CONFLICT! (Nude in Blue)

[Signe]

I saw this on the board that must not be named this morning.  I thought it was rather interesting since Blizzard has denounced the selling of ingame loot on eBay.  In fact, I think they've actually banned accounts for it.

If you don’t want IGE collecting data about your gameplay (and who knows what else), read this.

1. IGE Owns the OGaming Network.

Let’s take a look at the Whois data for Ogaming.com

Source: http://www.betterwhois.com/bwhois.cgi?domain=ogaming.com&x=0&y=0

Registrant:
OGAMING NETWORK
152 W. 57th Street
Carnegie Hall Tower, 25th Fl
New York, New York 10019
United States

NS1.OGAMING.COM
NS8.ENTHROPIA.COM


If this address doesn’t look familiar, let me refresh your memory.

Source: http://www.ige.com/corporate.aspx?id=offices&lang=en

New York
IGE
Carnegie Hall Tower
25th Floor
152 W. 57th St.
New York, NY 10019

IGE’s New York business address matches the registrant’s address for Ogaming.com


2. The OGaming Network claims to own Thottbott.

Source: http://www.ogaming.com/data/2235~Advertise.php

”Our properties include OGaming.com, L2Orphus.com, Thottbot.com, Guild-Hall.net, Warcraftcentral.com, more than 30 targeted community sites as well as a vast array of online forums.”

3. Lets see – if you go to WoW OGaming and hover over World of Warcraft in their menu bar, it links to Thottbot

4. If we head over to Thottbot, and we check the links page (http://www.thottbot.com/?l=news) look who is the first link: WoW OGaming

5. Let’s look a bit further. What about the Whois data for Thottbot?

Source: http://www.betterwhois.com/bwhois.cgi?domain=thottbot.com&x=0&y=0


Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160
PMB353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

NS1.THOTTBOT.NET
NS2.THOTTBOT.NET


Looks like someone wants to hide their identity.

6. Let’s take a deeper look at the OGaming Network. If we look at the page source of http://wow.ogaming.com we see what looks like the OGaming Network’s ad server: http://ads.ogamingmedia.com

Let’s see what Whois has to say about OGamingMedia.com.

Source: http://www.betterwhois.com/bwhois.cgi?domain=ogamingmedia.com&x=0&y=0

Registrant:
OGAMING NETWORK
152 W. 57th Street
Carnegie Hall Tower, 25th Fl
New York, New York 10019
United States

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.THOTTBOT.NET
NS2.THOTTBOT.NET

Whoa! It’s pretty clear from the domain registration info that IGE owns the OGaming Network. The OGaming Network admittedly owns Thottbot.com. Now we have a direct connection between IGE and Thottbot.com.

7. Thoughts.

I don’t know about you but I won’t be using the Thottbot Plugin for Cosmos anymore. It’s one thing to share my gameplay information with the gaming community but something completely different to be sharing it with a company involved in a business that is prohibited by Blizzard Entertainment. Who knows what other personal information they may be collecting with Thottbot that we don’t know about. Who knows if IGE is manipulating/withholding Thottbot data for business purposes to better control the market. I don’t think it be the first time IGE tried to manipulate a virtual world’s market?

[Paelos]

OMG!

[Signe]

Well, I thought it was moderately interesting. 

You only read this thread because you thought there were boobies, didn't you?  Pervy little monkey!

[Paelos]

Well, I thought it was moderately interesting. 

You only read this thread because you thought there were boobies, didn't you?  Pervy little monkey!

Yes, I thought it was about Elf boobs. Or people getting naked in game with some hack and banned. Either way, IGE owning thottbot doesn't fill me with an overwhelming sense of the gaming apocolypse.

[HaemishM]

IGE is a leech on the belly of MMOG gaming. Of course, the fact that they've owned places like Caster's Realm for EQ for quite a while now, as well as some other prominent EQ class sites, makes this news /meh. Funny, but /meh.

Now if they owned IGN, then we could talk!

[Righ]

It was interesting, although it didn't merit the proof of the equation. I wonder if the original poster thinks that Allakhazam is NOT a company that wants to make money out of online gaming. Admittedly the owners are grubby little Democrats, although that doesn't preclude poor business ethics.

> Moyer, Toni P (ALLAKHAZAM.COM LLC/Publishing), (Zip code: 19061) $2000 to DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE on 06/21/04

[Signe]

Strangely, (or maybe not) people on other boards are confusing IGE with IGN.  I expect the mods at IGN are going to have fun with this one.

[Furiously]

OMG!

Furiously is suddenly hungry for hershey kisses....

[Signe]

Aww... it's almost Valentine's Day, Furiously.  Maybe someone who loves you very much will give you one!

[Litigator]

Gamespy had an interesting interview with IGE's president.  Obviously, if you believe what you want to believe about IGE, you won't care, but Gamespy has no real reason to shill for IGE, so this has some credibility. Gamespy notes the gaming industry credibility of IGE's president; this guy worked for SSI which made the old-school Dungeons and Dragons PC RPGs.

IGE claims that it attempts to work with developers to maintain the integrity of the game economy while operating a cash economy, though most developers don't deal with them.  They insist that they only deal with players and do not do business or employ foreign commercial farmers.  IGE claims that the reason that most people associate their business with commercial farmers is that the commercial farmers organized a smear campaign in EQ where they claimed to be employed by IGE because IGE wouldn't deal with them.

Commercial farmers are detrimental to the game economy, but If IGE is running the kind of business they claim to be running, they are not harmful to the game. Frankly, once I get that epic mount, I may find it more desirable to unload my gold or my rare drops to IGE for a few bucks rather than accumulating more in-game change, though I won't do it if Blizzard's policy toward the behavior is still banning.

From a legal perspective,  (I'm sort of talking out of my ass here, because the property issues related to this kind of stuff haven't been litigated to my knowledge, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time researching this complicated issue out of idle curiosity) it seems to me that if Blizzard created a license to host these auctions on a condition that the auctions were regulated in such a way that preserved the game economy, it is possible that they would create an interest that would allow them to have a workable theory of damages with which to threaten other sites hosting auctions, like eBay.  As it stands, with Blizzard claiming the behavior is entirely illegitimate, a court seems likely to determine that the behavior is a matter to be dealt with between Blizzard and its players through in-game regulation, especially since this is the way player misbehavior has historically been dealt with in MMOGs.  If Blizzard claimed a right to name an exclusive licensee to host legitimate auctions, it seems a court might be more receptive to their claim of an economic interest in the auctions.

[Sky]

Listen. It's bad enough to deal with contested resources in a static world with thousands of players /without/ putting a real-world monetary value on it. You think you've ever dealt with some shit trying to get some stupid item (fbss or ring of the ancients spring to mind, eq), imagine if folks are lined up, not just to get the item for themselves, their "wife", their entire guild, and three more "just in case", but now they can turn around and sell them on contract pricing? Not only do they make a profit, but they drive up demand by dominating the resource, and eventually if you want an ingame item, you'll have to buy it from IGE. Well, maybe if you try long enough, you might get in there while a farmer nods off or something.

Just sayin'.

As I've said, I don't care how others want to waste their money. But when it starts to impact the ingame world, I care. I'll give up twinking for pure no-drop items before I let some greedy douchebag make me stand in line. That's just me. I've recently been told I just don't "get it" when it comes to mmorpgs, and I tend to agree, if the FoH-style of gameplay is what is equated to "getting it".

[Litigator]

Listen. It's bad enough to deal with contested resources in a static world with thousands of players /without/ putting a real-world monetary value on it. You think you've ever dealt with some shit trying to get some stupid item (fbss or ring of the ancients spring to mind, eq), imagine if folks are lined up, not just to get the item for themselves, their "wife", their entire guild, and three more "just in case", but now they can turn around and sell them on contract pricing? Not only do they make a profit, but they drive up demand by dominating the resource, and eventually if you want an ingame item, you'll have to buy it from IGE. Well, maybe if you try long enough, you might get in there while a farmer nods off or something.

Just sayin'.

As I've said, I don't care how others want to waste their money. But when it starts to impact the ingame world, I care. I'll give up twinking for pure no-drop items before I let some greedy douchebag make me stand in line. That's just me. I've recently been told I just don't "get it" when it comes to mmorpgs, and I tend to agree, if the FoH-style of gameplay is what is equated to "getting it".

Um, you don't "wait in line" for drops in WoW. All the rare drops seem to have roughly the same chance to drop from all monsters of the right levels, and a lot of the best stuff is in the instances (and binds on pickup).  If I were starting an alt on a new server, I wouldn't mind dropping 20 bucks or so to do so with a relatively fat bankroll.  Frankly, I'd also drop a few bucks to save myself hours of grinding to get a mount or some other high priced items.  I don't see anything illegitimate or unbalancing about this, except that people who value their time more than their money won't have to pour their lives into the game to enjoy it.  The problem with attaching a real world cash value to in-game loot, particularly in game money, is that that foreign operations will employ commercial farmers who will grind high level areas 20 hours a day, and crash the trade good markets in order to get a bunch of gold to sell (it would be uneconomical for an ordinary player to participate in this kind of behavior). 

[Righ]

Yeah, we hear you, you wouldn't care, you don't mind. I play MMOGs to play them, not to acquire a bigger e-peen. So I''ll never partake of IGE, and I'll always resent the motherfuckers who work for them farming 24x7 in the best spots.

[Jayce]

If Blizzard claimed a right to name an exclusive licensee to host legitimate auctions, it seems a court might be more receptive to their claim of an economic interest in the auctions.

If your theory is correct, they could just reserve the right to all auctions to themselves and never exercise it.

[Sky]

Bets on litigator working for IGE?

[CmdrSlack]

From a legal perspective,  (I'm sort of talking out of my ass here, because the property issues related to this kind of stuff haven't been litigated to my knowledge, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time researching this complicated issue out of idle curiosity) it seems to me that if Blizzard created a license to host these auctions on a condition that the auctions were regulated in such a way that preserved the game economy, it is possible that they would create an interest that would allow them to have a workable theory of damages with which to threaten other sites hosting auctions, like eBay.  As it stands, with Blizzard claiming the behavior is entirely illegitimate, a court seems likely to determine that the behavior is a matter to be dealt with between Blizzard and its players through in-game regulation, especially since this is the way player misbehavior has historically been dealt with in MMOGs.  If Blizzard claimed a right to name an exclusive licensee to host legitimate auctions, it seems a court might be more receptive to their claim of an economic interest in the auctions.

Under which theory are you guessing Blizzard would proceed?  You talk about property interests (I assume intellectual property), but your vague analysis seems directed towards a tort theory...perhaps tortious interference with a business relationship. 

Explain.

Heh, some of us have researched this stuff out of idle curiosity.