You're talking about a company that currently has 11 million people paying them money every month to play a game that was initially released 5 years ago.

Whatever you may think of WoW or Blizzard, I have to scratch my head when someone suggests they don't care about customer satisfaction post-sale.

This argument isn't that compelling anymore. 5000g was a hefty sum in BC when initially there were only 2 daily quests and questing wasn't as streamlined. In Wrath, you can stumble into that sum if you just keep questing past 80 or do dailies for rep grinds. It's just a matter of avoiding frivolous purchases, no AH savvy or intense play required. Not to mention mount costs are being reduced next patch, and non-epic flier speeds will be nearly tripled.

Now 1000g an hour I can not do, but remember that you're buying tainted goods. 99% of the gold out there is obtained from hacking accounts, fleecing them, and leaving the unfortunate player to deal with the leftover mess. I don't think anyone's time is worth putting another person through that.

Would you care to go into details as to why it's so stupid to launder money through video games, or as to why a regular software company would be better? Those of us who aren't in finance would like to know.

Smart businesses don't think in raw, bulk numbers like that. Not all subscriptions are created equally.

Consider why people get banned from the game at all; it usually involves something that negatively impacts the play experience of other players. Sure, Blizzard loses $15/mo if they ban Player A, but they stand to lose many times that amount if they let Player A run around being a jerk to Players B through Z. One account termination due to the actions of Player A costs the company the value of his subscription.

The same essentially applies to gold farmers, in a more indirect way. Early in WoW's history gold farmers impacted other players simply through economic inflation and crowding out resources. Some resources were almost impossible to farm for yourself because of the ubiquitous presence of farmers. Blizzard banned these farmers because of these negative impacts alone, and the money it cost them to do so was likely saved in preserved subscriptions and reduced support costs.

This argument is far more pointed now. Gold farmers still inflate the economy, only they do so through ill-gotten gains obtained by hacking accounts. The support costs are many times greater than before, and are far more likely to result in account termination. Losing one's account, even if you can get it restored, is the single most frustrating event that can happen to a player in a game where progression is a foundational goal.

So Blizzard is saving a lot of money by working to prevent gold farming.

Also - the big question - why would this become illegal? People do what they want with their money. If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this. They've already ruined WoW four times over. Anyone who's played since the beginning can tell you how much more enjoyable it used to be.

It's disingenuous to claim that "anyone" from a category designed to exclude people who might disagree with you will agree with you. It's also demonstrably false, as I fit into your category and find that the expansions and patches have markedly improved the game.

Your second disingenuous argument suggests that having already ruined something, there's no reason to avoid ruining it further. This is frankly silly, as the mistakes of Star Wars Galaxies can attest.

More importantly, it's impossible to price match a black market. I've tried several MMOs which allowed RMT transactions, and was not surprised to find that even there the black market currency farming/selling still thrives. Even if Blizzard/other companies offer their currencies cheap, someone will always be ready to offer it cheaper.

I don't see why this was marked redundant, it's a fair point that hadn't yet been made.

The problem with the analogy is that repair services are different from currency exchange. The former does need to adapt to new technologies (and potential jerk moves on the part of manufacturers). The latter isn't supposed to print money, simply trade it. Gold farmers are more akin to counterfeiters, producing currency against the best interests of the economy that otherwise wouldn't be a part of the system.

It's not logical, for several reasons.

Say you want to buy an epic flyer in WoW, but don't want to spend the time grinding gold for it. On my server, it's $70 for the 5k gold that would take.

If WoW were the only game worth playing in the world, then it might be logical to spend this money. Wow is not, however, the only game worth playing. For those $70 there are any endless number of titles for the PC alone that could tickle one's fancy, without requiring the player to spend additional money to get through the "boring" parts.

Second, If leveling is boring you're not likely to like the end game anyway. If grinding is boring you're not likely to like PvP or raiding. The fundamentals of leveling and grinding are prevalent in every aspect of the game save for standing around and flexing in trade chat. If you don't enjoy them they will be haunting you whether you spend gold or not.

Third, most of the gold in games which do not support RMT comes from the players themselves, when they're hacked. Logically, buying gold supports these ventures and puts yourself in a situation of increased risk for the same.

Lastly, if we're being purely logical it's fundamentally illogical to do something which is against the ToS to which you agreed. MMOs which do not directly support RMT tend to explicitly forbid RMT in their ToS.

So yes, not logical. If you find the game boring the answer is to not play at all.

If only that were the case.

Rune of Magic is a free to play MMO which makes all of its money on RMT. There are effectively two currencies in the game, one which is used for common everyday stuff such as repairs and professions, and another which is used for all of the best features like mounts and player housing.

The latter is purchased with real money, and if desired can actually be sold on the auction house for the more "mundane" currency. In theory this should kill the market for gold sellers.

In practice it does not. The gold sellers simply offer a better conversion rate and continue to thrive. Perhaps they don't do as well as they otherwise might, but they aren't done away with at all.

This is essentially the truth of the Black Market. If something is illegal, there'll be a market. If something is legal, there'll be a still be a market. As long as there is demand, there are those who will appear with a supply of dubious origins.

My stimulus check went to volumes 1-25 of Berserk, as I had ready them online for free. I recently bought an Eric Whitacre album after hearing pieces of it on Youtube. So some of us do actually purchase based on "try before you buy".

While I don't agree with your guesstimation, I do agree that there are some people who are hypocritical about these matters. But there's little point in calling them on it as they can continue to hide behind anonymity, write false accounts of purchases, or exaggerate the importance of the purchases they did make.

I read the title as "Bikini Patent Case Appealed To Supreme Court".

It's been a long day at work.

I'd like to reemphasize "in this context". Goodness is a common word in the US as well, it just isn't commonly used in this fashion.

I'll also point out that citing a nerdy statistics concept as a point of grammatical clarity is not, in fact, a good way to prove anything beyond the awkwardness of a nerd's grammar. Maybe I'm being facetious.

Now we're getting mired in perspectives, so let's take a step back from the bad analogies (both of ours) and look at the fundamental differences.

Connecting a computer to the internet is a task which, when completed successfully, yields an identical result every time. Regardless of how the connection is accomplished the result should always be the same. The result is easily judged based on whether the connect functions and if so how well.

Writing music is a task which is meant to yield a unique result. Regardless of genre or intent, only someone insane would attempt to write a song that has already been written (although a sane person might rewrite a song looking for a different result). Implicit in mankind's understanding of music, and art in general, is that the completed work is a reflection of the composer's creative skill.

So in the first case the automation of the task using DHCP/Plug-n-Play/etc. makes sense as the process is almost entirely irrelevant so long as we have the right result. In the second case the process is integral in shaping what the result turns out, and cannot be ignored.

Understanding the importance of this difference is important in understanding why we decry that Songsmith "does everything else for you". Crucial decisions that are normally what set different artists apart are instead handled automatically and identically. No one cares if it's an IT professional or a DHCP server that decides what your IP is so long as everything works.

He's not saying the grammar is incorrect, merely that it isn't "good".

"Goodness of music" may be technically correct, but it is also highly awkward. "Goodness" in this case is standing in for "quality" with which most English speakers will be more familiar in this context.

I hate playing "bad analogy cop" but there are many fundamental differences between getting onto the internet and writing a song.

The most obvious is that the one is constructing a tool while the other is constructing a consumable product. The internet is a tool used to accomplish other tasks. Music is a product to be consumed. In this case, Songsmith itself is the tool.

This "bad analogy cop" comment wouldn't be complete without a car analogy. No one brags about being able to move faster than an Olympic sprinter despite the fact we do it every day. That's because it's our cars doing that work. We instead either brag about our cars or our ability to drive them.

Are we supposed to be impressed with your feeble wit detection? Seriously, why did you post that?