Blizzard has announced on their forums that they will be taking legal action against Peons4hire, a gold selling organization well known to many World of Warcraft players for their obnoxious spamming and in-game advertising.
Finding this here is rather amusing coming from a company that supports gold seller websites by posting their ad banners on site.
i've also seen a few banner ads on this site with selling gold/leveling characters
I think all game companies turn a blind eye towards gold sellers because they would have no business if there was no demand. However, they had to act to the new trend of spamming everyone in-game because their business is drying up. It is much easier to farm the gold you require now than it was prior to TBC so their market is now pretty small and they have resorted to disrupting the enjoyment of the game for the players with a bombardment of spam messages via tells, mails, line chat and group invites.
I have no problem with gold sellers if they have something to sell and they do it outside of the game, and Blizzard never had a problem with it either. However, this annoying spam detracts from the game and Blizzard is forced to send the message out that gold spammers are going to be prosecuted and hounded to the letter of the law if they are going to be disruptive to the players.
Courts tend to deal with physicality. All this data resides on servers owned by blizzard. If any of the data was stored on the personal computer of the user, then there might be some question, but it isn't. Hence the spammers have no legal defense whatsoever. It really does not matter if the Eula is valid or not, the spammers are breaking the law using blizzard to spam.
That is actually a rather good point Ciredric.
It was also mentioned before that the problem is also the gold buyers too. Blizzard should delete any toon that they found bought gold, that may make someone pause when they realize they are risking their lvl 70 going *poof* if they buy that gold for their flying mount.
i never had a huge problem with gold selling/buying. long as other players had disposable income it usually just meant more money for me on the auction house though i suppose its better for MMOs in general in the long run to try and keep gold selling in check. and if this company as particularly irritating to a large number of players in-game then yes, they deserve to be sued.
I had a friend that used to play Lineage II, he said it got really bad there as sometimes you'd be PK'd if you tried to go to certain areas. Basically you were interrupting their farming business and they would, rather harshly, kick you out.
I have to say, at least on my server, the spam has dropped to a minimum. Between the Lawsuit and the new right click "Report Spam" option on a players name, I don't think I have had anyone spam me in at least 3 weeks. Though, I have had two blind invites from 2 level 1 characters in starting areas, which I denied. I assume this is their new trick, but doesn't seem to be working well at all LOL no one actually accepts the group option from them now
I had a friend that used to play Lineage II, he said it got really bad there as sometimes you'd be PK'd if you tried to go to certain areas. Basically you were interrupting their farming business and they would, rather harshly, kick you out.
Something similar used to happen in EQ II. Since they couldn't kill you themselves, they would wait till you started fighting, draw aggro from several mobs of the same species and run them right into you. That way, not only were you fighting your mob, you had a train of 5 to 6 more to deal with. The sand goblins in Sinking Sands and Pillars of Flame would jump in to help each other at the drop of a hat. I can't tell you how many people/groups that pulled this crap on me, I reported right away.
Yeah the invites from level one's is the gold sellers attempt to "get around" the report spam. If you happen to accept, you get spammed with their ads. This can be rather annoying if you "LFG for <whatever>" and then a sec later you get an invite, it's then natural to accept thinking it's a potential group you asked for.
Comments
Finding this here is rather amusing coming from a company that supports gold seller websites by posting their ad banners on site.
i've also seen a few banner ads on this site with selling gold/leveling characters
I have no problem with gold sellers if they have something to sell and they do it outside of the game, and Blizzard never had a problem with it either. However, this annoying spam detracts from the game and Blizzard is forced to send the message out that gold spammers are going to be prosecuted and hounded to the letter of the law if they are going to be disruptive to the players.
This is not just on WoW, but many other games including SWG, Anarchy Online, and many others.
Hopefully it is the same kind of source, since it has been hell lately for everyone.
That is actually a rather good point Ciredric.
It was also mentioned before that the problem is also the gold buyers too. Blizzard should delete any toon that they found bought gold, that may make someone pause when they realize they are risking their lvl 70 going *poof* if they buy that gold for their flying mount.