Square and Blizzard Drop The Banhammer 244
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."
Wrong Headline (Score:5, Funny)
Same Crap, Different Day
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been on guild "Squish the Farmer" events, but all to often it turns into a pitched battle because people on the other side misinterpret your assault on the farmers. Anyway, that's of extremely limited utility anyway, because the economics of the sides only impact each other through the little-utilized neutral auction houses.
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Informative)
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:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2)
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Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
-matthew
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Informative)
-matthew
The basic problem is the same, the devaluation of the curr
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
But isn't the devaluation of ISK in EVE offset by cheaper hardware? When I played EVE, I was into manufacturing. When I could ge
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
EVE's economy is so in-depth and profound... "macro-miners" in EVE
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2)
I kill all WoW farmers on sight. First of all they are easy to spot, if yoou get used to it, and second: they are completely unable to defend, so its a free kill.
And I guess on a PVP realm most players do that!
OTOH: as alliance warlock, you only can kill horde farmers
angel'o'sphere
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
59,000 X $40.00 = $2,360,000
Damn, time to invest in blizzard stock....
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2)
Then again you may be right, they may not check the s/n on login, which in that case someone over there should have sensed a disturbance in the force when 59,000 level ones were suddenly created.
Re:Wrong Headline (Score:2)
Of course, they get a free month with that, so it's sorta like $30 considering they were probably into one of their paid months. But then again, intelligent plat farmers wouldn't be using western accounts anyway, as they're more expensive per USD, so it's sorta a moot point.
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Good, Ban Them (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good, Ban Them (Score:2)
Re:Good, Ban Them (Score:2)
Re:Good, Ban Them (Score:2)
Re:Good, Ban Them (Score:2)
Nah, there's a simple solution for this particuar form of MUDflation, and a few MMORPGs have used it: allow equipment to be improved abritrarily but with an exponentially increasing cost. This creates an infinite money-sink for high-level characters. The downside is: the best items in the ga
Oh Noes!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2)
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:3, Informative)
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:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2)
In a nutshell, it provided the ability to play the game online with a cracked CD, so they sued and had it taken down, thereby pissing off a horde of OS geeks who apparently can hold a grudge FOREVER. There are so many worse DMCA abusers out there, I really don't see the point of going nazi over one of the few cases where it was actually semi-legitimate.
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Arguing that bnetd enabled piracy is dumb; pirated copies could still be played offline, over a LAN, or through other workarounds. Furthermore, the bnetd developers offered to add support for verifying CD keys against a Blizzard server but were ignored (yes, individuals running bnetd could hack the source to disable the check, but that'd make it pretty obvious what they were up to, and Blizzard could've nailed them, not bnetd itself).
2) People are banned from bnet for other things, such as cheating, and there's a fair population of jerks on bnet. Someone with a valid license may want to play online but be unable or unwilling to use bnet. I own a legit copy of war3 but I'd definitely rather play with friends on a private server.
3) Blizzard's (well, I think it's Vivendi's) management and legal department already had a reputation among a lot of people for being grand assholes, so people weren't inclined to give them any benefit of the doubt.
I'll agree it's not the WORST use of the DMCA, but it's still pretty indefensible. People have a reason for holding this particular grudge.
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd love to see that crappy law thrown out and copyright intelligently reformed, but this is hardly the place to pick your fight.
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess my pod must have been defective because I thought people were still allowed to think for themselves.
When did slashdot become a hive mind? Did I miss a meeting?
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always shocked how pro-freedom geeks forget their morals when it comes to a game or a product they like. Blizzard is Vivendi, folks, and Vivendi is evil based on their corruption of Congress. Why are we still caring what they do to players who forgot they're evil?
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, it wasn't just some random company blown away because Blizzard felt like being mean. Bnetd was intimately tied to Blizzard's products and business model and they created this relationship without any cooperation or even permission from Blizzard.
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2)
Very true. When you deal with large groups, often you really can't fairly characterize the group as a whole as hypocritical, only individuals. At Slashdot, different types of stories often attract different groups of posters.
For example, if you looked at slashdot using just one type of story, you might think slashdot as a whole being anti-IP. In some other types of stories, the general vibe might seem to be the opposite, but I would bet that there are di
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
So, before I come up with a new use for a red swingline stapler, or feature one in some piece of media, I have to get the permission of the company who makes them? That argument just doesn't fly. I don't care what relationship that company had with Blizzard's product and business model, Blizzard had no right to do what they did. Or rather, they were granted a right by a stupid law that shouldn't exist and they should've had the sense not to invoke.
Can you sue your sewage treatment company for selling yo
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2, Informative)
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 pr
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2, Informative)
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!!! (Score:2)
but... the free market.... (Score:2)
I kid, I kid. Screw the gold farmers for messing up in-game economics and screw Blizzard for selling out.
I'm always shocked how pro-freedom geeks forget their morals when it comes to a game or a product they like. Fanboys will be fanboys, that's the reality of the situation.... Lots of these guys grew up on Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo, but the reality is that the Blizzard of today wasn't the Blizzard of your childhood.
constitutionality? (Score:2)
Re:constitutionality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good question. The U.S. Congress has very specific enumerated powers as listed in the U.S. Constitution. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated for Congress to govern/make laws for is considered a right of the State or the Individual.
The DMCA has no provision in the U.S. Constitution. I believe that the law passes muster only because individuals of today have accepted an o
Re:constitutionality? (Score:2)
What about the Commerce Clause? Since the Commerce Clause has already been used to justify laws covering everything from marijuana (because it might conceivably be sold between states) to racial discrimination (because a discriminating restaurant has a snack bar with goods purchased out-of-state), I'm sure it could be used to justify the DMCA.
Re:constitutionality? (Score:2)
That sounds like a well-reasoned objection, though I am not an expert in this area.
Re:constitutionality? (Score:4, Informative)
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:constitutionality? (Score:2)
The whole problem revolves around the fact that the founders really had no conception of copyrights as applied to non-tangible things. Can't blame 'em. But now its a huge mess because the corporations want IP to fall under the same protections as, f
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people were using bnetd not only to emulate Battle.net servers, but pirate the games. There is no DRM on any Blizzard CDs. People were logging into bnetd because there was no CD key check like batt.net.
Slashdot users cleverly ignore the fact that the majority (nay, nearly all) bnetd users were using it to get around buying the games from Blizzard. I personally get rather tired of this "Blizzard/Vivendi is evil" crap when t
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2)
I like their products, and frankly that's good enough for me.
m-
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2)
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Blizzard is one of the best game companies, for me at least.
Bnetd is a clone of Battlenet, disrupting blizzards way. It was completely leagal for them and in my eyes completely appropriated to go against Bnetd. And if the poor (my pitty) developers of Bnetd had any clue about anything they did have not done that stupid project. Everyone working as creator (programmer) should have some basic idea how copyright works.
How ANYONE can support Blizzard after the whole Bnetd thing is TOTALLY beyond me. Hm I'm n
Re:Oh Noes!!! (Score:2)
So does SourceForge [sourceforge.net]
Who cares? It's nothing new. (Score:2, Insightful)
No one cares about Blizzard doing it, either. Why?
Because they've been banning accounts all along. It's not news. Blizzard bans more gold farmers, twice as many spring up. It's not going to go away just because some accounts were banned.
Now, if this were news about how Blizzard was planning on redesigning their MMORPG to make gold farming a non-issue (and, to be honest, it really is already: the best stuff is gotten th
Re:Who cares? It's nothing new. (Score:2)
The news with FFXI is that the Japanese government [gamespot.com] is looking into gold farming. (That's the link from the Slashdot summary, you might want to read the entire thing.)
Plus, if you actually read the articles, they mention that the banning activity has greatly increased this month.
So, yes, it's news: MMORPG companies are banning more accounts over gold selling activies than they have been.
Re:Who cares? It's nothing new. (Score:2)
i report farmers (Score:4, Interesting)
I think we should be banned from BUYING gold, too.
Report sellers, report bots, the next time someone whispers to you ingame to visit their WoWgold site, report it under the behaviour tag in the reporting options. This becomes especially important for casual players, who just can't compete.
I know, isn't that just an artificial control? No, it's more like cracking down on forgery- this is wealth that was created for the purpose of selling it, which makes it an otherwise unnecessary element in the economy that hurts the whole.
I say yay, keep up the farmer bans.
On an unrelated note, every time i clean out my bookbag, i wish vendors in real life bought the trash...
Re:What's the Problem, Exactly? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:What's the Problem, Exactly? (Score:3, Interesting)
And especially in today's quest-based games
Re:What's the Problem, Exactly? (Score:2)
DISCLAIMER: I don't play in MMORPG and haven't since The Island of Kesmai (and if you get that refference, say "hi" :) )
My understanding is that the differences in real world economies is where this becomes a problem. If you can get cheap enough labor to sit there and farm things, and then give them a cut of the profits as their wages, then it can suddenly become a profitable buisness.
The very cheap labor available in the far east, combined with high-spee
Re:What's the Problem, Exactly? (Score:3, Interesting)
And i probably spelled it wrong.
Here's the problem with farmers. A casual player can make gear that sells for 10g in the auction house. This will enable them to equip their character pretty well, not great but not bad, with a new item that someone else produced or looted.
But wait! Gold farmers mean that for a little real money, everybody who is willing to pay can suddenly have as much gold as they need.
This means that prices go up, because the standa
Another day another GP (Score:5, Insightful)
(New acct) 59,000 * $40 = +$2,360,000
(Monthly fee) 59,000 * $15 = $885,000/mo
Looks like the business model is working for the farmers and Blizzard. Kind of like a farming tax.
Good Job! (Score:2, Funny)
Gold farming potentially a serious economic issue (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll assume you're just relatively ignorant and haven't spent much time living in Japan. As it is, they keep a very tight grip on the economic reins in a number of areas, and money laundering and taxation are two of the big ones. These are serious issues for anyone doing business in / with Japan, as banking and
Lesson to be learned (Score:3, Interesting)
a) better economics.
b) no tweaking.
c) tie characters to credit card details (will cause problems with gamecards).
d) better economics.
e) allow gold/character selling, but moderate and oversee it.
Blizz and any other games company who thinks about doing another MMOG better get this sorted before they write the next blockbuster, as otherwise I foresee thousands of bald programmers in darkened rooms pulling out their hair and screaming as they have to deal with the intricacies of propping up dying economies and stopping farming rather than writing stuff they actually are interested in.
Re:Lesson to be learned (Score:5, Informative)
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:Lesson to be learned (Score:2)
Re:Lesson to be learned (Score:2, Funny)
If they're bald, what hair are they pulling on? Ewww.
Re:Lesson to be learned (Score:2)
Re:Lesson to be learned (Score:2)
Re:Lesson to be learned (Score:2)
In fact, I'm willing to bet that this probably hits the Chinese gold farming companies pretty hard. The article mentions that Blizzard destroyed 22 million gold. If you use the rate of $.15 per gold (which is about how much it's worth these days.) This set of bans has set back the farming companies in the order of millions of dollars.
It IS something new (Score:5, Insightful)
I've actually heard of people quitting WoW over this, because the only way they thought they could compete with full time players was with buying gold. Between the growing gear gap, and increasing price of gold, it's making some people reconsider playing.
Gear Gap (Score:3, Funny)
I think a lot of politications would do pretty well in November running on a platform to eliminate the "Gear Gap".
Re:It IS something new (Score:2)
You are a part of the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
2. No matter how big someone else's equipment is, yours is good enough to play, have fun, and be happy.
3. Trying to compete with others for time, money, or equipment size is always going to leave you lacking.
4. Trying to play with "full time players" if you aren't one is a waste of time. Find "part time players" and play with them. The full time players aren't having more fun.
Please, if you have to compete by purchasing gold to "catch up" then don't play.
Gold farmers (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very good point (Score:4, Insightful)
I borrowed a friends discs once and bought a month's worth of access just so I can see what all the fuss was about. I simply couldn't believe how bad this game is. All of the quests were of the "find ten of these useless things and get back to me" or "kill that asshole over there" variety. My seven year old son's Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish games have more depth.
And I really hate how everything seems to "charge" you in time. Cast a spell, wait a few seconds. Open a chest, wait a few seconds longer. It's like the whole mechanic of this game is to make me sit here wasting my life watching progress bars while charging me $15 a month to do so. And then there's the fact that half the game experience is watching your character's back while he trudges slowly across the landscape.
And there's other really dumb things in the basic interface. You click on a guy attacking you from behind with your sword and it says "facing wrong direction". Well no fucking shit, man. I thought I communicated my intention to turn around and whack that fucker when I right-clicked on the monster. The game is filled with stuff like this. I had far, far more fun playing Diablo online.
I'm just not getting why this is the most successful game of all time. Maybe it gives obsessive-complusive people something to do? Seems like the best play here is to just not get involved in it in the first place.
Re:That's a very good point (Score:5, Insightful)
You played a little of the game. You are right, a lot of the quests are fairly boring kill and fetch sort of things. But for the most part, you have no idea what you are talking about. Abilities you have take time because this game has PvP elements in it. If everything was instant, then it would be overpowered and make playing against other players less interesting. The same with the turning and facing your enemy. If there wasn't PvP, fine...make you turn and face and whack away. But this game was designed with PvP in mind. Controlling you chracter is essential when competing with other players.
Beyond this, the best items in the game can not even be purchased with gold. All of it has to be done through working with other players to down interesting bosses that require teamwork and strategy. This is really where the game begins. Whacking a few bunnies at low level isn't going to show you anything.
It is more successful than other games because it is more accessible to people who don't have a lot of time. Other MMOs force you to group up and spend hours online just to level. With WoW, you can solo your way up to the highest level at your own pace.
Re:That's a very good point (Score:2)
Re:That's a very good point (Score:5, Interesting)
New the game is fun again, and I travel / level faster.
Why is this wrong?
Re:That's a very good point (Score:3, Interesting)
Which brings us full-circle to the point made by the GP - the game is setup in such a way that players are forced into long hours of tedious tasks in order to get enough goods/gold/equipment/levels be ab
Re:That's a very good point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gold farmers (Score:2)
Basically, it's a lot like real life. If you worked one day a week and brought in $10k per year can you legitmately complain that the guy working
Re:Gold farmers (Score:2)
Removing the boredom of farming would go a long way, but people will always pay to have an advantage at these types of games.
preferred solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:preferred solution (Score:2)
Wish (Score:2)
Re:Wish (Score:2)
When I played EVE there was one character
Re:Wish (Score:2)
The other cool part
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
An alternative (Score:2)
Anda's Game (Score:2)
Money Sink (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Money Sink (Score:2)
Re:Money Sink (Score:2)
Do I have a good solution to this? Nah... but I wanted to point it out anyway.
Gold farming exploits (Score:5, Interesting)
I used t play WoW. I am quite bored with it now but I played for about a year. I played through to lv 60 twice and enjoyed everything but the buying and selling. Epic items cost way too much for me (a hardcore gamer to my wife but actually a casual gamer to the Slashdot crowd no doubt) to get many.
In the last two months of playing I made a discovery that just about blew my mind. For those not in the 'know', Blizzard allows a certain amount of mods to be used in game. These do various things such as map enhancements, custom button grouping etc. Now one of these is called auctioneer [auctioneeraddon.com]. What it does is make you money. Not just a little bit but a whole CRAP PILE of money. This mod will NOT get you banned from WoW that I know of either.
How does it work, you ask? Glad you asked. Its very simple. If you have ever heard the phrase "Buy low. Sell High" well no truer words have ever been spoken about this addon. It scans the auction house for items that are being sold under the mean asking price. So if the average price of a stack of gold bars is 2g (for instance) and there are 5 auctions with bids below it will flag them and allow you to bid on them. You can say show me items with a bid
I struggled with the morale of using such a tool, but as my subscription was running out I wanted to see how much gold I could make in my last 30 days. I tried to do this on paper for a few weeks early in my WoW career but it is a tiresome process. I had about 6G in the bank. I would run this once a day and by the second to last day I had over 1000g in the bank! Broken or what? It was then I realised I would never play again. What is the point? If its that easy and I can buy whatever I want then there certainly is little use in playing.
Oh well. y other $0.02 is that I don't think I can support Blizzard too much any more. I loved Diablo2 and WoW for a time but I can't stand it when companies treat their customers like criminals. Close the loops you idiots! Don't blame the guys that spent possibly $100(s) on your @$%^ games. Its THEIR (read: Blizzard's) fault.
End rant.