General Discussion

www.massively.com/2008/02/02/blizzard-defeats-peons4hire-gold-farmers-in-court/

I am not a huge blizzard fan by any means,but today i must give them credit and rejoice for they have taken the first step.This court ruling will set the stage for other games and future lawsuits and will only help to make our games fun again and keep RMT out of them.The basis of the lawsuit was an obvious one that i can't believe wasn't used long ago as it is an obvious one.For those that don't understand why or how these RMT sites ruin the games ,it doesn't matter as it just does and you can take heed that it is going to get better before worse.

Aye Wiz agree with you completely...

It's good news but it's only a small win. They haven't even attempted to stop them selling gold out of game.

just need some younger judges on the stands and some individual wins.  things like myspace/second life/DMCA(claims) are racking up a nice head count.  The annoying part is that game worlds could very well rely on IP type things, and the more powerful and stretched those rights get stretched the worse(you can't say superbowl on public radio for instance, or use the term superbowl as part of a party name.   well that's what the NFL thinks.  Patriots are attempting to trade mark the term 19-0 even though they haven't won the superbowl yet and have a fair chance of losing).

I'd say 5 to 10 years till a sane company(NOT individual) to take any case to the real court room.

Mind you, that's just an injunction against one company and there is no weight of precedence here since it was a settlement.

Won't change much, but it will be nice to see a little less spam.

Even if the courts do eventually rule against the gold sellers, that won't stop them. It's illegal for telemarketers to call me at home, but I still get phone calls all the time.

I am glad, though, that Blizzard went after that company.

Great. That's another reason why Blizzard is a decent company and $$$$$$$$$OE is crap.

While I agree with the purpose of the ruling.  I am glad it does not have precedence.

Speculation is what harm the game.

I don't care either way, but if you want to destroy speculation, just put a 1 time buy/selling flag per item, that way nobody will buy low prices to sell high.

Speculators hurt casuals.  Then, you could include a way to reset this flag, such a way could be: earn X millions points of experience and the flag reset, where X is big enought to mean that you use the item for scores of fights (more then 1 level).

Actually, this loophole was a bit puzzling.

Defendant, and any persons or entities controlled directly or indirectly
by it, are hereby permanently enjoined and restrained from holding anything other
than a passive investment or financial interest in any enterprise that it, he or she
knows is engaging in any of the activities prohibited by this Consent Order.

As I read this, in theory the principals could provide the funding to another group of individuals who wanted to engage in RMT and as long as they didn't take an active role in running the business, (i.e., only profited as investors) they could still make money from RMT activites.  Not sure why they let them do this.