Blizzard sues Peons4hire for spamming

[Hutch]

And once again, what the fuck did you think was going to happen? I'd keep going about you all rubbing your pussies and making worse each time, but it's pretty tiring pointing the cause and effect of your own actions. I'm sure you'll continue to refuse to see what I'm saying and keep laying the blame at the feet of the eight people who buy a million and a half dollars worth of gold apiece each year. Remember though, until you all decided to "crush" the gold industry, we'd been buying it on Ebay for years with no annoying shit going on in-game.

If you (and the millions like you) weren't buying gold, there'd be no RMT industry, and thus no in-game spamming. Which is wishful thinking, of course, but the "cause" in cause-and-effect is spelled with you.

Gold selling is never, ever going away, ever - no matter what anyone does about it. There is nothing you can do about it, and each time you try it's only going to make the process a bigger pain in everyone's ass. The only thing that can possibly stop it is for the MMO companies to offer gold themselves at a cheaper price. Period. That's it. So all that shit and pipe-dreaming about your foolproof plans for stopping it are just wishful thinking.

Unfortunately this is true. But blaming spam on the people who aren't buying gold ... there's a word for that. Deflection? Spin? If only I had the flu; I could really go to town and expand my vocabulary, but you get the drift.

Two points here, skippy.  First, people buy gold because THERE IS A PROBLEM WHEN A GAME REQUIRES TONS OF TIME PUT IN TO ADVANCE.  Plain and simple.  This is NOT the same as spending hours training for a marathon or ironman, or practicing pitching in the hopes of making it to The Show.  The ability to play a game and farm gold is a function of time, not skill.  People with more money than time will find ways to short-circuit the "time to advance" equasion if they cannot make reasonable progress in the time they have to play.  This is a design issue. 

Second, Bob has a point about the cause-effect of taking steps against RMT type folks.  In Second Life, RMT is just fine and dandy.  The company runs its own currency exchange.  One NEVER sees spam from money-sellers.  Why?  Because it's not necessary.  People know where and how to get their cash.  There's a fucking button that opens the interface.  Seems to me that making things forbidden kinda contributes to the spam.  Now, you may discount Second Life for a lot of reasons, but a spam-free monetized virtual currency trading environment is not one of them.

Were you trying to refute my points, chief? Because you didn't. Let's go through it again. Try to just read what I'm writing this time.

We have RMT because there's a market for it. No market, no RMT. No RMT, no spam. Blaming spam on those of us who don't buy gold is ignorant at best.

Blaming spam on the game design makes sense. Game -> timesink -> market -> rmt -> spam. But you haven't refuted what I said.

[Cyndre]

Yes, I love buying gold as I have tons more cash than time to farm. Since they'd banned Ebay sales Peons is the company I use and have never had a problem with them. IGE fucked me pretty good once so I won't use them again. I also don't use any add-ons as I think they're cheating, so whatever it is they end up doing I get annoyed by.

This is ironical.

[Jayce]

Yes, I love buying gold as I have tons more cash than time to farm. Since they'd banned Ebay sales Peons is the company I use and have never had a problem with them. IGE fucked me pretty good once so I won't use them again. I also don't use any add-ons as I think they're cheating, so whatever it is they end up doing I get annoyed by.

This is ironical.

Welcome to two pages ago.

edited to be less offtopic:  To be clear, I don't care much either way about RMT or gold selling.  I don't like spam much, but I can live with it.  I'm just here for the logical fallacies :)

[CmdrSlack]

Were you trying to refute my points, chief? Because you didn't. Let's go through it again. Try to just read what I'm writing this time.

We have RMT because there's a market for it. No market, no RMT. No RMT, no spam. Blaming spam on those of us who don't buy gold is ignorant at best.

Blaming spam on the game design makes sense. Game -> timesink -> market -> rmt -> spam. But you haven't refuted what I said.

What you said was "People who buy gold are why the RMT industry exists."  I'm paraphrasing, but that's what you said.  I'm not trying to refute you, but moreso trying to point out that you're missing that key first step -- what creates the demand for the gold.  The flawed game design creates the demand for the market.  So, basically, playing the games at all endorses the design choices that initially created the demand for a RMT industry.  At the end of the day, it's futile to rail against RMT because it's going to stick around in one form or another.  There is no more magic circle.  None.  All of the analogies as to how it's cheating are fundamentally flawed, and people should just get off their high horses and suck it up.  Either buy gold or don't buy gold, but as long as there's linear advancement with more cash sinks than faucets, you'll have RMT.

[Numtini]

Comparing buying L$ in SL to buying gold in EQ/WOW/etc. is apples and oranges. Buying Lindens is basically the standard way they enter the economy. That's the funding mechanism. It's not a game in which one completes for Lindens. It's a game in which you buy stuff.

While there's no spam, it doesn't take much to find advertising for SLExchange, there's over 800 terminals in the game to buy lindens from.

[Jayce]

What you said was "People who buy gold are why the RMT industry exists."  I'm paraphrasing, but that's what you said.  I'm not trying to refute you, but moreso trying to point out that you're missing that key first step -- what creates the demand for the gold.  The flawed game design creates the demand for the market.  So, basically, playing the games at all endorses the design choices that initially created the demand for a RMT industry.  At the end of the day, it's futile to rail against RMT because it's going to stick around in one form or another.  There is no more magic circle.  None.  All of the analogies as to how it's cheating are fundamentally flawed, and people should just get off their high horses and suck it up.  Either buy gold or don't buy gold, but as long as there's linear advancement with more cash sinks than faucets, you'll have RMT.

You people keep throwing around "flawed game design" like having something that people desire in a game is a flaw.

The only really possible problem here is that you don't like the "normal" way to get gold.  Because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a flaw.

[Numtini]

Does the 1919 World Series prove that baseball is fundamentally flawed? After all, if you can steal a base, why can't you sell it? Doesn't it belong to you?

Does cheating at cards mean that card games are inherently flawed?

Can you name a game at which people will not cheat if they can get away with it?

The issue is that people are able (currently) to get away with it. There's no sanction whatsoever to RMT. They don't ban buyers, only sellers. The buyers are the ones cheating. Ban a few /played 500 hour ubers for buying gold and you'll see a bigger turn around than you think.

[Nebu]

Does cheating at cards mean that card games are inherently flawed?

Can you name a game at which people will not cheat if they can get away with it?

The issue is that people are able (currently) to get away with it. There's no sanction whatsoever to RMT. They don't ban buyers, only sellers. The buyers are the ones cheating. Ban a few /played 500 hour ubers for buying gold and you'll see a bigger turn around than you think.

It's all a matter of accountability.  If the risk outweighs the benefit of cheating, very few will risk being caught.  Of course sociopaths are ubiquitous and will cheat regardless of the consequence.  There will be cheaters in any game.  The best that you can hope to do is minimize their impact on the rest of the paying customers.

[Righ]

Its a fallacy to equate people who complain about tell spam with people who complain about people eBaying gold. I may not be fond of mobs of gold farmers choking up spawns, but I couldn't care less how people play the game if it doesn't grossly interfere with my play. As a result, I may have whined about gold farmers in the past (they really haven't been so much of a problem in WoW as in other games), but I've never asked a games company to go after people eBaying gold, loot or characters. Flashing windows from constant gold selling tell spam directly interferes with my enjoyment of a game, and so I'll complain about them, and be part of the reason that Blizzard takes action. I don't see random group invites, so that's your problem, not mine. Deal with it.

And I may scoff at folks for paying good money after bad to shortcut "the grind" out of a game when I'm of the opinion that unless getting there is part of the fun, it ain't worth playing (or paying), but then they scoff at me for augmenting said game with loser addons. Different strokes is all. However it was amusing to see Bob rail against other folks for a problem he's at least equally guilty of creating. But unknown people talking to me when I'm killing foozles can go to hell. And that goes for newbies begging me to take them through Wailing Caverns, people telling me my epic axe is cool, and somebody wanting to know where a quest mob is too. Do you idiots think I play these games to socialize?

[Hutch]

Were you trying to refute my points, chief? Because you didn't. Let's go through it again. Try to just read what I'm writing this time.

We have RMT because there's a market for it. No market, no RMT. No RMT, no spam. Blaming spam on those of us who don't buy gold is ignorant at best.

Blaming spam on the game design makes sense. Game -> timesink -> market -> rmt -> spam. But you haven't refuted what I said.

What you said was "People who buy gold are why the RMT industry exists."  I'm paraphrasing, but that's what you said.  I'm not trying to refute you, but moreso trying to point out that you're missing that key first step -- what creates the demand for the gold.  The flawed game design creates the demand for the market.  So, basically, playing the games at all endorses the design choices that initially created the demand for a RMT industry.  At the end of the day, it's futile to rail against RMT because it's going to stick around in one form or another.  There is no more magic circle.  None.  All of the analogies as to how it's cheating are fundamentally flawed, and people should just get off their high horses and suck it up.  Either buy gold or don't buy gold, but as long as there's linear advancement with more cash sinks than faucets, you'll have RMT.

I'm not actually missing the game design's role in all of this. I know that these games are designed to contain massive timesinks.

I guess what I'm doing is holding players responsible for their own behavior. And calling shenanigans when they try to deflect the blame onto someone else.

Here's a rough time flow of what happens:
1) Player realizes they're in a time sink. Either consciously or otherwise.
2) The player either decides to buy gold, or the player is compelled to buy gold.
3) Player buys gold from an RMT organization.

What happens in step 2 is important. Is the player in control of their own decision-making process?

If so, the players who buy gold are responsible for the existence of the RMT market.

If not, well, they aren't responsible. Maybe they shouldn't have access to credit cards or the internet either.

Whether RMT is a horrible evil doesn't enter into it. I personally don't care about RMT in and of itself. If there weren't any spam, the closest I'd come to noticing the effects of RMT would be at the auction house.

[Cyndre]

The issue is that people are able (currently) to get away with it. There's no sanction whatsoever to RMT. They don't ban buyers, only sellers. The buyers are the ones cheating. Ban a few /played 500 hour ubers for buying gold and you'll see a bigger turn around than you think.

This isn't technically accurate.  They do ban buyers if they implicitly catch it ocurring.   However, the processes required to track and execute that type of policing would be very cost-intensive, and its easier to eliminate the supply than it is to kill the demand.  Besides, banning a buyer is terminating a customer and a revenue stream, while eliminating thes etrial account spammers and banning a few select farmers makes major progress while limiting the PR and client side nightmare.

In general, Blizzard has done a good job limiting the spamming.  I have not gotten any tells since 2.1 went live and I haven't noticed the city say spam.  Then again, I am quick to put people on ignore when I can't read my chat log from all the enchanter/ JC/ gold seller spam.

[CmdrSlack]

What you said was "People who buy gold are why the RMT industry exists."  I'm paraphrasing, but that's what you said.  I'm not trying to refute you, but moreso trying to point out that you're missing that key first step -- what creates the demand for the gold.  The flawed game design creates the demand for the market.  So, basically, playing the games at all endorses the design choices that initially created the demand for a RMT industry.  At the end of the day, it's futile to rail against RMT because it's going to stick around in one form or another.  There is no more magic circle.  None.  All of the analogies as to how it's cheating are fundamentally flawed, and people should just get off their high horses and suck it up.  Either buy gold or don't buy gold, but as long as there's linear advancement with more cash sinks than faucets, you'll have RMT.

You people keep throwing around "flawed game design" like having something that people desire in a game is a flaw.

The only really possible problem here is that you don't like the "normal" way to get gold.  Because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a flaw.

I've never bought gold.  I have purchased cash for use in Second Life.  Never anything for an actual game. 

I think massive timesink systems are rather flawed.  It's pretty obvious to me that a system that encourages catassing is at best the easy way out for creating fun.  Lazy design is lazy design.  Games like CoX don't seem to have a huge market for buying Influence/Infamy -- why is that?  Is it lack of players or because the design focus that moved away from an item-based advancement scheme killed the need for it?  I'm sure some people do it anyway, but I'm willing to bet that as a percentage of player population, it's lower than for a game like WoW.

Seems like design decisions certainly do influence player behavior to some extent, eh?

If there weren't any spam, the closest I'd come to noticing the effects of RMT would be at the auction house.

Well, for whatever reason, the spam is there.  I don't know if it's truly possible to prevent (mail spam becomes chat spam), but at very least games should give some kind of privacy options for those who want them.  Doesn't WoW have some kind of system that allows users to say, "Don't accept incoming whispers unless from my whitelist" or "Mail from my friends only, please?"

Maybe that would make grouping tougher (at least as far as whispers are concerned), but maybe not.  I don't claim to have a good solution, I really enjoy RMT from an academic perspective -- there's some nifty legal issues that entertain me when I'm bored.

[Slayerik]

It's a little disingenious to rail about the evils of addons and how a real man won't use them but to be okay with buying gold.  A real man would earn every copper.

If you're okay with it, fine, but gimmie a break on that line of thinking.

Real men have jobs and families and don't have the time to grind.

Support Real men everywhere!!! VOTE YES on Proposal RMT!

[El Gallo]

The leap of logic it takes to say we are the problem by supporting countermeasures, where you aren't by buying gold, is breathtaking.

I don't think it is illogical to suspect that closing off one advertising method for a highly desired and highly profitable product will likely result in the sellers resorting to as-yet unthought of advertising methods which may be even more annoying.  Now, I'm not sure if I agree that in an alternate universe where SoE never decided to ask EBay to remove EQ sales that IGE still wouldn't have bought up a bunch of EQ fan sites and that Peons wouldn't be spamming gold ads in WoW tells, but it's not a crazy idea. 

To make a wildly exaggerated, quasi-apt-at-best analogy (i.e. an analogy on the internet), banning cocaine didn't do much to curb sales of the product, it just forced people to sell it in a way that causes all sorts of collateral problems. 

[Threash]

You know what i don't get? what the hell are people doing with so much wow gold?.  I've never considered buying gold because ive never needed to even think about it.  You don't NEED an epic flying mount, you don't NEED boe epics.  Theres very little reason to farm for gold, by the time i reached 70 i had easily enough gold for a regular flying mount and that was after buying an epic mount at 65.  I log in and pvp most days, i raid 3 times a week, i DO NOT farm, ever.  I just dont get it, wheres the flaw? what are people doing that they need all this gold?

[Rasix]

You know what i don't get? what the hell are people doing with so much wow gold?.  I've never considered buying gold because ive never needed to even think about it.  You don't NEED an epic flying mount, you don't NEED boe epics.  Theres very little reason to farm for gold, by the time i reached 70 i had easily enough gold for a regular flying mount and that was after buying an epic mount at 65.  I log in and pvp most days, i raid 3 times a week, i DO NOT farm, ever.  I just dont get it, wheres the flaw? what are people doing that they need all this gold?

Potions.

[Chimpy]

You know what i don't get? what the hell are people doing with so much wow gold?.  I've never considered buying gold because ive never needed to even think about it.  You don't NEED an epic flying mount, you don't NEED boe epics.  Theres very little reason to farm for gold, by the time i reached 70 i had easily enough gold for a regular flying mount and that was after buying an epic mount at 65.  I log in and pvp most days, i raid 3 times a week, i DO NOT farm, ever.  I just dont get it, wheres the flaw? what are people doing that they need all this gold?

Potions.

Repairs on Epics. Especially plate.

[Signe]

My last stint with WoW I didn't buy gold and I didn't use mods.  Beat them hairy balls, babies! 

[hal]

Every one is comming out of the closet here. So, I will as well. I have bought gold/plat/isk in EQ1, EQ2, EVE and WOW. Not often and not without muttering to my self. But do you honestly play these games to be a second class citizen? I think on this message board we all should chime in. Theres a broken mechanic here and an income stream that should by rights go to the developers/producers.

[Threash]

You know what i don't get? what the hell are people doing with so much wow gold?.  I've never considered buying gold because ive never needed to even think about it.  You don't NEED an epic flying mount, you don't NEED boe epics.  Theres very little reason to farm for gold, by the time i reached 70 i had easily enough gold for a regular flying mount and that was after buying an epic mount at 65.  I log in and pvp most days, i raid 3 times a week, i DO NOT farm, ever.  I just dont get it, wheres the flaw? what are people doing that they need all this gold?

Potions.

Repairs on Epics. Especially plate.

I use the pvp potions and have mostly epics to repair, i guess if you are in one of the very top guilds your potion budget would be extreme but thats still a very small % of the population that couldnt possibly be buying all the gold.  I'd would ask the people who have bought gold if they didnt mind posting what they needed it for.  Once again, i dont farm and don't feel like a second class citizen at all, my guild is at mags lair atm and i do regular pvp/arenas as well as raid regularly.  My gold supply slightly goes up week by week, ill never afford an epic flying mount but it doesnt bother me.

[Calantus]

My last stint with WoW I didn't buy gold and I didn't use mods.  Beat them hairy balls, babies! 

What were you, level 30? You don't strike me as someone who'd ever hit max level. "Level 30 finally! Ok now where to- ooooh, new korean MMO. MUST TRY!"



As far as grinding gold I've never had a problem with it. I listen to a lot of music and if I didn't have a boring, low attention required activity to do while listening to music I'd just be sitting here with my eyes closed doing nothing anyway. Therefore I lose nothing by farming gold. :P

[Chimpy]

I use the pvp potions and have mostly epics to repair, i guess if you are in one of the very top guilds your potion budget would be extreme but thats still a very small % of the population that couldnt possibly be buying all the gold.  I'd would ask the people who have bought gold if they didnt mind posting what they needed it for.  Once again, i dont farm and don't feel like a second class citizen at all, my guild is at mags lair atm and i do regular pvp/arenas as well as raid regularly.  My gold supply slightly goes up week by week, ill never afford an epic flying mount but it doesnt bother me.

My experience is all pre-BC. From what I hear, it is a ton easier to get gold than it was before.

The worst times were learning AQ.

There, the bosses dropped a total of about 75g each (less than 2g a person) so even if you had a clear run all the way through, you would usually lose gold on repairs if you died even once, regardless of class. Also, protection spec warriors and heal spec'd priests and druids really had no effective way to farm repair money. A warrior on a good night would have 25-30g in repairs. That was about 3 hours of farming for a protection warrior at the time.

Naxx was also bad because of the time commitment you had to put towards the instance along with the consumable costs.

[Jayce]

I raided extensively ... for a while... on a warrior with blacksmithing and mining.  I rarely broke 50g and most of the time was dead broke.  But I still managed it somehow and didn't buy gold.

My current go is on a mage with two gathering profs, and I'm being as cheap as I can be.  I now have about 1500g at 68 with epic mount + skill already bought.  I'll be able to afford my normal flyer immediately, and probably my epic shortly thereafter.

So yeah.  I don't know why anyone needs to buy gold once they get past the learning curve of their first character.

[Xerapis]

I bought adena for Lineage 2.  I think that should be understandable, in a still-very-fucked-up kinda way.

[Signe]

Ok, so I only got to level 18 the last time in WoW.  But they were virgin levels!  And I got to level 50 in Lineage without buying adena or using 3rd party apps!  That alone is probably enough hair on my balls to weave ten Indian blankets!

Dammit.

[Strazos]

When I went back to Gemstone III/IV like 4 years ago, I payed like $20 for 1m Silvers (in-game currency) to outfit my character and such (for reference, 1m isn't going to get you anything terribly uber, and I had to totally outfit a character).

When I went back with a buddy again last summer, I made the same transaction again (I had given all the money away when I left previously).

That is the extent of my RMT.

[Lantyssa]

Every one is comming out of the closet here. So, I will as well. I have bought gold/plat/isk in EQ1, EQ2, EVE and WOW. Not often and not without muttering to my self. But do you honestly play these games to be a second class citizen? I think on this message board we all should chime in. Theres a broken mechanic here and an income stream that should by rights go to the developers/producers.

I think this is the only time any one has come out of the closet and become a first class citizen. :-D

[Righ]

 

[rk47]

I guess buying gold is a brilliant idea as a fix to a broken mechanic, therefore future patches should come in 1000 g increment at 10 bucks for every week.

[Jayce]

Oh yeah.  The closet.  It's getting stuffy in here.

I've never bought anything in WoW as stated above, but I did buy a tamer account on Siege Perilous once, then resold it for about the same amount.  I also bought prepatch GSC leggings in AC1 back when such things mattered, then again I resold them.  Those were approximately a wash in terms of cash.

I later bought an AC1 account, which had some sweet characters on it, but that was the dawn of macroing, which I didn't get into, and the account was rapidly outclassed.  I lost money on that deal, but back then I wasn't married and had no kids so it was easy come, easy go.  I suppose I could still login to it if I remembered the info.

I haven't RMTd since, but I wouldn't be above it if I could be arsed to care about a game that was truly beyond my reach as a 2-3 hr a night casual.  WoW doesn't qualify (as being beyond my reach, that is).

[damijin]

I've sold gold and characters in multiple games, since we're all coming out of the RMT closet as it were. The only game I ever bought gold in was Lineage 2 because I bought it bulk from a farming boss via Western Union direct to China to resell for a profit (the markup is HUGE, especially when the boss can't speak English and has no way to directly present his product to a western customer base.)

I'm also friends with a bajillion farmers. They're quite nice, and they give you lots of free stuff.

[Ironwood]

Never bought anything IRL for a game*.  Because, well, it's a game.

I did, however, once go to the store and buy another Monopoly set and then I filled my wallet with the money and during the game with my family, I just kept buying hotels and streets and whatnot, right outta that wodge.  It was awesome.  The look on their fucking faces when I totally fucking owned them.  Ha.  That'll teach them.  Fucking Noobs.



*Unless a character transfer from Blizzard counts because the Server was shite and my character wisnae.

[Jayce]

I did, however, once go to the store and buy another Monopoly set and then I filled my wallet with the money and during the game with my family, I just kept buying hotels and streets and whatnot, right outta that wodge.  It was awesome.

Gold.  no pun intended

[Threash]

I usually sell my chars when im done with a game for good, does that make me an evil terrorist supporter?

[Hellinar]

I'm not actually missing the game design's role in all of this. I know that these games are designed to contain massive timesinks.

Its not so much the timesinks, but that the reward for time spent is linear. So a farmer bot playing 500 hours a month earns ten times (or more) that earned by a casual player playing 50 hours a month. That is what makes the RMT transaction economically attractive. Ditch that linearity and you have a very different game, one with little RMT. My theory is that the new 50 hours a week players attracted to such a game would vastly outweigh the 500 hour a week players leaving. I doubt I will see that theory tested though, because the developers themselves are by nature the 500 hour player type. 

To make a wildly exaggerated, quasi-apt-at-best analogy (i.e. an analogy on the internet), banning cocaine didn't do much to curb sales of the product, it just forced people to sell it in a way that causes all sorts of collateral problems. 

Real world drug analogies are not even quasi apt. We are talking server based worlds here. Any player behavior the server can reliably and cheaply detect can be banned. Better yet, just don’t implement the ability to do that behavior in the world. Most MMOGs don’t have illegal drugs coded in the database, so drug prohibition works perfectly. EVE does explicitly code illegal drugs in the database, so they do have an “illegal” drug problem.

Prohibition in an online world can work perfectly. It is just restricted to behaviors the server can reliably detect.