IGE's latest acquisition: Allakhazam

[WindupAtheist]

But I am not YOU.

I'd get back to you on this, but as soon as my check to Schild clears, this will be WindupNutsack's House of Fursex and Jedi Trammel Leetness, and I have to get ready.  Bruce will be a mod.

[Signe]

At least it wasn't SirBruced.

[HaemishM]

Where do you find those wonderful emoticons?

[Signe]

It's a deep dark secret that I'll carry to my grave.  (or you could just follow my linky-fu: http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/)

[Broughden]

How much are these guys actually getting for selling their sites?

More than they ever should have.

Okay so why not go with the suggested idea? Create some fan forum/info sites for upcoming games, generate lots of initial posters and maybe some cash with banner ads, and then finally sell the thing to IGE or the like for a pile of cash?

ie intentionally create sites in order to sell them.

[Tale]

Gold in WoW is relatively hard for the average player to accumulate. STFU now if you are some wanker who wants to tell me how fast you can accumulate gold. Gold in WoW really is hard for normal people to accumulate in the hundreds, and you are not normal, so please, step back from the keyboard.

But there is never a shortage of RMT gold. A near-infinite supply of it is generated 24/7 for RMT. So on the auction house, Axe of Pwn can sell for 700 gold because you can get 700g for a few bucks if you are willing to break the rules of the game. Meanwhile, the average player staying within the rules will take weeks or months of effort to accumulate 700g. But you see, Axe of Pwn isn't worth the value of 700g in fair play effort. If the supply of gold from RMT was not entering the game, Axe of Pwn would perhaps cost 300g as a reflection of effort versus rarity. At least in WoW, I am certain RMT hurts legitimate players. If the solution is to find something to sell to the RMT buyers and live off their spending, then that's also negative: they should not exist, so normal players should not have to compensate for their presence in the economy. All up, it makes life harder for a legitimate player.

Then there is the RMT marketing irritation. Typing /ignore every time it happens is not a solution. In WoW, you get whispers/tells, mail and group invitations from gold-sellers. They shout it in the cities, they spam it in the trade and general chat channels. Their farmers take the spawns you need for legitimate play. It's a major inconvenience to have this going on when you are trying to play fair.

Don't give me that tired excuse: "poor design led to this". Whether all this is the fault of RMTers or game design flaws is irrelevant to the point: RMT is a bad thing in games where it is against the rules. People who practise RMT (buyers and sellers) in games where it is not permitted are hated by normal players because they damage the game. They have a negative impact on the game for those who are playing by the rules. They made the decision to engage in this activity - they're not absolved by poor design, even if good design would fix it.

So drop this "RMT is OK with me, it's just IGE that's bad" bullshit, because I've had enough of your trendy fiction. It's false. In games where it's not allowed, RMT users are cheats and RMT suppliers are profiting from corruption, it's that simple. The criminal links of those involved are no co-incidence. And it affects all of us. And they buy out our beloved websites and fuck them up. And they love buggering young boys.

[Trippy]

How much are these guys actually getting for selling their sites?

More than they ever should have.

Okay so why not go with the suggested idea? Create some fan forum/info sites for upcoming games, generate lots of initial posters and maybe some cash with banner ads, and then finally sell the thing to IGE or the like for a pile of cash?

ie intentionally create sites in order to sell them.

That works assuming you can get enough of the right traffic.

[Broughden]

How much are these guys actually getting for selling their sites?

More than they ever should have.

Okay so why not go with the suggested idea? Create some fan forum/info sites for upcoming games, generate lots of initial posters and maybe some cash with banner ads, and then finally sell the thing to IGE or the like for a pile of cash?

ie intentionally create sites in order to sell them.

That works assuming you can get enough of the right traffic.

Whats the cost and process associated with getting a site listed with Google?
We would have to look at initial investment versus (servers, bandwidth, software lisencing, etc.) versus potential sale price (what other similar sites have sold for).
But if these sites are getting millions, or heck even a couple hundred thousand then return on investment is a potential windfall. Akin to churning fixer uppers in real estate.

[Trippy]

Whats the cost and process associated with getting a site listed with Google?

Depends on how good you are at SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It could be anywhere from free if you have enough other sites you can cross link into your new site or hundreds to thousands of dollars to pay for advertising if you can't finagle your site to the top of the search results.

We would have to look at initial investment versus (servers, bandwidth, software lisencing, etc.) versus potential sale price (what other similar sites have sold for).
But if these sites are getting millions, or heck even a couple hundred thousand then return on investment is a potential windfall. Akin to churning fixer uppers in real estate.
That works assuming you can get enough of the right traffic.

The infrastructure costs are pretty minimal -- like $100 - $200 a month for a dedicated server with unlimited or near unlimited bandwidth. The trick is to attract the right traffic and keep them coming back. If you look at the list of OGaming Affliates on the www.ogaming.com site you can see that they targeted very specific sites for purchase.

[Tale]

I hadn't seen this eight-page article on DEN before (Brock Pierce's dramatically failed pre-IGE company).

It includes details of the child sex abuse suit against the three DEN directors (Pierce, Shackley and Collins-Rector, who had all fled to Spain). Unfortunately it doesn't go into detail on the claims against Brock Pierce, just his two housemates.

If this story has a tragic figure, it's Daniel S. Like any red-blooded California teen, Daniel S. had movie-star dreams. Though he lived in the determinedly un-chic town of Upland, some 30 miles east of Los Angeles, Daniel had an agent, one who saw promise in his lean, kid-next-door looks. One day he sent him to audition at DEN's hip, postmodern studios, located in an old commercial space on Broadway in Santa Monica. DEN was assembling the cast for a series called Chad's World, about a gay teenager coming to terms with his sexuality, and Daniel's agent thought his gangly, all-American client would be a perfect fit for a supporting role in what was presented to him as a sensitive coming-of-age story.

When Daniel got the part, it was a breakthrough for him, one that seemed like the first step toward a brilliant career. Instead, it became a step into the Boogie Nights fantasy of a group of wanna-be Hollywood players.

... [note: Brock Pierce was the Producer for Chad's world]

According to the complaint, Daniel was fondled by Collins-Rector, then forced to perform sex with him and Shackley. Daniel claims, too, that he was put on a steady diet of Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, Percocet, Ecstasy, pot, and other drugs to keep him subdued and malleable. "He was heavily drugged," Brandt says, "to the point where he couldn't make his own decisions."

Daniel's complaint says that Collins-Rector hired private jets and took Daniel and Shackley to Puerto Rico, Florida, Hawaii, Las Vegas, and New York. Other young boys allegedly filled the hotel suites that Collins-Rector rented. The complaint also charges that limos were sent to Daniel's home to fetch him to Encino, where Collins-Rector encouraged him to spend all of his Friday nights, and that for about a year Collins-Rector and Shackley "engaged in various forms of sexual abuse on plaintiff, including fellatio and sodomy."

Daniel says that after he eventually had sex with Collins-Rector, he was passed along to Shackley. The two bought him Versace suits on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills; they made cars available to him.

"This kid isn't even gay," Brandt says. "I don't know if he'd even kissed a girl before he met these people. He didn't want this."

[Broughden]

I hadn't seen this eight-page article on DEN before (Brock Pierce's dramatically failed pre-IGE company).

It includes details of the child sex abuse suit against the three DEN directors (Pierce, Shackley and Collins-Rector, who had all fled to Spain). Unfortunately it doesn't go into detail on the claims against Brock Pierce, just his two housemates.

I hadnt seen that before either. That is disturbing.

[schild]

You all should look up some articles chasing Brock through Europe and Asia as he eventually got to Hong Kong. Either bad luck follows him or he has hooves for feet.

[Broughden]

You all should look up some articles chasing Brock through Europe and Asia as he eventually got to Hong Kong. Either bad luck follows him or he has hooves for feet.

He was a child star.....just look at what happened to the stars from Different Strokes.
Not that I wouldnt shoot the sick fuck on site along with the other two.

Just found this-
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2120349/dotcom-founders-spanish-jail

"The men fled to Spain where they were arrested by Spanish police who found "enormous amounts of child porn" at their villa."

[Sairon]

There's probably legal problems with the following but what would prevent this:

A dude employed by blizzard buys 100g @ let say $14 from IGE. When the trade is to happen, the delivery guy can easily be seen and banned. Track who farmed the gold ( a lvl 60 account ), and ban that one too. Do this for a few months and I don't see how IGE could still be making profit. This would be good buis for blizzard too, as IGE would have to constantly buy new boxes to make up for the lost ones.

[Xanthippe]

What are the alternatives to Thottbot and Allakhazam for WoW?

[Strazos]

If I use thottbot, but never clink on the ads, am I really supporting anyone?

[Threash]

There's probably legal problems with the following but what would prevent this:

A dude employed by blizzard buys 100g @ let say $14 from IGE. When the trade is to happen, the delivery guy can easily be seen and banned. Track who farmed the gold ( a lvl 60 account ), and ban that one too. Do this for a few months and I don't see how IGE could still be making profit. This would be good buis for blizzard too, as IGE would have to constantly buy new boxes to make up for the lost ones.

Probably the fact that theres 150+ servers in america alone and hundreds of farmers on every single one of them, going through all that trouble to ban a few of them wouldn't really help much.  What they do now is ban the farmers who use teleport exploits to farm the king in DM north.

[Velorath]

Gold in WoW is relatively hard for the average player to accumulate. STFU now if you are some wanker who wants to tell me how fast you can accumulate gold. Gold in WoW really is hard for normal people to accumulate in the hundreds, and you are not normal, so please, step back from the keyboard.

I don't know why of all the examples you could use that you'd pick WoW.  It's not hard for a player to accumulate gold, and the game is so easy you can get to level 60 without buying uber shit off the AH anyway.

[Threash]

Gold in WoW is relatively hard for the average player to accumulate. STFU now if you are some wanker who wants to tell me how fast you can accumulate gold. Gold in WoW really is hard for normal people to accumulate in the hundreds, and you are not normal, so please, step back from the keyboard.

I don't know why of all the examples you could use that you'd pick WoW.  It's not hard for a player to accumulate gold, and the game is so easy you can get to level 60 without buying uber shit off the AH anyway.

Not only that but the world drops and tradeskill items you could buy are pretty much crap at this point.  The only major purchase for someone in wow is their epic mount.

[Sairon]

There's probably legal problems with the following but what would prevent this:

A dude employed by blizzard buys 100g @ let say $14 from IGE. When the trade is to happen, the delivery guy can easily be seen and banned. Track who farmed the gold ( a lvl 60 account ), and ban that one too. Do this for a few months and I don't see how IGE could still be making profit. This would be good buis for blizzard too, as IGE would have to constantly buy new boxes to make up for the lost ones.

Probably the fact that theres 150+ servers in america alone and hundreds of farmers on every single one of them, going through all that trouble to ban a few of them wouldn't really help much.  What they do now is ban the farmers who use teleport exploits to farm the king in DM north.

Well buying the smallest chunks of gold on all 150 servers from some IGE site should be rather fast. I don't know how this work in detail, but I guess they have som kind of convenient web shop, a matter of hours perhaps. Rumor has it that the transaction is handled fairly fast, so lets say 1 employee from blizzard would be able to make 30 transactions each day. I believe the guy delivering the gold is separate from the one who farms them, so that means 2 deleted accounts / transaction, this is of course if they track gold transactions in game, which I would believe they do. I would guess 1 employee working full time would be able to greatly cripple IGE, perhaps to the point where they're not making profits anymore.

[sarius]

There's probably legal problems with the following but what would prevent this:

A dude employed by blizzard buys 100g @ let say $14 from IGE. When the trade is to happen, the delivery guy can easily be seen and banned. Track who farmed the gold ( a lvl 60 account ), and ban that one too. Do this for a few months and I don't see how IGE could still be making profit. This would be good buis for blizzard too, as IGE would have to constantly buy new boxes to make up for the lost ones.

Probably the fact that theres 150+ servers in america alone and hundreds of farmers on every single one of them, going through all that trouble to ban a few of them wouldn't really help much.  What they do now is ban the farmers who use teleport exploits to farm the king in DM north.

Well buying the smallest chunks of gold on all 150 servers from some IGE site should be rather fast. I don't know how this work in detail, but I guess they have som kind of convenient web shop, a matter of hours perhaps. Rumor has it that the transaction is handled fairly fast, so lets say 1 employee from blizzard would be able to make 30 transactions each day. I believe the guy delivering the gold is separate from the one who farms them, so that means 2 deleted accounts / transaction, this is of course if they track gold transactions in game, which I would believe they do. I would guess 1 employee working full time would be able to greatly cripple IGE, perhaps to the point where they're not making profits anymore.

It's been a while, so pardon any wrong concepts here from WoW.  But, I have an alchemist reach pretty high (oh the nights spent getting fishing up to freaking 300) and at that level I was trading lots of gold regularly.  Also, in other games where ventrilo is used money changes hands simply to conclude a deal that may have completely be originated on ventrilo vice the game.  This was particularly true in SWG.  How do you account for these circumstances?  I would classify these as normal transactions but they could reflect the same activity of a seller.

[Sairon]

There's probably legal problems with the following but what would prevent this:

A dude employed by blizzard buys 100g @ let say $14 from IGE. When the trade is to happen, the delivery guy can easily be seen and banned. Track who farmed the gold ( a lvl 60 account ), and ban that one too. Do this for a few months and I don't see how IGE could still be making profit. This would be good buis for blizzard too, as IGE would have to constantly buy new boxes to make up for the lost ones.

Probably the fact that theres 150+ servers in america alone and hundreds of farmers on every single one of them, going through all that trouble to ban a few of them wouldn't really help much.  What they do now is ban the farmers who use teleport exploits to farm the king in DM north.

Well buying the smallest chunks of gold on all 150 servers from some IGE site should be rather fast. I don't know how this work in detail, but I guess they have som kind of convenient web shop, a matter of hours perhaps. Rumor has it that the transaction is handled fairly fast, so lets say 1 employee from blizzard would be able to make 30 transactions each day. I believe the guy delivering the gold is separate from the one who farms them, so that means 2 deleted accounts / transaction, this is of course if they track gold transactions in game, which I would believe they do. I would guess 1 employee working full time would be able to greatly cripple IGE, perhaps to the point where they're not making profits anymore.

It's been a while, so pardon any wrong concepts here from WoW.  But, I have an alchemist reach pretty high (oh the nights spent getting fishing up to freaking 300) and at that level I was trading lots of gold regularly.  Also, in other games where ventrilo is used money changes hands simply to conclude a deal that may have completely be originated on ventrilo vice the game.  This was particularly true in SWG.  How do you account for these circumstances?  I would classify these as normal transactions but they could reflect the same activity of a seller.

What you know for certain is that the guy who does the transaction is someone who is representing IGE. In other words, regular players won't donate cash to this dude, the guys delivering gold to this guy is the farmers. I guess they could somehow try to launder the gold through the AH and try to decriminalize the farmers, but since at your average AH there's tons of people sitting and looking for bargins this would most likely be impossible. Your alchemy char trading gold won't get caught because the deals you perform doesn't mean IGE gains gold since they don't earn any value. This could perhaps be a problem if IGE earns their gold through playing the AH Game_tm and try to accumulate their gold through legit players, something which they're most likely not doing. The reason for why someone at blizzard would pose as a buyer is because then there wouldn't be any doubt about the nature of the transactions.

[HaemishM]

How much are these guys actually getting for selling their sites?

More than they ever should have.

Okay so why not go with the suggested idea? Create some fan forum/info sites for upcoming games, generate lots of initial posters and maybe some cash with banner ads, and then finally sell the thing to IGE or the like for a pile of cash?

ie intentionally create sites in order to sell them.

That works assuming you can get enough of the right traffic.

Whats the cost and process associated with getting a site listed with Google?

Actually getting a site to be googled is easy. Getting it into the rankings enough to make search engine marketing worth enough to get enough people coming to your site to make it worthwile to IGE? Not so easy, and requires constant massaging.

[Nebu]

The guy that runs Allakhazam has been providing players for multiple games with information for years.  I remember it being one of the first sites I went to when I played EQ after release. 

Personally, I'm happy to see the guy make money on the endeavor. He provided a valuable service to many gamers and that has value. 

[shiznitz]

The guy that runs Allakhazam has been providing players for multiple games with information for years.  I remember it being one of the first sites I went to when I played EQ after release. 

Personally, I'm happy to see the guy make money on the endeavor. He provided a valuable service to many gamers and that has value. 

Every site of his other than EQ1 has been piss poor. Just like every Stratics site other than UO's is piss poor. Fan sites need real fans to run them well and no one can multi-fan sufficiently to run more than one.

[Nebu]

Every site of his other than EQ1 has been piss poor. Just like every Stratics site other than UO's is piss poor. Fan sites need real fans to run them well and no one can multi-fan sufficiently to run more than one.

So what's your point?  Whether the site meets your standards or not is irrelevant.  Someone saw value in it and made him an offer.

[Chenghiz]

Allakhazam was pretty much the only alternative to Thottbot, which has a ridiculously messy database. Loaded a bit slower but was hardly bad.

[Xanthippe]

It's not that difficult to build a db template and write a web front end for the db.  The users provide the content for the db.  Where are all the college kids who need to do senior projects in CS?  Oh wait, they don't have the cash for the db software or the server. But surely some enterprising youngster will realize the profitability here...

[Trippy]

MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, Oracle Express et al are all free DBs. And shared hosting with DB access starts at like $10 a month.

[Sairon]

Me and my bud made a totaly home brewn MMORPG community site. Meta news. News system with diffrent levels where ordinary members can submit to specific areas. A complete system for publishing and creation of reviews. User grinding based on 3 diffrent criterias ( R G B ) which decides the color of peoples user name, complete white naturaly being the highest. Character database, only a basic one though, not custom made for every game. A fairly advanced administrator system. It's own integrated forum software supporting the most common features, naturaly not as complete as the one used here for example. Information database for L2, a lot better than the one on l2orphus imo, since you can comment entries as on thottbot and alla. Static content generation, meaning the pages are always served fast. Messaging system for sending messages to other members on the site. There was also a lot of experimental stuff which got trashed a long the way. Created a basic ebayish system where people could trade in game wares for in game currency, pretty wasted now though that auction house is becoming more common in game.

When it was all pretty much finnished there was only one problem, we were to lazy to launch and run it 

[shiznitz]

Every site of his other than EQ1 has been piss poor. Just like every Stratics site other than UO's is piss poor. Fan sites need real fans to run them well and no one can multi-fan sufficiently to run more than one.

So what's your point?  Whether the site meets your standards or not is irrelevant.  Someone saw value in it and made him an offer.

Just that I disagreed with your praise.

[Soln]

does IGE etc. own Cosmos.org as well?  They have Thottbot embedded in their package and Thottbot has Cosmos listed off its side nav.  Are they co-owned?

[Righ]

Cosmos has long been part of the IGE-Thott thing. Every time you ran their little application on your computer, you were playing with fire. IGE have been paying Allakhazam (via shell) since November 2005, so every time you ran their little application since then you were playing with fire.

In 2002, Netcraft, an Internet trends monitoring company, started noticing phishing attacks growing against online games. It strikes me as odd that over the years more of those phishing attacks against online games have originated from Spain, then China. It also strikes me as odd that there are computer worms out there that target various gold selling sites, but none that I know of that target another one...

As the money behind these "secondary market" sites grows, there will likely be growing interest in some of the computer crime associated with them from certain US Federal and international law enforcement agencies. You can come to your own conclusions about who is behind this stuff, and why - I have no way of knowing if its just plain stupidity by criminals in the obvious place or if somebody else is trying to make said place look bad. Perhaps they are just rich businesses being targetted by unrelated criminals, but it is certainly interesting why some gain more attention than others. But the long arm of the law is going to feel a collar at some point. No doubt about it - there's too much money involved.