In many countries contract terms in consumer sales are quite regulated in what they can say and what they can't say, specifically they are not allowed to be unfair. Having a term that permits one side (the seller) the change the conditions freely after the sale would in many cases be such a thing. Even if one CAN change contract terms for specific reasons, they can't be changed "without notice" either.
If we stick to Europe (since the main article was about France, the sugested EULA (assuming it has a similar text for Europe would be considered an "unfair term in a consumer contract" and void. It is actually specifically mentioned as an example of an unfair term in the EU directive regulating unfair terms in consumer contracts, so there is not even a need for reasoning about it. Here, I give you a direct quote of the examples:
(j) enabling the seller or supplier to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract;
(k) enabling the seller or supplier to alter unilaterally without a valid reason any characteristics of the product or service to be provided;
If you want a full version of the EU directive, here is a link (click on the link in the second parapgraph). Note that the list at the end from qhich I quoted above is just examples of termas that are for sure unfair, they are not meant as a complete list:
So basically, those terms in the EULA are completely unenforcable and not valid if they exist in the European site. If taken to court (or other regulating department that deal with consumer sales related issues), they would be demanded to change the contract or fined). Actually, Apples store (plus Microsoft's I believ) in the Nordic countries was just a few days ago reported for their EULA. SHould be intersting to see the outcome. I am sure there are many other parts of it that will be ruled as not acceptable.
Although my post was only meant to be half serious, I think you have in part shown the problem I tried to show.
>Of course, a simple "buy it now" on an online auction seems obvious now. It >is. Would this have been obvious in 1994? I would argue not.
Why 1994? Why was it not obvious 1950? 1743? Or some other year? People have had auctions and sold items since ages. The issue is not if someone though it obvious to do it "online". Or if someone though it obvious on how to program some specific feature (that most likely existed in some other form not related to computers). The concept here is really, if you have an auction, have a possibility to set a predefined price and if anyone pays that, the auction is called off. Is that non obvious? Has that never be thought of or done? Making it "online" or programming it into some program doesn't make it less obvious and warrent it a patent, yet, many patents are of that nature, people have done it since the dawn of humanity almost and suddenly it is a novell feature in the world of computers. As a small final note, the obvious requirement is for people in the field in question, not for people in general, hence making it even harder to be non obvious.
You missed the digital revolution. Today, as long as you add "with a computer" or "on the internet", everything turns completely non-obvious and is thus patentable. Just take any ordinary activity you can think of and slap on "with a computer". Instant patent!!
Not sure if you speak of a specific rental service (I have no idea about itunes or any of the others mentioned in the post you replied to) or about buying music in general. If we stick to music in general, yes it is yours, those specific copies of the music are. No idea why you have some other idea.
>The only thing you get by buying a movie, music, or game is the right to >watch/listen/play.
No, if you buy it, you buy it, that is covered by normal sales laws, copyright does not in anyway interfer or deal with that. The fact that what you buy is a copy of a work that someone holds the copyright to is irellevant in that aspect. Also note that owning (or buying) the copyright to a work is of course different from owning (or buying) a copy of thw work and one does not imply the other. Here is, by the way, a good link to a copy of the US copyright law that deals with such differences and one that defines "copies" (which are material by the way and includes the work as well):
Feel free to review other parts of the copyright law as well if you feel you don't know how it works. If you prefer some the law of some other country, I am sure we can find links to that as well.
You may also see that "watch/listen/play" or any other similar activity is NOT one that is exclusive to the copyright holder. Hence it is free for anyone to do without any sort of permision or liecense. Copyright does not deal with those activities at all.
>Purchasing copyrighted material is nothing more than a "lifetime rental >fee".
Are you making up sentences and pulling them out of a hat as you type along? No idea why you have got such an idea as this (which is of course wrong). Feel free to try to find ANY basis for this in for example the copyright law.
Purchasing copyrighted material is NOT any different from purchasing any other material, works just the same way.
>What does the EULA say? Most say you >can get a refund if you do not agree >with the license and return the game.
If you don't agree to it it is quite irellevant what it says since it does not apply. The only way for that to apply is to agree to it of course, in which case it doesn't help either.
The correct way is of course to take it either to the store or to the manufacturers for being faulty and have them fix the faulty product for him. If they can't or don't wont do that, revoke the purchase of course. Most countries in the work requires the products you sell to work and if not the sale can of course be revoked. Whatever any additional contract or EULA says is irellevant.
>Would you say the same thing about a dupe bug? It has the same >effect.
A dupe bug involve exploiting such a bug or some other means to achieve something that can not be achieve otherwise in the game. Farming and/or buying items for real money (famred or not) does not at all involve any bugs or exploits. It does nothing in the game that you are not supposed to do otherwise, that is, transfering items or money betwenn characters. The game has several features specifically created for that. There is no such features created for duping items.
>The farming companies have people who watch the auction house 24/7. I could >tell you who they are on my server. They wait for mail coming in from the >field farmers and put the items up for auction, they advertise specific >items in the trade channel, and they watch for anything undercutting their >prices and buy it.
Guess what, so do every other people as well. Not constantly but there are constantly a LOT of "other" people doing so too. I often find items priced very low and buy them (eother to use or to resell later) so what is your problem? Because someone else do so too? It makes it sound as if no one else watch the AH which is not true. You can have someone watch it all the time, yet you will still always have competition by tons of other players also looking for items.
>Ever notice all those level 1 characters with names like Xiaoyang spamming >Krol Blades for sale, people whose only ability to communicate is "500g ok?" >when you try to ask them about the items they're selling? Those are the >farmers' auction mules.
Yes, because no one else has AH mules, riiight. So now you are complaining about AH mules??? Most people that play for a while tend to create one sooner or later. And yes, if you are a "professional" farmer from china on an american or european server, you probably is so smart that you disguise yourself under the name of "Xiaoyang", hoping non one would figure out you are an AH mule.
>What I said was that the farming characters are in play 24/7. So while they >appear to be a small percentage of the population, they have a much greater >impact than their numbers would indicate.
Ahh, OK. But that does not mean it has a total effect any different than if it iwas 30 different accounts. Really, as a player, do you have ANY idea or is affected in any way different, or even have any clue about the difference between 30 people playing the same character or playing 30 different characters? You would not notice the difference, especially since they would probably pool the resources to the same account any way. Just like many players do. I have many friends that has a special AH character for example (I have it too), that basically is stationed at an AH and only run between the AH and the mailbox. All items of interest for sale found by any other of their (or mine) character are mailed to this character which is the one used for the actual AH bussiness. If you want, you can even get him enchanting so he can disenchant items, this character will also be buying items on the AH. SInce it is the one making money, the money is then sent back to all your other characters. The point is to not have all your other characters constantly having to spend time traveling back to the city with the AH. From an economical power point of view, would you see the difference of this one character or if all my characters instead travelled back and did their bussines each one?
>Why is it difficult for you to comprehend that farming for 24 hours produces >more gold and items than farming for 4 hours?
I never claimed that. But whoever farms, will farm about the same during the time they farm, regardless of how long they play otherwise. Your own statement was "
>No, but they have 24 hours a day to do the farming while the average player >has (pulling a number out of thin air here) 4 hours.
So? What are your trying to sugest, that whoever h
>(all relevant parts covered, but naked none the less)
How can someone be naked if covered??!??!?! Seems the only way to not be naked would be to be completely covered, but then, there would not be anything to show.....
>As a father and a person who atleast attempts to live >accourding to a moral standard, I do not want to see, nor do I >want my kids to see this stuff.
You don't want your kids to see covered people?
So how should the search engine know the searches moral to start with anyway? Were do you draw the line for how covered someone needs to be? Perhaps only pictures were at most the eyes can be seen should be the default? What about violence, did you try that? Or are you of the moral type that get shocked by a naked foot but have no problem with any type of violence, for example people killing each other, people hiting each other and so on?
>Difficult as it is to keep it away from them, at least google >offeres a decent filter that I can set to weed it out.
And how hard do you think it is to change that setting?
>Picture any other game. >Monopoly >Axis & Allies >Checkers >Chess
Yes, and the winner in a game of WoW is...... WHO? WoWO is not a game played by two or more player that has someone win after reaching a specific goal, now is it?
By the way, picture a game like soccer, tennis or anything else, are you going to argue that no one is allowed to buy a more expensive racket, shoes, whatever as that would be cheating? If I show up to the game in $2 shoes, should all the others who have bought more expensive shoes be disqualified due to cheating????? And if in the middle of the game, I decide to switch shoes with someone else (for a price of course), are we then cheating??????
>The author says that he is not impressed by the EULA violation 'theory'.
The issue is more of what is OK and allowed to put into rules for something you sell to consumers. Would it be OK to put in a rule that say that you can't arrange any baby sitter while you play unless it is one you rent from Blizzard? Would you then break thr rules if you ask someone in your family or friend to look after your baby while you play for a while?
>You're playing outside of the rules of the game. I hate >cheaters.
Yes, because it about somethig done outside the game, what does that have to do with cheating in the game? If the rules said it is cheating for me to drive to work in my car insted of walk, would you argue I am cheating then?
That doesn't change the fact that there are in practice unlimited ammount of gold/items in the game. Removing 5% (or 50% or whatever you want) from an unlimited revenue stream doesn't make it unlimited.
>I'm farming for the materials for my Robe of the Void and guess what, >there's a Gold Farmer running the same path over and over in Azshara looking >for Satyrs so that he can sell off the Felcloth.
So you are complaining you can't farm because someone else is allready farming (and appearantly being better at it than you)!!??!?!??!
For all you know, he could be on the same bussiness like you, geting material for that robe, or for something else, or grinding to level up, or doing something else in the game....
>The best example I can come up with from WoW is when I logged >in and spent 2 hours in an area trying to collect iron ore. The >problem is that a group of farmers were "patrolling" the spawn >locations and grabbing them as soon as they appeared.
So you complain that YOU could not farm since someone else was allready farming (and seemed to be better than you at it)!!!
>I have seen farmers buy out EVERY type of a paticular item >(Often a widely needed tradeskill item, such as arcanite), and >place them all up several minutes later with a massive price >increase.
Ahh, yes, you know they were farmers, how? And what prevents ANYONE from doing that themselves? I know several friends who do so and if I see something priced cheaply I have also bought it and later sold it at a higher price. In addition, what prevents YOU (if you need the item) to buy it out at the low procie when you see it?
>if the Code of Conduct says buying gold is cheating (which it >does for WoW), then its cheating.
And when a game company starts selling food and claim that if you eat any other food than their during the same day you play the game, you will probably stand on the baricades pointing fingers at everyone that slip in a hot dog that is from the wrong source I presume....
Game rules can control the game, not things unrelated to the game. When you "buy" or "sell" things for real money, you are not doing anything in the game that you can't do otherwise (transfering items and gold inside the game which is specifically provided for through Auction Houses, Mail system and special pop up windows for exchanging items.
>For one thing, the gold farmers concentrate exclusively on >producing gold. They are not playing, they are working, and as >such devote all of their time to gathering more gold. >Therefore, they naturally make more gold per hour than ordinary >players, often many times more.
And those that buy gold would instead have to spend part of the time they play now by farming themselves so they can get the gold they want to spend on stuff, perhaps an epic mount. So what?
>In addition, in many cases multiple players are playing the >same account to keep the farming going 24/7.
In no case can more than one player play the same account at once. There is virtually NO difference it people take shift playing the same character or each playing their own character, they farm just as much or little in a given time.
>This is a multiplying factor.
How? Do ammount of gold or item multiply in the game if the same account is played for a long time? See comment above, no difference.
Your calculation expample won't differ if someone uses 10 accounts each producing only 3 times the gold as someone NOT farming. The biggest difference would probably be that Blizzard has maken a bit more money selling more accounts.
>For another, the same ratio applies to the production of items, >especially the rare and epic items that are bind-on-equip world >drops. So if 5% of the population of your server is commercial >farmers (and from my experience tracking farmers in WoW, that's >the right order of magnitude) those 5% are producing more >items, half again more, than the entire population of >legitimate players combined.
If you compare to people idling in town and such, yeah probably, ordinary people playing generate gold and items too you know. Someone farming doesn't have a turbo button that make monsters have less hit points or drop more items. If you take those farmers away, someone else will farm instead, the players that now buy their items in AH would, if there were no items on sale there, go farm themselves instead, no difference except that more people probably can do other stuff than farming in the game. You think it would be better if each player themseves had to go farm half their playing time?
>This gives them massive power to control the market, further >increased by the fact that they sell virtually all the sellable >items they get, rather than using them as upgrades to their own >gear when possible as ordinary players would. Normally the >increased supply of items would drive down prices, but the >items are in the hands of the gold farmers, who collude to keep >prices high.
You just recently argued that those items would not exist at all otherwise. So you claim the items that now exist and otherwise would not exists cost more than what? Non existing items?
>They sell high, and if someone is selling items cheaper, they >buy up those items and resell them, too.
Ehh? How, no one stop others from buying items you know. Or farm items themselves.
The main issue you seem to have a problem seems to be that people buying their farmed gold and then spend them on their farmed items, somehow are cheated out because they should first not have had that gold to start with and now that they have it, they should not have to pay so much for the items that should not have existed to start with. You are complaining on inflation of items that would not have existed. You also fail to realise that otherwise, "ordinary" people would have to farm a lot more instead, playing less non-farming.
>Furthermore, in a PvP game, the ever-increasing inflation >brought on by the RMT gold sales means that players either have >to devote insane amounts of time to earning gold, or just give >up and buy it from the RMT companies. So the cycle continues
Or just farm themselves, it is not that it takes 5 years of university studies to le
>The farmers sell their farmed materials to create gold. Therefor the price >of those materials goes down.
You seems to assume only "farmers" sell raw material and that no one buying gold by raw material.
>They then sell the gold to people who buy equipment driving the price of >equipment up.
And here you turn arround appearantly assuming that "farmers" doesn't sell this equipment and that it is only bought by those buying gold.
In both cases you are wrong, everyone sell and buy raw material and everyone sell and buy equipment. Make up your mind on the deflating/inflating issue.
From my experience, raw material is not at all cheap, regardlss of type I want to get for my characters (depending on their profession) it is relatively expensive for example.
Sorry for two replies to same post, managed to post to soon.
>The point you're missing is that not all servers have queues. The game >works fine, unless you want to play on a particular server at a >particular time.
Then it does not "work fine" since it only works at times. If I subscribe to a telephone service, I expect it to basically always work. I don't expect to sit in half hours queues if I want to make a phone call in the evening when everyone is home. Doesn't matter if it "works fine" in the middle of the night or at work hour. There are excellent tolls, models and such to find out the demand and infrastucture needed to meet the demand even at peek hours. Obviously one can at times expect to have the net or in this case the servers loaded to the max. But how often should that be acceptable? If people constantly and most of the days have to sit in queues, it is obviously too often, even for a game I would say.
>And a physically defective game is not exactly the same thing as one >that functions fine but just didn't meet the purchaser's expectations, >is it?
Well, merchandize is defective if it does not meet the expectations given to the consumer or expectations a consumer could reasoanbly have. At least in many countries. What exactly that means or is can of course vary from case to case, how the marketing and information about the game was, how other similar products work and so on. Obviously one can't expect to have a situation were the server is never down and never queues but were the limit is? Hard to tell. If they clearly sell more copies than theyir servers can handle or let more people create accounts on single servers than they can reasonable handle, then they indeed have sold a defective product. Being defective does not nessecarilly mean physically only (or perhaps the correct english word is something else here, I am not native english speaking).
>I hear this all of the time, but I've never heard of it actually >happening. Does software suddenly stop working once the company that >made it closes down?
If the software requires some sort of activation it will, at least as soon as you need to reinstall it for example. If the software rely on some sort of "calling home" while in normal use it will stop working too of course.
If they stop to simply support the software, you can't get help if you have problems with the software any more or discover a bug that needs fixing.
Slashdot Mirror
>Sweedish law has said nothing about the matter to date.
Swedish laws on theft are quite clear about the matter, it is not even close to being theft.
>Absent a favorable decision from the Sweedish courts...
But there is such a decision, and quite old one, from the days of the BBS which is what makes it OK to make such linking as they do.
But if something is not copyright infringement to start with, it doesn't matter if you turn copyright infringement criminal or not.
In many countries contract terms in consumer sales are quite regulated in what they can say and what they can't say, specifically they are not allowed to be unfair. Having a term that permits one side (the seller) the change the conditions freely after the sale would in many cases be such a thing. Even if one CAN change contract terms for specific reasons, they can't be changed "without notice" either.
_ shop/unf_cont_terms/index_en.htm
If we stick to Europe (since the main article was about France, the sugested EULA (assuming it has a similar text for Europe would be considered an "unfair term in a consumer contract" and void. It is actually specifically mentioned as an example of an unfair term in the EU directive regulating unfair terms in consumer contracts, so there is not even a need for reasoning about it. Here, I give you a direct quote of the examples:
(j) enabling the seller or supplier to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract;
(k) enabling the seller or supplier to alter unilaterally without a valid reason any characteristics of the product or service to be provided;
If you want a full version of the EU directive, here is a link (click on the link in the second parapgraph). Note that the list at the end from qhich I quoted above is just examples of termas that are for sure unfair, they are not meant as a complete list:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/consumers/cons_int/safe
So basically, those terms in the EULA are completely unenforcable and not valid if they exist in the European site. If taken to court (or other regulating department that deal with consumer sales related issues), they would be demanded to change the contract or fined). Actually, Apples store (plus Microsoft's I believ) in the Nordic countries was just a few days ago reported for their EULA. SHould be intersting to see the outcome. I am sure there are many other parts of it that will be ruled as not acceptable.
Although my post was only meant to be half serious, I think you have in part shown the problem I tried to show.
>Of course, a simple "buy it now" on an online auction seems obvious now. It
>is. Would this have been obvious in 1994? I would argue not.
Why 1994? Why was it not obvious 1950? 1743? Or some other year? People have had auctions and sold items since ages. The issue is not if someone though it obvious to do it "online". Or if someone though it obvious on how to program some specific feature (that most likely existed in some other form not related to computers). The concept here is really, if you have an auction, have a possibility to set a predefined price and if anyone pays that, the auction is called off. Is that non obvious? Has that never be thought of or done? Making it "online" or programming it into some program doesn't make it less obvious and warrent it a patent, yet, many patents are of that nature, people have done it since the dawn of humanity almost and suddenly it is a novell feature in the world of computers. As a small final note, the obvious requirement is for people in the field in question, not for people in general, hence making it even harder to be non obvious.
You missed the digital revolution. Today, as long as you add "with a computer" or "on the internet", everything turns completely non-obvious and is thus patentable. Just take any ordinary activity you can think of and slap on "with a computer". Instant patent!!
>Except that it's not your music at all.
s c_sec_17_00000101----000-.htmls c_sec_17_00000202----000-.html
Not sure if you speak of a specific rental service (I have no idea about itunes or any of the others mentioned in the post you replied to) or about buying music in general. If we stick to music in general, yes it is yours, those specific copies of the music are. No idea why you have some other idea.
>The only thing you get by buying a movie, music, or game is the right to
>watch/listen/play.
No, if you buy it, you buy it, that is covered by normal sales laws, copyright does not in anyway interfer or deal with that. The fact that what you buy is a copy of a work that someone holds the copyright to is irellevant in that aspect. Also note that owning (or buying) the copyright to a work is of course different from owning (or buying) a copy of thw work and one does not imply the other. Here is, by the way, a good link to a copy of the US copyright law that deals with such differences and one that defines "copies" (which are material by the way and includes the work as well):
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/u
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/u
Feel free to review other parts of the copyright law as well if you feel you don't know how it works. If you prefer some the law of some other country, I am sure we can find links to that as well.
You may also see that "watch/listen/play" or any other similar activity is NOT one that is exclusive to the copyright holder. Hence it is free for anyone to do without any sort of permision or liecense. Copyright does not deal with those activities at all.
>Purchasing copyrighted material is nothing more than a "lifetime rental
>fee".
Are you making up sentences and pulling them out of a hat as you type along? No idea why you have got such an idea as this (which is of course wrong). Feel free to try to find ANY basis for this in for example the copyright law.
Purchasing copyrighted material is NOT any different from purchasing any other material, works just the same way.
>What does the EULA say? Most say you
>can get a refund if you do not agree
>with the license and return the game.
If you don't agree to it it is quite irellevant what it says since it does not apply. The only way for that to apply is to agree to it of course, in which case it doesn't help either.
The correct way is of course to take it either to the store or to the manufacturers for being faulty and have them fix the faulty product for him. If they can't or don't wont do that, revoke the purchase of course. Most countries in the work requires the products you sell to work and if not the sale can of course be revoked. Whatever any additional contract or EULA says is irellevant.
>Would you say the same thing about a dupe bug? It has the same
>effect.
A dupe bug involve exploiting such a bug or some other means to achieve something that can not be achieve otherwise in the game. Farming and/or buying items for real money (famred or not) does not at all involve any bugs or exploits. It does nothing in the game that you are not supposed to do otherwise, that is, transfering items or money betwenn characters. The game has several features specifically created for that. There is no such features created for duping items.
>The farming companies have people who watch the auction house 24/7. I could
>tell you who they are on my server. They wait for mail coming in from the
>field farmers and put the items up for auction, they advertise specific
>items in the trade channel, and they watch for anything undercutting their
>prices and buy it.
Guess what, so do every other people as well. Not constantly but there are constantly a LOT of "other" people doing so too. I often find items priced very low and buy them (eother to use or to resell later) so what is your problem? Because someone else do so too? It makes it sound as if no one else watch the AH which is not true. You can have someone watch it all the time, yet you will still always have competition by tons of other players also looking for items.
>Ever notice all those level 1 characters with names like Xiaoyang spamming
>Krol Blades for sale, people whose only ability to communicate is "500g ok?"
>when you try to ask them about the items they're selling? Those are the
>farmers' auction mules.
Yes, because no one else has AH mules, riiight. So now you are complaining about AH mules??? Most people that play for a while tend to create one sooner or later. And yes, if you are a "professional" farmer from china on an american or european server, you probably is so smart that you disguise yourself under the name of "Xiaoyang", hoping non one would figure out you are an AH mule.
>What I said was that the farming characters are in play 24/7. So while they
>appear to be a small percentage of the population, they have a much greater
>impact than their numbers would indicate.
Ahh, OK. But that does not mean it has a total effect any different than if it iwas 30 different accounts. Really, as a player, do you have ANY idea or is affected in any way different, or even have any clue about the difference between 30 people playing the same character or playing 30 different characters? You would not notice the difference, especially since they would probably pool the resources to the same account any way. Just like many players do. I have many friends that has a special AH character for example (I have it too), that basically is stationed at an AH and only run between the AH and the mailbox. All items of interest for sale found by any other of their (or mine) character are mailed to this character which is the one used for the actual AH bussiness. If you want, you can even get him enchanting so he can disenchant items, this character will also be buying items on the AH. SInce it is the one making money, the money is then sent back to all your other characters. The point is to not have all your other characters constantly having to spend time traveling back to the city with the AH. From an economical power point of view, would you see the difference of this one character or if all my characters instead travelled back and did their bussines each one?
>Why is it difficult for you to comprehend that farming for 24 hours produces
>more gold and items than farming for 4 hours?
I never claimed that. But whoever farms, will farm about the same during the time they farm, regardless of how long they play otherwise. Your own statement was "
>No, but they have 24 hours a day to do the farming while the average player >has (pulling a number out of thin air here) 4 hours.
So? What are your trying to sugest, that whoever h
>(all relevant parts covered, but naked none the less)
How can someone be naked if covered??!??!?! Seems the only way to not be naked would be to be completely covered, but then, there would not be anything to show.....
>As a father and a person who atleast attempts to live
>accourding to a moral standard, I do not want to see, nor do I
>want my kids to see this stuff.
You don't want your kids to see covered people?
So how should the search engine know the searches moral to start with anyway? Were do you draw the line for how covered someone needs to be? Perhaps only pictures were at most the eyes can be seen should be the default? What about violence, did you try that? Or are you of the moral type that get shocked by a naked foot but have no problem with any type of violence, for example people killing each other, people hiting each other and so on?
>Difficult as it is to keep it away from them, at least google
>offeres a decent filter that I can set to weed it out.
And how hard do you think it is to change that setting?
>They found an abundant market, and are profitting from it (all
>be it against a EULA it isin't against any laws).
If it was against the laws, why would you have to try putting it into an EULA to start with?? No, it is not against the laws.
>Picture any other game.
>Monopoly
>Axis & Allies
>Checkers
>Chess
Yes, and the winner in a game of WoW is...... WHO? WoWO is not a game played by two or more player that has someone win after reaching a specific goal, now is it?
By the way, picture a game like soccer, tennis or anything else, are you going to argue that no one is allowed to buy a more expensive racket, shoes, whatever as that would be cheating? If I show up to the game in $2 shoes, should all the others who have bought more expensive shoes be disqualified due to cheating????? And if in the middle of the game, I decide to switch shoes with someone else (for a price of course), are we then cheating??????
>The author says that he is not impressed by the EULA violation 'theory'.
The issue is more of what is OK and allowed to put into rules for something you sell to consumers. Would it be OK to put in a rule that say that you can't arrange any baby sitter while you play unless it is one you rent from Blizzard? Would you then break thr rules if you ask someone in your family or friend to look after your baby while you play for a while?
>You're playing outside of the rules of the game. I hate
>cheaters.
Yes, because it about somethig done outside the game, what does that have to do with cheating in the game? If the rules said it is cheating for me to drive to work in my car insted of walk, would you argue I am cheating then?
>Scarcity in WoW is created in three ways:
That doesn't change the fact that there are in practice unlimited ammount of gold/items in the game. Removing 5% (or 50% or whatever you want) from an unlimited revenue stream doesn't make it unlimited.
>I'm farming for the materials for my Robe of the Void and guess what,
>there's a Gold Farmer running the same path over and over in Azshara looking
>for Satyrs so that he can sell off the Felcloth.
So you are complaining you can't farm because someone else is allready farming (and appearantly being better at it than you)!!??!?!??!
For all you know, he could be on the same bussiness like you, geting material for that robe, or for something else, or grinding to level up, or doing something else in the game....
>The best example I can come up with from WoW is when I logged
>in and spent 2 hours in an area trying to collect iron ore. The
>problem is that a group of farmers were "patrolling" the spawn
>locations and grabbing them as soon as they appeared.
So you complain that YOU could not farm since someone else was allready farming (and seemed to be better than you at it)!!!
>I have seen farmers buy out EVERY type of a paticular item
>(Often a widely needed tradeskill item, such as arcanite), and
>place them all up several minutes later with a massive price
>increase.
Ahh, yes, you know they were farmers, how? And what prevents ANYONE from doing that themselves? I know several friends who do so and if I see something priced cheaply I have also bought it and later sold it at a higher price. In addition, what prevents YOU (if you need the item) to buy it out at the low procie when you see it?
>if the Code of Conduct says buying gold is cheating (which it
>does for WoW), then its cheating.
And when a game company starts selling food and claim that if you eat any other food than their during the same day you play the game, you will probably stand on the baricades pointing fingers at everyone that slip in a hot dog that is from the wrong source I presume....
Game rules can control the game, not things unrelated to the game. When you "buy" or "sell" things for real money, you are not doing anything in the game that you can't do otherwise (transfering items and gold inside the game which is specifically provided for through Auction Houses, Mail system and special pop up windows for exchanging items.
>For one thing, the gold farmers concentrate exclusively on
>producing gold. They are not playing, they are working, and as
>such devote all of their time to gathering more gold.
>Therefore, they naturally make more gold per hour than ordinary
>players, often many times more.
And those that buy gold would instead have to spend part of the time they play now by farming themselves so they can get the gold they want to spend on stuff, perhaps an epic mount. So what?
>In addition, in many cases multiple players are playing the
>same account to keep the farming going 24/7.
In no case can more than one player play the same account at once. There is virtually NO difference it people take shift playing the same character or each playing their own character, they farm just as much or little in a given time.
>This is a multiplying factor.
How? Do ammount of gold or item multiply in the game if the same account is played for a long time? See comment above, no difference.
Your calculation expample won't differ if someone uses 10 accounts each producing only 3 times the gold as someone NOT farming. The biggest difference would probably be that Blizzard has maken a bit more money selling more accounts.
>For another, the same ratio applies to the production of items,
>especially the rare and epic items that are bind-on-equip world
>drops. So if 5% of the population of your server is commercial
>farmers (and from my experience tracking farmers in WoW, that's
>the right order of magnitude) those 5% are producing more
>items, half again more, than the entire population of
>legitimate players combined.
If you compare to people idling in town and such, yeah probably, ordinary people playing generate gold and items too you know. Someone farming doesn't have a turbo button that make monsters have less hit points or drop more items. If you take those farmers away, someone else will farm instead, the players that now buy their items in AH would, if there were no items on sale there, go farm themselves instead, no difference except that more people probably can do other stuff than farming in the game. You think it would be better if each player themseves had to go farm half their playing time?
>This gives them massive power to control the market, further
>increased by the fact that they sell virtually all the sellable
>items they get, rather than using them as upgrades to their own
>gear when possible as ordinary players would. Normally the
>increased supply of items would drive down prices, but the
>items are in the hands of the gold farmers, who collude to keep
>prices high.
You just recently argued that those items would not exist at all otherwise. So you claim the items that now exist and otherwise would not exists cost more than what? Non existing items?
>They sell high, and if someone is selling items cheaper, they
>buy up those items and resell them, too.
Ehh? How, no one stop others from buying items you know. Or farm items themselves.
The main issue you seem to have a problem seems to be that people buying their farmed gold and then spend them on their farmed items, somehow are cheated out because they should first not have had that gold to start with and now that they have it, they should not have to pay so much for the items that should not have existed to start with. You are complaining on inflation of items that would not have existed. You also fail to realise that otherwise, "ordinary" people would have to farm a lot more instead, playing less non-farming.
>Furthermore, in a PvP game, the ever-increasing inflation
>brought on by the RMT gold sales means that players either have
>to devote insane amounts of time to earning gold, or just give
>up and buy it from the RMT companies. So the cycle continues
Or just farm themselves, it is not that it takes 5 years of university studies to le
>The farmers sell their farmed materials to create gold. Therefor the price
>of those materials goes down.
You seems to assume only "farmers" sell raw material and that no one buying gold by raw material.
>They then sell the gold to people who buy equipment driving the price of
>equipment up.
And here you turn arround appearantly assuming that "farmers" doesn't sell this equipment and that it is only bought by those buying gold.
In both cases you are wrong, everyone sell and buy raw material and everyone sell and buy equipment. Make up your mind on the deflating/inflating issue.
From my experience, raw material is not at all cheap, regardlss of type I want to get for my characters (depending on their profession) it is relatively expensive for example.
>I understood that most studies found exactly the opposite.
Care to provide some references?
Sorry for two replies to same post, managed to post to soon.
>The point you're missing is that not all servers have queues. The game
>works fine, unless you want to play on a particular server at a
>particular time.
Then it does not "work fine" since it only works at times. If I subscribe to a telephone service, I expect it to basically always work. I don't expect to sit in half hours queues if I want to make a phone call in the evening when everyone is home. Doesn't matter if it "works fine" in the middle of the night or at work hour. There are excellent tolls, models and such to find out the demand and infrastucture needed to meet the demand even at peek hours. Obviously one can at times expect to have the net or in this case the servers loaded to the max. But how often should that be acceptable? If people constantly and most of the days have to sit in queues, it is obviously too often, even for a game I would say.
>And a physically defective game is not exactly the same thing as one
>that functions fine but just didn't meet the purchaser's expectations,
>is it?
Well, merchandize is defective if it does not meet the expectations given to the consumer or expectations a consumer could reasoanbly have. At least in many countries. What exactly that means or is can of course vary from case to case, how the marketing and information about the game was, how other similar products work and so on. Obviously one can't expect to have a situation were the server is never down and never queues but were the limit is? Hard to tell. If they clearly sell more copies than theyir servers can handle or let more people create accounts on single servers than they can reasonable handle, then they indeed have sold a defective product. Being defective does not nessecarilly mean physically only (or perhaps the correct english word is something else here, I am not native english speaking).
>I hear this all of the time, but I've never heard of it actually
>happening. Does software suddenly stop working once the company that
>made it closes down?
If the software requires some sort of activation it will, at least as soon as you need to reinstall it for example. If the software rely on some sort of "calling home" while in normal use it will stop working too of course.
If they stop to simply support the software, you can't get help if you have problems with the software any more or discover a bug that needs fixing.