so it's easier to ban or otherwise sanction players who don't abide...
I haven't played a MMO since SWG first hit, so I'm just now gettting what Thottbot, IGN, etc is... but here's my question:
If paying real money for in-game items is cheating, then isn't using an out-of-game utlility to locate items in-game also cheating as well?
Both involve doing something out-of-game that affects what's in game... This seems to me like the pot calling the kettle black!
Obviously, since Thottbot is an add-on, not every player has it. So even though it's a free add-on, it still unfairly gives some players an advantage over other players, which is essentially what's being argued.
It is a problem only in part with IGE. From what I can tell, IGE is sort of like an item/money/account broker. Where they make their Real Life money from the transfer of In Game items/money/accounts. While IGE has claimed in the past that they don't employ others to retrieve the in game items, they certainly do facilitate the sale of these items no matter how they were obtained. In truth, it's the griefers who are the most noticable effect of the service that IGE provides.
Selling items outside the game should be OK.
I disagree because the world in game is affected directly by the amount of cash a player has outside the game. I see these types of games as closed systems where advancement comes with skill, and time invested.
What is really going on is that people are playing different games within the MMO - some are playing the Advancement Game, and for them, people who buy stuff are cheating. But people who are playing the Exploring Game or the Socializing Game only see the advancement as a means to an end - in the case of the latter, it may be a way to keep up with friends.
:)
That's just about the smartest thing I've ever seen anybody say on the subject of farming.
Personally, I tend to play the "roleplaying game."
In EverQuest, I had a character named "Iwalk", who was an even cleric with a very simple ethos:
1. Never run. It's undignified.
2. Never fight. Hurting people is beneath me.
3. Heal people if they want me to.
I played the character up to about level 8 or so (and that took weeks) while strolling leisurely through the forest. Some were amused by my quirky character, and dozens tried to explain to me how I was playing "wrong" because it would take longer for me to "level up" doing what I was doing.
All of my exp came from delivering mail for the bard's guild (a newbie quest which merely involved going from one place to another with "mail"), and from rare people chosing to invite me into their group, in spite of the fact that I told them up front that I would neither fight nor run. (Some of them were stunned when they discovered that I meant it. They would try to "lead" me to some hunting ground or another, only to turn around at the end of their jog and realize that they left me about a half-mile behind.)
I got almost nothing "accomplished" in that vitrual world, but man was it ever fun. I felt a lot like Kwai Chang Caine, walking among the cowboys of the Old West, who can't understand why he doesn't carry a gun or eat meat like regular folks.
In fact, next time I log in to WoW, I think it's about time I bring the character concept back.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's more like buying all the food within a week's journey, and then selling it to people for outrageous prices. This is very immoral.
You're analogue is flawed, because
Actually, as a matter of fact, people do have the moral obligation of taking into account the consequences of their actions have on other people, and to try and minimize any negative effects. People who do not follow this obligation are called psychopaths (which, according to dictionary.com, means "A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse").
So yes, there is a moral obligation for them to allow you a chance to advance.
Furthermore, don't forget that they aren't just refusing to help you (which would be within their rights to do) - they are actively keeping you from advancing (which you could do just fine without their harassment), unless you pay them a certain amount. This is Mafia tactics.
"Trading items" and "creating an artifical shortage in supply by keeping anyone else from getting to the item just so you can sell it" are a bit different, don't you think ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.