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18,000+ Accounts = Owned
IcoGames
Member Posts: 2,360
Not sure how long the announcement will stay on the main page, however Blizzard has closed over 18,000 accounts for violating the EULA. Kudos to them!
There's no excuse for cheating in a game, so I won't bother with further comment. However, for those that feel compelled to purchase gold and items to support farmers I'll advise there's no need for it.
With a little patience and a modicum of time you can easily acquire the funds needed. For example, I spend 20 minutes 2 or 3 times a week gathering Icecap in Winterspring. By doing so I've been able to purchase an epic mount and a few crafted items for my alts.
Now, I am unhappy that some of these accounts mostly likely came from my server. Gold Farmers were some of the easiest CP around. ^_^
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Comments
Good, I hate farmers. They should get rid of all of them
Necrotank
I am so happy they're cracking down on cheaters and farmers. With all the advertising gold sellers blatantly do, it was almost as though Blizz didn't care...cause you kept seeing them. Maybe this will deter the cheaters/farmers...a bit at least.
I do have to say that I feel bad for people who may have been mistakenly banned. I'm sure there's not many but we all know Blizz isn't infallible.
Anywho, a definite kudos to Blizz for taking out the trash
Ha, a night elf in Booty Bay was using a disconnect hack. He was killing me and fellow horde. He had almost full nightslayer.
Sadly, the disconnect hack costed him his level 60 night elf, his night slayer armor, and his $50 on the game. Not to mention his previous work.
I am a proud reporter of cheaters, I contributed to the 18,000
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
EDIT: Double Post
I wonder sometimes when developers do this. This is not the first time I've seen this either, so don't take this as a WoW bash. It's a great game.
I wonder why they don't just ban them as they see them? This way it seems they let them get away with it for a time, theoretically damaging the gameplay of any particular game, and then go for a big dramatic move.
Ignoring the type of behaviour for a moment (for the purposes of making a point), the means of preventing any behavior in a closed system is always interesting. When the behavior is attached to commerce or other reward, a reactive mechanism only insulates profit for those enterprising souls. This works for an illicit commodity or service. The forces of reaction themselves generally manufacture or inflate this market.. heck, it keeps them in business.
If I were the director of an artificial world, and I wanted something done, I would do it in the way that secured almost total efficiency for little overhead in manpower. Instead of reacting to the perpetrators of activities that sometimes become harmful to my clients, I would punish the victim.
Case in point: A developer find selling characters bad for their bottom line for whatever reason. If a player were to sell a character, and then get scammed by the buyer, I would respond by deleting all the victim's other accounts and banning them publicly and leaving the aggressor untouched and possibly even rewarded.
The fear that people have of being scammed would multiply exponentially, and the problem makers would die out of their own success. Ergo, the activity would halt almost immediately.
People would decry such tactics, but how can they deny the logic of it? Admittedly, logic doesn't usually drive people to accomplish or terminate things. So I'd have to ask, would a mere ethical crisis cause people to cease subscribing if the digital opium is good enough?
Not everyone that was banned during this period bought and sold game items. However, I agree that both the buyer and seller should be punished as both are equally guilty.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Ah, but that would not quite be the purpose behind my machinations.
Punish both and you simply drive them to conspire to push the practice further under the radar. (Which may in and of itself be sufficient for some game owners.)
However, with a reward structure in place, you fish out the activity without actually having to commit any real resources to it. Let's take it a step further.
Player Y ebays furry dice +1 to Player X. Player X either pays or scams Player Y, but reports the sale to Game moderator.
Game moderator awards Player X a second furry dice +1, and fines Player Y for the object or otherwise punishes Y. Publicly no less.
The GM's raison d'etre? Furry dice +1 was Furry Dice Co.'s property, and Player X assisted in its recovery.
Y type players become exceptionally wary of merchandizing FD Co.'s goods.
X type players tend to find it extraordinarilly difficult to obtain ebayed goods.
Counterargument: Will this will elevate the price of the good Y sells?
I don't think so. Plus, it doesn't need much moderation manhours to keep up with it. The bigger the sale, the bigger the penaly, and offering bigger and bigger snitching rewards is an effortless undertaking for a GM. One or two publicly conducted incidents would be enough to curb the activity for months.
Kekule
I am glad as well, Got really tired of getting those gold farm website tells in game. Talk about breaking immersion. Deep in the lair, sneaking around to find targets and quietly take them out - our hero finds himself hearing a strange voice...
"200 gold for only 16 dollars at <insert name of some russian hosting based site>."
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
they do ban them as they see them. They didn't ban 18,000 accounts immediatly, this happened over a few months.
Glad they did. 18,000 closed out of 5 million is not a big deal. Wish other games would do the same but since they have far less numbers then the 5 million they choose to ignore them or either decide to open servers so that they can get a cut of the profits.
I disagree. I think the buyer should have his/her account suspended for a week with a warning placed on the account. Any further actions of this type on that account would result in the account being banned for life.
Sellers should be banned as soon as Blizzard finds them.
Lets say player A is selling his toon to player B. So, if you ban player As account, you are actualy banning player B, becuase he bought that account (there is no transfering of characters in between accounts, so you are buying a whole account). Now why would player B report this transaction and get his own account banned? Player A wouldnt care less for that account becuase he has his money now. And if player A is smart, he will not give up ANY info on his account before receiving money from player B.
Thats why its hard to catch those kinds of transactions, and they should monitor popular sites like EBAY to catch transactions before money change hands.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.