WoW and E-Bay.

Degineth · December 2004

As i was bored today i checked how is WoW doing on E-bay. I was amazed to find out that there we're over 50 pages of posts selling gold/items/characters and everything else. Lineaage 2 had 10-20 pages and i thought it was much compared to other MMO's i have played, and now WoW breaks the record by far.

The problem is, Blizzard cannot stop this action, even tho they say they can. As long as the e-bay poster sais in his Disclaimer: "All items are the property of Blizzard, I only sell the time it took me to aquire theese items. No Blizzard employee or affiliate is allowed to bid on this item" they are clean and Blizzard cannot do anything.

Unfortunately, i think the economy in Wow will be destroyed far beyound Lin2's economy. I don't even want to think what will happen in February when CN people will be able to play on the US servers. I'm from Europe and i sincerely hope this won't happen on the EU servers.

Sad....

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Arguing on the Internet is like running the Special Olympics. Even if you win you're still a retard

Rudnoc · December 2004

Degineth why don't you tell everyone that over 50% of what is listed is the game itself. 30% is mainly everyone selling gold and about 15% are selling guides with about 5% selling manuals on how to create bots. I am sure that after the new year is here the 50 pages will turn into be down to about as much a FFXIO and L2 after all the "Hey it is a blizzard game" has worn off.

You got to remember that atleast 75% of people who bought WoW only bought it because they either got into the Warcraft series, Starcraft series or Diablo series. The majority will drop big time in the next few months for many reasons. I work for EB games and I am already dealing with a lot of very upset customers saying they didn't know it was a pay to play, that you could only play it online. Some thinking it was a RTS and not an RPG let alone a MMORPG. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there that strongly feel they were mislead to by the product and also to find out that they can't even return it like most other games, even unopened. So, yes you will see a LOT of sales on ebay for a while with regards to WoW. Plus you will see this until after the holidays, especially after christmas when a families realize what they really got for their spouse, son, daughter, other relative or friend then they will see that even unopened they can't get a refund. I think there will be a big lawsuit going on by the beginning of the year. Shees, I already was told my five customers alone today that they plan to sue not only Electronics Boutique, but also Blizzard for this. I love how you WoW defenders always get everything and make it look like it is a good thing. Talk about worse than politics.

Oh, BTW I can see being a WoW player how you would be bored. I would be to if I were playing WoW or even EQ2. They both suck and I am surprised that there aren't more EQ2 games being sold on ebay as there are with WoW. But I guess it is because WoW sold so much. LOL.

Degineth · December 2004

1. I am not a wow player at the moment, because i am from Europe as i stated and i am not allowed to play on the US servers.

2. I read some posts on the WoW official forums and i was impressed by many replies wich encouraged e-bay-ing and flaming blizzard for their lawsuit threats.

SO in the end, my opinion changes completely, and I totally agree with people selling items on e-bay or on other sites.

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Arguing on the Internet is like running the Special Olympics. Even if you win you're still a retard

JennysMind · December 2004

I back Blizzard all the way in stopping people from affecting the game and changing it to a way it wasn't intended. I have an idea on a way to stop this selling on e-bay. You can only give money or loot to your guildmates or one of your alternate characters period.

Detonated · December 2004

Sorry but youre right, Blizzard cant do anything to stop gold sellers. People dont really have to go on eBay to sell in game items for any MMO. There are other reputabile websites that will buy in game items for a a moajority of MMO's out there. It isnt just eBay.

Going after eBay is just like how everyone went after Napster for Peer to Peer sharing, sure Napster costs money now, but there is one peer to peer program thats been out for a few years now that doesnt cost money and is way better than napster could ever hope to be.

In other words, its just Blizzards CS spin of "hey we see this going on and we want to reassure the public at large that we care".

Flying750 · December 2004

Degineth...you said you are from europe right?

How familiar are you with US laws?

To say that there is nothing blizzard can do about these auctions by having the seller list the disclaimer's would justify or clear them of any wrong doing is just showing your ignorance regarding your knowledge of this matter.

I would like to point out that you sir are wrong. I am not bashing but just pointing out a fact that so many people think they know all the ins and outs of company copyrighted material/US laws. If you read the NDA's or EULA's you will see a clause that states any auctioning,resell,or bidding of company virtual property is prohibited.

It is true that almost every seller will include that disclaimer closing them off from any "legalities" regarding the auction, but in reality they are just sugar coating the desert they are trying to shove down people's throats.

I am an employee with eBay. I spend alot of my time investigating things of this matter. Threat's included. These auctions are not immune to being closed down or suspended. We have in fact closed down many many many auctions just like these that you are seeing. Especially from other MMO's. The only thing regarding this is that for these auctions to be closed down eBay has to get an okay from... say "Blizzard" to close it down.

It can be quite a long process, but blizzard does in fact have complete control over closing these auctions down if they so wish. It is there property and they control it as well as bidding on "someone's time spent on acquiring the item's" is prohibited by eBay as well. To sell item's with eBay the seller HAS to send a physical item to the buyer of that auction. They cannot just buy someone's "time" or "air" as some would call it.

(An example would be the recent news story of the mother selling away the grandfather's ghost to somebody for $78 US dollars so that the son would not be affraid anymore of having a ghost in the house. Now this lady had to send the buyer something. She sent the buyer the grandfathers old cane, because there has to be an exchange of property. Item's for money, item for item, etc.)

Now there are just way to many of these things out there (not just MMO's but other company products too) where sellers try to get away with this sort of thing. We at eBay cannot catch every little auction that gets posted, but we can stop and catch a good number of them. There are many people who will try to rip others off or break law's selling other company's property.

Degineth I would not be too worried about this. As someone else posted, the number of these instances happening should go down as time goes on. I dont think the economy will be ruined in WoW, simply due to the fact that Blizzard has spent considerable amounts of time making the game as clean as possible. Not just for banning hacker's and bot users, but for illegal resell of there property online as well. Ebay has closed down a number of auctions from these illegal sale's of items, gold, characters, etc. We just cannot catch them all nor focus all our attention on one little product in this mass marketplace of online auctions.

Just some food for thought.

"Time to kick ass and chew bubble gum!...but I'm all outta gum!!!"

Neas · December 2004

Originally posted by Degineth
As i was bored today i checked how is WoW doing on E-bay. I was amazed to find out that there we're over 50 pages of posts selling gold/items/characters and everything else. Lineaage 2 had 10-20 pages and i thought it was much compared to other MMO's i have played, and now WoW breaks the record by far.The problem is, Blizzard cannot stop this action, even tho they say they can. As long as the e-bay poster sais in his Disclaimer: "All items are the property of Blizzard, I only sell the time it took me to aquire theese items. No Blizzard employee or affiliate is allowed to bid on this item" they are clean and Blizzard cannot do anything.Unfortunately, i think the economy in Wow will be destroyed far beyound Lin2's economy. I don't even want to think what will happen in February when CN people will be able to play on the US servers. I'm from Europe and i sincerely hope this won't happen on the EU servers. Sad....--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arguing on the Internet is like running the Special Olympics. Even if you win you're still a retard

Another good reason to just wait for EU release.

I reckon the impact of such things will be less on EU servers cause well the Americans like to spend more dollars on mmorpgs than us.

Beta Tested: Lineage 2, Ryzom, City of Heroes, RYL, EverQuest 2 World Of Warcraft European
Truly Loved: World of Warcraft

Flying750 · December 2004

Anyone that is not aware of Blizzards stance, should head on over to there community website and check out there most recent news post.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/

Blizzard has been in contact with eBay and both are working out ways to stop the auctions that should not be taking place.

Thank you!

"Time to kick ass and chew bubble gum!...but I'm all outta gum!!!"

necbone · December 2004

ban'em all....keep the game in the game.

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