moral-dilemma
Latest
The ethics of a botched deal, redux
"The ethics of a botched deal" turned out to be a much more popular article than I'd been expecting. I didn't really think the subject matter was going to result in that much commentary, but, having read all of the comments, I think I see why. Everyone's been on at least one end of a bad deal, and stuff like that is a lot more common in the early days of an expansion with new recipes, dungeons, and raids everywhere you look, with the attendant opportunities for costly mistakes.A few people quite fairly said it would be tough to make a call on the incident given the limited account I'd written in the original article. Others pointed out that you could probably draw an ethical distinction between the Blacksmith's decision to: a). accept a tip, and b). keep the gold gained from vendoring the 2H mace (and I think this is accurate, although it does raise another question. More on this in a bit). Commenters also observed that, the ethics of the Blacksmith's actions aside, you wouldn't necessarily want to be a repeat customer of his for reasons that hadn't been articulated in the original piece.So behind the cut is a more inclusive look at the issue, a little more background on what happened, and how other players responded to it ingame.
The ethics of a botched deal
My chat box isn't usually a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but on occasion it turns up a few statements that'll make your eyebrows execute a shuttle launch. One such morsel popped up recently in the form of an amused snicker from an acquaintance who'd applied to raid with my guild in Wrath. He'd just made himself a quick 38 gold off a blacksmithing deal gone awry and was having a laugh over his good fortune. A leveling player had asked him to meet in Orgrimmar to make a Saronite Mindcrusher and could provide both materials and a tip. The applicant obliged, ported to Org from Dalaran, made the mace, and then they discovered that it was BoP and thus unusable by the customer. The disappointed player thanked him for his time, tipped him anyway for making the trip, and went on his way (according to the person who shall henceforth be known as The Blacksmith)."So not only did I get a 25g tip," he concluded smugly, "but I also made 13g vendoring the mace."That dog won't hunt, Monsignor. "You did give the guy the 13g at least?" I asked. "I mean, those were his mats, the mace wasn't yours.""No. Why would I? It was his mistake."To quote everyone who has ever set foot on the internet ever, ORLY?UPDATE: The post got a lot more attention than I expected, so I've written an addendum here that gives a little more insight into what happened.
Officers' Quarters: A moral dilemma
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Every once in a while I get an e-mail where I think, "This person has to be pulling my leg." At first, I thought the e-mail below was one of them. As I read on, however, the author's heartfelt anguish over the decision she has had to make convinced me that there really is a guild leader out there doing this. Judge for yourself:Hello there,I'd love your opinion along with your readers opinions on an issue going on in my current guild. I'm an officer of a Horde guild that is still relatively young (3 months) but very dedicated. We transferred from other servers in order to form an off-hours raiding guild. Things were going very well until several weeks ago when I looked at our guild forum and was shocked to find the GM posting character accounts for sale and urging other guild members to buy them! And if that wasn't bad enough a week or so later he decided to buy a current guild member's account for himself and his girlfriend (another officer and the purchased account's owner supposedly wanted to stop playing those characters).
