You failed to fully examine the scenario. Sure, you couldn't rent an apartment and sell it. However, your rental company could not prevent you from working out of the apartment and making money. This is in essence what these EULA's try to do. When a player finds an item in a virtual world, that item is a direct result of the time and effort, and in some cases skill of the player who found the item. The developer has no claim on those resources used by the customer. It is my belief that the ownership rights of digital properties will be challenged at some point in the near future. This is in no way an ignorant view, and has been discussed in a number of circles. Therefore, the poster who you are berating has sound merit to his post, although it was obviously a bit too rhetorical. But to dismiss the underlying content of his message is ignorant, and the post is far from a slap to the face of the American Education system (besides the fact that he may very well not have been educated in America!). I guess that poster's not the only one to get a bit too involved in rhetoric.
Yes, they can prevent you from selling hotdogs out of your house. They can say your not allowed to dance on one leg between the hours of 4pm and 6pm if you signed the contract. I only used metaphores in that example as it seemed to be that posters argument of choice.
The digital property debate has been going on a long time, and as you said in many circles, but ultimatly it is their game. If your playing with my playdoh, and you create an amazing sculpture, just because you made the sculpture doesnt make it yours, its still my playdoh.
In essence, Although you did the work, your still using my stuff... When you get the sword of a thousand truths, sure you found it, and you invested the time, but you made it out of blizzards game, and they dont want to share their playdoh.
The debate lies in who gets to govern the things created in a world owned by somebody else. For example if you find oil on my land, its my oil, even though you did the work.
As for the American poke.. I dont know of many other countries where people take pleasure in proclaiming their forefathers fought for their right to be illogical.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
If WoW was a free game, it would be different. But it isn't. They take our money, they have to play by our rules, whether they like it or not.
This is one of the strangest opinions I've ever seen, so I just have to comment it:
Let's imagine a situating where there's some kind of treasure hunt mady for the children (IRL). Everyone entering has to pay 1 dollar fee, and follow the clues made by the organizers of the hunt. In the end the ones who follow the clues will get their names written to a table of honorable mentions (wich none reads by the way).
The rules of the hunt are simple, and according to them one must not ask others how to complete the hunt in advance, and parents may not help their children.
Now, if the hunt had been free, you'd follow the rules and send your children there without help. But since you're paying for your children's chance to go to the hunt, it's your right to escort your children though the hunt in 3 minutes, and it's your right to sell your children's place in the table of honorable mentions to your grandma and demand that they write your grandma's name to the table instead?
I must say that I don't really understand how paying to play a game would chance your responsibility to follow the rules of the game at all. The logic of your morale eludes me.
I really don't see what the issue is.. the TOS and EULA states that you cannot sell your in game account for real money and if you break the TOS/EULA Blizzard has the right to cancel your account.
Developers don't make "the rules". They make games.
Now I ended up making 2 posts to comment 1 post, but I just have to comment this:
Who makes the rules then? I've never seen players making the rules together either. So either we follow developer's rules, or there are no rules at all in the game?
And shouldn't that also generalized to situations where you play in IRL? Should players playing football not follow the rules either, since they aren't after all the ones making the rules?
But don't you think that some of this reaction from Blizzard.
Might be due to the EU bank blocking all payments to them. Unless a customers contacts them personally to arrange for payment.
This is due to the gold farming/power level companies that take customers CC info an open as many accounts as they can. They do this to bypass the trial account restrictions.
Even Smedster from SOE mentioned this a month or so ago as being the MAIN source of fraud they deal with.
Fastest way for gold sellers to stop having people pay them.. is to keep frauding people. don't worry you don't have to tell them to stop or ban them.
After their CC info gets stolen enough times or their accounts stripped.. they'll probably decide its not worth it.
I have no issues with RMT. I do have an issue when someone doesn't do what they say they're going to do. Work, play, or otherwise.
Apparently some folks want a game without RMT, and some folks do. Likewise, some folks want to play tackle football, and some folks want to play flag. Things get jacked up if a person goes tackle in a game of flag football. The rules are agreed upon ahead of time, and most folks expect those playing to abide by 'em. I mean, after all, we did just accept the same terms/rules/agreement before the opening kickoff/logon.
If you're ok with RMT, then by all means go get it. Just don't do it in a game that's not designed for it. That's just ludicrous. Play by the rules of the game, or the game gets ugly....Didn't we learn that in childhood?
Every time this subject comes up, the cheaters come out in droves to try to rationalize their despicable behavior. But no matter how much they argue, or whatever BS rationalizations they come up with, most of the rest of us still see them as what they are: cheaters, self-centered scumbags who ruin games because they refuse to be bothered to play by the rules that everyone who logs onto the game agrees to abide by.
So, keep on trying to blame the games for "forcing" you to cheat. I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job convincing yourselves that what you're doing isn't cheating. The rest of us will just shake our heads and curse all the in-game advertising that your RL money is paying for.
Every time this subject comes up, the cheaters come out in droves to try to rationalize their despicable behavior. But no matter how much they argue, or whatever BS rationalizations they come up with, most of the rest of us still see them as what they are: cheaters, self-centered scumbags who ruin games because they refuse to be bothered to play by the rules that everyone who logs onto the game agrees to abide by. So, keep on trying to blame the games for "forcing" you to cheat. I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job convincing yourselves that what you're doing isn't cheating. The rest of us will just shake our heads and curse all the in-game advertising that your RL money is paying for.
Actually I never buy gold or items but I agree with these excuses. Not that they are "forced", but the games have clearly failed at properly incentivizing people.
Frankly its basically economics, these people feel sufficiently inconvienced that they will actually part with money to avoid parts of a game. Whether they are immoral or whatever other crap you want to throw at them is immaterial. These are games, they are meant to be fun. Part of the game is so bad and so unfun people actually pay extra money outside of the sub and box price to avoid. This should be flashing red light to people.
Let me put this another way. Hiring someone to clean your house is not illegal or immoral. People often pay for this service because they do not like doing the activity and it takes up time they could spend on other things. They actually pay people to do something they are easily able to do themselves.
Half of these games are essentially analogous to house cleaning they are an annoying chore that people want to get around. Guess what? People will pay for that and have always dones so.
People can moralize or whatever they want. But that does abolsutely NOTHING constructive. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Black Markets knows not only that this will occur no matter what, but that it will be extremely lucrative.
You can try to stop it on the backend. But you won't be able to. You can try to moralize about it, but that is known to never ever work in cases like these. The only way to stop it is to address the demand. And the developers are the ones who created this demand and did not properly account for all of its effects.
So keep calling them names and judging them. Doesn't matter won't listen. But giuving a free pass to the developers for creating the situation to begin with is just as bad as what they are doing.
Every time this subject comes up, the cheaters come out in droves to try to rationalize their despicable behavior. But no matter how much they argue, or whatever BS rationalizations they come up with, most of the rest of us still see them as what they are: cheaters, self-centered scumbags who ruin games because they refuse to be bothered to play by the rules that everyone who logs onto the game agrees to abide by. So, keep on trying to blame the games for "forcing" you to cheat. I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job convincing yourselves that what you're doing isn't cheating. The rest of us will just shake our heads and curse all the in-game advertising that your RL money is paying for.
Actually I never buy gold or items but I agree with these excuses. Not that they are "forced", but the games have clearly failed at properly incentivizing people.
Frankly its basically economics, these people feel sufficiently inconvienced that they will actually part with money to avoid parts of a game. Whether they are immoral or whatever other crap you want to throw at them is immaterial. These are games, they are meant to be fun. Part of the game is so bad and so unfun people actually pay extra money outside of the sub and box price to avoid. This should be flashing red light to people.
Let me put this another way. Hiring someone to clean your house is not illegal or immoral. People often pay for this service because they do not like doing the activity and it takes up time they could spend on other things. They actually pay people to do something they are easily able to do themselves.
Half of these games are essentially analogous to house cleaning they are an annoying chore that people want to get around. Guess what? People will pay for that and have always dones so.
People can moralize or whatever they want. But that does abolsutely NOTHING constructive. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Black Markets knows not only that this will occur no matter what, but that it will be extremely lucrative.
You can try to stop it on the backend. But you won't be able to. You can try to moralize about it, but that is known to never ever work in cases like these. The only way to stop it is to address the demand. And the developers are the ones who created this demand and did not properly account for all of its effects.
So keep calling them names and judging them. Doesn't matter won't listen. But giuving a free pass to the developers for creating the situation to begin with is just as bad as what they are doing.
What you fail to realize is that an equal number of gamers if not more, like the way item centric MMOGs are designed, that they want there to be a large investment of time involved to earn your way. This is why there are games that support RMT and games that forbid it, to satisfy both types of gamers. It's real simple, play the type of game that satisfies your desires and don't ruin the experience for other players by insisting a game accomodate your personal choice.
Every time this subject comes up, the cheaters come out in droves to try to rationalize their despicable behavior. But no matter how much they argue, or whatever BS rationalizations they come up with, most of the rest of us still see them as what they are: cheaters, self-centered scumbags who ruin games because they refuse to be bothered to play by the rules that everyone who logs onto the game agrees to abide by. So, keep on trying to blame the games for "forcing" you to cheat. I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job convincing yourselves that what you're doing isn't cheating. The rest of us will just shake our heads and curse all the in-game advertising that your RL money is paying for.
Actually I never buy gold or items but I agree with these excuses. Not that they are "forced", but the games have clearly failed at properly incentivizing people.
Frankly its basically economics, these people feel sufficiently inconvienced that they will actually part with money to avoid parts of a game. Whether they are immoral or whatever other crap you want to throw at them is immaterial. These are games, they are meant to be fun. Part of the game is so bad and so unfun people actually pay extra money outside of the sub and box price to avoid. This should be flashing red light to people.
Let me put this another way. Hiring someone to clean your house is not illegal or immoral. People often pay for this service because they do not like doing the activity and it takes up time they could spend on other things. They actually pay people to do something they are easily able to do themselves.
Half of these games are essentially analogous to house cleaning they are an annoying chore that people want to get around. Guess what? People will pay for that and have always dones so.
People can moralize or whatever they want. But that does abolsutely NOTHING constructive. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Black Markets knows not only that this will occur no matter what, but that it will be extremely lucrative.
You can try to stop it on the backend. But you won't be able to. You can try to moralize about it, but that is known to never ever work in cases like these. The only way to stop it is to address the demand. And the developers are the ones who created this demand and did not properly account for all of its effects.
So keep calling them names and judging them. Doesn't matter won't listen. But giuving a free pass to the developers for creating the situation to begin with is just as bad as what they are doing.
You also run the risk of the person you hired to clean your house, doesn't clean out your house. If you did a background check on the maid, you might catch this. It's tough to run a background check on an RMT company and if you did I doubt you would give them you CC number afterwards.
It's basic economics to cheat when you can't get what you want? I guess I should go rob a bank because society hasn't made it easy enough for me to earn a living otherwise? Pathetic. Another person making excuses for cheaters. You haven't said anything new.
As for "calling them names": if you cheat, then expect to be labelled as a cheater. Names identify people. Cheater identifies someone who cheats. If you're suggesting that I am giving them an *unfair* label, then that's a different matter, but I'm not.
I don't blame the games. See, if I don't like a game, I don't play it. If I agree to play a game, then I ABIDE BY THE RULES of said game. Cheaters don't do that. Not only are they contemptible, but they damage the game for those who *do* follow the rules. Hey, if someone wants to play a single-player game and cheat his ass off, then I'm not going to care about it: his actions only effect himself. But when he does it on an MMO, he damages the game for EVERYONE, and that's wrong.
Then we disagree. I argue that money sinks in the end only encourage RMT; rewarding players who break the EULA and punishing those who play the game as intended. There is no work around for this, money sinks have failed to fufill their purpose. The purpose is balance. Some people won't resort to RMT no matter how bad the money sinks are and some will resort to RMT even if you pull all the money sinks out. Without money sinks, RMT would still exist and the economy would be destroyed. Yes, the larger the money sink or the more of them that are added, the more RMT seems like the only possible answer for some, so there has to be a balance. I think what Blizzard is trying to say is that if most of us stay away from RMT, then the economy will be fine and they won't have to add more money sinks. I don't think Blizzard enjoys putting in the money sinks, but they can't just pull them out and let the economy be destroyed either. The purpose is to keep the economy on an even keel. And of "earning." I "earned" the right to play and be entitled to the content of the game when I paid for it. That, too, is like life. RMT'ers can be "satisfied" about how they earn more real money and can afford to buy what you think is worth your effort. Yes you earned the right to play, but only under the rules with which the developers setup. You are not entitled to every bit of content WITHOUT any effort on your part. As long as they aren't putting in random chance to who can and cannout access the content then you're not harmed in the least. It's up to the individual to decide whether or not the effort is worth the reward.
I didn't say pull out all the money sinks. They have their uses, even real economies pull money out of circulation when its required to do so. I argued that relying on them as the sole means of keeping the economy from going insane doesn't work. Money sinks are best used for things that should be an option in the game. For Blizzard to solve the money problem in their game would probably require a rather signifigant, and admitantly unadvised a this point, overhaul. They are basically left to lawsuits and being SOL. The second issue, well I suppose you're right about that. But I would change every instance of the word "effort" with "spare time" because that's really what it is. This is more of design flaw, in terms of the massive and massively lucretive "casual" audience.
And when money doesn't flow it gets horded so you have a few players with ridiculous amounts of it and then throw it around on occasion causing the prices of everything to go up, far beyond what a player can reasonably earn without RMT'ing or selling something for an inflated price to someone else who did. See EQ1's economy if you want more proof of that.
Your argument lacks logic. If it does you haven't really shown me anything to support that, other than what hold for opinion. What I have stated is what I have observed in at least three different games. People don't ask for incredible prices on mediocre crap. People ask for very high (in your words...inflated) prices for the best of the best, and it should be of no surprise whatsoever that such prices are charged. Agreed, however this effect DOES affect mediocre items and prices go up across the board although not nearly as much. In games with a signifigant lowbie population its more pronounced but where the servers are old and the marjority of players are end-game, most of the time you cannot even find non-uber items for sale because they're not worth the time to farm and sell them on those servers. These top end items are meant for the best of the best, and if you don't have the money to afford them it means that you have simply failed to reach the top of the game. It is not your right to own the uber sword of pwnage. It is your option to put in the investment required to attain such an item. If you're a good player, then you will either find the item or an equivalent item or two to trade for the item you want. If you think you need RMT to do this, then you fail as a player.
In the end, that uber sword of pwnage is going to go to one of two people. The super no-lifer who excels at the game, or the RMT'er. Since you're not an RMT'er, then it doesn't really matter, because you will never get such an item. With or without RMT, you are still stuck. Don't blame RMT for your obvious inability to become a top player in whatever game you're playing. This doesn't make you a lazy or incompetant person. It just makes you a normal player. Frankly, your complaint about somebody RMT'ing for an item you realistically have zero chance of obtaining is purely an exercise in futility and jealousy. Of course, jealousy is the primary reason for most people's dislike of the RMT market. To be honest, I've never cared about someone's jealousy, and frankly I never will.
I've NEVER ONCE felt that I needed to purchase RMT'ed coin to play and compete in a game, even in games where RMT run rampant. Nor have I, except on a Station Exchange server. Guess what, you don't need RMT either. In nearly every single MMO, if you want an uber item, you must find it or find another uber item in trade. RMT does not affect the tradability of items in any way shape or form because if prices are "inflated", then you'll get a lot more for that uber item that you don't need, thus enabling you to purchase the uber item you want. RMT has NOTHING, do you hear me, NOTHING!!! to do with your ability to find great items and trade those items for what you want. I think you missed the part where I said "selling something for an inflated price to someone else who did."Items in direct trade with no game currency ends up being a default method of exchange in games that get destroyed by RMT, I agree. If you don't have the ability to trade for what you want, then you have failed as a player. Pure and simple.
The rest of what you talked about was the standard hard-core elitist argument. And that's just fine for hard core games with niche audiences. I'm talking more of the larger casual audience. Perhaps I was unclear on this. WoW attracts the casual audience due to its easy learning curve and quick rewards scheme in the early levels, even though this tapers out and few become really hardcore players. Hence the greater urge to RMT in that game. I feel that the game that will attract the larger audiences will be the ones that steer away from the concepts of time and money sinks. Games that focus on gameplay, content, and community. The whole attraction of leveling and looting has been a small audience in the game world even before computer games. More people played Monopoly than ever played Dungeons and Dragons.
But I'm getting off-topic. The main gist of what I am saying is in games that have time sinks in them, there will always be players who will try to go around them. You can applaud them, you can denounce them, in the end if you play you have to figure out how to put up with them. The best way to avoid this is to avoid having time sinks altogether. Or at least as much as possible.
It's basic economics to cheat when you can't get what you want? I guess I should go rob a bank because society hasn't made it easy enough for me to earn a living otherwise? Pathetic. Another person making excuses for cheaters. You haven't said anything new. As for "calling them names": if you cheat, then expect to be labelled as a cheater. Names identify people. Cheater identifies someone who cheats. If you're suggesting that I am giving them an *unfair* label, then that's a different matter, but I'm not. I don't blame the games. See, if I don't like a game, I don't play it. If I agree to play a game, then I ABIDE BY THE RULES of said game. Cheaters don't do that. Not only are they contemptible, but they damage the game for those who *do* follow the rules. Hey, if someone wants to play a single-player game and cheat his ass off, then I'm not going to care about it: his actions only effect himself. But when he does it on an MMO, he damages the game for EVERYONE, and that's wrong.
This isn't bank robbery, alhtough I am sure you wish it was as simple.
Its a black market. Its a secondary market meant to supply a demand that cannot be supplied through legal means. Bank robbery is just simple stealling. There is no selling involved. Perhaps this is too subtle for some people. There is a trade going on that is important to understand.
Do you really think anyone particpating in a black market gives a rat's ass whether you think its wrong? Seriously is anyone that naive?
So what? You got nothing except recriminations of people who don't care about your opinion or the effect they have on your game. You got bup kiss. Nada. Hot air.
You could be 100% right about them being bad. Doesn't mean a thing because you can't stop them and they don't care.
Call it eveil or immoral or stupid or self-destructive. I don't care because it doesn't matter. If enough people are participating in this black market such that it is seriously effecting the game then there is a serious problem with demand. And a serious problem with the design of your game.
And the mechanics of the demand is solely created by the devs, because these are completely made up systems.
Put whatever value judgements you want on people's behavior. It doesn't matter because the fact is they are still behaving that way. And if its a problem it needs a solution and your only option is to change the demand or to alter the way in which demand can be met. Because no one involved in a black market has every cared whether its wrong and never will.
It is not however the Dev's fault for designing a game poorly that RMT occours. It will always occour because people enjoy the RPG format which rewards players with "achievement points", which allows players to progress.
You can't stop RMT because it is perfectly legal and people want to do it. And you can't design it out of the game because trading is a fundamental feature of multiplayer RPG's that people are looking for in their game.
It's here to stay. It's always been here, it always will be.
You might as well complain about the sun rising in the morning.
If you are worried about unscrupulous gold sellers stealiong your credit card details, then you should petition your MMO provider to set you up a regulated trade site, where for a cut of the action, gold, items, and accounts can all be traded.
Only most of them won't, because they want you to buy a new boxed set when you subscribe, not just an existant account. Gold selling hurts Blizzard because it defeats their time sink. They go to a lot of effort to keep you subscribing as long as possible, any process that attempts to circumvent their business model really upsets them.
Only it's not illegal. It is not however the Dev's fault for designing a game poorly that RMT occours. It will always occour because people enjoy the RPG format which rewards players with "achievement points", which allows players to progress. You can't stop RMT because it is perfectly legal and people want to do it. And you can't design it out of the game because trading is a fundamental feature of multiplayer RPG's that people are looking for in their game. It's here to stay. It's always been here, it always will be. You might as well complain about the sun rising in the morning. If you are worried about unscrupulous gold sellers stealiong your credit card details, then you should petition your MMO provider to set you up a regulated trade site, where for a cut of the action, gold, items, and accounts can all be traded. Only most of them won't, because they want you to buy a new boxed set when you subscribe, not just an existant account. Gold selling hurts Blizzard because it defeats their time sink. They go to a lot of effort to keep you subscribing as long as possible, any process that attempts to circumvent their business model really upsets them.
Its here to stay... its always been here... it always will be
Despite the first and third statement being identical, and your analogy of the sun rising being completely irrelivant. I will argue the following two points.
1)Its here to stay.
My response? no.
have you seen the court injuction Blizzard managed to get keeping Peon4Hire out of their game? if you played wow you might also notice that you never get peon4hire.com spam anymore...
Thats one down. The fun part is, none of the child/parent companies are allowed to deal through WoW either, knocking many MANY other gold farming companies out of WoW.
Also, you may notice that WoW prices for gold remain high. 1000g for 60bucks or more. Quite high considering there are many things in the came that go for 2000+ and the final mount is 5000g. Thats 300 bucks american for the mount... I think thats proof enough that Blizzard is managing to keep gold buying out of their economy for the major part.
2)its always been there.
Wrong. It hasnt always been there. It started to rear its ugly head in UO part way in, but China didnt pick up on it till a ways in. Its only in the last few years its become an issue by destroying ingame economies.
If you think Timesinks/money sinks are just to keep people playing longer, I believe your mistaken. Moneysinks are to keep inflation down. Money comes out of nowhere in mmo's. Its created out of nowhere when a mob spawns. The money that goes in, has to go out somewhere or else it will just keep accumulating untill the prices are so rediculous that new players have no chance.
Not to mention RMT ruins the economy for people who just want to play the game. I like the feeling of saving for weeks to get something ingame, but the glory somewhat dissapears when Joe construction worker with 30,000 dollars in extra income can come in a buy the same thing on a whim.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
Banks deny you transactions if you don't play by the rules. So if Blizzard rips off too many of that banks customers, that bank may stop dealing with them.
For example, if Blizzard banned me but did not refund me and I asked my credit card agency to cancel the payment. If this happens a few times it is normal for banks to block transactions with said company.
The same would be true if you bought gold by credit card and the gold didn't arrive. If you then asked for a refund and didn't get it. If a few of the bank's custiomers did the same, then the bank would blacklist transactions with that company too.
Lots of game services get blacklisted by banks. Steam is blacklisted by loads of them. companies have a legal obligation to provide a method of renumeration in the event of customer dissatisfaction, those that do not offer this risk blacklisting.
I think other reasons for persisent credit card disputes will be unauthorised access. Little johnny used his dad's card to resub or buy a game and didn't tell him. And dad disputed a charge he didn't think he'd agreed to.
I find this strange you would write at length about banks supposedly banning WoW (only in your mind) when its not even mentioned in the article. Bring the hate down, my friend.
The truth of it is if an individual keeps doing a chargeback on a particular company/individual the banks will stop those transactions to that one account. Its not a global ban.
It's mentioned in the Original post to which that is a reply to.
It is a global ban, but only from your bank, not your credit card agency. So if my bank was one of the many that had banned transactions with Steam for example, none of the other users of my bank could transact with Steam by Credit card either, although other Mastercard users from other banks would remain unaffected.
This is a common problem for Steam. The first time I've heard of it happening to Blizzard was the OP's remarks in this thread.
So to correct you, it's not "in my mind alone" but in the minds of all those with basic reading comprehension. Perhaps if you stopped listening to teenage rock music, you might not view the world as quite so hate filled.
I place the blame of the gold and powerleveling problems squarely on the developers for making games that people would rather pay somebody else to play than play it themselves. Think about it.. If the game was truly fun, you would want to play it yourself. I don't outsource sex.. well because its good.. But I do outsource my tax returns, landscaping and oil changes.... and sometimes MMORPG leveling. Here's a recent article I wrote on the subject.
Agreed what Blizzard calls "content" I call a minimum wage job. In real life I would pay illegals to do that crap. I sure won't pay to play a game where I have to grind for gold.
Comments
The digital property debate has been going on a long time, and as you said in many circles, but ultimatly it is their game. If your playing with my playdoh, and you create an amazing sculpture, just because you made the sculpture doesnt make it yours, its still my playdoh.
In essence, Although you did the work, your still using my stuff... When you get the sword of a thousand truths, sure you found it, and you invested the time, but you made it out of blizzards game, and they dont want to share their playdoh.
The debate lies in who gets to govern the things created in a world owned by somebody else. For example if you find oil on my land, its my oil, even though you did the work.
As for the American poke.. I dont know of many other countries where people take pleasure in proclaiming their forefathers fought for their right to be illogical.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
This is one of the strangest opinions I've ever seen, so I just have to comment it:
Let's imagine a situating where there's some kind of treasure hunt mady for the children (IRL). Everyone entering has to pay 1 dollar fee, and follow the clues made by the organizers of the hunt. In the end the ones who follow the clues will get their names written to a table of honorable mentions (wich none reads by the way).
The rules of the hunt are simple, and according to them one must not ask others how to complete the hunt in advance, and parents may not help their children.
Now, if the hunt had been free, you'd follow the rules and send your children there without help. But since you're paying for your children's chance to go to the hunt, it's your right to escort your children though the hunt in 3 minutes, and it's your right to sell your children's place in the table of honorable mentions to your grandma and demand that they write your grandma's name to the table instead?
I must say that I don't really understand how paying to play a game would chance your responsibility to follow the rules of the game at all. The logic of your morale eludes me.
I really don't see what the issue is.. the TOS and EULA states that you cannot sell your in game account for real money and if you break the TOS/EULA Blizzard has the right to cancel your account.
Now I ended up making 2 posts to comment 1 post, but I just have to comment this:
Who makes the rules then? I've never seen players making the rules together either. So either we follow developer's rules, or there are no rules at all in the game?
And shouldn't that also generalized to situations where you play in IRL? Should players playing football not follow the rules either, since they aren't after all the ones making the rules?
Games are bound by rules. Without the rules there is no game.
They will continue selling gold, while someone is paying.
hi
I didn't read this whole thread.
But don't you think that some of this reaction from Blizzard.
Might be due to the EU bank blocking all payments to them. Unless a customers contacts them personally to arrange for payment.
This is due to the gold farming/power level companies that take customers CC info an open as many accounts as they can. They do this to bypass the trial account restrictions.
Even Smedster from SOE mentioned this a month or so ago as being the MAIN source of fraud they deal with.
Fastest way for gold sellers to stop having people pay them.. is to keep frauding people. don't worry you don't have to tell them to stop or ban them.
After their CC info gets stolen enough times or their accounts stripped.. they'll probably decide its not worth it.
I have no issues with RMT. I do have an issue when someone doesn't do what they say they're going to do. Work, play, or otherwise.
Apparently some folks want a game without RMT, and some folks do. Likewise, some folks want to play tackle football, and some folks want to play flag. Things get jacked up if a person goes tackle in a game of flag football. The rules are agreed upon ahead of time, and most folks expect those playing to abide by 'em. I mean, after all, we did just accept the same terms/rules/agreement before the opening kickoff/logon.
If you're ok with RMT, then by all means go get it. Just don't do it in a game that's not designed for it. That's just ludicrous. Play by the rules of the game, or the game gets ugly....Didn't we learn that in childhood?
Every time this subject comes up, the cheaters come out in droves to try to rationalize their despicable behavior. But no matter how much they argue, or whatever BS rationalizations they come up with, most of the rest of us still see them as what they are: cheaters, self-centered scumbags who ruin games because they refuse to be bothered to play by the rules that everyone who logs onto the game agrees to abide by.
So, keep on trying to blame the games for "forcing" you to cheat. I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job convincing yourselves that what you're doing isn't cheating. The rest of us will just shake our heads and curse all the in-game advertising that your RL money is paying for.
Frankly its basically economics, these people feel sufficiently inconvienced that they will actually part with money to avoid parts of a game. Whether they are immoral or whatever other crap you want to throw at them is immaterial. These are games, they are meant to be fun. Part of the game is so bad and so unfun people actually pay extra money outside of the sub and box price to avoid. This should be flashing red light to people.
Let me put this another way. Hiring someone to clean your house is not illegal or immoral. People often pay for this service because they do not like doing the activity and it takes up time they could spend on other things. They actually pay people to do something they are easily able to do themselves.
Half of these games are essentially analogous to house cleaning they are an annoying chore that people want to get around. Guess what? People will pay for that and have always dones so.
People can moralize or whatever they want. But that does abolsutely NOTHING constructive. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Black Markets knows not only that this will occur no matter what, but that it will be extremely lucrative.
You can try to stop it on the backend. But you won't be able to. You can try to moralize about it, but that is known to never ever work in cases like these. The only way to stop it is to address the demand. And the developers are the ones who created this demand and did not properly account for all of its effects.
So keep calling them names and judging them. Doesn't matter won't listen. But giuving a free pass to the developers for creating the situation to begin with is just as bad as what they are doing.
Frankly its basically economics, these people feel sufficiently inconvienced that they will actually part with money to avoid parts of a game. Whether they are immoral or whatever other crap you want to throw at them is immaterial. These are games, they are meant to be fun. Part of the game is so bad and so unfun people actually pay extra money outside of the sub and box price to avoid. This should be flashing red light to people.
Let me put this another way. Hiring someone to clean your house is not illegal or immoral. People often pay for this service because they do not like doing the activity and it takes up time they could spend on other things. They actually pay people to do something they are easily able to do themselves.
Half of these games are essentially analogous to house cleaning they are an annoying chore that people want to get around. Guess what? People will pay for that and have always dones so.
People can moralize or whatever they want. But that does abolsutely NOTHING constructive. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Black Markets knows not only that this will occur no matter what, but that it will be extremely lucrative.
You can try to stop it on the backend. But you won't be able to. You can try to moralize about it, but that is known to never ever work in cases like these. The only way to stop it is to address the demand. And the developers are the ones who created this demand and did not properly account for all of its effects.
So keep calling them names and judging them. Doesn't matter won't listen. But giuving a free pass to the developers for creating the situation to begin with is just as bad as what they are doing.
What you fail to realize is that an equal number of gamers if not more, like the way item centric MMOGs are designed, that they want there to be a large investment of time involved to earn your way. This is why there are games that support RMT and games that forbid it, to satisfy both types of gamers. It's real simple, play the type of game that satisfies your desires and don't ruin the experience for other players by insisting a game accomodate your personal choice.
Frankly its basically economics, these people feel sufficiently inconvienced that they will actually part with money to avoid parts of a game. Whether they are immoral or whatever other crap you want to throw at them is immaterial. These are games, they are meant to be fun. Part of the game is so bad and so unfun people actually pay extra money outside of the sub and box price to avoid. This should be flashing red light to people.
Let me put this another way. Hiring someone to clean your house is not illegal or immoral. People often pay for this service because they do not like doing the activity and it takes up time they could spend on other things. They actually pay people to do something they are easily able to do themselves.
Half of these games are essentially analogous to house cleaning they are an annoying chore that people want to get around. Guess what? People will pay for that and have always dones so.
People can moralize or whatever they want. But that does abolsutely NOTHING constructive. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Black Markets knows not only that this will occur no matter what, but that it will be extremely lucrative.
You can try to stop it on the backend. But you won't be able to. You can try to moralize about it, but that is known to never ever work in cases like these. The only way to stop it is to address the demand. And the developers are the ones who created this demand and did not properly account for all of its effects.
So keep calling them names and judging them. Doesn't matter won't listen. But giuving a free pass to the developers for creating the situation to begin with is just as bad as what they are doing.
You also run the risk of the person you hired to clean your house, doesn't clean out your house. If you did a background check on the maid, you might catch this. It's tough to run a background check on an RMT company and if you did I doubt you would give them you CC number afterwards.
Hiring someone to clean your house is inmoral.
It's basic economics to cheat when you can't get what you want? I guess I should go rob a bank because society hasn't made it easy enough for me to earn a living otherwise? Pathetic. Another person making excuses for cheaters. You haven't said anything new.
As for "calling them names": if you cheat, then expect to be labelled as a cheater. Names identify people. Cheater identifies someone who cheats. If you're suggesting that I am giving them an *unfair* label, then that's a different matter, but I'm not.
I don't blame the games. See, if I don't like a game, I don't play it. If I agree to play a game, then I ABIDE BY THE RULES of said game. Cheaters don't do that. Not only are they contemptible, but they damage the game for those who *do* follow the rules. Hey, if someone wants to play a single-player game and cheat his ass off, then I'm not going to care about it: his actions only effect himself. But when he does it on an MMO, he damages the game for EVERYONE, and that's wrong.
I didn't say pull out all the money sinks. They have their uses, even real economies pull money out of circulation when its required to do so. I argued that relying on them as the sole means of keeping the economy from going insane doesn't work. Money sinks are best used for things that should be an option in the game. For Blizzard to solve the money problem in their game would probably require a rather signifigant, and admitantly unadvised a this point, overhaul. They are basically left to lawsuits and being SOL. The second issue, well I suppose you're right about that. But I would change every instance of the word "effort" with "spare time" because that's really what it is. This is more of design flaw, in terms of the massive and massively lucretive "casual" audience.
http://mmo-hell.blogspot.com/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
Your argument lacks logic. If it does you haven't really shown me anything to support that, other than what hold for opinion. What I have stated is what I have observed in at least three different games. People don't ask for incredible prices on mediocre crap. People ask for very high (in your words...inflated) prices for the best of the best, and it should be of no surprise whatsoever that such prices are charged. Agreed, however this effect DOES affect mediocre items and prices go up across the board although not nearly as much. In games with a signifigant lowbie population its more pronounced but where the servers are old and the marjority of players are end-game, most of the time you cannot even find non-uber items for sale because they're not worth the time to farm and sell them on those servers. These top end items are meant for the best of the best, and if you don't have the money to afford them it means that you have simply failed to reach the top of the game. It is not your right to own the uber sword of pwnage. It is your option to put in the investment required to attain such an item. If you're a good player, then you will either find the item or an equivalent item or two to trade for the item you want. If you think you need RMT to do this, then you fail as a player.
In the end, that uber sword of pwnage is going to go to one of two people. The super no-lifer who excels at the game, or the RMT'er. Since you're not an RMT'er, then it doesn't really matter, because you will never get such an item. With or without RMT, you are still stuck. Don't blame RMT for your obvious inability to become a top player in whatever game you're playing. This doesn't make you a lazy or incompetant person. It just makes you a normal player. Frankly, your complaint about somebody RMT'ing for an item you realistically have zero chance of obtaining is purely an exercise in futility and jealousy. Of course, jealousy is the primary reason for most people's dislike of the RMT market. To be honest, I've never cared about someone's jealousy, and frankly I never will.
I've NEVER ONCE felt that I needed to purchase RMT'ed coin to play and compete in a game, even in games where RMT run rampant. Nor have I, except on a Station Exchange server. Guess what, you don't need RMT either. In nearly every single MMO, if you want an uber item, you must find it or find another uber item in trade. RMT does not affect the tradability of items in any way shape or form because if prices are "inflated", then you'll get a lot more for that uber item that you don't need, thus enabling you to purchase the uber item you want. RMT has NOTHING, do you hear me, NOTHING!!! to do with your ability to find great items and trade those items for what you want. I think you missed the part where I said "selling something for an inflated price to someone else who did." Items in direct trade with no game currency ends up being a default method of exchange in games that get destroyed by RMT, I agree. If you don't have the ability to trade for what you want, then you have failed as a player. Pure and simple.
The rest of what you talked about was the standard hard-core elitist argument. And that's just fine for hard core games with niche audiences. I'm talking more of the larger casual audience. Perhaps I was unclear on this. WoW attracts the casual audience due to its easy learning curve and quick rewards scheme in the early levels, even though this tapers out and few become really hardcore players. Hence the greater urge to RMT in that game. I feel that the game that will attract the larger audiences will be the ones that steer away from the concepts of time and money sinks. Games that focus on gameplay, content, and community. The whole attraction of leveling and looting has been a small audience in the game world even before computer games. More people played Monopoly than ever played Dungeons and Dragons.
But I'm getting off-topic. The main gist of what I am saying is in games that have time sinks in them, there will always be players who will try to go around them. You can applaud them, you can denounce them, in the end if you play you have to figure out how to put up with them. The best way to avoid this is to avoid having time sinks altogether. Or at least as much as possible.
http://mmo-hell.blogspot.com/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
Its a black market. Its a secondary market meant to supply a demand that cannot be supplied through legal means. Bank robbery is just simple stealling. There is no selling involved. Perhaps this is too subtle for some people. There is a trade going on that is important to understand.
Do you really think anyone particpating in a black market gives a rat's ass whether you think its wrong? Seriously is anyone that naive?
So what? You got nothing except recriminations of people who don't care about your opinion or the effect they have on your game. You got bup kiss. Nada. Hot air.
You could be 100% right about them being bad. Doesn't mean a thing because you can't stop them and they don't care.
Call it eveil or immoral or stupid or self-destructive. I don't care because it doesn't matter. If enough people are participating in this black market such that it is seriously effecting the game then there is a serious problem with demand. And a serious problem with the design of your game.
And the mechanics of the demand is solely created by the devs, because these are completely made up systems.
Put whatever value judgements you want on people's behavior. It doesn't matter because the fact is they are still behaving that way. And if its a problem it needs a solution and your only option is to change the demand or to alter the way in which demand can be met. Because no one involved in a black market has every cared whether its wrong and never will.
Only it's not illegal.
It is not however the Dev's fault for designing a game poorly that RMT occours. It will always occour because people enjoy the RPG format which rewards players with "achievement points", which allows players to progress.
You can't stop RMT because it is perfectly legal and people want to do it. And you can't design it out of the game because trading is a fundamental feature of multiplayer RPG's that people are looking for in their game.
It's here to stay. It's always been here, it always will be.
You might as well complain about the sun rising in the morning.
If you are worried about unscrupulous gold sellers stealiong your credit card details, then you should petition your MMO provider to set you up a regulated trade site, where for a cut of the action, gold, items, and accounts can all be traded.
Only most of them won't, because they want you to buy a new boxed set when you subscribe, not just an existant account. Gold selling hurts Blizzard because it defeats their time sink. They go to a lot of effort to keep you subscribing as long as possible, any process that attempts to circumvent their business model really upsets them.
Despite the first and third statement being identical, and your analogy of the sun rising being completely irrelivant. I will argue the following two points.
1)Its here to stay.
My response? no.
have you seen the court injuction Blizzard managed to get keeping Peon4Hire out of their game? if you played wow you might also notice that you never get peon4hire.com spam anymore...
Thats one down. The fun part is, none of the child/parent companies are allowed to deal through WoW either, knocking many MANY other gold farming companies out of WoW.
Also, you may notice that WoW prices for gold remain high. 1000g for 60bucks or more. Quite high considering there are many things in the came that go for 2000+ and the final mount is 5000g. Thats 300 bucks american for the mount... I think thats proof enough that Blizzard is managing to keep gold buying out of their economy for the major part.
2)its always been there.
Wrong. It hasnt always been there. It started to rear its ugly head in UO part way in, but China didnt pick up on it till a ways in. Its only in the last few years its become an issue by destroying ingame economies.
If you think Timesinks/money sinks are just to keep people playing longer, I believe your mistaken. Moneysinks are to keep inflation down. Money comes out of nowhere in mmo's. Its created out of nowhere when a mob spawns. The money that goes in, has to go out somewhere or else it will just keep accumulating untill the prices are so rediculous that new players have no chance.
Not to mention RMT ruins the economy for people who just want to play the game. I like the feeling of saving for weeks to get something ingame, but the glory somewhat dissapears when Joe construction worker with 30,000 dollars in extra income can come in a buy the same thing on a whim.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
I find this strange you would write at length about banks supposedly banning WoW (only in your mind) when its not even mentioned in the article. Bring the hate down, my friend.
The truth of it is if an individual keeps doing a chargeback on a particular company/individual the banks will stop those transactions to that one account. Its not a global ban.
It's mentioned in the Original post to which that is a reply to.
It is a global ban, but only from your bank, not your credit card agency. So if my bank was one of the many that had banned transactions with Steam for example, none of the other users of my bank could transact with Steam by Credit card either, although other Mastercard users from other banks would remain unaffected.
This is a common problem for Steam. The first time I've heard of it happening to Blizzard was the OP's remarks in this thread.
So to correct you, it's not "in my mind alone" but in the minds of all those with basic reading comprehension. Perhaps if you stopped listening to teenage rock music, you might not view the world as quite so hate filled.
Agreed what Blizzard calls "content" I call a minimum wage job. In real life I would pay illegals to do that crap. I sure won't pay to play a game where I have to grind for gold.