Slashdot Mirror
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."
Should be something like: Game companies expect revenue increase as banned gold farmers buy new accounts...
Same Crap, Different Day
Back when I played WoW, the server I was on was pretty much owned by gold farmers. They drove up the prices on everything, and unfortunately a lot of players just went along with it. People would buy in-game currency with real money to pay for things in the game sold by those selling the in-game money they got from those inflated sales. A vicious circle, but I guess some players felt it was worth it.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Now what will I do?? - Oh wait - I know, I'll keep ignoring WoW like I have been since it first came out! How ANYONE can support Blizzard after the whole Bnetd thing is TOTALLY beyond me. Screw them. Screw them right in the ear.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
First off, no one cares about FFXI outside of Japan. But even pretending anyone does:
No one cares about Blizzard doing it, either. Why?
Because they've been banning accounts all along. It's not news. Blizzard bans more gold farmers, twice as many spring up. It's not going to go away just because some accounts were banned.
Now, if this were news about how Blizzard was planning on redesigning their MMORPG to make gold farming a non-issue (and, to be honest, it really is already: the best stuff is gotten through raids, which side-step the gold-seller aspect entirely), then this would be news.
As long as the gameplay rewards people for collecting large sums of gold that can be traded amongst other players, people will be willing to pay others to collect that gold for them. It's nothing new.
Banning cheaters isn't interesting. Trying to fix the root problems that result in cheating would be interesting, but they're not, they're just banning people who cheated.
Inflation in games is a lot easier to trace than inflation in the real world. It's a much smaller economy- until you drag the 'outer' economy into it.
I think we should be banned from BUYING gold, too.
Report sellers, report bots, the next time someone whispers to you ingame to visit their WoWgold site, report it under the behaviour tag in the reporting options. This becomes especially important for casual players, who just can't compete.
I know, isn't that just an artificial control? No, it's more like cracking down on forgery- this is wealth that was created for the purpose of selling it, which makes it an otherwise unnecessary element in the economy that hurts the whole.
I say yay, keep up the farmer bans.
On an unrelated note, every time i clean out my bookbag, i wish vendors in real life bought the trash...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
(Bannings) -59,000 * $15 = -$885,000/mo
:)
(New acct) 59,000 * $40 = +$2,360,000
(Monthly fee) 59,000 * $15 = $885,000/mo
Looks like the business model is working for the farmers and Blizzard. Kind of like a farming tax.
There's a lesson to be learned from this, banning gold farmers and the people who buy from them doesn't work. 59k accounts banned in WoW? That's ridiculous. It tells me the economics are still not working (I played WoW for a year and saw how bad they were). If games companies want to solve this they will have to come up with some stronger defence. such as:
a) better economics.
b) no tweaking.
c) tie characters to credit card details (will cause problems with gamecards).
d) better economics.
e) allow gold/character selling, but moderate and oversee it.
Blizz and any other games company who thinks about doing another MMOG better get this sorted before they write the next blockbuster, as otherwise I foresee thousands of bald programmers in darkened rooms pulling out their hair and screaming as they have to deal with the intricacies of propping up dying economies and stopping farming rather than writing stuff they actually are interested in.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
About 2-3 months ago Blizzard really started to crack down on the buyers and the sellers of gold in World of Warcraft. Before that they would sometimes ban farmers if they caught them. What they've started to do is take back gold from the buyers when they ban seller accounts. This led to a large jump in the price of gold. Where gold was selling for around 2000G for $125 USD a few months ago, it's back around 1000G for $169 USD. That is a huge jump.
I've actually heard of people quitting WoW over this, because the only way they thought they could compete with full time players was with buying gold. Between the growing gear gap, and increasing price of gold, it's making some people reconsider playing.
I always thought the best way to remove farmers was to create a game that's fun to play in ALL regards; farmers only exist because part of the game is so tedious that many players don't want to bother with it. Personally, I'd be insulted if people were paying money NOT to play my game...
Blizzard has probably banned more players than the peak populations of most other games... What would make more sense is just to transfer the characters over to a "banned" server. Let that economy fight itself out... Just need a good name for it....
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Economy is the problem. If there is 10x as much gold because people are "producing" more of it by farming, then those who don't farm can't buy the good items. It actively decreases the value of other players' gold.
That's how it affects other players' experiences. Blizzard has made a decision that this is a bad thing in terms of fun, so they delete accounts accordingly.
I personally think it's a Sisyphusian task, but I'm certainly not against trying.
Last post!
In FFXI land not all the 2000 accounts where banned (most got 3 day suspensions) and most where not for RMT. The users in question had been using flee/pos/warp hacks and or engaged in MPK or other offences. A large portion of them happened to be endgame players who where using cheats to steal or easily beat high level monsters instead of playing fairly. SE is now flagging accounts for punishment if they are caught cheating and depending on the level of your offence you could be subject of a ban.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I wish I had mod points today. You are exactly correct, people buy gold so they can skip a lot of the game. The reason they do this is because WOW is perhaps the most boring RPG ever created.
I borrowed a friends discs once and bought a month's worth of access just so I can see what all the fuss was about. I simply couldn't believe how bad this game is. All of the quests were of the "find ten of these useless things and get back to me" or "kill that asshole over there" variety. My seven year old son's Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish games have more depth.
And I really hate how everything seems to "charge" you in time. Cast a spell, wait a few seconds. Open a chest, wait a few seconds longer. It's like the whole mechanic of this game is to make me sit here wasting my life watching progress bars while charging me $15 a month to do so. And then there's the fact that half the game experience is watching your character's back while he trudges slowly across the landscape.
And there's other really dumb things in the basic interface. You click on a guy attacking you from behind with your sword and it says "facing wrong direction". Well no fucking shit, man. I thought I communicated my intention to turn around and whack that fucker when I right-clicked on the monster. The game is filled with stuff like this. I had far, far more fun playing Diablo online.
I'm just not getting why this is the most successful game of all time. Maybe it gives obsessive-complusive people something to do? Seems like the best play here is to just not get involved in it in the first place.
Between the growing gear gap, and increasing price of gold...
I think a lot of politications would do pretty well in November running on a platform to eliminate the "Gear Gap".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorta, but if there's 10x as much gold, you can usually make money off doing things a player with two years in the game and a bunch of upper level characters wouldn't want to do. Everquest did a good job of this by requiring low-level mob drops in a bunch of crafting recipes and as spell reagents. They were just inconvenient enough that a level 60 wouldn't want to go out and farm themselves, but plentiful enough that as a newb you could make decent money off them.
And especially in today's quest-based games like WoW and EQ2, I'm a bit surprised plat farmers make money at all. Even with two maxed out characters in EQ2, when I ran up alts, I didn't bother twinking them out at all. It's just not worth the money when you can quest items and blow through levels ridiculously fast while you're doing it.
I'll assume you're just relatively ignorant and haven't spent much time living in Japan. As it is, they keep a very tight grip on the economic reins in a number of areas, and money laundering and taxation are two of the big ones. These are serious issues for anyone doing business in / with Japan, as banking and wiring service websites will show anti-laundering / anti-fraud messages from time to time, and the government's efforts to prevent money laundering and tax dodging are partly why it's so difficult now to get a bank account in Japan. If dodgy types have found out that gold farming is a quick and dirty way to skirt the laws, it makes perfect sense to me that the government would be interested in finding out about it -- hence the investigation.
As another poster noted on the linked GameSpot page,
For crime, as with anything, follow the money. That's what Japanese law enforcement does, they follow the money as one of their many tools in trying to run a tight ship. And as virtual money starts to look more and more like the real thing, you can expect all sorts of government attention in other countries as well.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Good question. The U.S. Congress has very specific enumerated powers as listed in the U.S. Constitution. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated for Congress to govern/make laws for is considered a right of the State or the Individual.
The DMCA has no provision in the U.S. Constitution. I believe that the law passes muster only because individuals of today have accepted an outrageous definition of what the "interstate commerce clause" offers as a Congressional power. Rather than have power over making sure that interstate commerce wasn't regulated by the States (as originally envisioned by the founding fathers), the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court believe that the clause offers Congress the right to regulate Interstate commerce as a force instead of as a watchman for individual rights.
The DMCA and all IP laws show that you need to use government force to support inefficient and unprofitable businesses. Without government force, these businesses would be much more competitive, and new markets and profitable sectors would arise out of the creation of content. Unfortunately, the average consumer, taxpayer and voter doesn't see the freedom that real freedom would bring us -- instead they think we need more force to battle the problems that previous use of force created.
1. It is a _game_.
2. No matter how big someone else's equipment is, yours is good enough to play, have fun, and be happy.
3. Trying to compete with others for time, money, or equipment size is always going to leave you lacking.
4. Trying to play with "full time players" if you aren't one is a waste of time. Find "part time players" and play with them. The full time players aren't having more fun.
Please, if you have to compete by purchasing gold to "catch up" then don't play.
I don't know about WoW, but in other MMORPG's I have played, there is simply too much money in the economy. The game had several ways to make money, but few ways to take it out of the economy. The effect was rampant inflation as the total amount of money in the economy kept increasing. If a new skill or event was created that would take large amounts of money off the economy, inflation and money farms would have less of an effect.
No, DMCA has nothing to do with copyright. DMCA is about reverse engineering, not about duplicating or distribution.
Also, it could be well argued (not by me as I repudiate copyright entirely) that DMCA has not been enforced by "authors" nor "inventors" but by distribution cartels. Again, not within the meaning of the Constitution.
The DMCA has zero to do with copyright and everything to do with enforcing actions of others that any free thinker would deem legal. Figuring out how something works is part of making a new device that will be better (and not potentially disturb any patents). The DMCA prevents you from figuring out how something works -- it doesn't actually enable or disable copying.
I used t play WoW. I am quite bored with it now but I played for about a year. I played through to lv 60 twice and enjoyed everything but the buying and selling. Epic items cost way too much for me (a hardcore gamer to my wife but actually a casual gamer to the Slashdot crowd no doubt) to get many.
In the last two months of playing I made a discovery that just about blew my mind. For those not in the 'know', Blizzard allows a certain amount of mods to be used in game. These do various things such as map enhancements, custom button grouping etc. Now one of these is called auctioneer. What it does is make you money. Not just a little bit but a whole CRAP PILE of money. This mod will NOT get you banned from WoW that I know of either.
How does it work, you ask? Glad you asked. Its very simple. If you have ever heard the phrase "Buy low. Sell High" well no truer words have ever been spoken about this addon. It scans the auction house for items that are being sold under the mean asking price. So if the average price of a stack of gold bars is 2g (for instance) and there are 5 auctions with bids below it will flag them and allow you to bid on them. You can say show me items with a bid
I struggled with the morale of using such a tool, but as my subscription was running out I wanted to see how much gold I could make in my last 30 days. I tried to do this on paper for a few weeks early in my WoW career but it is a tiresome process. I had about 6G in the bank. I would run this once a day and by the second to last day I had over 1000g in the bank! Broken or what? It was then I realised I would never play again. What is the point? If its that easy and I can buy whatever I want then there certainly is little use in playing.
Oh well. y other $0.02 is that I don't think I can support Blizzard too much any more. I loved Diablo2 and WoW for a time but I can't stand it when companies treat their customers like criminals. Close the loops you idiots! Don't blame the guys that spent possibly $100(s) on your @$%^ games. Its THEIR (read: Blizzard's) fault.
End rant.
More people are abandoning the game not because of the inflation because you can't even buy the good armor but because its getting way too tedious. They are restructuring the dungeons so now instead of bosses dropping loot they will drop "tokens" which you can turn into loot. But they don't drop enough for 1 person to make 1 item. So you'll have to have every character if every class run through dungeons for much longer without seeing a return on their time spent. ZG and AQ are like this but they are making EVERY raid instance token based. And I won't even get into the China farmed PvP rating nonsense that went on. The problem is that Blizzard is making advancement past 60 so ridiculous that you either have to be pissed slaving away for hours or just give up.
For Kesmai, all i have to say id: asak nungi irga lubluyi.
And i probably spelled it wrong.
Here's the problem with farmers. A casual player can make gear that sells for 10g in the auction house. This will enable them to equip their character pretty well, not great but not bad, with a new item that someone else produced or looted.
But wait! Gold farmers mean that for a little real money, everybody who is willing to pay can suddenly have as much gold as they need.
This means that prices go up, because the standard is now that everyone has 1000 gold, not 10.
Damn.
Now all of a sudden, everything costs more- to anyone who doesn't buy WoW gold. Before, only a few players had thousands of gold. That kept the playing field relatively even. Now, the playing field gets evened once again, but at higher prices.
This creates problems. a.) the gold farmers sell low level items (potions, etc) far cheaper and drive down the prices i'll get for anything low level i make
b) they increase the prices on everything else, because everyone can afford more.
So anything i can farm, i lose out on the profit of because there are so many gold farmers doing this to get the gold in the first place (items that other people need for potions, or the potions themselves, for example, are cheap. This is useful for those buying potions but not useful as a production skill anymore, because what's the point when you won't for them what you need? The whole skill class has basically been outsourced to third world countries because people want WoW gold and are willing to spend money but not time on it. It's not as much of a problem in a larger economy, but in WoW you have a small, server-wide economy with money pouring in from the farmers.)
and anything that's a dropped item somebody else would sell is infinitely MORE expensive because they assume we all have bought the gold to pay for it.
If you are the only kid in third grade with a $1 allowance and everybody else has $10 allowances, that's what this becomes. The kids are trading $10 things at $100 rates. If i played full time, i'd get gear drops i could sell for high rates- which would still continue to buy me less and less as farmed money poured into the economy.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
This is just something Blizzard likes to flaunt that doesn't really mean anything. On the server where I play, there's a bot that farms the same set of harpies repeatedly. People post about him in the forums to try and get him killed by the other faction. We've tried to bust up his program, initiating duels, trades, inviting him to groups, tagging his kills, mind controlling his kills, etc. I reported him twice. The first time, I got your standard CSR email "We've investigated and taken appropriate actions." The appropriate actions were, apparently, nothing. So I reported him again, and this time I got some big speech about how Blizzard is anti-bot and has banned nearly 60,000 accounts in the last month. The GM assured me they were going to investigate him, again. That was 2 weeks ago. As of a few days ago, he was still there, running his same circuit through the harpies.