Blizzard sues Peons4hire for spamming

[HaemishM]

I've never bought anything from a third party (or even first party) for an MMOG. Ever. I've been given gold by Shockeye, who used to buy WoW gold, but at the time, I didn't know he'd bought it. My wife has sold a few accounts, in EQ and DAoC, but that's about it. I've just never seen the point, or had enough disposable income that I could justify it. I'd rather spend that money on other games, DVD's or you know, FOOD.

[SansWetware]

There's just no value to me in in-game currency.  There's always an easy way to make it and it never stops appearing out of the blue.  It's infinite. 

I do see a problem with a game that does not scale gold earned appropriately with what a player will realistically be spending.  Not enough of a problem to spend even more money to get ahead of the curve, though.

[Jayce]

There's just no value to me in in-game currency.  There's always an easy way to make it and it never stops appearing out of the blue.  It's infinite. 

I do see a problem with a game that does not scale gold earned appropriately with what a player will realistically be spending.  Not enough of a problem to spend even more money to get ahead of the curve, though.

This sort of post turns on the economist in me, so I apologize in advance.

In a lot of ways, in-game gold is perfect money: not counterfeitable, infinitely transportable, divisible, fungible, and durable.  It does suffer from a few fatal flaws, to wit: it's entirely controlled by whoever adminstrates and codes the game, so its value is completely based on overall trust of that company.  Not only that, but the company's prime goal is typically to let people have fun, not create a stable system of exchange, so their goals are not exactly aligned with more serious uses for money.

Another flaw is that you can't directly exchange it for goods outside the world, for example the aforementioned FOOD. So there goes any possible argument of actual value (edit: leaving aside RMT)

However, one thing that occurs to me is: why do people use it as the standard?  If gold farming got so out of control that money had no value and everything was ridiculously expensive, would people start trading using things that are like money but not?  It would have to be something everyone agrees is valuable, like health potions.  Health potions are even bad because players can make them.

One reason people don't do that is that you can't trade via the AH with health potions.  You also can't buy things from NPCs (like mounts) with them.

[Numtini]

Well that actually happened in AC, the pyreal was so devalued that people traded in barter form.

[Lantyssa]

SoJ

[Furiously]

Yheska.

[SansWetware]

However, one thing that occurs to me is: why do people use it as the standard?  If gold farming got so out of control that money had no value and everything was ridiculously expensive, would people start trading using things that are like money but not?  It would have to be something everyone agrees is valuable, like health potions.  Health potions are even bad because players can make them.

One reason people don't do that is that you can't trade via the AH with health potions.  You also can't buy things from NPCs (like mounts) with them.

They use it as the standard because there is not a real means to create another standard that is not overly complicated.  Currency was created over a really long (that's me being scientific) time.  Currency in games exists right away and is given to us as the standard to use - complete with easy ways to use that standard.  To barter is to make it MORE complicated.  Hell - bartering in most games is a nervous experience.

"Oh god I hope this guy doesn't know the item screen switcharoo trick - but this deal is so sweet!"

[sam, an eggplant]

Yheska.

As far as I know, ykeshas where never used as barter material. Everquest gold was never sufficiently devalued that the players moved to a barter system. Or were you just being cute?

Add me to the list of people that never bought anything out of the game. I did sell my EQ accounts whole when I quit, got over $5k.

[Calantus]

I've never bought anything from a third party, though I've thrown about $200 at transfering characters around in WoW. The only time I've ever sold anything was my old UO account to someone I knew then. I'll never do it again unless offered quite a lot, a couple hundred is enough to make me part with an old account. Never know when you might want to come back and regret selling it like I did that old UO account.

[Azazel]

I think the influx of gold with the new daily-repeatable quests is in part to fuck up the gold sellers and their ilk. Why pay cash for this stuff when you can make 10-12 gold x10 per day for a bunch of simple quests?

[Merusk]

I think the influx of gold with the new daily-repeatable quests is in part to fuck up the gold sellers and their ilk. Why pay cash for this stuff when you can make 10-12 gold x10 per day for a bunch of simple quests?

Yeah, I'm making a ton of gold right now working on Netherwing faction and came to the same conclusion.  Just doing 6 repeatables a day I'm making about 120g in 2 hours.  I borrowed 2k from my wife to buy my epic flyer last Wednesday and I'm already up at 1400 gold again.  If I were to sell my greens rather than ship them to my Enchanter for DE/ Skillups I'd be even farther ahead.  Very nice.

[damijin]

I think the influx of gold with the new daily-repeatable quests is in part to fuck up the gold sellers and their ilk. Why pay cash for this stuff when you can make 10-12 gold x10 per day for a bunch of simple quests?

For some reason, as totally logical as that is, I suspect it just provides some farmers with a much, much, larger quantity of gold to service even more people who are too lazy to do even the simplest of tasks.

On the plus side, things like that tend to fuck up the gold market so bad that a lot of farmers will have their profits turned to shit and go look for other games with a more favorable economy for farming.

[Numtini]

We'll find out if I'm right, Turbine is banning gold buyers in LOTRO.

[palmer_eldritch]

We'll find out if I'm right, Turbine is banning gold buyers in LOTRO.

Incidentally, the goldsellers in LotR started with spam tells and in-game mails, rather than spamming the chat channels. Come to think of it, goldsellers in WoW have been doing that for ages too. I'm not sure I buy this theory that a "golden age" ever existed when the goldsellers happily spammed chat in Ironforge and refrained from sending annoying tells and mails.

[CmdrSlack]

We'll find out if I'm right, Turbine is banning gold buyers in LOTRO.

Incidentally, the goldsellers in LotR started with spam tells and in-game mails, rather than spamming the chat channels. Come to think of it, goldsellers in WoW have been doing that for ages too. I'm not sure I buy this theory that a "golden age" ever existed when the goldsellers happily spammed chat in Ironforge and refrained from sending annoying tells and mails.

Nah, the golden days were when this shit was on eBay and there was no in-game spam at all.

[Furiously]

Yheska.

As far as I know, ykeshas where never used as barter material. Everquest gold was never sufficiently devalued that the players moved to a barter system. Or were you just being cute?

Add me to the list of people that never bought anything out of the game. I did sell my EQ accounts whole when I quit, got over $5k.

Really? I recall using them to trade just before Kunark came out. Forget how many of them I traded for a COF.

[Jayce]

We'll find out if I'm right, Turbine is banning gold buyers in LOTRO.

Incidentally, the goldsellers in LotR started with spam tells and in-game mails, rather than spamming the chat channels. Come to think of it, goldsellers in WoW have been doing that for ages too. I'm not sure I buy this theory that a "golden age" ever existed when the goldsellers happily spammed chat in Ironforge and refrained from sending annoying tells and mails.

Nah, the golden days were when this shit was on eBay and there was no in-game spam at all.

I recall receiving in-game mail spams occasionally as far back as I can remember.  That of course has the limiting factor of costing a few copper per letter, but the advantage that an interested buyer can hang on to the mail rather than having to copy down info out of a tell.

[CmdrSlack]

There was no in-game mail in EQ...maybe now, but not back then.

[Murgos]

Yheska.

As far as I know, ykeshas where never used as barter material. Everquest gold was never sufficiently devalued that the players moved to a barter system. Or were you just being cute?

Add me to the list of people that never bought anything out of the game. I did sell my EQ accounts whole when I quit, got over $5k.

Really? I recall using them to trade just before Kunark came out. Forget how many of them I traded for a COF.

Ykeshas were totally used for barter material.  I remember doing deals for ykeshas several times.  Kunark dropped the bottom out of the ykesha market but even for months after Kunark launched they were still pretty standard items for mid-40's types.

[Stephen Zepp]

There's just no value to me in in-game currency.  There's always an easy way to make it and it never stops appearing out of the blue.  It's infinite. 

I do see a problem with a game that does not scale gold earned appropriately with what a player will realistically be spending.  Not enough of a problem to spend even more money to get ahead of the curve, though.

This sort of post turns on the economist in me, so I apologize in advance.

In a lot of ways, in-game gold is perfect money: not counterfeitable, infinitely transportable, divisible, fungible, and durable.  It does suffer from a few fatal flaws, to wit: it's entirely controlled by whoever adminstrates and codes the game, so its value is completely based on overall trust of that company.  Not only that, but the company's prime goal is typically to let people have fun, not create a stable system of exchange, so their goals are not exactly aligned with more serious uses for money.

Another flaw is that you can't directly exchange it for goods outside the world, for example the aforementioned FOOD. So there goes any possible argument of actual value (edit: leaving aside RMT)

However, one thing that occurs to me is: why do people use it as the standard?  If gold farming got so out of control that money had no value and everything was ridiculously expensive, would people start trading using things that are like money but not?  It would have to be something everyone agrees is valuable, like health potions.  Health potions are even bad because players can make them.

One reason people don't do that is that you can't trade via the AH with health potions.  You also can't buy things from NPCs (like mounts) with them.

You missed a really big fundamental flaw though--the currency source is infinite (spawns), and the influx rate to the money pool (M1? or is that M2--been a LONG time) is controlled by the consumers of said money pool.

Back when I was working with a team to design an MMO focused entirely on RMT (we elected to discontinue since back then their was too much investor risk since none of the laws were even close to being solidified), our core concept was that the total money pool for an entire shard was fixed at the start of the shard. Theoretically, years and years down the road, no more resource consumables would be available, and no more currency would "spawn"--the only way to get currency was a transfer.

We did design a mechanism to inject additional value into a shard's economy by RMT--effectively buying an additional amount of value that was injected to the value pool of the shard. The root idea was that at any time a player could either "cash in" or "cash out" directly from the shard itself, making it effectively a poker casino where the players played with their own money against each other, and the "house" simply took a rake from the transactions.

[Murgos]

One, not immediately apparent, result of mudflation in modern MMO's is that the game becomes easier for new players over time.  I'm guessing here but I bet that helps build and maintain a 'long tail' of keeping old subscribers in game through alts.

[Jayce]

You missed a really big fundamental flaw though--the currency source is infinite (spawns), and the influx rate to the money pool (M1? or is that M2--been a LONG time) is controlled by the consumers of said money pool.

I don't have the experience of having designed any RMT-based (or other) MMOGs, but with that caveat, I'd disagree to some extent with this statement.

I disagree that the currency source is any less infinite in the real world, where governments increase the money pool as the economy grows.  Both are potentially infinite but in practical terms controlled by the gate mechanism (gov't in RL, number of players in VL).  As players quit (assuming some don't give away their stuff) they remove their accumulated goods and cash from the pool, acting as a sink on the overall cash supply. When population reaches a plateau, the cash supply should also reach a plateau, especially if you put money sinks in the game to balance people's income versus their spend (repair costs, purchase of stuff from NPCs, etc)

I agree that the influx is controlled by the consumers (said players) but there is a practical limit on how fast it comes in (leaving aside duping and other cheats) based on how many players and how much they farm.

[Numtini]

Puzzle Pirates got the whole RMT thing right. Almost no affect on gameplay, but they've sold a million dubloons.

[Phred]

Yheska.

As far as I know, ykeshas where never used as barter material. Everquest gold was never sufficiently devalued that the players moved to a barter system. Or were you just being cute?

Add me to the list of people that never bought anything out of the game. I did sell my EQ accounts whole when I quit, got over $5k.

Really? I recall using them to trade just before Kunark came out. Forget how many of them I traded for a COF.

On some servers I believe they'd mostly moved to a barter economy pre-kunark, late-release era but for a different reason. The argument went that there was nothing you could buy with gold so who needed it. This was before gold/plat selling really caught on and gave even the average player visions of sugar plums, when only a tiny number of people were selling gold on e-bay.

[Hutch]

Peons has a new trick. I got invited to a group tonight by "fkjdkcjmkrjs".
That's not the exact spelling, but you get the point.

I declined the group invite, and did a /who on them instead.
My level 25 hunter, in Tarren Mill, was being invited to a group by a level 1 Tauren in Mulgore.

I speculate that the gold spam would have come in a party tell, instead of a whisper.
Had I decided to join the group, that is.

So, instead of /whisper gold spam, it's going to be party-invite spam. Time for the 3rd-party community to write a new plugin   

[HaemishM]

Yeah, I've gotten a random invite to a party before, and when I joined, there was a shitton of folks in a set of raid groups. I think there was gold spam before I figured it out, at which point I and a bunch of others dropped it. I didn't notice what level the invite was from.

That's going to be a shitton more annoying than tell spam.

[Chimpy]

Yeah, I've gotten a random invite to a party before, and when I joined, there was a shitton of folks in a set of raid groups. I think there was gold spam before I figured it out, at which point I and a bunch of others dropped it. I didn't notice what level the invite was from.

That's going to be a shitton more annoying than tell spam.

Just get a mod that auto-denys group invites. Hell it is probably in the standard UI now.

Then turn it off if you need to be invited to a party. Problem solved.

[Murgos]

EQ2 has an auto-deny group invites (and duels) option.  I'm sure WoW probably has it too, somewhere.  The hassle will be in having to turn it off when you DO want to join a group.

[Reg]

So next patch level 1 trial characters will lose the ability to create groups I guess.

[Tmon]

Probably not letting trial accounts send invites to people more than 5 levels higher would do it.

[Numtini]

For EQ2, force all the trial accounts onto exchange servers.

[Hlk]

Some years back it would be hard to believe that peple actually will not go to work on Monday morning, instead they will log onto a PC and farm money that don't exist and sell it afterwards .. and that lawyers will get jobs for cases like that.

But hey, spammers and gold sellers we hate, hate, hate! What they do to game economy is one thing, how they bother people other, for both things they should be slapped and we should use all ways to do it. If Bliz sues them, then It's only positive and I hope they are more than successful.

[ajax34i]

More than successful?  I don't know, that implies that they completely ruin and wipe out the spammers and then go on and somehow affect the industry extra and on top of that.  Maybe it becomes a social stigma to sell gold or whatever.  Or a crime.  Worldwide.

Nah.

[Stephen Zepp]

You missed a really big fundamental flaw though--the currency source is infinite (spawns), and the influx rate to the money pool (M1? or is that M2--been a LONG time) is controlled by the consumers of said money pool.

I don't have the experience of having designed any RMT-based (or other) MMOGs, but with that caveat, I'd disagree to some extent with this statement.

I disagree that the currency source is any less infinite in the real world, where governments increase the money pool as the economy grows.  Both are potentially infinite but in practical terms controlled by the gate mechanism (gov't in RL, number of players in VL).  As players quit (assuming some don't give away their stuff) they remove their accumulated goods and cash from the pool, acting as a sink on the overall cash supply. When population reaches a plateau, the cash supply should also reach a plateau, especially if you put money sinks in the game to balance people's income versus their spend (repair costs, purchase of stuff from NPCs, etc)

I agree that the influx is controlled by the consumers (said players) but there is a practical limit on how fast it comes in (leaving aside duping and other cheats) based on how many players and how much they farm.

I'll give you that point in a way--but it's leaving the money pool completely under semi-random influence instead of direct, authoritative (and semi-informed) control like most modern economies is flirting with disaster, and when you're talking real money value in the virtual economy, that's very dangerous.

I read an article somewhere (have NO idea where) that the only real way to balance a mudconomy is to have wells (outflow) that are dynamic enough to adjust against the influx--basically to keep things relatively neutral. Without things like repair costs, mandatory vendor bought potions, etc, etc, all the money pool can do is go up, inflating the prices of everything in the mudconomy, and/or devaluing items due to farmed sources (if there are 5 swords of uberness in the game, they are worth xxx. Once there are 5000, they aren't worth anything unless demand goes up by the same amount).

[Xanthippe]

Peons has a new trick. I got invited to a group tonight by "fkjdkcjmkrjs".
That's not the exact spelling, but you get the point.

I declined the group invite, and did a /who on them instead.
My level 25 hunter, in Tarren Mill, was being invited to a group by a level 1 Tauren in Mulgore.

I speculate that the gold spam would have come in a party tell, instead of a whisper.
Had I decided to join the group, that is.

So, instead of /whisper gold spam, it's going to be party-invite spam. Time for the 3rd-party community to write a new plugin   

Blizzard has added this really nifty new feature.  When you right click on a person's name, you can select "Report Spam" as one of the options.

So, join the groups, then you can right click the person's portrait and report them very easily with only one step.  Then drop group, go on with life.