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Blizzard Wields The Banhammer Again
Eurogamer reports that Blizzard is once again clearing house, and this time they mean business. From the article: "Blizzard has banned more than 5400 World of Warcraft players from the game for good as part of plans to clamp down on gold farming and cheating in general. A further 10,700 accounts have been suspended for 'participating in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items.'"
Anyone else just hear a hideous scream from the direction of China?
Now if only they'd use the "Make the Servers Work" hammer.
Man, that's an easier joke than I thought, I guess.
Hunter Weapon!
Why did I receive a ban notice from them?
I don't even have an account...
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
Won't the farmers that survived the banhammer just be able to increase their prices, as their competitors are at least temporarly out of commision? Plus the supply of gold available for purchase is less so won't prices go up even more?
$54,000+ is a large chunk of change to be giving up for the 'good and moral path'
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
5400/5M = 0.1% of the total population...
Blizz can't cut *too* deep into the bottom line.
Although Blizzard has been under a lot of scruteny lately for a variety of issues (sexual orientation prejudice, bad servers, etc.), I'm glad that they are still a company with the integrity to keep the game running fair at the loss of profit (since I don't think many players care if others cheat a bit, at least not to the point of quitting the game). At $12/mo for 12 months, that's a loss of over777,000 dollars from those 5400 players. Seems like many other companies would rather keep the money then keep the playing fair....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
change the game experience so that you can't just stand at one spot and have creatures spawn over and over again? A giant Sloth with a 33% chance of dropping a Toe amulet of +12 charisma would only generate in a geographic area once per X amount of time. Or, have it randomly spawn throughout a realm. Why make the same thing spawn in the same place all the time? It really only makes sense that the same enemy would be in the same place if it's an instance and you can't camp it... but, I don't play WoW, so what the heck do I know.
"Blizzard is once again clearing house, and this time they mean business"
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I think that there are significantly more than 0.2% of WOW accounts involved in "gold farming and cheating in general". It sure sounds significant to throw around numbers like five and ten thousand until you realize that the number of accounts is in the millions.
It sorta reminds me of when the politicos squawk about the financial carnage that a few million dollars will cause to the many billion dollar budget.
RFC2119
Why don't they fix the game instead of banning these "cheaters"?
Now I don't play WoW or any MMORPG but I have played Quake and UT online and these are generally fixed with tools that help prevent cheating rather than just outright banning of everyone. I don't have a problem banning true cheaters but who says who is cheating and what constitutes "cheating" versus friendly taking advantage of the system. Seems like too many innocents or people just playing around could get banned. I mean mistakes can be made, there are no laws governing this, you're just gone. This is actually part of the reason why I don't play MMORPG's, I don't want to possibly waste money on something I can't control.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Like creating some sort of grim reaper that starts chasing banned folks where ever they go, like in Gauntlet. Only it never gives up and if you're ever touched, you're dead, er, banned forever. Make it move at a nice steady pace so that everyone else is treated to some Pepe Le Pew style comedy. Or make it like a biblical plague. From time to time, folks are cleared out by frogs, boils, flies, etc.
(I've never played, so it may not as good an idea as it sounds)
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
if only there was some way I could get my WoW fix for free on servers that you are actually able to log in to.
yep, too bad theres nothing like that on the interenets
Looks like a few thousand people might have to actually leave the house now to get their socialising fix, or they could just give their cash to another MMORPG supplier..
Just switch dealer! Gotta get that fix, after all.
If there's anything more sad than gaming geeks sitting all day (and night) long and replacing their social lives with WoW, it's the very same geeks that also feel the need to cheat their ways through the game. I don't mind it if it doesn't affect others, but botting and macroing tend to affect game economies and make things overly hard to acquire due to inflation.
If you don't ban the cheaters you effectively encourage them. Look no further than Turbine's Asheron's Call. The game has a permanent exploiter haven stain over its head. Worse was the day a Turbine developer posted on their own forums that "combat macroing" was condoned. If you encourage one type of the cheating people will use that as an excuse for others.
As for fixing the game versus banning players. I am quite sure its different teams. The game CSR/GM group jobs only interact with developers on bugs and possibly for new tool requests. If anything banning these players may make for more time for the developers to fix the game.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Anyone playing the game can still do a /who dire maul or /who mauradan and still see multiple level 60 hunters exploiting the instances.
So woopty do, all 5000 of those people just bought a new copy and are exploiting again. What i want to know is why did they wait and let the economy get ruined and then do it all at once instead of banning them one by one when they do something bad? Just for these worthless "hey, we banned a lot of people" statements?
I've been a tireless defender of Blizzard but I finally ran out of patience. They've hopelessly crippled the PvP system with mindless battlegrounds grinds, where you farm rep and CP instead of XP and items. Boring. And now that my server crashes 2-3 times a night and is totally unplayable most weekends, and BWL is so lagged that Vael is impossible ... well I hit a wall. I can't justify $15/mo for a game that I can't even play. I hung it up and signed up for EVE.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
wait, are we talking about the US economy or the WoW economy?
I don't see what the criticism of gold farming is all about from the player's standpoint. Anyone who has an alt character on a separate account is doing essentially the same thing as someone who buys gold on ebay from a gold farmer. They are paying real world money to get an in-game advantage. Thing is, when you get an Alt it is Blizzard who gets all the payments. But with gold farming, someone other than Blizzard is profiting, too. Don't believe them when they say they are trying to keep the game balanced for all players. If you pay Blizzard, you can get TOS-compliant in-game advantages poorer players cannot match. So it isn't about fairness to players at all. It's about Blizzard's bottom line.
I buy gold and don't care what people think. You have an alt, and don't care what I think. Even, steven.
Blizz could make infinite lvl 30 ghosts spawn around the gold farmer randomly. The gold farmer might be able to fight them off, but over time they'd just wear down and wouldn't be able to get any gold farming in... what a cool idea.
After reading over some of the posts here, I had an idea based on some of them. Rather than ban these people, why not keep them flagged for both Alliance and Horde PVP (like in the Arena), and set them up like Trial accounts where they can't send or receive ingame mail, and can't trade. Give them a tag like or or something, and let people police themselves. That would let the players on the servers vent some and force them to do the work of canceling their own account.
-- Dan
After 30 days, Captain Hector got guns and would hunt you down. He wasn't too hard to kill if you had a decent ship, but he'd be back a few minutes later to attack you again. And again. And again. And again...
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Let's see, 5400 people @ $12.99/month (or more), that's about $800k a year--easily enough funds for a half-dozen developers' salaries+benefits+perks. So when Blizz's income drops by close to a million per year, who got axed?
I played EQ original to a very high level in the day Plane of Time etc and I think its ok for people to spend a huge amount of time in at least one or two mmorpgs. You learn to network with people, schedule large groups and pay close attention to detail. But you have to be careful not to get caught up in an endless experience that becomes purely entertainment after a while. Give it a year or two but then stop and experience other things.
I'm really curious what software people use to drive MMOs automatically. I've seen them in the past, and seen some of the scripting for them - but I just can't remember what they are. Anyone?
Education is the silver bullet.
You banned 5400 accounts! You're really showing those gold farmers who's boss! Boy, at this rate I bet those companies selling gold will be out of business in NO TIME! /runsOverToIgeDotCom
Hrmm... 500 gold on my server was $30 bucks last week... Let's see what's up after blizzard's heroic bans! Arthas Server, Horde... 500 gold. $31 bucks. =|
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
I hear you on the battleground grind.
For four weeks I pvped with the group on our server that always had the top two or three people, but I have a job/wife/life so I didn't PVP as much as them. After almost making it to rank 11 I started figuring out the math based on wowguru and some other sites. It would take 8 additional weeks of being in FIRST place for me to make warlord (not high warlord) on our server.
I'm sorry, but that's too much dedication. I enjoyed it but I'd like to enjoy it on my terms, not blizzards.
So I pulled the plug had a few days of withdrawals, but I destroyed my account so that I could never go back and I'm all the better for it.
Trading information thats free to replicate is fundamentally wrong.
These commodities don't lose value because they replicated.They remain the same(except for sheeple that chooses to buy them).
What is different from original file? What is difference between Official Digital Copy of Ringtone/File/Song/Information you buy and a copy you make?
...that's almost 1000 a MONTH since they've begun! I'm glad they're not just paying it all lip-service. /rolleyes
that's like double all the people still playing star wars galaxies =)
Blizzard is judge, jury, and executioner . There is no way to appeal, once they ban you, you are gone for good. Along with the money you paid to play that month and use of the game. Unlike Diablo 2 where there is a single player option, WOW is only online. A lot of their bans are done by Warden, an anti cheat piece of software. We all know programs, or the people who create them, never make errors, Right?
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
At least they aren't banning us copper farmers...Because we are so important to the economy.
So now information is free, and people who pay for it are sheep. What about the people who contribute money to wikkipedia? They are paying to give information away. Where is the value in that? Are they grass? I pay verizon to get access to wikkipedia and other free content. What kind of animal am I?
Don't confuse what people subjectively should pay with what they do pay. People pay a buck a song. It must be worth it to them.
" It must be worth it to them."
Subjective value,just another aspect.
These things have no real value.
The ringtones and DRMed songs you pay for are copies,digital copies.
Company who sells them just prints money out of thin air(not-considering distribution and storage which you already paid).
So, are we talking economics, or only what you consider valuable? Don't let yourself be tricked by something that has no value to you. All of my money is just bits anyway. Yet people are willing to trade my bits for things like groceries and gasoline, or even ringtones. What does it cost to store my bank balance? I paid my taxes with an online servie this year. what were those bits worth?
The only real measure of value is what people are what people are willing to pay for something. Does it matter if the payment or the purchase are virtual?
Your money is valuable to all,Your Virtual Items are valuable to small subset of population who need them.
What you buy exactly is the time they spend to farm these game resources(to prevent wasting time yourself).
Digital Copies of Information on other hand are not Virtual Items,Its just data.Companies who charge for copies don't spend any time or resource.They only need the original for distribution.
Because that's what I really like. Fucking wankers.
Teleport them into low orbit, and watch as they plunge into the ocean at ~500kph.
Virtual Items doesn't become your Credit Card records just because someone willing to pay real money for them.
It reminds me of a some smilie trading site that charged 5$(or something similar) to buy smilies as gifts to users of your choice.
Tell me of value of those pixels?
Don't they exist there?Can i send you a copy?For 4.00$ each? Premium quality
Smilies might i add.Unique!
I feel we need Online Economy 101 courses mandatory for everyone.
"Natural law of human interaction" more like "There is a sucker born every minute".
it seems blizzard east has been down for over 6 hours this morning. some think it's a server update some think it's a DDoS attack. I personally think it's a DDoS attack related to this action by Blizz