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Blizard Sues Virtual Gold Seller

DaphneDiane writes "Blizzard announced that they are suing one of the heavily spamming gold sellers, Peons4hire. Peons4hire had recently been spamming players in World of Warcraft with multi-line messages advertising their power leveling and gold selling business. With the advent of the recently released 2.1.0 patch Blizzard made it easier to report and block these spammers. I've noticed a large decrease in spam while playing since the patch. It used to be that I would get nearly a dozen spams a night but I barely have seen any since."

242 comments

  1. Anti-spam by nekozid · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of you who don't know what measures they took, there is now a report spam button and the servers filter out most of the messages.

    1. Re:Anti-spam by Broken+Bottle · · Score: 5, Informative

      they also blocked trial accounts from being able to send whispers to people who haven't sent them a whisper first or have the trail account name on their friends list. Also, they throttled the rate at which people can send whispers and te amount of text that can be sent per whisper.

      A lot of stuff that will make a spammer's life more difficult.

    2. Re:Anti-spam by LocoMan · · Score: 4, Informative

      And when you report a spammer, it ignores all messages coming from the entire account until you log off. That prevents a spammer from creating an alt, spamwhisper everyone, delete it, create another alt, repeat.

    3. Re:Anti-spam by ajanp · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I would think blocking the ability of trial accounts to initiate tells is what had the largest impact (so far). Most of the spam came in the form of mass whispers from companies like peons4hire that would contain a couple of lines about the gold/price/website and it was sent to everybody in the entire zone.

      The person who originally sent the whisper would generally have a trial account, create a character with a random name (often including accents and ascii symbols), log in, send the mass number of tells, and the log out and delete the character, so they might only be logged on for no more than 30 seconds.

      The trial accounts are free so they could be used to sent mass whispers w/o any fear of getting banned. By blocking the ability to trial account users to send tells, that alone cuts of the primary method of spamming people, because now they would be forced to open subscriptions which would include a significant investment considering the account is destined to be banned quickly.

      Don't forget, there is a market for selling gold in a virtual economy. Gold spammers might be breaking Blizzard's TOS, but they are making money from it with absolutely no consequences. Blizzard certainly took steps to protect their users given you could expect an average of 2-3 gold spam tells in an hour, but I'm sure they will find another way to get their message across (after all, it's a business that rely's only on marketing and price).

      This lawsuit really has nothing to do with seeking monetary gains from peons4hire. It's about deterrence and making peons4hire and all other gold selling companies aware that there are consequences for their actions. If they win their case, then it basically makes selling gold within WoW more expensive than continuing to break Blizzard's ToS and it will have a huge impact on that entire market.

      Bottom line, as long as gold sellers can continue to profit, these companies will exist.

      --
      File Deletion is Murder.
    4. Re:Anti-spam by Sandman1971 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's incorrect. I'll try to find the link to the WoW forum post regarding this, but a Blue (Community Manager) confirmed that most of the reported spam came from paid accounts and not trial accounts. They were a combination of gold sellers purchased accounts and hacked accounts. Trial accounts have had whisper limitations for months.

      --
      It's better to burn out than to fade away
    5. Re:Anti-spam by Thexare+Blademoon · · Score: 3, Funny

      Amusing that someone would spam with the subject "Re:Anti-spam".

      Or maybe I'm just too easily amused by stupidity.

    6. Re:Anti-spam by fractoid · · Score: 1

      I dunno about shift, but assuming you mean "Ctrl" since I use a real keyboard... Ctrl+1 tells Wang, my pet nightsabre, to attack. And Ctrl+2 tells him to follow me.

      Sadly my gf won't let me use my other pet, which is a giant crab, because I named it Head.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  2. Result by milo_a_wagner · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the comments under TF'A', it seems as though this has had a massive impact. With the filing of a Federal lawsuit, perhaps we'll be sending another, louder message that these nuisances are no more acceptable in virtual universes than they are in ours.

    --
    Man wird am besten für seine Tugenden bestraft.
    1. Re:Result by Poltras · · Score: 2, Funny

      And maybe then, two years from now, SPAM will not exist anymore. Oh wait...

    2. Re:Result by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Yeah because in RL everyone sues those bastards who drops pizza ads in your mailbox. (I hate them thought, usually throws them out in the stairs.)

    3. Re:Result by Afecks · · Score: 1

      So you're the asshole that keeps littering?! Stop that!

  3. Interesting. by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I was reading the actual forum post on this.

    Blizzard posters are often called "Blue" because their text/name/posts are blue colored.

    So, a person said "AWESOME! What are the charges?"

    Blue: silence.

    Does Blizzard have any real legal recourse here?

    TLF

    --
    I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    1. Re:Interesting. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      civil law.

    2. Re:Interesting. by xpccx · · Score: 1

      My guess is that they violate the licensing agreement you have to click through when you install the software. So like the AC posted, it's probably a civil case.

    3. Re:Interesting. by _KiTA_ · · Score: 2, Informative



      Does Blizzard have any real legal recourse here?


      Violation of contract (EULA).
      Digital Trespass (since they've been told not to come back).
      Harassment

      I'm sure a lawyer can find a better legal sounding way to say "being an obnoxious twit" than I can.

    4. Re:Interesting. by The+Custodian · · Score: 1

      I'm no legal expert, so I don't actually know if they have a legal reason for suing here. I'm sure there's something in the liscence agreement that prohibits advertisements, though. Regardless, they've banned the two practices (power-levelling and gold-selling) prior to this. Why not just ban the player? Unless this guy was far-and-away the mastermind of all spamming in WoW, I don't see much of a reason to take it beyond an account termination.

    5. Re:Interesting. by Mr+EdgEy · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not 'a player'. Peons4hire and similar businesses have many players working to farm up and advertise the gold, if you've ever played WoW you'd know it's not just one account :p

    6. Re:Interesting. by bigdavesmith · · Score: 1

      IANAL, but if a person or company makes profit by selling virtual gold, depending on location, they'd probably need to declare it for taxes. Since selling said virtual gold goes against the EULA, and constitutes misuse of the product, it seems like they're kinda trapped there. If I mugged somebody, I wouldn't declare it on my taxes.

      Of course I'm thinking somebody operating in the USA. I imagine most of these people or companies are farming in China or somewhere similar. Things are probably different.

    7. Re:Interesting. by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      Of course I'm thinking somebody operating in the USA.

      There's no legal reason Blizzard can't declare that, for tax purposes, the game is in the USA. They probably do already, to ease their jurisdiction.

      If you telecommute to NYC, you can expect to pay taxes to NYC, NYS, and USA -- and your home country. There might be a credit in there somewhere, maybe a bunch of them, but not reporting it is still a crime.

    8. Re:Interesting. by Serzen · · Score: 1
      Blizzard does, in fact, appear to declare that the game is "in" a couple of different states. In New York, as well as a few other states they charge you sales tax on your subscription fee. They're the only company that does charge the tax on any game subscription I've held, and I know that in NYS you can be charged sales tax for online purchases made from a company that has "a presence" in NYS.


      Blizzard also charges 8.25% sales tax to NYS residents, even those of us who live in a county where the tax less than that. When I noticed the oddity on my statement, I wrote Blizzard's billing department and was told that "Blizzard and its employees cannot be expected to understand tax laws, if you would like additional information, please contact your state Department of Commerce." I canceled my subscription instead--if they aren't prepared to explain their actions, I'm not prepared to pay for their services.

    9. Re:Interesting. by Decado · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As far as I am aware the legal situation is that Blizzard claim ownership of all the items/gold etc in WoW. By selling these items the gold sellers are basically selling Blizzards property which amounts to theft.

      --

      Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece

    10. Re:Interesting. by raylu · · Score: 1

      "As part of the lawsuit, the operators of Peons4hire have been asked to immediately cease all in-game spamming efforts by all entities and websites under their control. If this organization refuses to act accordingly, further legal action will be taken. We'll be sure to keep you posted on the progress of this topic." Besides the fact that there are 17 pages of posts and, as mentioned earlier, this isn't criminal, it also seems like Blizzard is letting them off easy if they leave Blizzard alone. Also, they obviously aren't ready to reveal the details of this yet.

      --
      Maurice Wilkes, debugging, 1949
    11. Re:Interesting. by Courageous · · Score: 1

      Since they've been told not to come back, why not break out the big guns? ILLEGAL ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC DEVICE. Federal felony.

      C//

    12. Re:Interesting. by Kineel · · Score: 1

      Of course, Blizzards lawyers had a meeting with the staff and gave the usual, "Do not discuss this lawsuit with the public," speech.

      --
      -- Should there be smoke coming out of my CPU?
    13. Re:Interesting. by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      Federal felony. Federal felony? The obvious flaw with that is that it assumes the perpetrator lives within the United States or a country that's willing to enforce U.S. law on their soil (whether or not it applies there). Unfortunately, I can't see this working if the person in question lives in, say, China.
      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    14. Re:Interesting. by malkavian · · Score: 1

      Yes, Blizzard claim ownership of all items. Which is fine, considering that you can't ever take them out of the environs of the Blizzard servers.
      Selling things on from one player to another thus can never be theft, as Blizzard are never deprived of the item.

      What the spammers are guilty of is unauthorized access of a computer system. I know the UK has hefty penalties for this, and I believe the US does as well. By breaking the terms and conditions of the game, they are not allowed access (by person, not account) to the game. Continuing to come back and break the terms of access to the system once more then becomes a criminal offense. This is the same area of law that applies to crackers..

    15. Re:Interesting. by Pofy · · Score: 1

      >As far as I am aware the legal situation is that Blizzard claim ownership of all the items/gold etc in WoW.

      So? If they want to do that, fine, no one is changing that or claiming otherwise. The gold, after all, will not leave Blizzard and their servers, they are thus still owning and posessing them afterwards. Sure, the possession of it in the game has changed, but that is what the game is about in part, change of possession inside the game. The game has plenty of functionality to facilitate that even, trade windows, auction houses, built in mail system were you can send gold and items along and so on.

    16. Re:Interesting. by Courageous · · Score: 1

      Fair enough.

      But suing them will be equally difficult.

      C//

    17. Re:Interesting. by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      You know that line on the IT-150/200/201 where you declare Sales Tax you haven't paid? I wager that, if you document the over-tax you paid, you can get a credit for it from DTF and have it included in your refund.

  4. Wherever you go, there you are by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You create this new online world, and pretty soon it's just as crappy as the real one - full of cheaters using money instead of skill to win, ads everywhere constantly nagging you to buy stuff, and anonymity being stripped away in hopes of curbing irresponsible behavior. Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia?

    1. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by AlephNot · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's no such thing as a utopia--real or virtual. Suffering is the kick in the pants that forces us to become better people. A utopia is a world where no one has any incentive to become a better person (since there's no suffering), in which case, I'm glad no utopia can exist.

      Cold-hearted? Sure. But so is reality.

      --
      "Feel a glory in so rolling / on the human heart a stone" --E. A. Poe, "The Bells"
    2. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by ari_j · · Score: 1

      Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia?

      It works exactly the same as real utopiae, as you pointed out. So far, it's working perfectly.

    3. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      It was perfect. Then people showed up and started using it.

    4. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by TheVelvetFlamebait · · Score: 1

      You create this new online world, and pretty soon it's just as crappy as the real one
      Except that this world has an active god. A vengeful god. This god is currently suing one of the cheaters/advertisers. That's two being taken care of, and I don't even think the third is even an issue in a MMOG.
      --
      You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
    5. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia?

            You know - way back when cyberspace was $6 or $12 an hour (or more!) in the days of GEnie and CompuServe, this sort of thing really wasn't a problem. You could play a multiplayer game with your friends and enjoy yourself. The beggars and spammers were kept to a minimum and most of them were encouraged to actually play the game.

            Then the internet happened. Prices came down - WAY down. Playing a game that would cost you perhaps $200 a month in hourly connect fees, was now $24.95 per month (including your $15/month flat rate internet access). The games got bigger, hosting more people. And the amount of beggars, spammers and griefers grew exponentially.

            There's a lesson in here somewhere.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    6. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Oh, it was a veritable utopia. We came together, enjoyed a good time, cooperated on projects...

      It ended when we let the masses in.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah those cheaters using money instead of skill to win in... WoW? Wait a second what the hell did skill ever get anyone in WoW? Oh I see they're using money instead of TIME to win... Well that's just wrong! Exchanging money for things which take time to do yourself shouldn't be allowed!

      I'll agree that constant nagging is annoying, but bitching about someone paying for things that you'd rather do yourself is kind of pathetic.

    8. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In utopia you don't need to become a better person because we'd already be perfect.

      Now give me my frigg'n utopia!!!

    9. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by gilroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just to be clear: You're saying something like: People are rotten. Because people are rotten, real life is harsh. Because real life is harsh, we need to become better people (to reduce the harshness, I suppose). Utopias would imply an existence without that motivation, so we'd all stay rotten people. Hence, it's good that no utopias do or can exist.

      But... the point of a utopia is exactly that people aren't rotten (in the utopia). It's not about easy living -- natural disasters can still occur, people still die, etc. It's about everyone working together for the net greater good. It's about people not competing in a life that's nasty, brutish, and short. So if a utopia did exist, its inhabitants wouldn't need to better themselves.

      I agree that utopias don't exist in the Universe we inhabit. But I'm not sure I buy the idea that the impossibility of a utopia is a good thing. It sounds a lot like rationalization to me.

      Side snark: Of course "There's no such thing as a utopia--real or virtual". The name was chosen by Sir Thomas More specifically from the Greek that means "no place" or "place that cannot exist". :)

    10. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think it was the price so much as the number of people. Now the net is worldwide so if a percentage of people are a-holes then you just have that many more a-holes to deal with.

    11. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Utopia doesn't exist, it's litterally the meaning of the word: Greek ou, not, no; + Greek topos, place.

      Every society can be put somewhere on the line between absolute lack of individual freedom = totalitarianism and absolute lack of societal control = anarchy. None of those are without troubles, and it would be foolish to think any point inbetween is. Even the best examples of democracy and rule of law are flawed and imperfect. Utopia can only exist where all the inhabitants act in an utopian way, with the interst of society as a whole at heart. Cyberspace was presented as a place outside traditional societal control, a free haven which in many ways is an anarchy. However, since cyberspace was virtual most saw this as just fine - sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me, right?

      Well, it turns out the truth is a little more complicated than that. "Cyberspace" doesn't exist in a vacuum like Star Trek, and even there it's ridiculous people don't steal replicator rations and holodeck time, steal holodeck personalities to use in their private sex fetish and so on. Virtual things have real value, virtual ads are a way to gain real money, real-world crimes like child molestation turns into cyberspace child porn. If you look up Supreme court decisions around the first amendment, long predating the Internet you'd find there's plenty reasons to curb free speech - libel, slander, commercial speech, threats, frauds, grooming, age limits on pornography and whatnot. Somehow, none of those problems were going to exist in Cyberspace. It was naive and the illusion got shattered, that's what happened.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    12. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You create this new online world, and pretty soon it's just as crappy as the real one - full of cheaters using money instead of skill to win, ads everywhere constantly nagging you to buy stuff, and anonymity being stripped away in hopes of curbing irresponsible behavior. Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia? People.
    13. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by AlephNot · · Score: 1

      Let us remember that people have free will, and that forcing people to "choose" to work together for the "greater good" is antithetical to free will. To deprive a person of his free will is to destroy that person (for that person would then become a mindless automaton); let us hope that no one ever attempts to create a utopia by depriving people of their free will, by forcing them to serve the greater good (as has been attempted many, many times in the past).

      But then we are faced with the question, What if people chose to help each other, including themselves? I agree that such a society would be heavenly, but in order to create it, we would have to force people to act accordingly, thus depriving them of their free will, thus destroying them, etc. So, such a society could only exist if it were brought about by random chance. Perhaps it's not impossible, but it's surely improbable.

      --
      "Feel a glory in so rolling / on the human heart a stone" --E. A. Poe, "The Bells"
    14. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1, Funny

      He's essentially a Matrix philosopher; pay him no mind.

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    15. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by mikael_j · · Score: 1
      I'm not sure I understand your logic, are you saying that if people choose to cooperate and help each other then that would be bad because somehow them choosing to cooperate is the same thing as someone forcing them?

      /Mikael

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    16. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia?"

      Human nature, same as with every other "utopian" society. Face facts: we are, as a group, a bunch of assholes. Individually we can be quite nice and friendly, but the more of us you put in one place, the worse we get. It's stuff like this (plus my complete lack of interest in the genre) that keeps me out of MMORPGs. If I want to be harassed and abused, I'll go to talk.bizarre; THAT, at least, doesn't cost me $10 a month.

    17. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by xero314 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A utopia is a world where no one has any incentive to become a better person (since there's no suffering), in which case, I'm glad no utopia can exist. What is really sad is that there are people that believe they have to suffer to find incentive to improve. Personally I find that to be complete rubbish. There is little if any suffering in my life, and yes I worked hard to get to this point, but I still try to improve myself and the world around me. I could sit back and just live a normal suffering free life, but that would be both boring and denying maximum potential. I'll have to put the "you need to suffer to have incentive" right next to the "you need commerce to have incentive" argument. It's nearly universal that those that make these claims never read More, and have no clue of the origins of the term utopia.
    18. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is the "greater good"? Life has no meaning in utopia. We would lose all reason to exist, however selfish those may be.
      Please lookup the meaning to Utopia - as defined originally , not some crummy wikipedia citation.

    19. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by fcolari · · Score: 1

      Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia? People start to inhabit it.

      --
      "The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces." --Aldo Leopold (Paraphrased)
    20. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



      There's a lesson in here somewhere.



      Yeah, poor people suck and have no manners. Only the economically solvent know how to behave themselves.






    21. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Dhalka226 · · Score: 1

      Meh. You're really making too much of it in this case.

      I don't understand cheating in games such as, say, Counterstrike or America's Army. The whole point of the game there is: how good are you? Can you beat the other guy? I simply can't understand what the fun is in using aimbots or firing cheats or whatever.

      For the most part, WOW isn't that. If people enjoy playing more if they don't have to worry so much about gold, I really don't care that much. It may have a minor effect on prices in the auction house, but neither my brother nor I have seen any notable fluctuations that stayed up. It's really more supply-and-demand (how many of this item are there?) than a factor of how much gold people have in their pockets.

      Cheating really only affects me as a player if I chose to do PvP, in which case what do I really care if I'm slaughtered by somebody who bought their levels instead of getting them the hard way? I'll never know, and I'm still dead.

      The point is, there is no "win" in WOW. I don't think there's a "win" in any MMPORPG, because the whole point of them is to keep them going. They're a grind. If somebody wants to trade some real money for some in-game money to enjoy it more, it's just not a big deal to me.

      The spam I could do without, but I installed SpamSentry a couple weeks back and that's pretty much enough.

    22. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by yndrd1984 · · Score: 1

      He's saying that forcing them to cooperate isn't the same as them choosing to do so, and that one is fine but the other isn't. That's why "choose" was in quotes.

    23. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by dukieduke · · Score: 1
      "I agree that utopias don't exist in the Universe we inhabit. But I'm not sure I buy the idea that the impossibility of a utopia is a good thing. It sounds a lot like rationalization to me."

      Want to hear rationalization?: I honestly believe that X will not happen. Still we should promote X anyway, because I think it good to pretend X may happen for my own good.

      Sound familiar?

    24. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by kubalaa · · Score: 1

      What if people chose to help each other, including themselves? I agree that such a society would be heavenly, but in order to create it, we would have to force people to act accordingly, thus depriving them of their free will, thus destroying them, etc.
      What constitutes force which deprives free will? For example, the need for oxygen forces people to breathe, depriving them of the free will to choose not to breathe. So free will in this sense is impossible. But free will could mean free from imposition by another will. In other words, if the "force" is applied impartially to everybody, i.e. by nature, then this could solve your dilemma.
      --

      "If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show

    25. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Frozen+Void · · Score: 1

      Its matter of design.WoW is materialistic and dependant on grinding which can be reduced by buying stuff or automating the process by a bot.
      If your 'virtual utopia' depends on skills only,
      and those skills cannot be automated or assisted by computer,then you're safe.(e.g. virtual servers of Second Life and skill based games like Go)

      Blizzard is fighting what is essentially
      exploitation of game design.Its profitable and going to be a problem as long as the game exists.

    26. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      Except for what mother nature offers us, we Humans INVENT our own problems. While it may not be our conscious intention, it's true none the less.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    27. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Korvar · · Score: 1

      Except that this world has an active god. A vengeful god. This god is currently suing one of the cheaters/advertisers.

      Man, can you imagine if God dealt with His grievances in this world by litigation? Some part of me finds that idea immensely cool...

      --
      Korvar the Fox!! www.korvar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
    28. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by xero314 · · Score: 1

      From what I recall, More and other utopian writers never imply people would be force to live a particular way. No one was forced to be a citizen of Utopia or similar societies. Forced control is more an aspect of dystopian societies that utopian. Sure if you chose to be a member of a utopian society you will be held to the same standards as anyone else, but that is not forcing anything on people, except in as much as children always have their belief forced upon them by their parents.

    29. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by xero314 · · Score: 1

      Please lookup the meaning to Utopia You mean the many thousand word description of Utopia as write by More? Or maybe you are talking about a hundred year old definition of utopia based on common usage of the word following Mores writing.? You clearly misunderstand the origin and meaning of utopia.

      More's Utopia, the first ever use of the word, clear describes a society were people pursued both individual and societally beneficial tasks. The citizens of Utopia were describe as having extensive meaning with the increased freedom to pursue philosophical and scientific pursuits, with an equality never realized outside of Utopia. All people had access to the same information, they all shared in the workings of society, and all shared in the knowledge each other had or learned. Read Utopia, and then reading Looking Backward, two very different views of utopian societies, both of which describe a society where people have increased meaning since they are freed from the trappings of current industrial civilizations.
    30. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HomelessInLaJolla? Is that you behind the AC?

    31. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by GeneJoker · · Score: 1

      I disagree, especially in the region of PvP. The bane (and by bane I do not mean "best, most challenging opponents", I mean "thing which ruins the games") of PvP are characters known as "twinks", people who aquire the absolute best gear available in their level range. This effectively makes them several levels higher than the other players, ruining the game for casuals. It's the equivalent of playing, say, Counterstrike where armour and grenades are only available to a class of "prestige" player. Since you can't (well, not easily, and without a lot of tedium) find these items or earn the amount of gold required to purchase them on the auction house without gaining at least some exp, and therefor leveling out of the level catagory, there's an 'effective' cap on the gear most people will have. Twinks get their gear by either using gold aquired from one of their other characters or, more usually, buying the gold. Since they have more gold to spend, they artificially inflate the cost of "twink" items well beyond the range of most players. Which reduces the quality of gear casual players have, which increases the gap, etc etc. So if you chose to PvP (by which I assume you mean battlegrounds) you'll find it equivalent to playing Quake where rocket launchers and quad damage are a pay-per-use option only. And that's why gold sellers suck.

    32. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by ultranova · · Score: 1

      There's no such thing as a utopia--real or virtual. Suffering is the kick in the pants that forces us to become better people. A utopia is a world where no one has any incentive to become a better person (since there's no suffering), in which case, I'm glad no utopia can exist.

      Better people ? All suffering has ever made me do is think of various creative ways to utterly and very painfully destroy the source of that particular incident of it. Never once has it made me better in any way, unless you consider hatefullness, bitterness and cynicism to be better than lack of them.

      Suffering doesn't make people better, it makes them worse. It is the kick in the pants which makes us want to take the pain out on someone else. And so the cycle of abuse goes on.

      Cold-hearted? Sure. But so is reality.

      No, just stupid. Just the kind of crap people come up with when they are trying to explain why bad things are, in fact, good. Pseudo-philosophical bullshit.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    33. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Joshwaa · · Score: 1

      I do believe that's called a dystopia ;).

    34. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by brkello · · Score: 1

      That sounds nice...but there isn't really much you can do with the services they provide. You can buy gold, which gives you access to a few things, but nothing close to the best gear in the game. You can get a leveling service...but everybody is 70 anyways so it isn't that big of deal. The spam messages were irritating though and I am glad they have taken steps to shut them up.

      --
      Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
    35. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's also a world that rewards time spent over skill. It has nothing to do with 'cheaters' using 'money to win'.

      What exactly is so fucking godly that you can buy anyway? You can buy epic mounts, and you can buy enchants. Well sorry, but enchants give you a nice edge, but you still have to earn the gear to make it worth anything. Mounts? Just another god-damned carrot. You could get lucky and win all the rolls or have your set pieces drop 10 times in a row. Is that skill or is it just dumb luck?

      I raided 20% of the time and PvP'd the rest. I bought gold so I wouldn't be broke after I bought my epic mount out of AV. I botted so I'd have runecloth to bandage with and money to blow on pots, PvP gear and repairs.

      I don't feel bad about it, I didn't impact anyones game. Cry about it all you want, but bots make the game enjoyable. Without them WoW becomes another job if you want to stay ahead of the pack.

    36. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by yndrd1984 · · Score: 1
      My interpretation of the original post was that even if people chose to from a utopia, they would need some kind of force to keep people from slipping, and thus it wouldn't be a utopia:

      Imagine that a group of people willingly form a "free-will utopia". Some people will later change their minds, and some kind of force will have to be used to keep them from limiting others' free will (even if it's just banishing them). The use of force to prevent that also constrains the use of free will. So in the end no society can allow people absolute freedom of choice.

    37. Re:Wherever you go, there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is really sad is that there are people that believe they have to suffer to find incentive to improve. "Suffering" as used in this context essentially boils down to some kind of conflict being leveraged to a positive outcome. A broader interpretation of the concept of 'suffering to gain' is required here.
  5. Hang on for a second... by DogDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hang on here... People PAY to play this game online, and they get spam? Spam comes via email because nobody owns the SMTP/POP system, per se. But this is a closed environment. One company owns the infrastructure here. There should be *zero* spam.

    What kind of idiots put up with that? Could it be that it's a subset of the millions of people pay to watch commercials on cable TV, too? I can't really wrap my head around this one.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Hang on for a second... by mikkelm · · Score: 3, Informative

      The game needs a way for the player to communicate with other players.

      Spam is unsolicited communication.

      If you can't wrap your head around that.. well.. yeah.

    2. Re:Hang on for a second... by nekozid · · Score: 1

      The spam is usualy from compromised accounts (If anybody says 'hacked' I will beat them with a dictionary). So even though a payment is required, which deters 99.9% of spamming, they aren't the ones losing the money.

    3. Re:Hang on for a second... by xpccx · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not spam, as in unsolicited email. The game has a built in chat system for people to communicate and quest together. What they do is create a character with the 30-day free trial offers (my guess is they can't be tracked since there is no credit card). They then use macros/addons to harvest who's playing (character names) and send chat messages to all of them, advertising their website. They then delete the character and get another 30-day free trial offer and start again. What Blizzard has done is put in limitations so they can't do this anymore.

    4. Re:Hang on for a second... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With any product there are good points and bad points. As long as the good points outweigh the bad points, people buy the product. The product isn't perfect, but nothing is. It doesn't mean people are idiots for buying the product.

      You're absolutely right that there shouldn't be any spam. One company owns the infrastructure. They gave the users the freedom to interact with each other while enjoying the product that they've paid for. They noticed there's a problem with a small group of users and released a patch. Problem seems to be going away. If only it were that easy in the real world. What's there to wrap your head around?

    5. Re:Hang on for a second... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "hacked" ... runs away

    6. Re:Hang on for a second... by LocoMan · · Score: 1

      I do remember I had to put my credit card details when I signed up for the trial, but that's on the euro side. Maybe it's different on the US side.

      Of course, nothing stop them from using fake/stolen credit card info, AFAIK credit card info is mostly used to prevent the same people from signing over and over to trial... but in any case if they did that, it might give Blizzard some more legal ammo, since IIRC using fake or stolen credit card information is actually illegal and could be used as a criminal case instead of just civil.

    7. Re:Hang on for a second... by Mahler · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Any system where you allow people to interact with eachother though electronic message can be used to send spam. When there are more users to a system, spam will be an attractive marketing method. Unless every message goes though an administrator who has to approve them, you can't stop ALL of it. But you can stop most of it, which is what they did with the latest patch... and automated administrator checking messages based on keywords and spam-reports.

    8. Re:Hang on for a second... by BlueBat · · Score: 1

      nekozid says:

      (If anybody says 'hacked' I will beat them with a dictionary).

      In case you didn't know, the english language is constantly evolving. The word ain't used to be considered anathema but is now in the dictionary. If the word hack and its derivative hacked isn't in the dictionary yet they will probably soon be.

      To support my claim, look at history. If you were to travel one hundred years into the past, you would be able to understand what people were saying but there would be a few linguistic oddities. If a person were to travel two hundred years into the past, Understanding would still be possible but many pronunciations would be different as would the meaning of the words. To travel three hundred or more years in the past, most likely unless you were a student of olde english you wouldn't understand much of what was being said.

    9. Re:Hang on for a second... by LiquidFire_HK · · Score: 1

      I do remember I had to put my credit card details when I signed up for the trial, but that's on the euro side. Maybe it's different on the US side.
      Actually, no. I've registered a trial account on the European servers without providing any credit card details. You can provide them, but it's not obligatory.

      Though trial accounts are somewhat limited - you can't write to the in-game chat channels, for instance. And now with 2.1, it seems you won't be able to whisper random people from a trial account, either. Along with the other measures, this will get rid of at least 50% of all spam, in my opinion. Thank you, Blizzard!
    10. Re:Hang on for a second... by Akaihiryuu · · Score: 1

      Well, if you really want to get technical, you could say the accounts were hacked. Just because Blizzard's servers weren't compromised doesn't mean the accounts themselves couldn't be "hacked" from their owners via social engineering (keyloggers, etc). Social engineering is still hacking.

    11. Re:Hang on for a second... by koreaman · · Score: 1

      I have no fucking idea what the point of what you just said is.

    12. Re:Hang on for a second... by flosofl · · Score: 1

      I do remember I had to put my credit card details when I signed up for the trial, but that's on the euro side. Maybe it's different on the US side.
      Weird, I just signed up for a trial account about 15 mins ago (never played before, thought I'd give it a try) and It completely skipped over the CC pages. The account creation gauge at the top had a big green EXEMPT over the grayed out section dealing with payment info. I am in the US, so I guess it is different.
      --
      "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
    13. Re:Hang on for a second... by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      I'd have to go hunting for it, there was a post done by blizz awhile ago. Might be on a blue tracker or something, but the GM dept. was saying that ~95% of the spam was done from full paid accounts that trial accounts were not used. In other words, the idiots who are using the power leveling, and the unfortunate ones who've gotten their accounts stolen and/or sold.

      Stolen accounts are a easier way to make money for companies, even faster then farming all it takes is a couple of key loggers.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    14. Re:Hang on for a second... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, you can't send PMs with trials anymore.

    15. Re:Hang on for a second... by ssintercept · · Score: 0

      you dont have to travel into the past- as an electricain, we use 'hack' to describe someone who doesn't know what he/she is doing or to describe sub par work. so, i always kinda chuckle when someone claims to be a 'hacker'.

      --
      "You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
    16. Re:Hang on for a second... by wilsonthecat · · Score: 1

      You're absolutely right, there should be no reason for spam in the game.

      WoW allows you to send lots of mail to multiple recipients via its API that Mod users can use - for what reason I'm not quite sure.

      It also allows people to type things in the chat channels (which are basically like IRC channels) repeatedly without any kind of throttling until this recent change. Look at IRC networks: you get disconnected for doing this pretty quickly. It's been like this for over 2 years and they only just figured it out now, which kind of points to a company sitting on its dollars until the community gets annoyed enough that they are forced to put some developer man hours into the problem. Similar things happened with their looking for group solutions, which they have made a huge mess of.

      It's a shame as the game has so many strong points, but it feels that in the past year Blizzard has got very apathetic about making any kind of innovation with the game. This maybe the fault of the developers being used for SC2, or the Burning Crusade sapping their time. Looking back to 2005 there were lots of new innovations happening and now its stagnant. End of anti-Blizzard rant!

      I reinstalled the game to try out the amazing new patch they've just released (which incidently contains very *new* content except for raids). The 'spammers' now just use the general, trade, guild recruitment chat channels to advertise.

    17. Re:Hang on for a second... by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Well, that's neat and all, but that's not the point. I know what spam is. My point is that if you're paying for a service over which a private company has 100% control, there is no reason to receive spam. Whatever the technical limitations of their system is isn't the problem of the subscribers. I don't care if they have to hire armies of people to read and approve each and every message.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
  6. IRS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    just report these spammers to the IRS and perhaps a quick tipoff to get their systems audited by the BSA

    1. Re:IRS by AlexMax2742 · · Score: 1

      The spammers are chinese, and the chinese have a reputation of "not giving a fuck", so I have no idea how you expect the BSA to fix things.

      --
      I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
    2. Re:IRS by BuhDuh · · Score: 1
      |The spammers are chinese, and the chinese have a reputation of "not giving a fuck", so I have no idea how you expect the BSA to fix things.

      Not necessarily, but with the current registration system, it takes muscle to find out who is really behind it.
      whois gold4power.com
      Registrant: Domains by Proxy, Inc.
      Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
      Administrative Contact:
      Private, Registration GOLD4POWER.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
      Technical Contact:
      Private, Registration GOLD4POWER.COM@domainsbyproxy.com

      --
      Enlightenment? It's just a flush in the pan.
  7. Re:Blizard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    are you still playing wow cowboyneal? i quit myself a month or two after the expansion, and haven't looked back.

    just wondering

  8. zzz by Frogg · · Score: 0

    >Blizard Sues Virtual Gold Seller

    Great wizzards with lizzards!!

    1. Re:zzz by PhxBlue · · Score: 4, Funny

      So that's where the missing Zs went. Give them back, scoundrel!

      --
      !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
    2. Re:zzz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought it funny too - although i think it's sailed over most people's heads.

      spelling's not a strong point here, and spelling jokes can often be missed by over zealous mods - too bad.

  9. Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've only played the trial period of WoW, but every single time I was spammed with advertisements, it was always "Peons4hire" doing it. I suppose getting them to stop spamming should decrease the spamming overall quite a bit.

  10. Re:FFS, /. janitors... by mikkelm · · Score: 1

    What's wrong with "suing"?

  11. Re:FFS, /. janitors... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 1

    Ok, that's an ambiguous one. "Suing" is probably ok. "Sueing" is UK English.

  12. Re:FFS, /. janitors... by mikkelm · · Score: 1

    Neither the Cambridge Dictionary nor the Oxford Dictionary contain "sueing". Both do, however, list "suing". I think you got ahead of yourself.

  13. That's the problem with Utopians.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They're always surprised and disappointed when reality enters...

  14. Ok ok fine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This makes up for them nerfing my Glimmering Mithril Insignia.

    But just barely.

  15. Peons of the WoW unite! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Peons upset by the harsh treatment of "Peons For Hire" decided to stage a work stoppage and form a labor union. Officials at Blizzard had threaten to send the boys from South Park in to crush the union.

    1. Re:Peons of the WoW unite! by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Boys from South Park? Nah... should be able to get a lvl 3 Orc warrior to go around hitting 'em with a blackjack. They'll be back to work soon enough.

      Best. Quest. EVER.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  16. Virtual utopia went the same way as the real one by Colin+Smith · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Whatever happened to cyberspace as a virtual utopia? The idealists failed to take account of human nature.

    --
    Deleted
  17. NI HAO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ni hao ma

      GIVE ITTAM 10G Ok?

    xin nian kuai le

    1. Re:NI HAO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ni hao!

      Ni shi meiguoren ma? Ni you meiyuan?

      Ruguo ni gei wo 25 meiyuan, wo gei ni 1000GP!

      Hao bu hao?

      PS. I want to be your frend! You teech me Inglish, I teach you Chinese? OK friend?

  18. My Own Research by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been playing WoW since beta.

    Up until now, since the release of WoW, gold spam has followed a nearly expontential curve. At first it was almost zero. Slowly over time it built up. Recently it exploded and you couldn't go five minutes without getting a whisper from some character named something like "Fahzhizdaj" asking you to go to their website and buy gold or powerleveling etc. After patch 2.1.0 spam has not disappeared. It has morphed into different forms. Instead of receiving private messages from spammers they have resorted to different means. Now you cannot run through the major cities without getting bombarded with local messages from the "say" or "yell" channels.

    This means that the gold spammer literally had to run a character from the starting town, at low level, to the major city. While not difficult, it certainly added an extra step to the spammers' setup. And once that person spams in a major city they will be reported much faster than if a million players all got individual private messages. People in the game in a common area will communicate with each other about stuff like this. The spammers can't possibly last long.

    So you might be wondering, where does a spammer get an account? Most people think they use trial accounts, or they buy accounts. Of course, both are usable. Trial accounts are locked down for many things, but they aren't locked down to the local 'say' channel. So camping a trial account spammer at the auction house in a major city will net a pretty big payoff in terms of impact vs. time spent, especially since the trial account is free.

    Spammers also get accounts in other ways too. People who purchase power-leveling services, for example, are at risk of allowing their account to be compromised to a spammer. People who go to websites claiming they have WoW exploits/cheats are at risk of using a keylogger and compromising their account. Then there's stolen credit cards and false account numbers. The actual numbers on all of these are impossible to determine for me. But nevertheless, these are some ways the spammers do it.

    The real crux of the issue though is that spammers, and more generally, gold selling, wouldn't even exist if people didn't buy the services! Because demand is so high it is not reasonable to expect in-game ads to disappear completely. But what Blizzard has done is definitely a giant step in the right direction -- IF you aren't one of the large minority of people who have actually purchased gold. If you are, you probably liked the spam sometimes, because usually it provides up-to-the-minute price info and increases competition between the sellers.

    You might be wondering: does one run the risk of getting scammed purchasing gold from these people?

    I didn't know the answer to that, so, I looked into it deeper. I went to their sites. There were numerous ones advertised but, after getting deeper into each site, eventually I was taken to a specific site almost every time: gold4power.com Of the eight or so websites I visited, every one of them led me to this one site. And it wouldn't amaze me if Peons4Hire was actually behind this one.

    I have no idea who runs this site, but I wanted to see how legit they were. So I sent them a small amount of money through paypal and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later, the gold was in my mailbox. I figure at least they aren't just scamming people completely.

    Anyway, spam is bad, yada yada. Get used to it, or download a mod like SpamSentry and put a stop to it.

    TLF

    --
    I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    1. Re:My Own Research by Bajskorv · · Score: 3, Funny

      I have no idea who runs this site, but I wanted to see how legit they were. So I sent them a small amount of money through paypal and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later, the gold was in my mailbox. I figure at least they aren't just scamming people completely.
      Pete Townshend, is that you?
    2. Re:My Own Research by Das+Modell · · Score: 1

      I was getting an epic amount of spam from Peons4hire. About time Blizzard pimp slaps those assclowns.

    3. Re:My Own Research by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 1

      I'll admit it, I had to wikipedia (if google can be a verb then so can wikipedia, although it's funny that I used google to find the wiki, lol) Pete to find what this meant.

      Still, having trouble making the connection. You're talking about his... ahh.. website visiting choices?

      Enlighten me.

      --
      I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    4. Re:My Own Research by ptbarnett · · Score: 2, Funny
      Pete Townsend claimed he was doing research into child pornography when he got ensnared by the law.

      I think the GP is questioning whether you were "doing research" or "shopping".

      On the MMO that I play occasionally, a new player admitted to buying game currency on the cash market. One of my friends told him that he was "buying from terrorists", and that the 9/11 attacks were funded by "gold farming". The poor guy was really upset until the rest of us couldn't stand it anymore and let him in on the joke.

    5. Re:My Own Research by CodeBuster · · Score: 1

      So camping a trial account spammer at the auction house in a major city will net a pretty big payoff in terms of impact vs. time spent, especially since the trial account is free.

      This is why all of the servers on the game should be full PvP where anybody can kill anyone else at any time and for any reason whatsoever without warning. This does not necessarily result in the chaos that one might otherwise suspsect since factions and groups quickly emerge to keep the asshats and the spammers in line. That low level trial account spammer would quickly be cut in half by the lvl 50 orc warlord for engaging in such navery in the public auction locations.

    6. Re:My Own Research by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 1

      Or? Why does it have to be or? Why can't "both" work? Research costs money! :)

      TLF

      --
      I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    7. Re:My Own Research by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      Ah but it wouldn't just be the gold spammers that get constantly killed by high level players it would be all new players. Therefore WoW would only be as successful as other MMORPGs that have that sort of thing in it - which with the exception of some of the MMORPGs in South Korea is not particularly.

    8. Re:My Own Research by Hyperspite · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If demand for these services is so high, I'm guessing there might be something wrong with the game :P

    9. Re:My Own Research by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think it's evidence that something is right with the game. If people didn't want these thing so badly, they wouldn't pay real money for them. The game is good enough that it creates the desire to spend real money on its virtual items. If these items were easy for anyone to get they wouldn't be perceived as so valuable. I'm not savvy enough in macroeconomics to go deeply into it, but commoditization, saturation, supply and demand, and free market concepts seem to apply here. (they probably aren't even part of macroeconomics, I just pulled some nice sounding stuff out of my a$$).

      TLF

      --
      I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    10. Re:My Own Research by Puff+of+Logic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Up until now, since the release of WoW, gold spam has followed a nearly expontential curve...

      So you might be wondering, where does a spammer get an account? Most people think they use trial accounts, or they buy accounts. Of course, both are usable. Trial accounts are locked down for many things, but they aren't locked down to the local 'say' channel.

      Spammers also get accounts in other ways too. People who purchase power-leveling services, for example, are at risk of allowing their account to be compromised to a spammer. People who go to websites claiming they have WoW exploits/cheats are at risk of using a keylogger and compromising their account. Then there's stolen credit cards and false account numbers. Four words solve the problem: Ban. By. Credit. Card.

      This, coupled with the inability of trial accounts to send tells (or hell, segregating trial accounts onto trial servers), would provide a cheap, technical fix for an annoyingly organic problem. As far as people getting hit by keyloggers by trying to download cheat macros (such as automated mob farming or other activities barred by the EULA) or people whose accounts are compromised by "power-levelling services", I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy. A ban by credit card, necessitating a nice chat with a Blizzard rep to get the ban removed, would both heavily inconvenience farmers while providing an incentive for actual players to police the activity on their account ("Timmy, you got the entire damned family banned again because you were screaming 'shitcock' in Trade").

      Actually, I've always been curious as to how people justify buying gold or using power-levelling services. The argument I usually hear is that they are too busy with a job to level a character and "just want to play". Presumably these people wouldn't join a tennis league and then demand to use an oversize racquet because they're too busy with their job to learn to play skillfully. Would they think it acceptable to buy points in some sort of sports fantasy league from another player because they don't have the time to properly manage their team?

      If you're going to play a game with a lot of other people, why not play it on equal terms? And if you don't have as much time to devote to the game as others, then either accept that with good grace or move on to a different game for which you do have the time. I suppose that shortcuts, cheating, and griefing are an inevitable side-effect a large crowd of people playing, but it's really bloody annoying!
      --
      P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
    11. Re:My Own Research by shalla · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have no idea who runs this site, but I wanted to see how legit they were. So I sent them a small amount of money through paypal and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later, the gold was in my mailbox. I figure at least they aren't just scamming people completely.

      Congratulations. You are now part of the problem.

      Where exactly do you think they're getting the gold? Do you think they are legitimately running characters to high levels and then shipping the gold around to characters whose players pay for it? That would take time and effort and would not be an efficient way to make money.

      Last I knew, most of the gold came from hacking accounts and stealing it. It's a lot faster to shard and sell off the inventories of multiple characters than it is to go out and earn the money. If it were easy enough to earn the money, people wouldn't be buying it in the first place.

      The CGFs people joke about (you know, the ones that run their characters up, speak poor English, and then farm all day long) may make some of that, but not much... Several days to get to the point where you can farm, then maybe three drops an hour for 7-10g each? Pitiful compared to hacking just one account. Probably why I haven't seen them around much--that business model died out.

      So next time you think about doing "research" to see if a goldseller is legit, don't bother. They might not have ripped you off, but that's probably because they were too busy screwing over someone else at the time.

      So next time someone you know gets their account hacked and all their epics sharded, you can feel really good about yourself. In your own way, you contributed to that just a little bit.

    12. Re:My Own Research by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it's called bitch slapping.

    13. Re:My Own Research by arivanov · · Score: 2, Interesting

      All that it will do will be the spammers to "hire" bodyguards to the more valuable yellers and raise prices. If the have enough gold to offer for sale and enough peons to farm it sparing some resources to develop some "security staff" is not going to even show up on their balance sheets. And there is little your level 50 orc lord can do if he is simultaneously backstabbed by multiple characters of similar level.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    14. Re:My Own Research by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Congratulations. You are now part of the problem.
      An undercover detective who buys drugs from dealers is supplying said dealers with money to get more drugs. The detectives are part of the problem. But, in a larger sense, they are part of the solution. I'm not an undercover detective for anyone other than myself, and my only drive was curiousity.

      Last I knew, most of the gold came from hacking accounts and stealing it. It's a lot faster to shard and sell off the inventories of multiple characters than it is to go out and earn the money. If it were easy enough to earn the money, people wouldn't be buying it in the first place.
      There are numerous ways they get gold. Hacking accounts and disenchanting people's gear and stealing their gold is not even remotely close to the way they get most of their stuff. I happen to play on a server with a very tight knit and small Horde faction population. People talk. I can't remember the last time I heard of ANYBODY having their account hacked and I know a large percentage of the active players on the server (you know, the players who would actually have a good amount of value in their accounts). That most of their money comes from hacked accounts is simply not true.

      The CGFs people joke about (you know, the ones that run their characters up, speak poor English, and then farm all day long) may make some of that, but not much... Several days to get to the point where you can farm, then maybe three drops an hour for 7-10g each? Pitiful compared to hacking just one account. Probably why I haven't seen them around much--that business model died out.
      These people are excellent at what they do. You don't see them around much because outdoor farming is not the most effective method of making gold -- farming instances with aoe spells is better. Using that method it is quite easy to make 500g per day. It's certainly not unthinkable to make 1000g per day. Which translates into, at today's prices, about fifty to one hundred American dollars. Tax free. From China. Per day. I don't know about you, but the chance to make $1,500 - $3000 American per month in China for playing a game seems pretty damned appealing. That's more than many Americans make working FULL TIME in jobs they HATE. Especially considering it's all tax free!

      The demand is there. The desire to make money is too. The combination works well.

      TLF
      --
      I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    15. Re:My Own Research by Das+Modell · · Score: 1

      Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

      Pimp slap is valid too.

    16. Re:My Own Research by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Undecover detective or curious user? You decide.

    17. Re:My Own Research by king-manic · · Score: 1


      Where exactly do you think they're getting the gold? Do you think they are legitimately running characters to high levels and then shipping the gold around to characters whose players pay for it? That would take time and effort and would not be an efficient way to make money.


      hacking accounts would net you very little at great risk and it not sustainable since the number of idiots is a finite number and they only have so much time to remake alt hat gold. A average 70 might have a few thousand gold at most on hand and equipment that could be auctioned for a fair amount lets say 10-20 thousand. But you want to dump asap and mule it because once the idiot discoveries he'd been compromised he'll be on the horn with blizz who will reset the password on you so you really only have the gold on hands and the quickest sale of equipment you can get.

      Most of the gold is done by farming areas with semi-valuable drops and auctioning it and selling the junk. You over estimate the value of the time of the farmers. Their time is simply worth less then the gold yield per hour of some areas making the venture profitable. WOW has a lot of features that discourage rampant farming and organized harassment for cash as some other MMORPG's have been known for. People feel annoyed by the spam but not annoyed byt he farmers being predatory like in EQ or FFXI. In those two the priates actively inhibit your ability to play to make a buck while in WOW they just devalue the currency.

      --
      "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    18. Re:My Own Research by waveclaw · · Score: 1

      Anyway, spam is bad, yada yada. Get used to it, or download a mod like SpamSentry and put a stop to it.

      As long as the game lets random people join and chat, there will be UCE, XCP, and fraud. If you let absolutely new accounts get full access to communication when you release, everyone expects it from then on. So, unless Spam becomes game-breaking, you can't escape that design choice for your chat features. I'd prefer a three tiered system of (1) default no chat, (2) listen only and (3) full duplex with Turing tests and basic communication skills tests in between. You could even integrate it into the game's content.

      This is similar to how the online game Kingdom of Loathing's limits chat: you cannot use the chat features until you pass a basic grammar and spelling test. It has the downside of pissing off potential players. However, being able to chat indicates that you had to either know basic communication skills or were a bald-faced cheater. Somewhat harsher penalties can be justified because 'you should know better.'

      Even then there are people who manage to spam. Automated bans and gags on poorly behaving accounts can lead to an arms race. No matter how cleaver the scripts are, some Gold Farmer is sitting in front of a computer upping the ante with more obtuse yet functional language to get out the message about their gold-for-dollars services.

      Short of a live moderator standing around in each public area, it's not possible to keep up with the filters needed for bans and gags. With the money that Blizzard makes they might be able to do something about it though...

      --

      "You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
    19. Re:My Own Research by phaunt · · Score: 1

      I have no idea who runs this site, but I wanted to see how legit they were. So I sent them a small amount of money through paypal and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later, the gold was in my mailbox. I figure at least they aren't just scamming people completely. Of course, many people will 'test the water' first by buying a small amount of gold, and it's not very worthwile to rip people off for that small amount either. Better wait till the buyer is confident enough to spend a little more.
    20. Re:My Own Research by Korvar · · Score: 1
      I totally read that as "I was getting an Epic Mount of Spam"...

      Now I'm wondering what the stats would be :)

      --
      Korvar the Fox!! www.korvar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
    21. Re:My Own Research by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess you don't know much about WoW. You can't auction most of your gear because it's bound to you. At best they can disenchant it (if they have Enchanting > 275, which takes a while if you're not doing it as you level) and sell the results of that. So no, you can't sell off all your gear for 10k - 20k.

      And yes, I am very annoyed by the predatory farmers who train mobs on to you and directly harass you when you're trying to scrounge up another primal fire (tagging mobs with an instant cast spell that does low damage right as your attack is about to hit, so now the monster is after you, but if you kill it, they still get 100% of the loot.). This is why the instant I find someone buying gold in my guild, they're booted and blacklisted then I inform every guild leader on the server regarding it. Generally they get to spend $25 to transfer to another server if they ever want to raid again.

    22. Re:My Own Research by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      Yes. IGN certainly sells lots of gold. Oh wait, no, they explicitly abhor the practice and have ads up all over the place saying they hate it and want it gone.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    23. Re:My Own Research by Dirtside · · Score: 1

      Presumably these people wouldn't join a tennis league and then demand to use an oversize racquet because they're too busy with their job to learn to play skillfully. Would they think it acceptable to buy points in some sort of sports fantasy league from another player because they don't have the time to properly manage their team?

      No, they wouldn't think it's acceptable, because they know they can't get away with it. If I play in a tennis league and my racket is larger, people will be able to tell, and they won't let me play. But Blizzard has no way to know (aside from difficult, unreliable research) whether Joe gave me 50 gold because we're pals, or because I paid him cash.

      I've been playing WoW off and on since beta, but I've never bought gold or powerleveling services, because I don't desire to. Other people want to, and know they can get away with it.

      Don't take this the wrong way, but you're being awfully naive. You may as well act bewildered about why people would commit crimes in real life, when they could just play fair!
      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
    24. Re:My Own Research by Puff+of+Logic · · Score: 1

      Don't take this the wrong way, but you're being awfully naive. You may as well act bewildered about why people would commit crimes in real life, when they could just play fair! No offense taken. Believe me, I'm well-aware of why people do it and I've heard a lot of justifications. I suppose I just have a hard time trying to imagine having that mindset. Or perhaps I find it contemptible. Actually, there is no ambiguity there: I do find cheating at a game to be a contemptible act and my opinion of the people who do it is accordingly low.

      What possible source of satisfaction can such a victory be? Topping the charts in an FPS by using an aimbot must be a hollow experience. Or do such people pin the tiny thread of their insecure pride upon such victories by convincing themselves that cheating makes them "smarter"? Or in WoW, wouldn't the nagging knowledge that you bought your gear/character or botted your way to max level put an irrevocable tarnish on interactions with others who had actually played the game?

      Yeah, I guess the world is full of these dipshits and dealing with them is an inevitable part of being a gamer. I just don't really get why people cheat at games...the victory is hollow and if you don't want to play it properly, then fuck off.

      cheers.
      --
      P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
    25. Re:My Own Research by Dan+B. · · Score: 1

      Sadly, this is true. Farmers moved to the instance farming model a long time ago. Outdoor farming was too obvious and got them regularly interrupted and/or banned. Now a dedicated team of 10 'players' can play the game all day, quite enjoyably, going from one instance to the next and selling off the loot without arousing any suspicion. If I was a low society person in China, I'd jump at this for a job given the other options. Consider also that the hourly limit the Chinese government imposes on on-line gaming doesn't apply on EU/US servers, and even people who just want to play the game (quite a lot) are starting to sell their (excess) gold. And if you don't already know, they (the companies that sell the gold in bulk) have people lining up for 'work'.

      Also, don't confuse the retailer (such as P4H) with the farming teams (who can actually be quite nice people). P4H (et al) buy their gold from a wholesaler, who in turn buy it from the farm teams (and account thieves), then sell it to buyers however they can. Compromised account gold and farmed gold are all the same after it has changed hands twice, as far as the retailer cares anyway.

      --
      Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
    26. Re:My Own Research by Dirtside · · Score: 1

      I know a couple of people who have bought gold or PLing services in WoW, not because they want to "cheat," exactly, but because they've already played through the low-level content three or four times, and have decided that they want a level 70 character of some class they haven't raised up themselves. One particular person I'm thinking of is in a big raiding guild on a PVP server, and the guild needed more priests or whatever class, and so he bought one to play (he already had maxlevel chars of other classes that he HAD leveled himself).

      I've known of some other folks who got into a game because their friends had been playing for a while, and wanted to do the high-level raiding with them without going through the low-level stuff. So they buy a high-level character to go raiding with. Most of these cases were people who had legitimately raised a character, played it for a while, and then decided they were gonna quit -- well, no use throwing away a level 70, so they'd sell it to someone else who wanted to play. Not a powerleveling service, like p4hire.net or whatever.

      Anyway, my point is it's not always as cut-and-dry as wanting to cheat to win, like an athlete on steroids. There's other reasons people buy high-level characters.

      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
    27. Re:My Own Research by thesandtiger · · Score: 1

      I have no idea who runs this site, but I wanted to see how legit they were. So I sent them a small amount of money through paypal and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later, the gold was in my mailbox. I figure at least they aren't just scamming people completely.

      Will it be worth losing your account in the next purge? I just assumed that gold-buying is the WoW-equivalent of playing Russian-roulette with a semi-automatic pistol: even if you get your gold you're still screwed thanks to the ban sweeps.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    28. Re:My Own Research by thesandtiger · · Score: 1

      You assume that Blizzard wants to stop gold selling/buying entirely. This is NOT the case: Blizzard wants to maximize profits.

      Gold-farmers and sellers buy copies of the games and pay monthly fees. That's $10 (original game) + $20 (BC expansion) + $25 (monthly fees if they keep the account going for about 4 months) = $55, some portion of which is profit for Blizzard.

      Gold-buyers buy copies of the games and pay monthly fees. They might actually quit out of boredom if they can't get gold more easily/less boringly than grinding. That's another $55+whatever longer-term monthly fees - expenses.

      Spam haters and regular players who don't buy/farm/sell gold buy copies of the games and pay monthly fees. Figure whatever profits there.

      At some point, there is a maximum return for Blizzard by balancing the needs and desires of each group.

      Make gold farming and selling impossible, and the revenues from those accounts and the accounts of those who would quit from boredom of grinding gold are lost while some amount of player accounts who might quit because of the spam are saved. Make it too easy and lots of legit players may quit. But hit it just right...

      Given the numbers for WoW, this kind of min-maxing by Blizzard makes perfect sense. If it was an MMO with "only" a million players, it might not be worth it. But 5-10 million? Yeah, that turns into serious money.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    29. Re:My Own Research by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a moron.

      This game is 10% skill, 90% time investment. The time that is required to play it is artificial. It doesn't take months to learn how to play a warlock or any other class. Blizzard forces these time sinks upon the player base as a way to keep them involved with the game. Give me 48 hours with any class I haven't played, and I would dominate you.

      If you could instantly create a character with T6 and play, you would quickly tire of the game because there would be nothing to work towards.

      This is not what botting and gold buying accomplish. There are still objectives to accomplish, challenges to be met. Buying a million gold isn't going to help you beat an organized PvP team. It's not going to be the make or break beating a PvE boss. All it does is reduce some of the bullshit that you have to do to get things done. You still have to spend time and coordinate with your team to be successful. You just don't have to grind horny toads for an hour before the raid to collect soul shards to summon your weak sauce lazy fucking guild.

      I spent time playing where it counted. I played on a competitive PvP team. I earned my PvP gear and always ranked in the top 30 of my server (and in the top 3 when I tried). I raided ZG/AQ, and built up DKP to purchase the gear that I wanted.

      Botting didn't change any of that. All it did was allow me to log on and do the activities that I wanted to do instead of griding dumb-ass toads or running instances with retards for two hours instead of having fun.

      So QQ more, but while you're sitting in your chair doing repetitive mind numbing monotonous things that any primate could do with one finger in its ass, the intelligent players are out having fun or doing something productive in the real world and letting their computer grind WOW gold for them.

  19. Blizzard entering secondary market! by DaveG,+the+Quantum+P · · Score: 5, Funny

    Surely though, Blizzard winning damages from this company means that Blizzard has directly gained money from the selling of in-game "Gold" which is against their own EULA. Ironic eh?

    1. Re:Blizzard entering secondary market! by HouseArrest420 · · Score: 1

      Or you could believe, (as most people tend to think after considering the fact that there are still sites selling items for diablo and diablo2) that blizzard recieves a payment from most of these sites. The ones that don't pay up, get shut down (like ENZO), the one's that do, get thier share of money. Sorta like the crime families of yester year. Least that's my belief, as well as my guild(wow)/clan(diablo).

      --
      This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
    2. Re:Blizzard entering secondary market! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blizzard is not suing this company to get money, they are suing them to put them out of buisness.

    3. Re:Blizzard entering secondary market! by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but Blizzard spends an amount of time fighting these sellers. That time costs the company money. If they use any proceeds from the lawsuit to spend development/support time to help shut down gold farmers / spammers, I would consider this money well spent.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    4. Re:Blizzard entering secondary market! by Kineel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except I gave up my account because of all the gold spammers. So Blizzard is really trying to re-coop the money they are losing due to these sites.

      --
      -- Should there be smoke coming out of my CPU?
    5. Re:Blizzard entering secondary market! by saethone · · Score: 1

      Actually that would be indirectly gaining money from the in game selling of gold.

    6. Re:Blizzard entering secondary market! by Supurcell · · Score: 1

      Except the terms of the EULA only apply to the end-user and not to Blizzard themselves.

  20. In order to fix, SCREW by HouseArrest420 · · Score: 1

    GREAT!!! They finally get so that I can report with ease, oh wait, but now the drop down disappears just as fast as it appears. Can't they ever get it right?

    --
    This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
  21. Gold Farming is Big Business by kabz · · Score: 4, Informative

    NPR covered some of the human aspects of the gold farming story a while ago. Audio Link for your listening pleasure.

    12 hours a day playing Warcraft, getting beaten up by higher level players. It's sounds like a pretty ugly life.

    --
    -- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
    1. Re:Gold Farming is Big Business by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

      NPR covered some of the human aspects of the gold farming story a while ago. Audio Link for your listening pleasure.

      12 hours a day playing Warcraft, getting beaten up by higher level players. It's sounds like a pretty ugly life.


      Compared to subsistance level agriculture, coal mining, or a million other jobs, it's pretty damned cushy. That's why people do it.

      I don't go and kill farmers. I understand why they are there.

      That said, I will never buy gold for WoW. I earn enough money to buy the 5000g I would need for an epic flying mount in about 8 hours. It would take at least 50 hours for me to earn that gold in game. But, you know what? At the end of the 50 hours, the epic flying mount would mean something to me. It's a bit like using a walkthrough when playing Zelda - you'll beat the game faster, but it's a hollow victory.
    2. Re:Gold Farming is Big Business by Stormie · · Score: 2, Funny

      12 hours a day playing Warcraft, getting beaten up by higher level players. It's sounds like a pretty ugly life.
      On the other hand, as one of the higher level players delivering the beatings to the goldfarmers, I can tell you that it's all kinds of awesome!
  22. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hate those bastards. I haven't played in some time, and every time I logon to my account to see what's going on, I have probably 50 messages from them.

  23. Funny by bryan1945 · · Score: 1

    On the linked page there were 4 or 5 "First Page" comments.....

    --
    Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
  24. Greeat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Great! So now the large guilds that make the market unusable for anyone in a small org. Yea fuck the little guy and let the big guys get richer.

    Untill blizard fixed the problems with the markets on some severs being runined by large groups flooding the market, they should of left things how they were.

    1. Re:Greeat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gold sellers have no effect on market flooding. They don't sell any items on the market and items bought with the gold they sell actually decreases flooding by removing those items from the market. Also if the market is flooded with items then average prices drop due to competition among sellers resulting in better buying conditions (cheaper prices) for the vast majority of the players. Market flooding is caused by server overpopulation not by gold sellers.

      Gold sellers do increase inflation on a server. However an interesting thing about the WoW economy is that servers with high inflation benefit newer players greatly because you can make huge profits selling commodity items like ore and herbs which are easily gathered. On servers with high inflation new players benefit greatly by selling commodites and old players can (usually) afford to pay for the inflated items. Inflation is also regulated by the fact that the best items in the game can not be sold to other players. This keeps the prices from rising too high on the other items because players reach a point where paying more gold for an item isn't worth it anymore.

    2. Re:Greeat by tuxedobob · · Score: 1

      So you're saying you're a gold seller?

  25. Blizard? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Blizard?? Blizzard, it's in the description *twice*.

    1. Re:Blizard? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NOOBS its Blizzard not Blizard. OMG L2SPELL KTHXBYE

  26. Typo in article title by Twiceblessedman · · Score: 0, Redundant

    There are two "z"'s in Blizzard.

  27. YES! by DurendalMac · · Score: 1

    I'm sick to death of those assholes at peons4hire! Sometimes I'd be getting spam from them every five minutes! I hope Blizzard sues these assholes out of existence.

  28. L2SPELL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NOOBS its Blizzard not Blizard. OMG L2SPELL.

  29. Awesome, now fix the stuff patch 2.10 broke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So now this is all well and good but nobody mentioned that they seriously broke the graphics engine in WOW with the new patch. Things like simple flashing in the background to creatures not being texture mapped at all. Not only that but a lot of people can't even launch the game anymore! They goofed up big time with this patch. Hopefully they'll fix it in time before the masses who can't play realize there's a world of...uh, the real world too.

    1. Re:Awesome, now fix the stuff patch 2.10 broke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vista is not completely supported and its the fault of the graphics manufactors and not Blizzard. Also Intel graphics cards are not the best ones around.

      I used to do support for them and I assume you have what I described above.

  30. Imagine... by ewhenn · · Score: 1

    Imagine putting peons4hire on your resume as an employer.

  31. Fixing the Economy by paleo2002 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I play WoW for over a year until I no longer had the time and money to committ to the game. (I'm still not quite over the withdrawal symptoms.) I've recently been playing around with Puzzle Pirates as an interesting time-waster and they've come up with a really interesting solution to the problem of buying game currency.

    The problem with WoW is that you have people with time and skill, but not a lot of money. They hate people who buy gold because, to them, they're cheating. Then, you have people with money but not a lot of time and/or skill. They're willing to spend $50 on gold that might have taken days or weeks to collect in-game. Blizzard wants to keep the former happy AND they want to get as much money from the latter as possible.

    Puzzle Pirates has what they call "doubloon servers" that utilize two types of currency. In-game "pieces of eight"(PoE) that you get from just playing the game, like gold in WoW. Doubloons are a special currency that you use to buy access to more advanced parts of the game, better clothing, equipment, etc. You can buy doubloons from Three Rings (game dev) directly for about $.20 to $.25 a piece depending on volume. Or, you can trade PoE's for doubloons and vice-versa in the game with players.

    If Blizzard implemented something like this in WoW, it would essentially legalize buying gold, but it would eliminate spamming and other account abuses. Say, for example, you have an epic mount. Blizzard implements "Epic Feed" that can be purchased for $.20 a day by anyone. The people who have money to burn can buy extra feed and sell it at the AH. People who balk at the idea of spending extra money on the game can buy feed at the AH. The people who can afford neither probably don't have an epic mount.

    1. Re:Fixing the Economy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..

      No

    2. Re:Fixing the Economy by voodoo89 · · Score: 1

      Isn't this essentially the same as buying gold? Plus, it probably wouldn't eliminate spammers. They'll still advertise to sell you gold or "epic feed" at sub-blizzard prices. And if Blizzard undercuts the spammers' prices, the game will become massively unbalanced as those who can will easily buy whichever items they need.

    3. Re:Fixing the Economy by paleo2002 · · Score: 1

      But, if the "epic feed" can be traded for gold via the AH or individual transactions, then people will simply advertise via the trade channels. Have you ever gotten a whisper telling you to go bid on a stack of arcanite bars? By internalizing the sale of gold, Blizzard could squeeze out the spammers, gold farmers, and other undesireables and still provide the shortcut that some people are looking for. If a server's economy starts to get a little screwy, Blizzard can buy up excess "epic feed" if prices get too low or undercut sellers who are driving up the prices. I wonder if Blizz wasn't experimenting with this when they had us turning in trade goods to open up AQ.

      Blizzard is employing real world solutions like litigation to prevent the real world economy from interfering with their virtual world. It would be cheaper and more effective if they employed some virtual world tactics.

    4. Re:Fixing the Economy by vux984 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Legalizing selling gold doesn't prevent the real world economy from interfering with the virtual world. It just remvoes the black market element.

      And it has the same effect as legalizing drugs. Sure the street corner dealers are gone, and people stop smuggling it accross the border, and some of the violent crime goes away (and those are all 'good things'), but the heroine junkies are still going to inject their rent money and end up on the streets where they'll smash your window for spare change and pawn-able items to get their next fix (now at the 7-11). So legalization isn't really a 'real solution'.

      And the organized crime elelement simply morphs, it doesn't disappear. There's always a black market for something. Legalize currency sales, and peons4hire just shifts focus to acquiring rare items, and power-levelling. What are you going to do in response to that? Put all rares into vending machines so anyone can get them? Provide a prompt at login "What level do you want to be today?" with a price list? They could I suppose... and it might even work as a game idea... but it wouldn't be WoW anymore.

      There is NOTHING wrong with a GAME having arbitrary rules that dictate how you progress. When you choose to play the game you implicitly agree to play by the rules or face being kicked out of the game.

      WoW should -aggressively- target both buyers and sellers of services, ban accounts, ban credit cards. Maybe even issue temporary bans to ip addresses (say 4-12 hours) [yes some ISPs NAT and banning an ip could affect hundreds of people -- so don't filter those ISPs - its not rocket science, and it will work for enough cases to be worth doing] Toss free trial accounts onto a trial server (let them server transfer when they buy the game).

      Make currency trackable. (like real currency, and record transactions). Write algorithms to watch for 'suspicious behaviour' like accounts sending large sums of gold to brand new characters, which immediately transfer it to other new characters.

      Modify the game rules so that low level characters simply cannot possess large sums of gold. And limit how much gold they can transfer to other characters per hour in discrete transactions. Limit the number of transactions all players can accept per hour. (To prevent a series of low level characters from each sending a small sum of money to one recipient... etc).

      Basically, force the gold traders out of throwaway characters, and into characters that have to have some 'history', which can be tracked and profiled. Sure there's nothing stopping them from power levelling up characters for a single transaction but it will be comparatively easy for blizzard to track them.

      The point is, there are a lot of things they can do to put a real dent in people breaking the rules if they really wanted to, but a certain (and profitable) amount of players -like- breaking those rules... and blizzard is a business first and foremost... they only crackdown to the extent that the 'problem' starts costing them "too many" subscribers.

      And in that light I'd like to see MMORPG publishers create zero-tolerance servers, and more relaxed servers.

      It genuinely bothers me to play on servers where farming is going one and some of my fellow players have bought their way up. It cheapens my own sense of accomplishment, and frankly I don't like associating with people who lack the integrity to play by the rules. I would like servers dedicated to people like me. I'd even welcome additonal mechanics rules like capped progress per hour to mitigate power-levelling (without affecting more relaxed 'realistic' play), etc. I'd be prepared to sacrifice some of my anomymity to gain access to that server. And to have limits on the number of IP addresses I can log in from within a time period, etc. And other measures to make the players more accountable.

      Now, I'm not so arrogant as to expect everyone to play like this, and if one likes to buy gold or whatever, I don't mind them having a place to play, which is why I support running more relaxed servers too. I just don't have any interest in playing on the same server as people like this.

    5. Re:Fixing the Economy by paleo2002 · · Score: 1

      Modify the game rules so that low level characters simply cannot possess large sums of gold.

      Now we know what an MMO run by the Republican party would look like.

      Sorry, that's not constructive, I know.

    6. Re:Fixing the Economy by tuxedobob · · Score: 1

      Actually, i think they already have a limit, at least on trial accounts. The trouble is the trial accounts don't actually deliver any money; they just spam.

    7. Re:Fixing the Economy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Recently I've re-started playing Everquest II. I did not realize that it was a 'Station Exchange' server, which you can buy game currency directly from Sony. There's one problem with being able to buy gold. All the prices are exorbitant. And yes, it's in direct relation to being able to buy gold. If my RL friends weren't playing on the server, I would guaranteed change to one where you couldn't buy gold. I'm one of those people who don't believe in buying gold. I much prefer to earn it. And yes, when playing WoW, I used SpamSentry and reported all the spammers I came across.

    8. Re:Fixing the Economy by Dirtside · · Score: 1

      but the heroine junkies are still going to inject their rent money and end up on the streets where they'll smash your window for spare change and pawn-able items to get their next fix (now at the 7-11).

      Not quite. If heroin is legal, then for one thing, it's also a hell of a lot cheaper, because big companies will produce it in large enough quantities to see economies of scale, there'll be competition, etc. It doesn't take their entire month's rent money to buy enough to get high. (You can only inject so much heroin before you OD, anyway, so there's a limit to how much heroin one junkie will buy per unit time. It's the same as with cigarettes, alcohol, etc.

      For another thing, when it's legal, it's also a lot easier to get support for trying to kick the habit, or at least manage it -- there's no fear of being arrested if you reveal that you shoot up, so addicts are a lot more likely to seek help.

      It is funny, though, how people come up with these "obvious" schemes that Blizzard should implement to stop gold farmers... as if Blizzard hasn't spent the last three years putting a huge amount of thought into the situation :) (I work for a website that has exactly the same issues of people buying game resources for cash, so trust me, I'm familiar with it inside-out. It's not one percent as easy as the situation might seem. For example, we have *enormous* legitimate resource transfers all the time between players where there's no cash transactions going on. Picking the wheat from the chaff -- especially when we have no way to PROVE that person A paid money to person B, since that transaction happened on a website we have no control over -- is like finding one particular grain of wheat in a wheat field.)
      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
    9. Re:Fixing the Economy by vux984 · · Score: 1

      It is funny, though, how people come up with these "obvious" schemes that Blizzard should implement to stop gold farmers... as if Blizzard hasn't spent the last three years putting a huge amount of thought into the situation :)

      They haven't. On some level, they don't really have the will to. Those people buying gold are paying customers. Those people AOE farming instances are too. And besides doing the work to stop them cost money. Its a losing proposition on all sides. Their only real objective is to prevent the underground from becoming too offensive to the playerbase or from completely destabilizing the entire in game enconomy.

      For example, we have *enormous* legitimate resource transfers all the time between players where there's no cash transactions going on.

      Why? Why is this happening? Don't you think the fact that this happens 'legitimately' points to a flaw in your game? *I* certainly don't transfer large amounts of wealth to complete strangers in the real world. Nobody does. Why is it happening in these games? Perhaps there is a larger failure in the world-data-model, as this really shouldn't be happening.

      Picking the wheat from the chaff -- especially when we have no way to PROVE that person A paid money to person B, since that transaction happened on a website we have no control over -- is like finding one particular grain of wheat in a wheat field.

      Don't worry about whether it was a paid transaction or not. You attack the 'gifting' of serious amounts of resources, regardless of 'motivation'. Ideally, you restrict it via the mechanics, so that its not 'necessary' for legitimate purposes, provide other mechanisms for legitimate purposes. (e.g. if you want a tradeskiller to process a guild-vault full of ore, set it up so that the tradeskiller can process a guild-vault full of ore without taking ownership of the ore.) If a guild wants to outfit a new recruit with guild gear, so be it, but set it up so the outfit remains the guild property, etc.

      Then, once the need for massive 'gifting' has been removed. Let players know that large resources transfers are not allowed by the 'rules of the game', and make it impossible to 'accidently' exceed some threshold, or even remove certain types of direct player trade, or do centralized price fixing and let players negotiate within a range, perhaps modified by the skill/level/class/whatever.

      The real goal should not be to police the economy, but ultimately to design an economy that really doesn't need to be policed. I realize that on some level the 'buy-sell' market of the in game economy is attractive to some players, at the same time in most high-fantasy rpgs they often do more to undermine the game than enhance it.

      No GM in a pen and paper game would EVER offer you this choice: "You can slay the dragon and loot its scale to make the magical fire resistant shield you need, or since another party has already killed a few dragons 'elsewhere' they have a few scales and they sell for a couple hundred gold. So if you just want the shield you could go farm some high quality wolf pelts to sell and just buy the scale...aw hell... its your lucky day! it turns out the guy at that table has the finished shield, and isn't using it becuase he's got much better stuff... he'll just give it to you for the asking since he doesn't have room in his bank to store it and he's rich enough that its just a trifle to him anyways. Everyone having fun tonight??" ;p

      Bottom line, we live in a world where business in the real world and than virtual world can interact. We have to design games knowing that this can happen. We can either embrace it a la second life, or design the games so that its effects are controlled -- even if its at the expense of certain 'realisms'.

      That 'realism' can never actually be attained anyway, because in the 'real world' you only have what you have, and even if you wanted to 'cheat', you have no 'extra-dimensional resources' you can bring to bear on your 'real world' situation. So our 'real world' doesn't have to compensate for that. Our virtual ones, however, do.

    10. Re:Fixing the Economy by Dirtside · · Score: 1

      Don't you think the fact that this happens 'legitimately' points to a flaw in your game?

      Yes, but -- redesigning the game to fix the flaws is impossible at this point, because we'd have to fundamentally alter the way everything about the game works, which is not ever going to happen for the following reasons:

      1) The players are used to it being the way it is. Fundamentally changing everything would piss off most of our users and we'd lose a huge number of them for many months, which would have a huge negative impact on our finances (we're mostly ad-supported).

      2) We are constantly adding new features to the site, which takes up most of the resources of our development staff. Completely redoing the entire site would mean we'd either have to put all those things on hold for upwards of a year (yes, we've looked into rewriting the entire site -- 10,000+ individual pages -- no, I'm not kidding), or we'd have to hire a dozen more programmers to redo everything, which would mean payroll for a dozen more people, which (at going rates for good programmers) would mean another million dollars a year in salary, benefits, other costs, etc.

      3) The actual *cost* to us to deal with policing this stuff is significantly less than the cost of overhauling the entire system to prevent it (which, in any complicated economy, can't be done anyway -- the best we can do is mitigate it).

      To put it another way, the damage to the system in lost players who get pissed that other people can buy resources for cash is less than the damage to the system from trying to change everything in order to fix it.

      *I* certainly don't transfer large amounts of wealth to complete strangers in the real world. Nobody does. Why is it happening in these games?

      Because the games don't accurately model the real world. And they shouldn't. They're games. Real-world financial systems analogies only go so far in game systems ilke this. In WoW, for example, the cost to produce something is essentially just time. If I decide that in exchange for my time, I'm having fun, then I can sell whatever resources I gather for half what the next lowest price is, and I'm still ahead of the game, because I personally have gained fun in exchange for my time. Whatever money I can sell the resources for is a bonus. That's why I personally always sell everything for just lower than the lowest current price on the auction house: I hate auctions that don't sell much more than I hate not making as much money as I potentially could.

      The real goal should not be to police the economy, but ultimately to design an economy that really doesn't need to be policed.

      The holy grail of game economy design -- but it's fundamentally impossible if the economy is complex enough to be interesting. A stable, lively, interesting economy that needs as minimal policing as possible, sure, that's great -- but the actual "minimal" amount is pretty high, in real-world terms, and there are fundamental restrictions on it going any lower.

      I think part of what you're missing is that a lot of the controls you propose putting on the game make the game a lot less fun. For example, the "if a guild gives you stuff, it remains the guild's property" -- okay, well how is that implemented? If you leave the guild after a year, those items fall off your character? That's no fun, players hate that kind of thing. It might be feasible as a mechanism to prevent people from joining a guild, getting a bunch of stuff, and then skipping out -- but that's a totally different issue than trying to prevent people from selling each other items in the real world. You end up penalizing the vast majority of players who don't buy/sell in the real world, in order to stop those who do.

      Believe me, we've put a number of things into place to prevent real-world buy/sell stuff, and most of the things we've tried that are similar to what you suggest, the players have

      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
    11. Re:Fixing the Economy by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but -- redesigning the game to fix the flaws is impossible at this point

      Yes, I grok that. I'm not suggesting that your game be 'fixed', but merely that developers working on the 'next game' pay better heed to the issues. A *lot* of current game economies are essentially built on the 'honor system' in terms of expecting players to follow the rules.

      Its ironic really. All the 'dice rolls' made in tradeskill systems for example are done within the system, largely because computers are good at it, and its part of what makes the game. But if a customer were to suggest, "I'd prefer to make my own dice rolls and input them", the devs would laugh them out of the building. Not because such a thing couldn't be done trivial, but because everyone knows that letting players generate tradeskill results on the 'honor system' is going to be rampantly abused. Why would anyone think the economy be any different?

      Obviously, if you don't want 'real world' economics to have a large impact on your game, relying on the 'honor system' is a colossally bad idea.

      Because the games don't accurately model the real world. And they shouldn't. They're games.

      Exactly. So we shouldn't feel compelled not to impose arbitrary systems that aren't 'realistic'. Games are supposed to be fun. When the real world economy hits the game one, it ceases to be fun for a lot of people.

      Real-world financial systems analogies only go so far in game systems ilke this.

      The point isn't necessarily to model the game economy exactly like the real world one, but rather to devise a facsimile that is both protected from the real world one, and at the same time is compelling and fun in its own right.

      The holy grail of game economy design -- but it's fundamentally impossible if the economy is complex enough to be interesting.

      I disagree that its fundamentally impossible. Its hard, because you need to rethink how it going to work. A simple currency based economy in the hands of the PLAYER is fundamentally broken. Move it to the realm of the CHARACTER. My newbie character is not proficient with a sword despite the fact that I'm a competent fencer. My newbie character is not proficient at carpentry despite the fact fact I can make a serviceable desk or bookshelf.

      Why should my character be unrestrained when it comes to handling wealth? When every other trait about my character is locked down at 0 including where I am allowed to go, and what doors I can open, and all thise can only be increased or unlocked by *playing*, why am I allowed to participate in the 'economy' without restriction?

      Make it so the key items you can buy and sell have to be 'unlocked' (perhaps you may not buy or sell lotus flowers before you have killed a man-eating lotus). Make it so that quanties or transaction values have to be unlocked (by leveling, through skills, perhaps even specific quest completion). Make it so that participating in various types of auction must be unlocked. Make it so that the size of your coin purse, or bank account must be earned. In summary make 'economics' another progression tree like 'combat' or 'crafting'.

      Sure its artificial... like why can I buy Agate, but not Diamonds? But its no more artificial than why can I set agates into rings without even trying, but diamonds are 11x as hard, and if i fail why does it destroy the diamond? Or why does this sword have a level requirement? Or why is this item 'no drop'?

      Whatever money I can sell the resources for is a bonus. That's why I personally always sell everything for just lower than the lowest current price on the auction house: I hate auctions that don't sell much more than I hate not making as much money as I potentially could.

      Would you even bother with the 'auctions' then if the npc merchants just gave you that amount of money? Or what if you *had* to sell to the NPCs, who sold it on your behalf, and let the players bid items up. Maybe you get a percentage based on your negotiation skill. The

    12. Re:Fixing the Economy by brkello · · Score: 1

      I have thought and discussed a lot about this topic. I agree that legalization of gold selling is not the way to go. You get a "game" like Second Life which is more of a giant advertising space than anything that resembles a game.

      To me, the gold sellers in WoW aren't really that big of a deal as they don't really have a huge effect on how the game is played. Compare this to FFXI, where gold sellers make it impossible to try to get any of the good drops and cause disgustingly massive amount of inflation.

      But let me go back for a second...you say that the company needs to go after both the buyer and the seller. Really, this is unrealistic. It is hard to actually prove that someone bought the gold. Sure, you can see who a seller is by how much gold is coming from them and how it is distributed. But say a gold seller just gives a person gold for fun...that person would be banned. They have no proof that the person actually bought gold, they just know that they got gold from a certain character. It is better to go after the seller because it is easier to track a large volume of transaction to a single account.

      Ok, to go back to the difference between WoW and FFXI. The services these gold selling companies have change the complexion of the game. In FFXI, it made the game unenjoyable to me. In WoW, other than the spam messages, you really don't even notice. There is a bit of inflation...but generally you benefit from that as much as anyone else. Blizzard did it right with their Raiding system. You just can't buy the best stuff. The only mistake they made was making epic flying mounts so expensive. Other than that, you need to actually play the game to get the top tier stuff.

      As far as capping progress per hour...that is just dumb. Some people enjoy to level as fast as they can. There is nothing wrong with that. You just have to learn that in an MMORPG you will not be the best player on there unless you give up your life. Really, what would you cap it at...your rate? These are games designed to be played by many people, not just you. Gold selling should be attacked, absolutely. But forcing people in to playing a certain style is going too far. (Though Eve gives you something that caps the actual speed of how fast you 'level' so you might like that)

      --
      Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
    13. Re:Fixing the Economy by vux984 · · Score: 1

      But let me go back for a second...you say that the company needs to go after both the buyer and the seller. Really, this is unrealistic. It is hard to actually prove that someone bought the gold. Sure, you can see who a seller is by how much gold is coming from them and how it is distributed. But say a gold seller just gives a person gold for fun...that person would be banned.

      The strategy is make 'giving people piles of gold for fun' an urealistic and unlikely scenario, then preventing it via the mechanics, so it can't happen by accident. Then people who jump through hoops to do it stick out like sore thumbs.

      They have no proof that the person actually bought gold, they just know that they got gold from a certain character.

      Which is why you make 'unrealistic gifts' the target. This all applies to designing new games. When dealing with it in an existing game, then yes, you made your bed and now you have to sleep in it.

      It is better to go after the seller because it is easier to track a large volume of transaction to a single account.

      Yes, in an existing game, where do you don't have the freedom to (re)define the ruleset/mechanics. Although even that is ineffective, a profitable seller operation can afford a stable of accounts to 'launder', and even 'throw away accounts' to be discarded when they get 'hot'.

      Ok, to go back to the difference between WoW and FFXI. The services these gold selling companies have change the complexion of the game. In FFXI, it made the game unenjoyable to me. In WoW, other than the spam messages, you really don't even notice.

      Which is why Blizzard is only chasing the spammers. But there are plenty of people who are disgusted with the peons4hire activity going on, even if it isn't causing the complete economic collapse.

      There is a bit of inflation...but generally you benefit from that as much as anyone else. Blizzard did it right with their Raiding system. You just can't buy the best stuff. The only mistake they made was making epic flying mounts so expensive. Other than that, you need to actually play the game to get the top tier stuff.

      No. Because that ONLY affects top tier players. Non-top tier players in raiding guilds will never get that stuff anyway... so for them the top tier stuff they could ever acheive IS for for sale. For new players/ mid level players the stuff they can buy is better than anything they could 'earn' at any given point along the progression curve.

      As far as capping progress per hour...that is just dumb. Some people enjoy to level as fast as they can. There is nothing wrong with that.

      Which is why there can be more than one game, more than one server for that game, and special rulesets for different servers.

      You just have to learn that in an MMORPG you will not be the best player on there unless you give up your life.

      In current mmorpgs that is the case, yes.

      Really, what would you cap it at...your rate? These are games designed to be played by many people, not just you.

      Different strokes for different folks. I'd happily join a server where your play time was capped at 15 hours a week. It would be an attractive server for people like me. I don't suggest that it be the ONLY server. But its like anything else... people LIKE to play with people of similiar rank and skill, and of similiar involvement in the game.

      I don't WANT to play with people who log 150 hours a week in the game, and honestly they don't really WANT to play with me either. Sure I can form groups within the game of like minded people, but the game world itself is dominated by the hard core players, and that affects our game. I don't want to buy their shit. I don't want them doing everything on the server first. I don't want their incessant whining about raid game content, and issues like the balance of uber-lord seven when tanked by paladins vs warriors to dominate all the developers time instead of the broken quest for 40th level players.

  32. Flaw is inherent in current MMOG P2P model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any game that requires its users to "grind" for hundreds or thousands of hours in order to progress in the game is going to suffer from this no matter what they do.

    It is an obvious flaw in the current pay-to-play model; hold your customers for longer periods by requiring them to perform tedious tasks for thousands of hours instead of simply providing constantly new, fresh and entertaining game content.

    Such laziness on the part of these game designers and developers will always have this result. If MMOG developers had scruples and actually provided quality entertainment for their monthly fee, then this would not be a problem. Greed and laziness begets greed and laziness.

    Perhaps they should try a little creativity and originality in their game design?

    Note:
    MMOG = Massively multiplayer online game
    P2P = Pay to play

  33. Re:having trouble finding a vacant frequency? by night_flyer · · Score: 1

    oops.... wrong story

    --


    Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
    Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
  34. The Blizard Animal. by lullabud · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's a mix between a Bee, a Lizard and a Shark.

  35. Blizard? by Cleeq · · Score: 1

    I'd be willing to bet if Blizzard sued them, it would be more pertinent.

  36. The spam problem has NOT STOPPED by analog_line · · Score: 1

    I use SpamSentry, and while Blizzard did hamstring the reporting function, the spam blocking parts still work fine. I get at least 4 spam messages each hour still, more if I'm in a city with a trade channel for any length of time. At least Blizzard has finally woken up and tried to do something, but it hasn't been effective by even the most generous stretch of the imagination.

  37. Banishment by implowry · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think they should implement a vote for banishment. Something like if some number of characters report you as a spammer in a certain amount of time you are ported to the boss of the opposing factions highest level instance and are killed instantly by the big bad elite monster. By being in the opposing faction's area it would render all of the tells unintelligible and as a bonus the level one spammer would be immediately killed thus silencing him again.

    As an added punishment, if a spammer is killed by an NPC I think the spammer shouldn't be able to be resurrected or talk on any chat channel for > 10 minutes.

    1. Re:Banishment by Lordpidey · · Score: 1

      Bad idea. Something similar was implimented in the sims online. Basically if you got scammed/spammed/etc... by someone you could place a "bad mark" on them, and people can see how many bad marks someone has. Eventually, there was a "mafia" that sprung up, threatening to mark someone with alot of bad marks unless they would pay money. And if the mafia did mark someone, everyone would assume that person was a scammer or spammer. Note: this may be innacurate or old, as this is what I read in a magazine. Don't sue if I'm wrong, but this seems logical, and seems to be what would happen if Blizzard implimented banishment.

      --
      Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
  38. MapleStory has another option by wantedman · · Score: 1

    MapleStory is a free MMORPG that uses in game currency to buy certian items that do not directly inpact the gameplay. There's pets that autoloot, teleportation rocks that let you get to maps faster and store permits to open stores.

    One of the things you can buy is a Gachapon tickets. The Gach is simular to those prize eggs in the Supermarket, one ticket gives you an item randomly. Some are worth billions, but you can get something that's worth almost nothing. This is basically trading real money for in game money, but it also helps control inflation by limiting the number of good items that go into the world.

  39. Wouldn't it be great... by John3 · · Score: 1

    if we could get rid of "real world" email spam as easily. Bravo to Blizzard for getting this fixed with the recent patch.

    --
    "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
  40. ACT NOW! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    (Anonymous Coward Tells You): This week only, 5 mod points per story for $60 (USD), powerkarmaing to excellent in only one week $300 (USD)!!!!1!!!1!1 Visit slashd0tt3r4h1r3.com!!1!!11!!!1

  41. Yay! Crackdown on spammers by George+Johnston · · Score: 1

    Now if Blizzard would only fix their client so it didn't crash at random times then I could actually play it.

    --
    Orignator of the Miserable Failure Googlebomb
  42. Remove the incentive as well by BlueParrot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It would be nice if they could also take measures tor educe the incentive for these spammers. Basically, WoW's economy rewards players for doing things they don't enjoy, farming herbs, ore, power levelling, grinding the same mob over and over... etc. That is why people will actually pay in order to not do so. If the economy instead made fun activities much more profitable than the boring ones it would reduce the amount of spammers ( thou probably not remove them completely ) and also make the game itself a lot more fun to play. Basically, running a bot program or paying someone to do the same thing over and over should not be rewarded by the game mechanics. Playing the game with other people, completing quests, winning PvP battles etc... should be the main source of wealth in the game. As long as Blizzard insists to have the economy based on "kill monster X 500 times and hope item Y drops" you will get problems with bots and spammers.

    1. Re:Remove the incentive as well by jjohnson · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is the dilemma faced by MMORPG devs. If they make the grind more profitable (i.e., shorter), then everyone has tons of gold and epic drops, and the value of those things decrease proportionately. So they add back rarer items that either cost more or drop less frequently, and you're back to the long grind to get the *truly* epic gear.

      The only way to let players avoid long, boring grinds is to offer many kinds of grinds so that a player doesn't have to kill 5,000 Xs; instead, they can kill 100 Xs, mine 100 ore, complete 10 quests, and buy 20 herbs. WoW isn't too bad at this; Eve was a bit better than average too, since there were quite a few ways to earn money.

      But fundamentally, if you don't want players to get bored because they've got their tier 4 set after only 3 weeks of play, you have to have harder to obtain goals that amount to longer grinds.

      --
      Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
    2. Re:Remove the incentive as well by HouseArrest420 · · Score: 0

      Playing the game with other people, completing quests, winning PvP battles etc...should be the main source of wealth in the game Yeah, but hey, if you don't like to group or PVP you can just pay someone to do it for you or realize that you'll never have the great gear you need. Good idea, bad thought process.
      --
      This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
  43. Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've only been playing WoW for a short few months, just really getting into the meat of things and figuring it all out.

    The first week, I had no spam whispers whatsoever. The second week, maybe two or three spams per session I played. A week ago (before they rolled out the patch) I was getting spammed with 3 messages every 5 minutes! Out of control.

    I shouldn't have to leave every general/trade channel and turn off whispers simply to enjoy the game without getting harassed by spambots.

    Honestly, if Peons4Hire weren't going to stop spamming like jerks, the LEAST they could've done was add a function like a "do not spam" list so you could whisper the spambot and be excluded from further spamvertisements. Let the people who WANT power leveling and gold spam have it and leave the rest of us alone.

    Since they couldn't bother being at least somewhat friendly in how they go about their "business", I say let Blizz sue them into oblivion. Good on you, Blizzard!

  44. I hope those filthy rats burn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously. You get constantly spammed with badly worded engrish, selling you gold and 'leveling services', its so annoying.

  45. They call it a game... by BagOCrap · · Score: 1

    Seriously? I had never heard of auctioning nor selling game items online until World of Warcraft. Not to mention the girl who offered sex in exchange for 5.000 gold pieces, or something to that extent. All because of some PC game? All I can say is "wow" (no pun intended, really). Now the community is getting spammed by some "virtual gold sellers". People, it's just a game. Don't forget to live your life. It should be far more important than a computer game.

    --
    -- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
    1. Re:They call it a game... by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 1

      One night of likely bad but still potentially enjoyable sex for your entire epic mount training costs? It's really not a bad investment if you play a lot, couple hours of bad sex, couple weeks of feeling like a whore (maybe), but then a large amount of time with something you want. I assume anyone willing to make that offer plays many hours a day, so thats a huge chunk of her life that will be improved by a single night.

      As for the second part.. She is living her life. Gaming is a part of it. What should she be spending her life on instead, something you deem worthy? Watching TV? Reading things she doesn't care about? Working all day for money she doesnt really need and wouldnt have time to spend?

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    2. Re:They call it a game... by BagOCrap · · Score: 1

      You have a point there, actually. I retract my previous statement of "living life". Although she definitely shouldn't be doing things that I deem worthy. I just can't help it, she (and most others) must have something more worthwhile to do than play computer games.

      However, I still think it is ridiculous how computer games are becoming the controlling part of our lives.

      --
      -- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
    3. Re:They call it a game... by dbIII · · Score: 1
      Are you sure it was actually a girl?

      The net - where men are men, womem are men, and 13 year old girls are FBI agents.

    4. Re:They call it a game... by BagOCrap · · Score: 1

      I don't have any reliable sources, really. Only a link posted on SlashDot a couple of days ago (see article).

      Aforementioned link.

      --
      -- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
    5. Re:They call it a game... by dbIII · · Score: 1
      That was educational! Personally I think she is still far morally superior to anyone that has actually bought gold in WoW.

      WoW is becoming too much like real life. I get begged in my front yard and street walkers hang out as close as a block from my place (telling them I am broke since I look the part is the instant way to avoid being hassled by the street walkers anyway) - need a different game with more fantasy.

    6. Re:They call it a game... by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      couple weeks of feeling like a whore (maybe) And a lifetime of BEING a whore. Worse, a lifetime of being a whore for a video game.

      That kind of loserdom deserves recognition... is wowwhore.com taken?
  46. Re:terrain flicker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can stop the terrain flickering part unchecking the box under video options that says something similar to "level of detail" or something. The tooltip should explain that it doesn't draw the terrain stuff you can;t see. I had this issue too, unchecking that seemed to fix it for me. Dunno about the missing critter textures, though.

    Hell, on certain days my WoWlauncher.exe would just crash, even on a fresh reboot. Just use the WoW.exe to launch instead.

  47. Lets Hope They Sue Them Into the Ground... by Phrogman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am not litigious by nature. But as I am playing SWG heavily again right now - and it is massively plagued by Credit Spammers - I am hoping intensely that if Blizzard takes the lead the rest of the industry will follow suit (as they have in pretty much every other regard sadly, with some exceptions), and sue the living **** out of the gold sellers. I know I am casually condemning thousands of third world country workers to sudden unemployment, but I don't care. The ratbags that run these businesses are in direct violation of the TOS/ROC for MMORPGs, and I would dearly like to see them nailed to the wall - possibly literally.

    They systematically end up ruining games. Ok, so SWG has suffered an awful lot from the ravages of inept developers and designers over the past few years - its actually getting better now and approaching playable once more - but the area that has alwasy interested me was the player-driven economy. Most of my characters have been crafters. Over the past few years its been subject to gross inflation, and I suspect that the gold farmers that infest the planets like cockroaches are largely to blame. Its gotten to the point where players who are currently subscribed have lost all feel for how the economy ran in the past, and just post random prices for things (always high mind you) because the economy is so whacked out (a common item can vary from 100k credits to 12m credits easily. Mediocre quality resources are priced at 10-50 times what they used to sell for etc).

    I was mayor of 2 cities in SWG (on Tarquinnas server) and had to /cityban the gold farmers a few times. I still regularly report them to the CSRs. They come back like cockroaches.

    Now I have to report the AFK spammers that stand in front Mos Eisley Starport and spam an advertisement for their website literally every 5 seconds. Yes, you can turn off seeing AFK chat (a nice improvement), and you can /ignore the individual but since they will be back with a different name in an hour the later accomplishes nothing. Reporting them is useful enough, but I have a feeling the CSRs can't keep up with the reporting and I bet they are spending a lot of their time just banning trial accounts containing spammers. I hope they are forced to follow the lead of Blizzard again here and restrict the ability to broadcast, send, whisper etc.

    --
    "The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
    1. Re:Lets Hope They Sue Them Into the Ground... by petrus4 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I know I am casually condemning thousands of third world country workers to sudden unemployment, but I don't care.

      The Chinese (who are the main nationality in question here I think) need to be given a very strong incentive not to see gold farming as a legitimate form of employment...because it isn't. Civil lawsuits on their own are unlikely to be enough; what Blizzard should really do IMHO is petition the Chinese government to conduct enforcement within their own country.

      Gold farming isn't any more beneficial to the Chinese people themselves than it is to gamers. Apart from anything else, it sends a message to whichever businesspeople that are running these companies that Chinese employees are willing to be exploited; that they are willing to work long hours in poor conditions and be paid the absolute bare minimum required in order for them to have an incentive to do the work. The Chinese government isn't doing itself any favours by allowing the companies in question to exist, either. The companies in question are almost always owned by foreign nationals, and every last dollar of whatever revenue they make will leave China, if it ever enters the country at all. This does nothing for the Chinese economy.

      I can understand Chinese workers wanting to make a living for themselves and their families as much as any other people on the planet, but I also feel that they should look for ways in which they can have a genuinely beneficial employment opportunity, rather than something which is exploitative and harmful to them simply because the people running said companies are willing to exploit these workers' own beliefs that they do not deserve better jobs. They do deserve better, and we as gamers deserve better than what they are doing to the games we play.

      Gamers and the gold farmers are not actually on opposite sides here; the reality is that both groups are being screwed in this scenario by the usual plutocrats.

  48. Blizzard in deep shit with the IRS? by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

    Blizzard also charges 8.25% sales tax to NYS residents, even those of us who live in a county where the tax less than that. Who keeps the extra money wrongly collected as "tax"- Blizzard or your county/state/whatever?

    If the former, doesn't profiteering from wrongful collection of taxes contravene some federal law and potentially place Blizzard in some very, very deep shit with the IRS (or whoever)?

    When I noticed the oddity on my statement, I wrote Blizzard's billing department and was told that "Blizzard and its employees cannot be expected to understand tax laws, if you would like additional information, please contact your state Department of Commerce." (Disclaimer: IANAL, and the following is speculation). Whilst it's understandable that most employees won't understand tax law, there should be someone there that *does* (or should) and should have been informed/questioned about the issue as soon as (anyone in) the company was informed that there may be such a problem.... right? Or at least I'd guess that's how a court would see it.

    I don't know that much about the U.S. tax authorities, but I do know that you don't want to get on the wrong side of them. I really doubt Blizzard washing their hands or shrugging their shoulders like that would look good for them at all.

    Might be worth investigating if you dislike Blizzard's attitude and possible wrongful profiteering.
    --
    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  49. When game requires so much effort to play... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is no longer a game.

  50. Re:Yay! Crackdown on spammers by petrus4 · · Score: 1

    Now if Blizzard would only fix their client so it didn't crash at random times then I could actually play it.

    As a first step, get rid of any addons you've installed. If that doesn't fix the problem, reinstall Windows, or run a virus scanner to get rid of the crap that your machine is almost certainly infested with. If you're using Linux, you may need a more recent version of Wine.

    However, I routinely play WoW for probably a minimum of four hours a day with absolutely no problems. It doesn't crash for me at all.

  51. Double Secret Probation by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 1

    Also it seems if you try and type 'peons4hire' in any communication, the server just drops your message. Fiance was trying to tell guildmates about the lawsuit and was confused why none of her messages were getting through...

    --
    Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
    Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
    1. Re:Double Secret Probation by NickCatal · · Score: 2, Informative

      That is "client side" It appears

      Click the "Disable spam filter" and they will get through

      --
      -nick
  52. Except that's real hard by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It takes a good deal of time to get a character to level 70. Even for people who are good at it and spend lots of time on it, we aren't talking a one day thing, we are talking at least a couple weeks of really determined effort. Now to have any effect, you'd need a ton of body guards, like hundreds probably. It isn't hard for a single PvP guild to get 20-40 people on short notice to go after someone, and these people would be targets for everyone. Also, you don't need to kill all the guards, just keep them occupied while one person gets one spell off on the low level person. So this is all fine you say? Ok, except that Blizzard will no doubt ban the guards as readily as the spammer. Then you are again stuck needing to level up more characters. The people who attack you can do it at any time, each time it happens, you get all your characters banned and have to start over.

    Global PvP is problematic for other reasons, but gold sellers wouldn't be able to get around the problem by hiring body guards. Remember: Developers aren't the government, they are gods in the virtual world. While they aren't all seeing, all knowing gods like the Christan god, they are still extremely powerful gods like the Roman gods. The gold sellers can't hire defense against them, as they simply remove people from the world and shut down accounts permanently.

    1. Re:Except that's real hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not actually that hard. I was in IF on a trial account trying to find some allies to game the Outland PvP objectives with me and since it was very difficult to msg people with the new changes, I ended up just bringing my UD rogue into IF and killing the dwarf spammer that was there annoying everyone. :D

      I bought gold and botted when I played btw.

  53. But they're adapting already... by Killer+Eye · · Score: 1

    Of course, the spammers have already found something new.

    Yesterday, I logged in and in the middle of a major WoW city, there were 3 or 4 "jumble-name" accounts similar to the ones who had previously sent whispers. Only this time, they were standing there preaching spam messages over and over, where a lot of people would surely be gathered and overhear them.

    While we're all grateful the whispers have gone away, these people are far from done.

    --
    "Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
  54. Stamina not skill by CountBrass · · Score: 1

    WOW does not require skill to advance. Sure there are skilled players but the main asset a player needs is time (or to put it another way, stamina).

    So what gold buyers are actually doing is paying cash instead of time to obtain their epic sword of leetness. Perfectly reasonable imo and the only people whom 've heard whinge about it are the adolescents supported by their parents who can afford to spend their lives in WoW.

    So don't mistake stamina for skill. The latter is more than just playing 24x7 and being able to endure WoW farming. (Personally I think WoW grinders are pretty much the same creature as WoW Gold farmers: except the farmers get paid for their time where as the grinders are just waisting theirs).

    --
    Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
  55. One could see it as... by Kabuthunk · · Score: 1

    One could argue that it's no different than someone messaging someone saying "Hey, I found a cool new webpage" or "I got a cool new *random object or service*. A spammer is just doing that repeatedly... to anyone they're capable of reaching... over and over again.

    Now, one would think it would be easy to differentiate the two... but there's no solid line drawn between them. It's going to have a large grey area where Blizzard won't know whether it's actually spam or just a really annoying jerk... which isn't illegal anywhere (unfortunately)

    --
    Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
  56. c harges by Jenovaside · · Score: 1

    The charges should be selling something that does not belong to you. If you read eula, everything on the server belongs to blizzard. Also with a little luck they set up presadence(sp) and use that to quickly take down all the other gold sellers.

    1. Re:c harges by Pofy · · Score: 1

      You are confusing what the "selling" is about. It is not selling in the traditional sense of changing ownership. Blizzard can claim whatever ownership they want but that is not changed, they still own it afterwards if that is the way you want to view it. What is sold is the possession of the gold (in this case) within the game, something anyone playing the game is free to do as they see fit, there is even several features built into the game for changing possession of gold and items between players and characters.

      Next you will probably say that someone owning a Monoply game can charge other players of it with charges of "selling something not belonging to them" if they exchange real money for a street when playing.... I doubt you will get far with that. Nothing would prevent the owner (or someone else for that matter to kick those people out of your game if such practise was not allowed by the rules, but that is something else of course.

  57. Re:Yay! Crackdown on spammers by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Try running it on linux instead of the hobby OS you have to pay for :)

  58. Re: Please Explain about Virtual Gold by Douglas+Goodall · · Score: 1

    I am not knowledgeable about WoW. Please explain what virtual gold is and why it is a problem. Are people making their own, or cloning it, or stealing it, or what? I don't understand the basic issue... Thanks

  59. Re:My Own Research (WHOIS) by milsoRgen · · Score: 1

    Registrant: Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: GOLD4POWER.COM Created on: 09-Jan-05 Expires on: 09-Jan-08 Last Updated on: 01-Dec-05 Administrative Contact: Private, Registration GOLD4POWER.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Technical Contact: Private, Registration GOLD4POWER.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Domain servers in listed order: WSC1.JOMAX.NET WSC2.JOMAX.NET Registry Status: clientRenewProhibited Registry Status: clientTransferProhibited Registry Status: clientUpdateProhibited Registry Status: clientDeleteProhibited

    --
    I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
  60. In other news . . . by Death_Aparatus · · Score: 1

    The price of World of Warcraft gold soars by 14.83%.

  61. If blizzard wins by Organic+Brain+Damage · · Score: 2, Funny

    will the spammers pay in in-game currency?

  62. Re: Please Explain about Virtual Gold by Korvar · · Score: 2, Informative
    The gold in question is the in-game currency players use to buy their character's equipment, training, food, and so forth.

    The problem is that certain people are using either bots (AI players) or cheap labour (called gold farmers) to gather large amounts of gold, not for their own use, but to sell on to others.

    This is against WoW policies, and will get your account banned.

    It also impacts the game negatively; it distorts the game economy horribly, for one. The various sources of income (gathering various items, killing beasties and taking their stuff) become harder for genuine players, because the bots/farmers get there first. And you get less for them too, because the glut of farmed items drives the price down.

    Meanwhile, the people who buy the gold spend it, generally on the more expensive and difficult-to-acquire items, which drives the prices for them up. So it's harder to make money in the first place, and harder to buy stuff with the gold you do get.

    But of course the most irritating aspect by far is that in order to get customers, they spam the living heck out of players. This is astonishingly irksome.

    To summarise the summary of the summary, gold sellers and buyers make the game less fun for everyone else.

    --
    Korvar the Fox!! www.korvar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
  63. Re: Thanks for the excellent explanation by Douglas+Goodall · · Score: 1

    You are most kind to take the time to explain this so well. I understand now why it is so bad. It makes it harder to make a living. Now that I understand. Anything that distorts the game like this make irk the players and the provider. Pseudo-virtual spam is the stray that breaks the camel's back as well. The final insult. And as in the real world, it tends to work which makes me sad/crazy. Can I assume that there is a way to export virtual gold from the game to the real world and in doing so drain financial energy from the game?

  64. An easy fix by AP31R0N · · Score: 1

    When you /ignore someone, make it ignore the entire account (for all of your and their alts).

    --
    Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
  65. They're adapting by obeythefist · · Score: 1

    Just like the borg, or roaches, or whatever, but under the new adverse conditions they are finding new ways to spam-spam-spam.

    I was recently invited into a party (this happens a lot, until 2.1, then it changed), it is almost always a clueless idiot/newbie/child/dumbarse so I tend to join anyway and completely ignore the person who invited me without chatting first... it's an in-game etiquette consideration to first talk to someone before inviting them into a party or opening a trade window. Some people who don't quite understand civility will just invite you with no warning or open a trade window and expect you to buy something or unlock something... it's annoying. So yes, I tend to join these parties then ignore the inviter, which is surely about as aggravating to them as it was to me to be invited without warning in the first place.

    Anyway, I joined the group and lo and behold, it was a fully populated raid group and the raid leader was spamming everyone. Looks like Blizzard isn't filtering raids/party chat.

    --
    I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
  66. Re:Yay! Crackdown on spammers by seebs · · Score: 1

    Seconded. I've been running almost exclusively under Wine since about 0.9.30, and Cedega for a month or two before that, and NO PROBLEMS AT ALL.

    If the client is crashing, my first guess is a dodgy computer. Windows machines can have utter crap for hardware without the user noticing.

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  67. Mod parent insightful +5 please, for gamer's sake by unity100 · · Score: 1

    reasons described in the parent are the ones which push people to buying gold and powerleveling instead of playing the game.

  68. Simple - make game FUN instead of time gulping by unity100 · · Score: 1

    started wow 1 year ago. for a month or so, it was fun.

    but when i hit level 20, the "go there and here for that quest and come back" concept started to wear off.

    after i hit 40, this time "go to this and that dungeon with 5-20 people and such" concept started to wear off.

    it was a long and boring, tedious journey from 40 to 60.

    just as i hit 60, and started to grind for items that would make me able to compete fairly in pvp, the only fun left in the game, expansion came out and 10 new levels to go were added into the game.

    60-70 boredom is much much longer and tedious than 30 to 60 boredom. and, when you hit level 70, you have to go through the "grind for items" boredom to get adequate itemization for being able to compete in pvp, and get into raids easily.

    i admit, its boring. boring in the boredom kingdom of the bored.

    im in this game for 2 things, 1 my guild that has migrated here from swg, 2, for pvp, which is the only thing fun in the game.

    if blizz wants to break the cycle, they have to let go of the concept "play time" when valuing game s, but bring in "fun factor".

    making me play something for months and than claiming that a game has "xxxx hours play time" does not mean shit, because i am bored through those xxxx hours.

  69. Re: Please Explain about Virtual Gold by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

    Meanwhile, the people who buy the gold spend it, generally on the more expensive and difficult-to-acquire items, which drives the prices for them up. So it's harder to make money in the first place, and harder to buy stuff with the gold you do get. And guess who is most likely selling those expensive items...

  70. Re:Yay! Crackdown on spammers by HouseArrest420 · · Score: 0

    Yeah, because we all know that having windows as an OS means your hardware is shit. What OS you have has absolutely NO reflection on your hardware. Unless your the type that likes to keep shit stock....in which case I have a POS to sell you!

    --
    This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
  71. Re:whats illegal about it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately breaking an eula does'nt mean they're breaking the law.
    (I Don't agree with what the spammers are doing, but saying its theft is complete bullshit)

  72. This just in.... by Joshwaa · · Score: 1

    Slashdot admins stop paying attention to titles!

  73. Re: Thanks for the excellent explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are free to assume anything you'd like.

    Were you trying to sound like a moron in your post, or did it just come out that way?

  74. stock sneakers by kewenlong · · Score: 0

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  75. A simple way to fight WoW spam by StephenW · · Score: 1

    I don't know about the author, but I've seen nothing but increased spam since the patch. It's impossible to /ignore since the spammers send from brand new characters that never send more than one message to you. Heck, I even saw one spammer brazenly standing in the middle of Ironforge peddling his site's services out loud. The existing filters obviously aren't enough.

    A simple way for Blizzard to help fight spam would be to disallow some communication commands for low-level characters. For instance, you could prevent all characters below level 10 from using /tell. That way spammers would have to spend hours rather than seconds to set up a spamming character. Sure, it'd be a tad inconvenient for honest players, but you don't really need help from your level 70 buddy when you're still in a starting territory.

  76. Re:Yay! Crackdown on spammers by seebs · · Score: 1

    You don't understand. It's not that Windows makes your hardware be shit.

    It's that, under Windows, you have no way of knowing, because "crashes all the damn time" is normal.

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  77. What should have been done sooner by jgoemat · · Score: 1
    I think this has all been caused by free trial accounts. Spammers can apply for one and create characters and spam all night. I say if it's a paying account, they should be able to send tells to whoever they want. If they are reported as spammers, that can go into suspension and banishment for the account where they will be out the $30 to buy the game and the monthly fee. This is assuming they are keeping track of characters that are added and deleted, that's a must. There's not much reason not to keep track of deleted characters, at least for a period. To solve the problem with free accounts, they can do combinations of the following:
    1. Bayesian filter - will automatically track reported and non-reported tells, this is how many spam filters work and with such a narrow subject matter it should be highly accurate
    2. /reportspam command that will automatically report the last person to send you a tell and log the tells for a GM to inspect (only works for level 10+ characters?)
    3. Automatically suspend tells from the ACCOUNT that was reported, they have to talk to a GM (or wait an hour?) to get it cleared
    4. If GM sees that it was a gold spammer (would take like 10 seconds to review), automatically flag that account as Banned

    To keep the '/reportspam' command from harming innocent players:

    1. Doesn't work anymore after level 5 or 10, this way it won't affect you after you have a couple of hours of playtime
    2. Possibly doesn't work anymore after you have any character over a certain level, so it won't affect your legitimate low-level alts
    3. Possibly has a graduated level where you can still be automatically suspended after enough people complain about the account in a certain time
    4. If someone fraudulently reports another person, that would be harassment under the TOS, so if the GM saw it wasn't valid, the reporter could get suspended
  78. Casual Players Versus Lifers: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Objective:
    A casual player should not be affected by hard-core players.
    People should be able to play with people of similiar rank and skill, and of similiar involvement in the game.
    Proposed solution:
    Limited time servers, where everyone is expected to reach the time or progression cap.
    Problems with Proposed Solution Relevant to YOU:
    Accounts being sold. You will still have high level players that are lousy because they bought the account.
    Levelling guides. You will still have high level players that are lousy because they followed a guide word for word.
    Botting. You will still have high level players that are lousy because they botted. Note that it would be impossible to detect well-written bots based on play-time since all players are expected to reach the cap.
    Major problems with proposed solution in general:
    Problems with grouping with real-life Friends. Friends that join later will always be at a disadvantage since there is no way to close the gap with the friends that joined first.
    Limits on time will cause frustration in groups.
    Does not Deal with Alternate Characters.
    People are already capped at 24 hours a day.