Square and Blizzard Drop The Banhammer

Gamespot has the news that Square has banned some 2000 accounts from FFXI, and Eurogamer reports that Blizzard has banned 59,000 accounts from World of Warcraft. The bans come as game publishers continue to attempt to crack down on Real Money Traders in their titles. From the FFXI article: "The news follows Square Enix's crackdown of 250 accounts in June over money-farming and real-money trading, which is the practice of selling in-game currency for cash in the real world. Concerns over real-money trading prompted the Japanese government--particularly worried about large-scale money-mining operations in video games--to launch its own investigation last week."

Re:Oh Noes!!!

[dada21]

For Bnetd information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd [wikipedia.org]

I don't buy anything from Blizzard based on this idiocy and support of unconstitutional laws in order to control content. No thanks.

Re:Wrong Headline

[rpillala]

This would only be possible on a pvp server, where farmers often farm in cross faction teams and just kill anyone who gets close. Maybe with overwhelming numbers you could stop them for a short time but they'd just move elsewhere or stop for as long as it takes for people to get bored.

Re:Oh Noes!!!

[LordKazan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd [wikipedia.org]

Re:What's the Problem, Exactly?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Economy is the problem. If there is 10x as much gold because people are "producing" more of it by farming, then those who don't farm can't buy the good items. It actively decreases the value of other players' gold.

That's how it affects other players' experiences. Blizzard has made a decision that this is a bad thing in terms of fun, so they delete accounts accordingly.

I personally think it's a Sisyphusian task, but I'm certainly not against trying.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Lesson to be learned

[SatanicPuppy]

Every time someone starts screaming about the game economics being utterly broken, I have to wonder about their actual evidence. I've played seriously on about 5 servers, and I currently play the auction house on two, and all I see are very predictable supply and demand fluctuations. Stuff goes up today, and down tomorrow. Prices run up on the weekends, and taper off during the week.

Sure you see items that are overpriced, and sometimes those get purchased. More often, however, you see the same item up for sale for a week or more, and get to watch its price trending gradually down until someone buys it.

It's not rampant inflation. It's exactly the sort of cyclical activity I would expect given variable supply.

So give me some data on this completely broken model, because I'm not seeing it.

Re:Wrong Headline

[Wintermute__]

I haven't played EVE in a while, and I've never played WoW, but doesn't farming have a different effect on the economy in Eve? Rather than inflation, doesn't it make things cheaper? If there is a huge influx of minerals, the price of them goes down and items get cheaper to manufacture. Where as in WoW you get raw gold coming in and devaluing the current gold that people have. Or am I way off here? What is the real problem with farming in Eve?

-matthew

The basic problem is the same, the devaluation of the currency. The farmers in EVE sell the minerals in-game for ISK, the equivalent of WoW gold. Then they sell the ISK for real-world money, thus de-valuing the currency in-game. The deflation of mineral prices (which adversely affects players who have chosen mining as a profession) is a secondary harmful effect of their activities.

Re:Oh Noes!!!

[Omnifarious]

I will fault the corporation because it's the corporation's money that causes legislators to pass this stupid garbage in the first place. So, when corporations stop hiring lobbyists and donating to political campaigns I will stop punishing them for bad laws.

Re:Oh Noes!!!

[narfbot]

A few corrections. Bnetd wasn't a company, it was a group of programmers. When blizzard sent take down notices, they actually stopped development. It was hosted by an ISP. It was the ISP blizzard sued. The ISP had nothing to do with bnetd except they hosted the domain. So what blizzard won was the domain name and shutdown a small ISP.

Bnetd wasn't intimately tied with Blizzard products. If you read the code, you'll find that it had third party support specified with it, and you'll find realization of the progress of bnetd's goals of multiple environments with todays pvpgn (really bnetd) and Red Alert support.

Re:constitutionality?

[dada21]

No, DMCA has nothing to do with copyright. DMCA is about reverse engineering, not about duplicating or distribution.

Also, it could be well argued (not by me as I repudiate copyright entirely) that DMCA has not been enforced by "authors" nor "inventors" but by distribution cartels. Again, not within the meaning of the Constitution.

The DMCA has zero to do with copyright and everything to do with enforcing actions of others that any free thinker would deem legal. Figuring out how something works is part of making a new device that will be better (and not potentially disturb any patents). The DMCA prevents you from figuring out how something works -- it doesn't actually enable or disable copying.

Re:Wrong Headline

[angel'o'sphere]

This would only be possible on a pvp server, where farmers often farm in cross faction teams and just kill anyone who gets close.
thats not correct.

The typical farmer controls 10 or more PCs and uses cheat tools to get to impossible positions from where he can shoot on mobs, e.g. Because he controls so many PCs je usually uses a hunter or a rogue, in very shitty gear. The rogues are usually 2 sword rogues and just do autoattack on mobs. Hunters usually also only send pet, without mark, and use autoshot.

Some time ago farmers usually where guildless, now they are in strange named guilds or even in a well known one.

When you see a lvl 60 hunter with a cat attacking a mob without hunters mark, several times in a row, and allways being on full mana -> not using any special skill (concussion shot, aimed shot) then you can bet it's a farmer.

To confirm if it is a farmer, kill his pet and watch what is happening to him ;D

To figure if a rogue is a farmer is a bit more hard: kill him, and wait for him to respawn, whatch what he is doing. If he does not try to take revenge, you can bet its a farming bot.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Wrong Headline

[hobbesmaster]

In EVE, farmers have to sell their minerals to other players who have put up buy orders. This means that no currency is being created in the transaction, unlike most games where farmers sell their loot/whatever to NPCs which generate money out of thin air.

Re:Wrong Headline

[ocelotbob]

They have prepaid cards as well. Anonymous, no way of tracing.