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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!
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?
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.
They've been mass-banz0ring cheaters, hackers, exploiters, and gold sellers since beta. Who said they wouldn't do this?
It's always nice to read these announcements from Blizzard.
"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
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
Ah, the typical all-devs-must-focus-on-one-thing-at-a-time mentality.
The misguided assumption that because one group is doing one thing (and publically), that another group isn't doing other work.
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
The problem with this sort of thing is that most of these people aren't really "cheating." They are playing the game perfectly by the rules. The problem lies within weaknesses in the basic game mechanics; as long as it requires frequent, repetitive actions to improve your character, people will find a way to automate that process. If there are incredibly rare items in the game that everybody wants, there are people who will hunt for this item 24 hours a day and then sell it; and, of course, in order to get the money necessary to buy it, players will just buy that money online, because they don't want to press the same button a thousand times in order to get enough money. Fixing these problems requires making changes in the way the gameplay works; naturally, this upsets honest players who had come to rely on whatever had been changed, and so they resort to exploiting other weaknesses in order to keep their character adequate...
There's really no equivalent in games like Quake and UT. Players have no attachment to their characters; every few minutes, you restart with the same basic equipment and stats as everybody else. Even if the developers decide to change a particular game mechanic, it's not a problem, because the change affects everybody equally, and nobody has lost anything.
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.
Now I don't play WoW or any MMORPG
This much is obvious. The fact here is that a lot of these accounts aren't "cheating", but rather violating the EULA/TOS/AUP (or whatever acronym Blizzard uses). I'm not certain, but I bet a lot of these accounts were used for gold farming, which while technically not cheating, has effects on the game economy, as well as creates a secondary economy for the game (this is probably the part they don't like).
Also, Quake/UT are quite a bit different. In those games, you have a large number of servers with a few players on each one. It's easier to set up a server where people can be trusted. Another huge difference is that FPSes are a lot less complex in terms of the amount of code used in gameplay.
MMOs are the exact opposite in both these regards. They have a small number of servers with a large number of players on each one. It's a lot harder to keep undesireable people from having a negative impact on the game. The code required for gameplay is also a lot more complicated, as a much larger amount of scripting takes place (tracking things like quest status, items/inventory, spells and abilities, environmental and skill effects, among others). All this extra code translates into more possible bugs.
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
The problem with farming gold and items is that often they're not camping one specific mob, but a small area.
Bind-on-Pickup items, like those won from bosses in dungeons, are worthless to a farmer; it can't be used by (or even go into the inventory of) anyone except the person who wins the loot roll for it. All you can do is sell it to a vendor for about 5g.
Bind-on-Equip epixxxx, which are the ones characters with no vowels in their names try to pawn off for about 800g, are almost entirely random world drops, which have a tiny chance to drop from anything in certain level range. This way, the farmer camping an area makes life miserable for anyone trying to complete a quest there, but there's not overwhelming 24-hour competition for one specific mob.
wait, are we talking about the US economy or the WoW economy?
Were you told that this ban oversight can be easily remedied if you just send $100 to a Nigerian bank account?
The fact here is that a lot of these accounts aren't "cheating"
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How do you know? I bet a large number, perhaps all, of the "banned" accounts were banned for teleport hacking. The programs to do this have gotten very sophisticated and user-friendly and nearly every server has problems with people who do nothing but teleport around the world mining rich thorium veins and hanging around instanced dungeons teleporting to places where they can't be hit but can kill bosses from.
Here's a video of someone teleporting around Dire Maul. The UI on the hack is pretty impressive, although the resolution is too bad to see details: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-53051962
I think the main reason they can't fix this is that they want their game to be playable in high latency conditions (virtually required with the load and network problems they are having) and so they can't really tell the difference between someone who lost their connection for 10 seconds and popped up somewhere new because they weren't reporting their position while they were moving and someone who just hacked their client into thinking it's somewhere else now.
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.
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!"
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
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.
One thing you're forgetting: "Game Cards"
Do you Gentoo!?
characters with no vowels in their names
Discriminating against characters from the parts of the game world equivalent to Eastern Europe (where vowels in many words have been eroded over time) or the Middle East (whose writing systems leave most vowels unwritten)?
Yes, because it's tough as hell to get a different credit card to use. Or like the person above me posted, game cards. Do you think anyone in that risky of a business would have their real name tied to their account? Hell, when I used to run ShowEQ back in the day I used it with an account based off game cards...and ShowEQ was near impossible to detect.
If you're purposely breaking the EULA, you watch your ass.
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
When Hgf, Gprs, and Adsfhg will stop hawking their Foror's Compendiums every 15 seconds and actually respond to whispers, I'll stop assuming that they're farmers.
Yes, the last one starts with a vowel, but you understand my meaning.
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 =)
"Er no. Your account isn't linked to the retail copy it's linked to your credit card"
BZZZZT!
Hardly. You can buy the game with cash, and then there are those pesky monthly game cards that you can purchase the same way, guaranteeing your anonymity.
They're going to get a catchy name like "analog hole" pretty soon too.
BTW, WoW expansion pack fans should take note of this link
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
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.
BTW, WoW expansion pack fans should take note of this link
/point /laugh
Bwahahaha. $50 for the expansion?!
SQEEEEEEAL like a pig.
-- GeminiDomino, WoW-Free since October 2005
Virtual Items doesn't become your Credit Card records just because someone willing to pay real money for them.
It reminds me of a some smilie trading site that charged 5$(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