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The Lawbringer: Why you'll never buy gold from Blizzard
Welcome to The Lawbringer, WoW.com's weekly examination of the intersection of law and the World of Warcraft. Amy is being attacked by the Bar Monster, so there's a new, temporary sheriff in town. Greetings, Lawbringer readers! As you'll soon notice, I am not Amy. Amy is currently studying for the bar and I've been asked to fill in for a bit while she studies for that hellish exam. I've been there -- it's a rough road. Her readers, however, are in good hands. So, please excuse me while I do my best to fill in. After I wrote my feelings about the Celestial Steed and heard many awesome responses, I wanted to talk a little bit more about buying and selling merchandise parallel to the World of Warcraft.
New sci-fi novel features gold farmer protagonists
Ever wanted to read about the exploits of young gold farmers toiling away in Asian sweat shops and ruining/enabling your MMORPG experience? Science fiction author and Boing Boing founder Cory Doctorow thinks you might, and has devoted his newest novel to fleshing out the torrid existence of a group of young grinders who decide to organize. When we say organize, we don't mean making lists or using spreadsheets to farm at the optimum rate, but rather, organizing as in worker's unions. Doctorow has made an audio excerpt of the novel, titled For the Win, available on his web site. He calls the book a spiritual successor to his Anda's Game short story, and has targeted it specifically to a young adult audience. For the Win debuts on May 11 and will be freely available online under the Creative Commons license.
The Lawbringer: Legal gold sales? Not a Blizzard's chance in Hell
Welcome to The Lawbringer, wow.com's weekly feature on the intersection between World of Warcraft and the Law. I am a third year law student acting as your crossing guard and trying not to get run over myself. As an introduction to our promised discussion on gold farming, I wanted to address an idea that's been circulating in the WoW blogosphere. There has been some talk that Blizzard could solve the problem of gold farming and hacked accounts in one fell swoop by simply selling the gold themselves. It's an attractive idea on its face, as some feel as though Blizzard's current ban on Real Money Transaction for gold ("RMT") is nothing but an ill advised Prohibition. Permit people to buy gold through Blizzard, the argument goes, and the keyloggers, site spoofers, hackers, and spammers will go back to the rock from under which they came, just like the Mafia disappeared after alcohol sales were permitted in 1933. Oh wait... The obvious problems have been pointed out before, including: rich brats will have more advantages over folks with jobs and bills; inflation will cause Azeroth to resemble Zimbabwe, the Weimar Republic, or -- God forbid -- Norrath; players will be forced to pay up to stay competitive; WoW-clone MMOs will follow Blizzard's lead, leaving players with few refuges from RMT markets; Blizzard devs will be "encouraged" to design the game around acquiring and spending more gold; players who can't remember website names will still think "www.l3g!t-w0rlduvw0wcr@ft-g0ld.c0m" is Blizzard's website and download keyloggers, etc. Some don't believe this parade of horribles is enough to discourage Blizzard from creating this quixotic market. To the doubters, let me add some legal issues that would affect Blizzard and players, namely: property rights, taxation, and investment advice. Any of that sound like improvements to you?
The Queue: Earthquake bonanza
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today we're going to skip the wacky shenanigans that usually plague the intros to the Queue. Instead, I'm going to blow your minds with the news that Chile's recent earthquake was large enough that it has potentially moved the Earth's axis and an Earth day is now shorter because of it. dav103id asked... "When running Shadowfang Keep during Love is in the Air, did anyone else notice Arugal on the other side of the courthouse gate when you first enter the instance? Has he always been there at that location or was he added for the Love is in the Air boss event?"
The lesser of two evils is still evil
There are a lot of choices we face where we don't so much pick a good option as we pick the option that's least negative. Most people would argue that going to work is a better choice than faking illness and calling out, but not really a choice they like. Kill Ten Rats recently posed an interesting question along the same lines: would you rather your game have gold farmers or cheaters? As the full piece argues, gold farmers are the greater evil to the companies running the game -- they aren't paying customers and they're disrupting the playerbase. But the average player is more likely to run into cheaters than gold farmers, and they're more likely to have a direct negative effect upon the experience of the game. Yet teams tend to be more active in pursuing gold farmers (witness Aion's theatrical destruction of them) because cheaters, to the company, are a slightly lesser problem. Obviously, it's not a binary equation, and some games (such as Final Fantasy XI) place both at an equally high target priority. The fundamental question, however, is an excellent one -- cheating jerks, or RMT bots? There's no good option.
CEO of SecurePlay discusses account security
Anyone even slightly in touch with the MMO community is aware that account security has been an even bigger concern than usual for the past few months. While it's more in the forefront of everyone's mind these days, it's important to remember that this isn't a brand new problem. It's very important for people on both sides of a game -- both the player side and the development side -- to work to make player accounts as safe as possible. Steven Davis, CEO of SecurePlay and the mind behind PlayNoEvil, has been watching the events with interest and spent some time recently talking to us about his take on the situation as well as overall account security. Follow along after the jump and see what he had to say.
GDC China 09: Netease speaks on combating botters
GDC China 2009 is currently in high gear until tomorrow, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about some of the panels today! One of the highlights for the MMO industry was certainly the talk given by Yunfeng Lin, the design director at NetEase, on keeping up with botters and bot programs.NetEase, the operator of the three Westward Journey games, Flyff (and here's the American version of Flyff), and the 100 pound gorilla that is World of Warcraft, is in a very unique position to speak on the troubles botters present to online communities. Westward Journey and World of Warcraft both draw huge numbers of people in China, but that also means they draw a huge number of botters.
The Daily Grind: What do you think of the WoW downtime in China
For the citizens of China, Azeroth is silent. During the transition from The9 to NetEase, the servers have been taken offline leaving millions of people with nothing to do. There are other MMOs, plenty in fact. Some from the west and loads with that distinctly eastern vibe. Yet I'm sure WoW has the vast majority of the Chinese MMO player base suffering major withdrawal and pining for Azeroth. Of course, many will have transferred to Taiwanese servers where Wrath is already live, up to date and there is no downtime but the vast majority will be left waiting.The most contact we have with Chinese players is usually through whispers asking if you want to buy gold, gnome corpses in Ironforge linking to websites, phishing scams and bots. I admit, I've noticed a marked decrease on my own server and the corpses have moved to Stormwind instead. Gold farmers aren't exactly the most positive form of contact and most Chinese players seem to be branded gold farmers regardless (guilty until proven innocent) and treated with disdain. So readers, how have you found the last couple of weeks in Azeroth? What do you think of the forced downtime? How do you think this will effect Chinese players (and I mean players, not farmers or bots)? Do you play on a Chinese realm? Have you migrated and rerolled or are you playing the waiting game?
The Daily Grind: Is there a difference between item malls and gold farmers?
With the recent news of China banning the exchange of virtual currency for real world currency, it brings up the future of gold farming in that country, and possibly the world. While China is certainly not the only country which employs MMO gold farmers, it's often labeled as the biggest offender. There is certainly a difference between trading real world money for virtual money and trading virtual money for real world money, but this new China legislation shows that the legalities of both practices are becoming real issues to lawmakers.So we're curious to know how you feel about the whole process of trading in either direction. It was once a stigma among gamers, but many companies are adopting this practice in a legal way, conducted by item stores and in-game currency exchange. Besides the fact that these item malls are supported by the game studios, do you see a difference? If so, what are they? Discuss!
China bans gold farming
Gold farmers! They're everywhere, right? We get spammed by them, we run into them farming Dire Maul, we put them on ignore. Lazy people with too much disposable income buy gold from them in a show of crass consumerism. Blizzard has done their best to stamp out gold-farming services, but litigation is difficult due to the fact that most of the major gold-farming companies are based in China or other parts of Asia. They've instead opted to try to control and stop gold farmers from being able to complete transactions via other methods. This time, though, it looks like Blizzard may have an unlikely ally in, of all things, the Chinese government. They announced today that the trading of virtual goods for real money is now illegal in China. This ruling reaches farther than just gold farming, though. It also bans the sale of prepaid time cards for MMOs or other online games, as well as numerous technicalities we're sure to hear about in the weeks to come. To give you an idea of how much an economic impact this will have on China, gold farming alone generates nearly one billion dollars a year worldwide, with China's specific numbers growing at a reported rate of 20% per year. It's estimated that 80 to 85 percent of gold farmers reside in China, so this ruling is massive and, to be frank, pretty troubling.From a gamer's perspective, yes, it'll be nice to worry about this kind of service a little less, but from a human perspective this places hundreds of thousands of Chinese people in one of two kinds of serious trouble: the first is financial hardship from the "honest" gold-farming companies that will close down after this ban, and the second is legal issues from the companies who don't close down because they can't afford not to do what they've been doing.It's not my intention to defend gold farming as an industry, because I used to have to deal with its more nefarious effects every day -- compromised accounts stripped of gold and gear, keyloggers, disruptive spam, all of that. But life isn't easy for many Chinese people working jobs like this. Many gold farming centers are much cleaner and safer, in relative terms, than other places in China where one on the bottom rung of the financial ladder might seek work, so while I appreciate the change as only a white first-world male can, I worry about what will happen to the underprivileged working-class Chinese people behind the spam ads and dead gnomes when this law starts getting enforced. NOTE: Comments are now disabled for this post.
MapleStory joins the wild world of Twitter
Twitter needs to be classified as an addictive drug, we think. We seem to be using it, and we just can't stop ourselves anymore. We keep telling ourselves that it's just a simple RSS feed where we're limited in what we can type out to others, yet we keep going back to that internet street corner, begging for just one more tweet...But hey, we've gotten company recently! MapleStory has created their own Twitter page as well, joining the rest of the world in answering the question "what are you doing right now?" If you're interested in the 2D MMO, just drop by their page and sign up for their tweets to stay atop of in-game news. Right now, they seem to be flaunting their recent gold farmer bannings (remind us to never get on MapleStory's badside), as well as talking to some of their fans regarding their MapleStory achievements.Now, if you could excuse us, we feel we need to tweet again.
China's online game market may reach $3.8b in 2009
Market intelligence firm Niko Partners projects that China's online game market will reach $3.8 billion in 2009. That's up a full billion over the $2.75 billion China's online market made last year. As PC penetration expands outside the major cities, Niko estimates the market will hit $8.9 billion by 2013.PC MMOGs made up 77 percent of revenue, with "advanced casual" and casual games making up the difference. The company notes that game console sales are on the rise, despite being banned in the country since 2000. There is no note about the financial impact of gold farming.
Account security mythbusting
So, you might have noticed the increased number of warnings and advice from Blizzard regarding account security lately. They've even popped up in the game itself, as a server message when you first log in. Needless to say, this has caused no dearth of consternation in the WoW community (read: people be trippin'). So, why the sudden notices? Has something changed? Has Blizzard lost their footing in the war against hackers and gold farmers? Is Blizzard in cahoots with them? What's this itchy pentagram-shaped rash I've developed?Now, there's a lot I can't talk about regarding this stuff, and certainly not for any sinister reason. It's a selfish reason, though, that being that I really like not getting sued. I can, however, use my experience and knowledge to bust or confirm some common account security myths. Ready? I'm a trained professional. Don't try this at home!
Arming yourself in the battle against LotRO gold spam
Following the release of their first paid expansion, Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria developer Turbine has released a reminder of their policy concerning gold-selling and real money transactions (RMT). The reminder post was written by Senior Game Master "Nod" on the official forums, and it contains their no-nonsense code of conduct when it comes to dealing with gold selling.The rules themselves are fairly typical of an MMO's anti-RMT stance, yet this post also gives players information on how they can deal with gold sellers, spammers, farmers and gold-selling websites themselves. For example, to report a gold spammer, "right-click their spam in your chat window, click on Chat, then click Report as Gold Spammer. This will automatically block the spammer and report the spam to In-Game Support." If you've found yourself getting annoyed by the onslaught of gold spammers that plagues games as they increase in popularity (like LotRO), this information should help you in your battle.
Warhammer mod automatically reports tell spammers
According to a ticker at the Warhammer Online Herald, Mythic has banned over 4,000 WAR users for gold farming and selling. Now to further the battle, its representatives at the Herald have suggested that players download a third party UI mod called "Spam Me Not" which not only automatically blocks incoming gold seller spam tells, but reports the sender of the tell.We haven't used the app, so we don't know how well it works. It might block legitimate tells from friends. If you try it out, tell us how that works for you.The post at the Herald says that the mod is not endorsed by Mythic, although one would think that mentioning it on the official site is at least a tacit endorsement. Mythic did go on to say that players should continue using the game's built-in spam reporting features as well.
Gold farmers top the 500k mark worldwide
We all knew it was a big problem, but gold farming has reached record proportions, despite the constant enforcement by game developers. In a recent study by the UK's Manchester University, nearly 500,000 people in developing countries now earn their living by farming for virtual gold, with 80% of this industry centered in China.Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at Manchester and author of this report, says that gold farming has gone from a cottage industry to a significant economic sector in many developing nations. In fact, the industry has seeped into criminal gang territory with credit card fraud and violent crime being introduced to the mix. Yet despite this illegal activity, we get a nice summary quote from Steven Davis, the chief of game security firm Secure Play: "You could get rid of it, but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."
Two WoW gold farmers arrested in China
Unfair revenue distribution is a concern in many economies. In China's, however, it is a crime. Two gold-farmers, Li and Zhang, were arrested by Chengdu's Shuangliu county authorities after Li ratted on his partner Zhang. Li and Zhang had gone into business last August, and with 20 employees had raked in around 1.6 million Renminbi (????) -- that's getting towards a quarter of a million US Dollars. That's not bad for what amounts to seven months of gold and item trading on World of Warcraft, now is it? With China cracking down on assorted online gaming activities that are either too intrusive, or have destabilizing economic effects, we don't think either Zhang or Li will get off lightly. Why, we wonder, did Li turn Zhang in? There's got to be a good story behind that. [via PlayNoEvil]
Gold farmers arrested in China
Here in the US, you can't really arrest someone for selling gold in-game -- it's against Blizzard's Terms of Service, so they can ban you from the game or even file suit against you, but it's not actually illegal. But in China, under communism, things are apparently a little different. Two gold farmers have actually been arrested by the government for "unfair revenue distribution" -- apparently the two had a disagreement about how to distribute the over $200,000 they had made from selling gold in World of Warcraft.Word is going around that "unfair revenue distribution" is the actual charge in the arrest, but it sounds like they just had a financial disagreement, so we really have no idea what they'd be charged with. Unfortunately, China isn't exactly forthcoming with how its legal system actually works, so who knows what's really happening here.Their operation also sounds interesting as well -- they had been going for about seven months, and had a crew of 20 PCs and 20 employees. There's little chance that an arrest like this will make much of an actual difference in the game (and there's no way an arrest in China will set a precedent in the US), but it is an interesting case that we'll follow if we can.[Via WorldofWar.net]
The Daily Grind: What's the best way to curtail RMT activity?
As noted in our recent Guild Wars post, there's more than one way to skin an RMT cat, if you'll forgive a labored metaphor. Quite aside from simply hunting the farmers down and feeding them to the Sarlacc beast, banning and possible litigation are merely the most commonplace ways to deal with these issues. Clearly, this problem isn't going to just fix itself or go away, and many have lost accounts thanks to these activities.Have we seen the best solutions to the RMT crisis? What hasn't been tried yet?
The Kwari model: Can RMT be taken to the next level?
I was in the bathroom the other day, reading Games for Windows (because let's be honest, where else would anybody read GfW?) and they had an article on an extremely interesting, though vaguely troubling new shooter called Kwari. Its basic premise is that players pony up a small amount of cash, the amount varying depending on the stakes of the game, and players lose or gain a portion of the pot based on their fragging prowess. Or to put it more simply, it's like online poker, but instead of cards, there are bullets. Designer Eddie Gill of Kwari Limited was hoping that in adding a financial incentive to the basic shooter model, it would result in an experience that was much more intense for the players involved. And if he took in a cut of the profits as well, what's the harm? By all accounts, Kwari utterly fails at delivering an engaging shooter experience, so whatever sociological implications the game would have had were rendered moot because of sloppiness on the developer's part. Still, this perception that online games could be tweaked to be a form of online gambling got me thinking. Is this business model just a developer supported real-money transaction (RMT) scheme, or is it even deeper down the rabbit hole of Shylock-esque shamelessness?
