Square and Blizzard Drop The Banhammer

Gamespot has the news that Square has banned some 2000 accounts from FFXI, and Eurogamer reports that Blizzard has banned 59,000 accounts from World of Warcraft. The bans come as game publishers continue to attempt to crack down on Real Money Traders in their titles. From the FFXI article: "The news follows Square Enix's crackdown of 250 accounts in June over money-farming and real-money trading, which is the practice of selling in-game currency for cash in the real world. Concerns over real-money trading prompted the Japanese government--particularly worried about large-scale money-mining operations in video games--to launch its own investigation last week."

Comments

Who cares?!!

[sigmapsicharlie]

I mean really, come on. I consider myself a geek and what not but really people, paying 12 bucks a month for what? To say I got my character to LVL 1234567 before some other retard. Paying every month to virtually hang out with other nerds is dumb as hell and anybody stupid and desparate enough to pay real money for fake money should be locked up

Re:You are a part of the problem

[iceperson]

i'm going to guess you're in school and play 30+ hours a week. sorry guy, don't be upset when people with more money than time are willing to part with the former to save them the latter. like you said, it's a game, and just like someone who plays paintball or hockey or whatever is willing to spend real money for better gear so are people in games. if you can't keep up, then find a new game...

Re:Gold farming exploits

[brkello]

This is the most clueless post I have ever read on WoW. There is just so much wrong I don't know where to start. But here we go. Blizzard has made an incredible UI. They allow others to make extensions that improve their UI even more. There are mods that make it easier to heal other people, modes that allow you to move and make extra buttons on the screen, mods that compare items you pick up to ones that are equipped, etc. etc. There is a mod called auctioneer. This is a useful addon because it scans the AH and stores the prices of each item. It is mostly used so that when something drops in the field, you immediately have an idea how much it costs. It also gives you a good baseline on how much to set your auction for. Can you use it to find items that are priced extremely low to resell. Sure. But pretty much everyone has this addon so it isn't like you are at some disadvantage. It just make the game more convenient which is a good thing. So you have to ask this guy...what's your point? You just showed that it is very easy to make gold in WoW without buying gold. How is this a bad thing? What you misunderstand is that this game is not about buying epic items. This game is about raiding. 1-60 is a fun game that sets you up for the end game content. You can not buy the best epics. You can buy mediocre epics that most people who raid wouldn't even waste time on. This game is for casuals for leveling. But once you hit 60, the only way to progress is to join with other people and play for 3-4 hours a few times a week (casual guild) or play hours every night (hardcore guild). Auctioneer is not a loophole. It doesn't encourage buying or selling of gold. It can be used to play an economy just like tools that watch the stock market. This is not Blizzard treating their customers bad. This is Blizzard creating a UI that is so sophisticated that others can make tools this useful that extend it even further. Addons are not hacker tools. Addons are how the game was meant to be played. The real problem are people who use illegal software (i.e. bots, hack tools that allow them to warp around the game) to get a lot of gold and then sell it to others. Blizzard is not perfect and there is plenty you can criticize them for...like not going after the buyers of gold as agressively as the sellers. But your post is just flat out wrong on auctioneer. In fact, it makes the point that there are plenty of ways to make gold that has nothing to do with real money trade. This is true of any MMO with an economy. With brains, or effort, or tools (even legal ones!), you can do quite well without doing any work. Unsurprisingly, people do this in real life as well.