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Gaming Industry
Praor
Member Posts: 519
Having debating on this topic with friends ,I wanted to hear what you all think. Do you think the Gaming Industry practice's what they preach when it comes to stopping exploiters,botters and the sale's of virtual currency or do you think they are recieving a little on the side and just make a post every now and then when it come's to banning account's ?
Waiting on Guild Wars 2
Comments
There was a new item in Guild Wars, Victo's Bulwark. I bought mine when they were 100K + 10 ectos. A player in my guild asked if he could borrow it. I took screenshots and everything of the trade just incase he didn't give it back. Turns out, he didn't. And I got screenshots of when he said he wasn't going to. I sent these screenshots to Guild Wars support, along with a brief summary of what happened, and they didn't do jack.
Most games really don't care. The few that do are worth playing.
This was taken from the World of Warcraft website.
World of Warcraft Accounts Closed - Ordinn on 4/12/06
In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we have since patch 1.10 banned over 5,400 accounts and suspended 10,700
more for participating in activities that violate the game's Terms of
Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such
actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game
enjoyment for all players.
We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft
realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful
effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft
content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent
ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.
Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to
hacks@blizzard.com by
legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of
Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or
items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the
suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports
will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in
corrective action.
Thank you for your continued support, and good luck with your adventures in Azeroth!
-Blizzard Entertainment
Hi! My name is paper. Nerf scissors, rock is fine.
MMORPG = Mostly Men Online Roleplaying Girls
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Reason they didn't help you is because they can't and no MMORPG that exists would help you to with an issue like that, because above all else, what do you expect them to do? It goes everything to edit the database...and they can't...many policies to uphold, also with the chance of corrupting ingame aspects.
No MMORPG that exists would bother with an issue like that, if they did, it would raise too many issues. It was your own fault for lending it to him, without taking certain ingame measures.
Anyway Guild Wars can't be classified as an MMO.....it just makes it seem like one with those camps and outposts.
Waiting on Guild Wars 2
Obviously a player that pays for multiple accounts generates more revenue than the single avatar gamer. However, if the single player is at such a disadvantage that the game loses its appeal they begin to cancel. I think most game developers know this and try to walk a very fine line, convincing both types of players that their approach is perfectly viable and fun. The same thing goes for exploiters/macro'ers/radar users. The company doesn't WANT to cancel those accounts clearly, but if they let the situation get too far out of hand they lose more accounts to people fed up with the abusers. So, the 'straddle the fence" approach.
It's really the same approach taken in any other industry, and it's all about the bottom line. If an automobile manufacturer for example becomes aware that one of their vehicles has a flaw which sometimes causes the accelerator to stick, do they recall it? It depends on which costs more money. If it happens often enough they will because the expense of lawsuits and lost sales becomes too great. If it's not too common they will simply put their hands in their pockets and cheerfully offer a settlement whenever someone's car decides to take them on a joyride into a brick wall at 70 MPH.
In the end it's all about the money.
Waiting on Guild Wars 2
My opinion here is varied. Right now I do not think that the industry does a very good job of policing things. What Blizzard just did for example has no real effect as they have acted too late (the economy is already tanked in many respects), and there is nothing to prevent those people from just returning with new accounts and such.
The big problems seem to be:
1. It's a huge legal gray area. Especially when dealing with people playing from other countries. The problem is to get law enforcement to recognize it as a serious issue (and thus put people in jail for meaningful periods of time).
Generally speaking I do not think any game company has been willing to actually take someone to court for cheating/exploiting/selling items for real money. Doing so could take years and the investment of millions of dollars in profits. If they lose it costs them a lot of money.
If someone eventually does do it and wins, it will however open a floodgate of prosecution. I just think your looking at a situation where no company wants to be the one to take a risk.
2. Just as importantly they have to look at international sales and such. While a lot of people did not like this point when I made it before, it's again relevent in this discussion. You have a lot of people from Asian countries who make extra money by farming and all together there are a LOT of these people cracking down on them would cost the company money in absolute terms.
This is not to say there aren't Americans (or those from other countries) who 'sploit and sell stuff for real money but if you check it out you'll see where the majority of the problem seems to be coming from.
Segregated servers are one way companies are trying to address this, but because of the money issues most people playing from outside of the country do not want to be on a server from their country. Ways of policing people using US copies of a game from outside of the country are a big blank.
You will notice that with a lot of the new MMOs one of the first questions being asked now is "will this game be released internationally". Companies want worldwide release, but players in the US are increasingly wanting US-exclusive games. People from other countries want games that they can uh, "share" with the US players on the same servers.
I'm sure some people are about to say nasty things, but the point is that it's a complicated issue that revolves around profits, but also around the feasibility of getting Law Enforcement to take things seriously.
Think of it this way, a lot of money probably goes into the South Korean economy via internet transactions revolving around MMO sales. South Korea is by no means a rich country. The authorities see this as being harmless. Our MMO companies want to sell hundreds of thousands of units of their games (if not more) to the "High Speed Internet Capitol Of the World" (as many people are quick to point out) not to mention monthy fees, however the people there are a big part (not exclusively responsible for) a lot of the problems in the games themselves.
Given that the South Korean authorities aren't going to take action against people for cheating in video games (especially when the money from item sales can add up in the economy), this leaves us with the option of cutting them off (costing lots of money), ignoring the problem while making noise about it in a general sense (the current activity), or creating an international incident where the US passes strong laws, and then sends our troops to round up and arrest MMO exploiters and forcibly extradite them to the US.... As you can see this doesn't have an easy resolution.
What's more we're already in the world court with China over much biggier issues of patent violations. China (and through them a lot of other nations in the region) takes things owned by American companies, produces them at a fraction of the cost without permission or paying any kind of royalties, and then sells the knock offs to the rest of the world. An example of this was in the news, the Drug "Viagra" which is owned by Pfizers. They invented it and expect to reap the profits for it, however other nations (mostly Asian) who do not respect the patent duplicated it and sell it costing Pfizers tons of money (and by association the US goverment who doesn't get it's share through taxes and trade tariffs and such). I seem to remember there are literally thousands of items on the table here as patent violation combined with cheap labour is a big part of what has China's economy exploding.
I know opinions are going to vary on the issue, but the bottem line here is that if the US is having trouble protecting the patents of it's citizens and enforcing THOSE laws with much more money at stake (and what is arguably a much more black and white issue), the odds of going into the same region and nailing people for issues related to video games are slim.
So basically, whether you like my opinions or not, I think the issue is that the game companies pay the issue lip service and occasionally make displays of "mass banning" but in the final equasion don't do anything. Both because it's not in their best interest financially, and also because it's impossible to enforce given that a good portion of the problem comes from a region that routinely thumbs it's nose at the US and our business dealings anyway. Even with mass banning there is no way to guarantee those people won't be back in business 15 minutes later with a new ISP and a differant registeration code. I suppose the token effort is nice though.
Who knows, maybe one day we'll see a reality police show based on "Law and Order". A bunch of brutal cops will kick open some guy's door (where is not important), rip his computer out of the wall, and drag him into the street kicking and screaming at gunpoint (accidently slamming his head into a few solid objects) to the tune of "bad boys". Later we'll see him in prison doing an interview, sobbing about contracting HIV from anal rape in between his revelation that he's there for selling online gold pieces for real money, along with PLing services. To finish it up they will do a close up of his cellmate, an infamous homosexual rapist/cannibal/axe murderer slightly less infamous than Dahmer, just to put the scope of his crimes into some kind of perspective....
Then we will know justice is done...
... okay, well it is Overkill, but what can I say? These people annoy me. I work for what I earn in MMOs by playing the game. I don't like the idea that Donald Trump or someone who basically rules over me in every way IRL can just paypal someone and get everything I have earned in my ESCAPISM without having to even play. They can just go right to the cool parts without any of the trials along the way. I also believe the point of a fantasy game with money is to use that money for fantasy items, real money should not be a factor in trading online. "Oh well sorry Theru, that's a lot of gold your offering, but really I can get $500.00 for this thing on Ebay, so why should I trade it for in-game money?".
>>>----Therumancer--->
Now here's a lil interesting story that happened to me today,guess you could say adding a lil fuel to my original post. If anyone know's about Lineage2 ,you would be familer with the massive bot fest in the game,most notably the dwarf's.
On the main Lineage2 forums,if you post regarding issue's of bot's,your thread will be locked and moved to the bot thread (hard to find thread but they tuck it in the back ).So today i went to dark elf village to do some homework as the bot's like that area.You will encounter names like ieuue, ghhf,xaimuu etc...
So I was followed them and they all grind in a place called spider's nest.Well why? I went to a quest site a found that there is a quest there that pays very well for collecting 10 sacks on top of the spoils they get grom a Dwarf skill.
I would whisper them with questions and such and everytime I get the same answer " hi ".So I did the quest a few times myself and did some mathematics and it turns out this is very profitable especially those who farm the quest for Adena ( in game currency ) and sell online.
Now back to the part of the forums,I posted my finding's and not only did it not get moved to the bot thread but it was locked and deleted from the site.This was done by the forum moderater Mistryl.
So everyone's opinion is welcome here but it shows what they dont want new people coming into the game and see.
Waiting on Guild Wars 2
Waiting on Guild Wars 2
Its actually pretty difficult to put a handle on bots. I will use Ragnarok Online as an example since it was an extreme case. Ragnarok Online is or atleast was the most popular mmo in Japan in October 2005. As a result it had many bot zenny farmers. It got so bad there were 8 people to a single monster. When the GM's would ban an account it wouldn't matter since another one would just pop in the next hour. The zenny farmers also didnt care there accounts were being perma-banned because they were making so much money that they can afford the loss of a monthly fee. It got to a point that the game was explicitly shown on Japanese News and showing the botting problem. So Gung-ho took serious action and made an anti-bot program that worked flawlessly. But it didn't work forever, within 2 weeks the bot programmers already made a work around. So now Gung-ho is constantly updating thier anti-cheat program bi-weekly making sure its impossible to bot and hope that eventually the cheating community will just give up since they aren't making anymore money off it and are just wasting thier own time.
I hope that clarifies how difficult it is to monitor cheating.