Web site fraud and World of Warcraft (long ass rant)

[Evil_Captor]

Per hajario’s request, a response to post 90.

@hajario

If I am born into a country with unjust laws, I can see the argument that the unjust laws should be disobeyed. Rosa Parks was born in the the Jim Crow South and acted appropriately.

Now if Rosa Parks had voluntarily emigrated to Saudi Arabia and then bitched that the laws were unjust with respect to women, I’d have very little sympathy for her. She would have chosen to move there and that’s how things are there.

I have so little respect for the laws of Saudi Arabia wrt women that I really don’t care whether the women protesting them are natives, emigrants, visitors, or lookers-on from other countries. I’m all on the women’s side on this one. I’d be on Rosa’s side, too.

In short, I’d base my opinion on the laws themselves rather than whether the person objecting to it was there voluntarily or a native.

Even that isn’t really the same as an on-line game. The player and the company make a contract. The WOW people get money and in exchange the player gets to play but only by the rules. It’s a contract. How can one think that there is any moral ambiguity here? If the WOW people changed the rules after you signed up, then I can see how one would be upset and could possibly have a case for circumventing those rules that had been changed.

Contracts can be so unfair that they are thrown out by the courts. The best and most famous example would be the case of the pinup artist Alberto Vargas and the contract he signed with Esquire. Vargas’ pinups were a huge success for Esquire, but Vargas knew nothing from nothing about contract law, so the publisher, David Smart, signed him up to a contract that was so one-sided that a judge threw it out on grounds that it amounted to contract slavery.

So there is precedent for examining the fairness and reasonableness of contractual relationships, though only a judge’s opinion would annul the contract of course. There’s plenty more precedent for having opinions about the ethicality or reasonableness outside of a courtroom – just look at all those sports fans who are constantly outraged at the enormous salaries some sports stars enjoy. It’s a contract between the owner and the player, presumably none of the fans’ business, yet still, they feel entitled to have an opinion. The nerve of them!

Anyway, Evil Captor, let me try to put this in terms that you can understand. Let’s say that a woman and I agree to a BDSM relationship. She agrees to submit to me but only if I agree to some rules, let’s say they are that I must respect her safe word and wear a condom for intercourse. We have a fun time for a few months and then one night I have her tied up and I find that I am out of condoms. I then unilaterally decide that this is an extenuating circumstance since I can’t use what I don’t have and I just tested negative for HIV the day before. I can justify this too. We never explicitly discussed what would happen if condoms weren’t available and no one is harmed since I tested negative for disease. So I do her bareback. Is this ok?

No, of course not. If she doesn’t know you’ve tested negative for disease, you could scare the shit out of her. For all she knows she’s getting an Anally Injected Death Sentence while tied up like that. And even without the prospect of disease, you could still get her pregnant riding bareback.

Let us suppose however, that you HAVE discussed your test with her, and that discussions have come up that show very clearly that she would be pleased and proud to bear your child, so long as you don’t insist on naming it Moon Unit or Dweezil. Would it still be wrong? Yeah, because you’ve promised her you wouldn’t. Would it be AS wrong as doing it without her knowledge of the test and willingness to bear a child for you? Not by a long shot.

She gets pregant and you name the child Moon Unit – no jury in the world would convict her for giving you a testicle-otomy.

[hajario]

@Evil Captor

Per hajario’s request, a response to post 90.

Thank you.

Contracts can be so unfair that they are thrown out by the courts.

Sure but in this case I would argue that there was fraud involved.

No, of course not. If she doesn’t know you’ve tested negative for disease, you could scare the shit out of her. For all she knows she’s getting an Anally Injected Death Sentence while tied up like that. And even without the prospect of disease, you could still get her pregnant riding bareback.

In both this case and the WOW case, two parties entered into a contract and then one side decided that they didn’t like it anymore and arbitrarily decided to no longer play by the rules. The right thing to do in both cases is to stop playing and find a better suited playing partner.

[The_Hamster_King]

Game rules are not equivalent to real-world laws.

Laws are not an inherent property of reality. They are human constructs that structure human interaction in useful ways, but they are not essential. Humans in small tribal or family units can exist just fine in a lawless state.

The rules **are ** an inherent property of a game world. In fact, the rules are what brings the game world into existence in the first place. It can’t exist apart from its rules. They are essential.

This distinction is key. In some circumstances one can make a good case that the right thing to do is break a law. That’s because laws are imperfect constructs laid down over the foundation of human morality and ethics. The behavioral reality of human decency trumps a bad law.

But the same doesn’t hold true of game rules. The game world exists only through the expression of the rules themselves. There is no deeper reality to make an appeal to.

That’s not to say that there aren’t good rules and bad rules. But the criteria for judging good and bad are different than for laws. A law can be good or bad when judged by absolute moral priniciples. But whether a rule is good or bad is an aesthetic choice – does it help or hinder the creation of an aesthetically satisfying game world?

My point? That you can ethically argue to change the rules of a game to provide a different experience. Sometimes you can ethically break a real-world law. But, you cannot **ethically ** cheat.

[justrob]

@Evil Captor

Would it still be wrong? Yeah, because you’ve promised her you wouldn’t.

I think this is the point trying to be made here. By agreeing to play the game you are promising to play by the rules.

[Grossbottom]

@DigitalC

People see a bot farmer, report him, and expect him to be gone almost instantly when in reality it takes weeks of watching and planning to catch alot of them in one swift stroke, and its a lot better for them to let a farmer keep going than to erroneusly ban a legit customer that just happens to like farmer and speaks little english.

Do people honestly believe that if the devs of the 2nd/3rd gen MMOGs actually wanted gold farming to be extinct, that it wouldn’t be? My god, Kyle. My god. They’ve been trotting out the image of a GM playing Dick Tracy since the early days of EQ, glad to see nothing has changed. Like they have to get a warrant and build a case in an online game with no due process rights?

Let me ask you a question: if your local police chief sent out a blindfolded cop on horseback to catch all the speeders on I-95 in the morning, would you think that police chief had a strong commitment to upholding the local traffic laws? No. You’d think he didn’t give two blue shits about speeding on I-95, and you’d be 100% right.

[Ogre]

no jury in the world would convict her for giving you a testicle-otomy.

I rarely, if ever, nitpick like this, but the suffix “-otomy” denotes cutting a hole in something, as in “tracheotomy.” The suffix for removing something altogether is “-ectomy.”

I only say this because drilling a hole in a testicle seems so much ouchier than just getting rid of it altogether, and I was praying you were referring to the latter.

[Dead_Badger]

@Ogre

I rarely, if ever, nitpick like this, but the suffix “-otomy” denotes cutting a hole in something, as in “tracheotomy.” The suffix for removing something altogether is “-ectomy.”

The appropriate full procedure is, I believe, called an “orchidectomy”, presumably in a vain and misguided attempt to make people feel better about it by distracting them with happy thoughts of flowers.

[Miller]

@Grossbottom

Do people honestly believe that if the devs of the 2nd/3rd gen MMOGs actually wanted gold farming to be extinct, that it wouldn’t be? My god, Kyle. My god. They’ve been trotting out the image of a GM playing Dick Tracy since the early days of EQ, glad to see nothing has changed. Like they have to get a warrant and build a case in an online game with no due process rights?

So, why would MMORPGs want there to be gold farmers in their game, and what fool-proof method are they not using that would guarantee all gold farmers - and only gold farmers - would be banned?

[Ogre]

@Dead Badger

The appropriate full procedure is, I believe, called an “orchidectomy”, presumably in a vain and misguided attempt to make people feel better about it by distracting them with happy thoughts of flowers.

Orchiectomy, I think, has become the term of choice. That’s bad enough, of course, but imagine being told you have to have an orchiotomy. “Yeah, uh, we have to ventilate your berries. It’s gonna suck.”

[DigitalC]

@Grossbottom

Do people honestly believe that if the devs of the 2nd/3rd gen MMOGs actually wanted gold farming to be extinct, that it wouldn’t be? My god, Kyle. My god. They’ve been trotting out the image of a GM playing Dick Tracy since the early days of EQ, glad to see nothing has changed. Like they have to get a warrant and build a case in an online game with no due process rights?

Let me ask you a question: if your local police chief sent out a blindfolded cop on horseback to catch all the speeders on I-95 in the morning, would you think that police chief had a strong commitment to upholding the local traffic laws? No. You’d think he didn’t give two blue shits about speeding on I-95, and you’d be 100% right.

So other than banning tens of thousands of accounts every few months what would you recommend? that every person farming gold get banned for whatever reason? gold farming is not illegal, every player has done it at one point or another. They can only ban obvious bots, cheaters and confirmed sellers, and they do plenty of that. Yes i do think they want gold farmers to stop, and i do think they have no chance of stopping them because to date they have banned more accounts than other games have total subscribers and they just come back in a couple weeks. That its not stopping it is pretty obvious, but i honestly don’t see any other approach that would work without penalizing legit players.

[Grossbottom]

Account in the 3rd world? Always grouped with other accounts originating in that country? In that city? Character spends 95% of its time in the same couple areas, killing the same mobs? Does the flow of money and items move directly from the account to other accounts, rarely the other way around? Name of character is gibberish, difficult to remember and retype? Doesn’t respond to direct communication promptly or at all? Is there little variation in the timing or sequence of the toon’s actions, strongly suggesting heavy macro use?

That’s all information an automated system can log and detect…and that’s a classic bot farmer. Take weeks to gather this data? No, try a couple hours for an automated system to raise the red flag, two minutes for an actual person to verify. Ban him, move on. What if you’re wrong 1% of the time? Who cares. Play habits like that, dude wasn’t exactly his server’s MVP anyway, who’s gonna miss him?

An automated system helmed by a few cubicles of rent-a-nerds could do this, and would do this, if devs wanted it that way. At this stage of MMOG development, I just can’t see how anyone can continue to believe in the myth of the embattled but well-meaning developer versus the horde of clever, devious farmers. Particularly since the above-described farmer MO hasn’t changed since 1999, and the well-meaning developer in this case rakes in millions and millions of dollars monthly, enough to build hire a legion of nerds to review the logs and do nothing else.

Not buying it. These parasites exist en mass because they’re permitted to do so, though whether through laziness or greed is anyone’s guess.

[robertliguori]

@DigitalC

So other than banning tens of thousands of accounts every few months what would you recommend? that every person farming gold get banned for whatever reason? gold farming is not illegal, every player has done it at one point or another. They can only ban obvious bots, cheaters and confirmed sellers, and they do plenty of that. Yes i do think they want gold farmers to stop, and i do think they have no chance of stopping them because to date they have banned more accounts than other games have total subscribers and they just come back in a couple weeks. That its not stopping it is pretty obvious, but i honestly don’t see any other approach that would work without penalizing legit players.

The fact that accounts are being banned in the tens of thousands would indicate pretty damn strongly to me that there is profit to be made in buying a copy of WoW and farming/scamming with it until you’re caught, then repeating the process. It’s like speed limits. No one actually believes that cops don’t want you to speed. Even though speeding can cause accidents, it is more likely to just transfer additional ticket revenue to whoever pulls you over. If the cops actually took effort to stop all speeders (instead of just most obnoxious and some unlucky) speeders, more people might consider speeding a real crime. Likewise, if MMORPGs actually took steps to keep people from grinding and then selling their items, fewer people would consider banning as something akin to hit point loss; one of the negative consequences of playing the game, but an expected consequence just the same.

[Evil_Captor]

@Ogre

I rarely, if ever, nitpick like this, but the suffix “-otomy” denotes cutting a hole in something, as in “tracheotomy.” The suffix for removing something altogether is “-ectomy.”

I only say this because drilling a hole in a testicle seems so much ouchier than just getting rid of it altogether, and I was praying you were referring to the latter.

I think a jury would be Ok with both.

[jayjay]

@robertliguori

Likewise, if MMORPGs actually took steps to keep people from grinding and then selling their items, fewer people would consider banning as something akin to hit point loss; one of the negative consequences of playing the game, but an expected consequence just the same.

You ARE talking about selling items IRL dollars, right? Because frankly, if making gold off of other players in-game were banned without adjusting things like the mount/riding skill costs downward, Blizzard would no longer have 7 million subscribers…

[Zabali_Clawbane]

I tell you what, if this tax on pixels goes through the gaming industry is going to go belly up, because people will drop the games en masse. (I know I will) Don’t think the saavy politicians won’t catch on eventually (if not right away) and make it also apply to game played on Playstation, Wii etc. either. :mad:

[lissener]

Wow. In a long and illustrious career of spouting some unbelievably retarded bullshit on these boards, Evil Captor, you have outshone even yourself. You have taken the entire cake. Which is impressive, that you could find enough cake to take, because you, sir, have taken some cake in your day.

Comparing cheating on a game to the American Revolution. And that was just for starters. I’d recommend embarrassment (because I know it doesn’t come naturally to you), but instead I think you should be proud of the new heights of assholery you have reached in this thread. You have taken the art of assholery to an entirely new level, EC. If there were an online game on that model, you would own ALL the gold.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@Antinor01

As a gamemaster myself (not for Blizzard though) I would say that both of your examples are examples of scum. We’ve banned players for those kind of things and I would do it again in a heartbeat. It really sucks that he played by the rules all that time and got screwed when he decided to cheat but the fact remains; HE TRIED TO CHEAT.

I could rant for a while about how much work goes into creating all that stuff for players and how its hard enough to try and keep things balanced out without all the cheating, but I’ll let it go for now.

I play, as I previously stated, an MMORPG, though not WoW. I’ve only played this one online game, but this particular game company does encourage its players to give feedback about the game. Sometimes, if enough people complain about a game mechanic, it gets fixed. If the GMs see that some aspect of the game is unbalanced, they figure out a way to make it fairer to the players. It’s a balancing act…if the clerics have a spell that’s way more powerful than other classes have, then the clerics will be happy but the other classes won’t be. One of my best friends was made GM, and I know that he had his plate full with all the GM stuff. If people feel that some rules are unreasonable, then they should make their beliefs known to the GMs, they shouldn’t just break the rules.

In my opinion, the game I play is most enjoyable not because of what my character has, or how powerful she is, but by how my character interacts with other characters. It’s a pleasure to be able to teach a new gamer how to get around in the world. It’s an equal pleasure to torment a character in stocks by offering him or her a piece of food, because people in stocks can’t accept anything. If I wanted to just make an ultra powerful character of some kind and absolutely dominate some make believe world, I have plenty of computer and console games where I can do just that, that I can play by myself. I don’t go online to play a game to try to interact with bots or scripters. I want those other characters to be played by other gamers, that’s most of the fun of the game.

And I, for one, appreciate the hard work that the GMs put into the game.

[Gleena]

@lissener

Wow. In a long and illustrious career of spouting some unbelievably retarded bullshit on these boards, Evil Captor, you have outshone even yourself. You have taken the entire cake. Which is impressive, that you could find enough cake to take, because you, sir, have taken some cake in your day.

Comparing cheating on a game to the American Revolution. And that was just for starters. I’d recommend embarrassment (because I know it doesn’t come naturally to you), but instead I think you should be proud of the new heights of assholery you have reached in this thread. You have taken the art of assholery to an entirely new level, EC. If there were an online game on that model, you would own ALL the gold.

I must say, lissner, that I laughed very, very hard at this. I dunno why, but it struck me funny. Bravo!

Cheers,
G

[Evil_Captor]

@lissener

Wow. In a long and illustrious career of spouting some unbelievably retarded bullshit on these boards, Evil Captor, you have outshone even yourself. You have taken the entire cake. Which is impressive, that you could find enough cake to take, because you, sir, have taken some cake in your day.

Comparing cheating on a game to the American Revolution. And that was just for starters. I’d recommend embarrassment (because I know it doesn’t come naturally to you), but instead I think you should be proud of the new heights of assholery you have reached in this thread. You have taken the art of assholery to an entirely new level, EC. If there were an online game on that model, you would own ALL the gold.

Trolling again, lissiner?

[D_Odds]

@Zabali_Clawbane

I tell you what, if this tax on pixels goes through the gaming industry is going to go belly up, because people will drop the games en masse. (I know I will) Don’t think the saavy politicians won’t catch on eventually (if not right away) and make it also apply to game played on Playstation, Wii etc. either. :mad:

There’s little-to-no chance of that happening. The idea was nothing more than some legislator shooting from the lip.

If you sell your pixels to another player for consideration - that’s taxable income under current taxation rules.

If you are paid to play a game for another player - that’s taxable income under current taxation rules.

If you play the game and never monetize it - no taxable income.

What the IRS would like is a way to track the taxable income being earned by players monetizing the game experience. Right now, they rely solely on the honesty and integrity of those earning income off of a game, and we all know every potential taxpayer accurately and correctly reports all earned income, even if the IRS has no way of knowing about it. Right?