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Originally posted by Pemdas
imo  the biggest problem is blizz not being able to tell apart farmers, ebayers, and gold mongers, that are hurting the game, from players that maybe only use bots to level a character of a class they were curious about playing but wouldnt otherwise have time in their busy raiding schedule.  it also looks like Blizz is using a bot to hunt bots. kinda explains why warden thinks linux users are bots and why bots think trees are mobs.  maybe blizz could look a time played at 60 to determine whether a warning or a ban is needed. a lot of people with 100+days played were banned, you can't bot raiding gear. that kind of play time shows loyalty to the game imo.

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Banning farmers is one thing and should be supported but banning someone for logging into the game that has no safety measures built into the software from another location is pathetically ridiculous. There is no safety catches built into the software for that and Blizzard is responsible for this being possible. In fact they allowed “Stan’s” father from South Park to log into the game from another computer.

Banning customers for logging into the game from Linux is utterly ridiculous. They do not license Operating Systems. Linux is open source. The blame is upon a company that has grown too large for its britches and has now officially lost contact with its fan base and customers. This is plain ignorance and “sadly” a real shame. As fan I am really disappointed in some of their decisions.

Blizzard is now the Lars Ulrich vs. Napster.

$0E BOE

Greetings,

As you know, Blizzard Entertainment traditionally makes a serious commitment to protect the World of Warcraft community from players who gain unfair advantage through hacks and exploits. Last week, our administrators implemented bans on a large number of accounts that were identified acting against the terms and the spirit of the game.

However, it has since come to our attention that a very small percentage of those accounts should not have been banned. This case of mistaken identity seems to be isolated to users of an unsupported, Linux-based Windows emulator called Cedega.

Once this pattern was brought to Blizzard's attention, our staff worked directly in conjunction with the Cedega development team in a rigorous and thorough review of the situation. We have since determined that your account was one of those accidentally flagged, and as such we are immediately reinstating your account to fully playable status.

Blizzard Entertainment deeply regrets the error, as we understand that this brief account closure presented you with an inconvenient and highly frustrating experience. We remain firmly committed to enforcing our regulations and suspensions for those exploiting our game, in the interest of ensuring that our legitimate customers have the best possible play experience. In this case, however, we regretfully caught a handful of innocent customers in the process, and for that we offer you our genuine apology.

In consideration of our error, we are applying a credit of two weeks play time
onto your account, in addition to crediting back the time that your account was locked. This comes to a total of twenty (20) days credit, which should be visible on your account within the end of the week.

If you have any other questions or concerns regarding this account, please do not hesitate to let us know. We appreciate your extraordinary patience in this matter and hope you will continue to enjoy your time in World of Warcraft.

Regards,

World of Warcraft Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard is guilty.  They are in their rights, but in an econimic driven society, they will lose money from these actions...they would prolly lose more by doing nothing.  This lose/lose scenario is something they brought on themselves however.

Everything could be solved into the design room, provided they give it enough considerations.

Gold farmers is something you can't fight, it is like waving your sword at the ocean...and you are hurting yourself doing so.  However, you can remove all negative impact these farmers can have on the game, thereby more or less fighting it, but most importantly, making the game fun for non-farmers.  They have instancing in the game, which is the MAIN tool to fight gold-farmers nasty impact...however, they fail to understand it...

Cheaters must be prevented from hurting the non-cheaters.  This is it.  You don't need to hunt them down, burn them, raze their computers and accounts to the ground.  Again, this could be solved in the design room.  I don't claim I have the solution for this one, but personnally I would have experimented a reclusion, putting all cheaters on a specific server with all other cheaters, yet, as I said, I might not have found the good solution about this.  The fact that I, as an individual, doesn't figure it out is no excuse for a big company like Blizzard with heavy teams, they could have find something...or at least TRY.

Everytime they ban an account, please spank their designers for me!  They deserve it.  Especially the raid-enforcers, you can double spanks these! 

It amazes me, we talk of accounts getting banned, yet fail to mention the word accountability.  This is what it all comes down to.  Accountability on both sides, the Player or as I like to call them CUSTOMERS and Blizzard. 

Unfotuantly, Blizzard has reduced their accountabilty to almost zero.  Its kinda like a No Fault MMO, they don't need reason to ban you or drop you as a customer, and YOU AGREED to this arrangement.  And you AGREE to drop them if they don't deliever the service you want.  As it should be.

I have seen countless people crying foul at being banned just to find out later they just got caught, so I take a lot of these stories with a grain of salt.  However, I do believe with the MASSIVE amount of accounts, some people get caught in the crossfire.

The player in the story getting banned for logging on another PC other then his "normal" PC sounds like a perfect example of someone "Powerleveling" them.  While I am sure that IP traffic is monitored, it would be very simple to flag activity that was not what they concidered normal.  Capturing this iinformation and using very simple tools for verification, is the key. 

In closing, until the "demand" for gold or Power Leveling services is removed, this will continue, and the innocent will get caught in the middle.

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Originally posted by AranStormah
Banning cheaters and exploiters is one thing.

Banning gold farming accounts does nothing to stop them. These are "black market" companies who will just purchase a new batch of accounts for their employes. This in turn makes one wonder as it quite obviously will put more money into the pockets of Blizzard.

By gold farmers I refer not to regular players, but those of companies who follow the MMO pop trend to set up farming accounts for selling virtual assets online to profit.

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Banning for logging on from different locations... nice..

 /Working as intended

  LMAO

My account got banned when i play WoW in Mac. Stating that i use 3rd application that relates to botting and no words from them till now.

1 word : Lame

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Originally posted by rmeyer
No this article is lame.  The reason they are getting banned is because they are doing something more than logging onto another machine.  Too many people are commiting the crime of buying gold and or an account.  They deserve it and they are ruining the game for the rest of us.  This article is just trying to fight for the people that already screwed up and tried to cheat in some fassion.

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There is something a lot of people don't consider, and that as more people come into a game world the crime and scams increase quickly.  Developers can't possibly think of every exploit that scammers, hackers, and exploiters are going to find and come up with.  These games are large scale and it can be extremely difficult to catch everything until someone happens upon it and takes advantage of it.  Yes developers are technically resposible for their content, but that doesn't automatically mean that someone is "allowed" to take advantage of it for profit at their expense. 

I'm personally tired of gold farmers and sites spamming in game to come to their site for leveling and gold.  Almost everytime we see this we report it because it goes extremely annoying when there is a bot spamming general chat for 5 lines advertising for their website.  I pay monthly fees for this game and part of that goes for not having to deal with adds in the game, yet these people do it anyway, they deserve to be banned. 

Most of these people that earn this gold exploit the game, farm things and deprive others from it, or hack accounts and steal from others.  No one should be allowed to profit from this behavoir and should be punished. 

Using any third party software is known when you play the game to be a bannable offense, so if you're using them you're asking to be banned, plain and simple.  Some people my try to be technical and claim that some of the mods are third party software.  Well Blizzard condones UI mods to help increase funtionality for the player, not open up the game for profit by eploitation, that should be obvious.

If you buy the game and want to play it go into it knowing that you cannot run bots or third party software legit and that you will be banned for doing so and if you do it anyway, then tough, you knew it going in, don't complain.

I don't personally agree with banning users for using Linux, but it was a mistake on Blizzards part and they owned up to it and credited those users back.  However they would be within their rights if they so desired to ban users from doing so because it's not a supported OS that the game was designed for which could lend to some people possibly using that as a means for illegitiment activity. 

I also don't pesonally agree with being banned from you account because you logged in from another computer.  However none of us know the full story on this, all we know is that the person said that they were banned when they got home and they are claiming that it was because of that.  That same person could be participating in suspicious activity, we only have their word to take for it and ultimiately it comes down to them and Blizzard.  If Blizzard banned them because they were playing on two different machines, then yes that's wrong, especially when I play on two or three different machines myself as do many others out there.  For all we know someone at the IP that caused them to get banned could have been participating in suspicious activity that lead to that person getting banned wrongly.  One thing Blizzard is good about though is fixing their mistakes and giving back to those who have suffered for it.

Now for something I'm concerned about in regards to this issue.  I don't want to see Blizzard to fall into the same trap SOE did.  SOE became a victim of their own success.  People started abusing the game so SOE had to severly crack down on their policies.  At the same time SOE had the attitude for a long time that they were the only game in town and that is really hurting them now.  Blizzard isn't as arrogant as SOE in that regard, however users who participate in this kind of activity ruin things for the rest of us and companies have to take severe actions sometimes to protect their products and the audiance that uses them. 

I can honestly say that if Blizzard banned my account because they suspected me of something, then I would be upset, however I would be more curious about what caused it since I know that I'm not doing anything wrong.  I would rather help them in their fight against these things and make the game better for everyone instead of just getting irritated bercause i'm out for a couple of days, but that's just my opinion.

What you're saying may be true for many companies, but I honestly don't think that's the case with Blizzard.  Blizzard has always delivered quality product, always.  They spend years working on games to ensure not only their gameplay but their quality, and while the don't always get it right when it's out the door and gone gold, they fix their problems the correct way and keep the game fun by keep the games integrity intact and keeping the cheaters out. 

Really, look at games like Starcraft and Diablo, look at how many people still play them online on Battle.net.  These games have been live and going for years and it's a rarity that there are that many people still active on games that old.  It's not just a few people either, there are a lot of people still playing these games because they're great games.  Blizzard has a standard of quality and that can't be denied, just look on any storeshelf today and you still see WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo games that still sell well. 

Blizzard isn't out to screw people, VU games I can't speak for, but Blizzard is trying to maintain the quality of the game despite what anyone may think.  When you have over 7.5 million people playing it's a hard battle to keep the game quality intact against a constant barage of scammers and cheaters.

While it's true that the company does reserve the right to keep the ingame time of prepaid players, how else would you expect them to refund it to people?  The can't just credit it back to them, and it's hardly worth it to cut a check to them for it, I honestly wouldn't expect it.  If you buy prepaid time and are conduction these kinds of activity it's your own fault if you lose the money, and if Blizzard makes a mistake the pretty much always credit game time to those who they've screwed up on.  So how is this some grand scheme?

I'll agree that there are games out there who don't have their players intentions truly at heart, but Blizzard isn't one of those companies.  Some may say I'm a fanboy for saying all this, but that simply isn't the case, I've played a lot of MMO's and while it's not my opinion that WoW is the best that I've played, it's been published by a very reputable company.  I say that after having taken a year long stance against SOE after they treated me very poorly due to one of their errors, having played half finished games, and started and quit many games with obivious lack of development thought.

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Originally posted by quixadhal
Blizzard, like every game company to date, is guilty of treating the symptoms instead of the cause.  If you want to build an online game that doesn't have the problems of gold fermers, ebay gold sellers, and third-party hacks, you have to design your game that way from day one.

Rule 1:  Never trust the client.  ALL changes of state need to be determined on the server side, allowing the client to only issue commands, which the server then performs or ignores.  They learned that one in Diablo, where the server blindly trusted the client when it said "I have a +9999 sword equipped".

Rule 2:  Never trust the client *grin*.  Seriously, all traffic between the client and server needs to be encrypted to prevent packet injection.  SSH tunnels would work for TCP streams.  The server establishes a public/private key pair when you create your account.  The client makes another key pair when you install it.  If you re-install, you have to re-upload (and authenticate) your public key to tie it to your account.  That also prevents people playing on other folks' computers (unless you allow a small set of "trusted" keys).

Rule 3:  Don't allow transfers of large amounts of wealth between characters.  Force them to trade valuable goods instead.  Even in the real world, transactions between individuals over a certain amount (I believe it's $10K in the US) are flagged and somoene, somewhere, looks into them.  That won't stop the farmers, but it will annoy them and slow them down a bit.

Rule 4:  Design your gameplay so that "farming" isn't a feasable way to amass wealth.  There are lots of ways to try this, ranging from diminishing returns on repeated activities, to moving away from the faucet/drain economy and actuallying implementing a real closed system (with raw materials added as players join, or devs decide to balance things).  This is the real solution, but it's also the tough one.  I'm not holding my breath here. :)

IMHO, Blizzard cut off their own foot when they dangled the candy in front of the community.  They build a UI that allowed scripting, and have been constanly nerfing it down as people figure out ways to use it for automation.  They designed a grinding game with free transfer of wealth between characters and then are shocked when farmers invade?

I hate farmers, macroers, and exploiters... I'm a crafter and resource gatherer myself, and I always am forced into combat because I can't make any money from selling materials because of the market flood.  I agree with the account bans, even though I don't think the way they're trying to go about it is the right way.  Instead of using "warden" and hitting people with the ban stick when their anti-virus software nukes it, they should redesign their client/server communitcation to be secure, and work with microsoft to develop a secure way to get keyboard and mouse events that can't be injected.

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well the time thing i see from a buisnees oint of view, to be playing more than 100 hours a week means more than one person is playing that account, and thats a big nono, one person to one account and thats a rule for almost all moo's and it also means more money for the mmo maker as that would require 2 people to have 1 account each, and blizz is all about making money, if yer having 2 people play an account then thats not making them money.

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Originally posted by Celestian

Since when is it a crime to buy gold or accounts? Heh, it's not.

It's a violation of Blizzard's ToS which is a rule for Blizzard, it's not against the law.


If blizzard didn't have such a farmy game no one would bother buying gold.

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 At least one company doing something about bots and cheats etc...

I'm sick of seeing same groups of bots in EQ2 running around autofollowing each other... farm all day...

SOE seems to do nothing about it... it's 6 accounts paid, doesn't matter that a program is controlling them.

I played two characters to 60 on two differant servers hoard and alliance, so I have experienced ALOT of wow. It is a good game but in my experience the player base was it's biggest fault. It is good that blizzard is cracking down on people who are abusing the game and I hope that maybe this will make it far more pleasant to play if I ever choose to go back.  I however, also feel that the lack of communication and sudden bannings of innocent players could cause some problems for Blizzard. (Innocent as in logging onto an account from a differant location etc) So in short, good thing bad approach.

-Jaxxy

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Originally posted by EverSkelly

 At least one company doing something about bots and cheats etc...

I'm sick of seeing same groups of bots in EQ2 running around autofollowing each other... farm all day...

SOE seems to do nothing about it... it's 6 accounts paid, doesn't matter that a program is controlling them.

 

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Originally posted by Darq

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Originally posted by Celestian

Since when is it a crime to buy gold or accounts? Heh, it's not.

It's a violation of Blizzard's ToS which is a rule for Blizzard, it's not against the law.


If blizzard didn't have such a farmy game no one would bother buying gold.

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Yes it is against the law. You sign a legally binding contract when you play the game. Breaking that contract is breaking the law. Whether or not you have to worry about actual legal charges being brought up against you is a different matter though.

As for Blizzard, they are ban happy. They banned one of my accounts and I to this day don't know why, they also banned me from the forums on my main account for "trolling" when all I did was argue with a CM about something (they were wrong, and didn't like being proven wrong, banned me and deleted my posts). I've yet to receive a single reply to any of the emails I sent to them about either of those bannings.

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Ok so I am still a player but not much theses day. While reading I said to myself this must be about the sites selling levels and gold so it really doesn't apply to me. Then I clicked the yellow link "How to stay in game" and now Im not sure what Blizzard is thinking.

This is taken straight from the Blizzard site (that yellow link)

Here are a few examples of access that is considered unauthorized. In all examples, George is the registered account user, and Cynthia is his 16-year-old daughter whom he has authorized to use the account (this list is by no means all-inclusive).

• George wants to let his brother Rick try the game.
• George has to cook dinner and his guest Travis just wants to chat with guildies while George is busy.
• Cynthia doesn’t want to level her character up, she just wants to raid, so she pays a power-leveling service to do it for her.
• Cynthia wants to achieve the top PVP rank quickly, so she asks her guildmates to fight in the battlegrounds while she’s at school.
• George is trying to get Exalted with a particular faction, and asks his wife, Janice, to help him by grinding mobs and repeatable quests.

Now the last three I get but number one took be back and number two is just too much. So do you mean to tell me if my husband has headed for the bathroom and one of his guildies is wanting to start so quest I CAN'T SAY "HE WILL BE RIGHT BACK" This is much more then this article lets on.

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Originally posted by Hamrtime

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Originally posted by Darq

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Originally posted by Celestian

Since when is it a crime to buy gold or accounts? Heh, it's not.

It's a violation of Blizzard's ToS which is a rule for Blizzard, it's not against the law.

If blizzard didn't have such a farmy game no one would bother buying gold.

---

Yes it is against the law. You sign a legally binding contract when you
play the game. Breaking that contract is breaking the law. Whether or
not you have to worry about actual legal charges being brought up
against you is a different matter though.

As for Blizzard,
they are ban happy. They banned one of my accounts and I to this day
don't know why, they also banned me from the forums on my main account
for "trolling" when all I did was argue with a CM about something (they
were wrong, and didn't like being proven wrong, banned me and deleted
my posts). I've yet to receive a single reply to any of the emails I
sent to them about either of those bannings.

---

Dude....what
have you been smokin? Just because you dont bind by a contract,
doesnt mean you also break the law. How many people that get
their car reposesed go to jail for not makin their car payment?
How many pro athletes go to jail because they held out on their
contract?

If you dont abide with your end of the agreement then its the other
party that has a right to come after you for damages, not the local,
state or federal authorities.

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Actually he is partially correct...breaking the contract is breaking the law...but only civil law. You cannot be criminally charged for breaking the contract (ie you cannot go to jail or be forced to pay fines to the state/federal autorities). You can only be sued by Blizzard in civil court, but instead, they just settle out of court by terminating your account.

First off, the Disclosure Clause for money transactions is shrinking every day here in the US., all in the name of the Goddess Herself, Homeland Security. Last I checked, $4,999.99 was the maximum transfer before automated flagging, it might be less now, if it isn't  then rest assured it will soon enough. That said...

I'm amused at the multiplicity of posts referring to WoW being an overly 'farming game'. Um, wakey wakey, all you WoW-was-my-first-MMO-babies: MMOs are farm-fests pretty much across the board; ESPECIALLY Korean MMOs which is EXACTLY. WHAT. WoW. IS.  MODELLED. AFTER. Why do you think it is such a success in China? It did NOT create new grounds, what it DID was copy the Korean MMO model and injected said model with Sword of Mana Graphics. It is also a massive success because it is a 3rd party Gold Seller's dream come true, for the reason that I state in the paragraph next.

The Viper That Bit Blizzard In The A** was their choice to go against EVERY MMO convention out there and whole-heartedly embrace hacking (oh *cough* sorry to insult you all: MODDING *cough* *cough*). So now here Blizzard is, reaping what they have sown: a veritable HACKFEST from having been too generous. Just as True Communism can never exist (and never has...except maybe in an Israeli Kibbutz), neither can a Rule-Abiding Moddable MMO exist. There is no such thing as Utopia and the Human Race will never realise that state. Humanity will always follow it's own Personal Selfish Agenda. This has been proven time and again.

As for 'My Linux system got banned' and all the other 'I was falsely banned coz of (insert favourite excuse here)', Criminals ALWAYS cry foul when they get caught. Criminals ALWAYS run to the Justice System to protect themselves against the Righteous Vengeance of those they have victimised. Don't believe me? Go spend some time with any of the Big Five Motorcycle Gangs and study how they do business. Crime hides behind the Scales of Justice, this also has been proven time and again. Don't be naive. Don't be deceived.

BLizzard is completly retarded when they:

Banning people for playing from varios computers/IP numbers.
First of all as many as my self have a numeros Computers I use.
My IP nr is changing as our ip use dynamical IP ( IP providers usualy do this in EU IP nr is running low here

I got friends of mine who have arrive home and seen there account banned becouse of this. Blizzard
never communicate with there users.

This is starting to be very pathetically ridiculous*.

Banning people becouse of using another OS then microsofts is (se above*).

I have gone true the legal pappers from Blizzard at a glance and I cant find any text stating banning can accour
becouse you swith to another computer, change IP nr or for that fact using Linux as OS.

More

- I got friends including my self playing WoW on varios computers, running it on linux clients, and
is this the way blizzard is acting it may be a good reason to start thinking " stop your current sub.." and
start browse for a better mmorpg.

We are right now 800 players in my guild and we got this " under disc shall we leave or not as it stands now
I think it's not that many + on wow and blizzard.

the writer aint native english so spelling and gramma may not be 100%

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Originally posted by Anofalye

 Gold farmers is something you can't fight, it is like waving your sword at the ocean...and you are hurting yourself doing so.  However, you can remove all negative impact these farmers can have on the game, thereby more or less fighting it, but most importantly, making the game fun for non-farmers.  They have instancing in the game, which is the MAIN tool to fight gold-farmers nasty impact...however, they fail to understand it...

---

 You are clearly wrong.

Instancing does not stop farming, it helps farmers by giving them a private place to farm nonstop without being seen or bothered. They don't have to deal with any competition from other players. The fact that WoW has a lot of instancing and is the most farmed MMOG around, proves this.

• George wants to let his brother Rick try the game.
• George has to cook dinner and his guest Travis just wants to chat with guildies while George is busy.
• Cynthia doesn’t want to level her character up, she just wants to raid, so she pays a power-leveling service to do it for her.
• Cynthia wants to achieve the top PVP rank quickly, so she asks her guildmates to fight in the battlegrounds while she’s at school.
• George is trying to get Exalted with a particular faction, and asks his wife, Janice, to help him by grinding mobs and repeatable quests.

Now the last three I get but number one took be back and number two is just too much. So do you mean to tell me if my husband has headed for the bathroom and one of his guildies is wanting to start so quest I CAN'T SAY "HE WILL BE RIGHT BACK" This is much more then this article lets onAll of the examples you gave are the same violation, sharing of an account, and you deserve a banning for any of them.

---

Originally posted by einexile
That Blizzard has a policy forbidding players from allowing their *spouses* to maintain characters on the account for even the most casual dabbling pretty much negates any claim they have to moral high ground on anything. This is a part of life in which WoW, Blizzard, the law, and the public have no authority and no right to consider, comment, or enforce.

Everyone should read these guidelines carefully. They are a bizarre insight into a dangerous hubris that could one day spell the death of the game - and they are a very strong argument for looking the other way in the face of any offense.

---

Blizzard and most other MMOGs have the same"non sharing of accounts" rule.

Blizzard and other MMOGs don't claim high moral ground. They believe sharing of accounts enables cheaters to be more effective, with powerleveling and use of bots which is the truth.

Sorry if you can't use your spouse's account to chat with his guildmates. Get over yourself.

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Originally posted by einexile
That Blizzard has a policy forbidding players from allowing their *spouses* to maintain characters on the account for even the most casual dabbling pretty much negates any claim they have to moral high ground on anything.

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Actually, I believe the lesson learned is do not let friends play on your account, or do anything else that is against the rules. They did nothing wrong there. They strung you along long enough to get the details concerning you and your friend's wrongdoing and then banned you, which was and is their right in such cases. You do not have a legitimate complaint with this one. You were not wrongly banned and you fell for good cop/bad cop. Funny all the way around

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Originally posted by Zorvan

Actually, I believe the lesson learned is do not let friends play on your account, or do anything else that is against the rules. They did nothing wrong there. They strung you along long enough to get the details concerning you and your friend's wrongdoing and then banned you, which was and is their right in such cases. You do not have a legitimate complaint with this one. You were not wrongly banned and you fell for good cop/bad cop. Funny all the way around

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/agree

It's the same ploy cops use and it's justifiable to get all the information they can.

Anyone who shares their account for whatever reason deserves to be banned.

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Originally posted by MrBoots
So the lesson is do not trust/help a blizzard GM. They do not keep their word.

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...and this is just too delicious to not edit my posting for.

How about "Do not trust your "friends" and read the agreements you enter when using your account? As mentioned a bit further up in my posting: You have AGREED and UNDERSTAND that one account will only EVER be used by one person.

I don'T really know what you expected here? Say your friend did do wrong on your account... A: How would they know it wasn'T you and B: Why should they let any abuse go unpunished if they already warn you when you open your accoun that this is what can happen to you?

The bottom line here is, you do not have a given right to play an online game.  If the game publisher does not want you to play THEIR game, then they have the right to tell you that you can no longer play.  They do not have to give you a reason other than we don't want you here.  Having said that, no game publisher is going to ban anybody without good reason.  I would venture to guess that 99% of these players who claim they did nothing wrong know perfectly well what they did. 

You do not have to use a third party program to get banned.  A good many players who get banned are exploiting a bug in the code.  It is amazing how many players will say, " if there is a bug in the code it is the game publishers fault for not fixing it and I can expolit if I want to".  Well, guess what, yes you can and you can also have your game account banned. 

Players will say. " I didn't know it was a bug".  Listen, if you find something in the game that allows you to reap rewards without any risk on your part then it is most likely a bug and you should report it, not exploit it.  For instance, if you found a vendor that after you sold him a special item, he would sell you some other item for 1 silver but would buy it back for 100 gold and you were able to do this over and over and over, then that would obviously be a bug.  You would be gaining a large reward for no risk and the situation was  obviously not meant to happen.  If you did this again and again, (thereby exploiting the bug), then you should not be surprised when the game publisher says buh bye to you. 

One of the often exploited bugs are pathing bugs.  If you find a spot where you can kill mobs over and over without any risk to yourself then that is a bug and you should report it,  not do it.  There is a game that had a few of these types of bugs.  There were spots where you could, using a special spell, cause mobs to run into and get stuck in a wall and then all you had to do was sit there and fire damage spells at them until they were dead.  This was obviously not meant to happen.  Many players were banned from this game for doing this exploit.

Just keep in mind when you are playing an MMORPG.  The game publisher can say goodbye to you whenever they please.  So while you are playing you should always keep that in mind and not do things you know are not suppose to work the way you are using them. 

If you are using third party programs to do things for you without any effort on your part, then don't be surprised when your account gets banned. 

If you are doing things that interfere with other players playing the game normally, then don't cry when you get banned.

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Originally posted by kmilner
And I remember when this game came out they said they weren't going to be ban-happy. They would talk to people before bans went out. They were a different kind of game company that would listen to its player base. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" as the Who would say.

What I think is funny is how they go around banning people right and left without even talking to them, yet do nothing about the level 44 orc warrior who has been in Thousand Needles for three weeks continuously.
When I was there, 15 levels ago, he was stealing kills and even trying to skin my kills before I could skin them. He ignored constant requests to stop, so I reported him.
"We'll look into this player's activity and investigate further."
well, three weeks later, I can still do a /who on him anytime, day or night, and there he is, farming his little heart out. Same level, same location.
Yeah, they can't ban him because he MIGHT not be a farmer, but they ban others left and right for what ever capricious reason they feel is adequate.
Ban the cheaters and gold sellers, but do it evenly. And give them redress of grievences.Thats all I say.

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Yeah, I remember when they made their little shiny promises.

The game WAS good but then it became a massive thing with 582859829 users, this ruined it.

Obviously Blizzard was ALWAYS slow to deal with EVERYTHING, they have an retarded inter-company structure and need days to respond to anything that gets reported.

Ive always loved their games and enjoyed WoW for a brief time, but I just wish it goes out of business, really. The service is looking like crap.

If the game expands that much they need to try and deal with it, hire more people or make more transparent systems to deal with problems. Obviously they cant do it.

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Originally posted by Samuraisword

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Originally posted by einexile
That Blizzard has a policy forbidding players from allowing their *spouses* to maintain characters on the account for even the most casual dabbling pretty much negates any claim they have to moral high ground on anything. This is a part of life in which WoW, Blizzard, the law, and the public have no authority and no right to consider, comment, or enforce.

Everyone should read these guidelines carefully. They are a bizarre insight into a dangerous hubris that could one day spell the death of the game - and they are a very strong argument for looking the other way in the face of any offense.

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Blizzard and most other MMOGs have the same"non sharing of accounts" rule.

Blizzard and other MMOGs don't claim high moral ground. They believe sharing of accounts enables cheaters to be more effective, with powerleveling and use of bots which is the truth.

Sorry if you can't use your spouse's account to chat with his guildmates. Get over yourself.

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Originally posted by willgar
As i am not a gold buyer, can some kind soul tell me what they use the bought gold for? All the top items are BOP or need a group of players to get, you cant buy faction with gold, herbs and potions are piss easy to gather... so what are all these supposed millions of gold being spent on then??? anyone? please....

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Originally posted by Onijin

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Originally posted by Samuraisword

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Originally posted by einexile
That Blizzard has a policy forbidding players from allowing their *spouses* to maintain characters on the account for even the most casual dabbling pretty much negates any claim they have to moral high ground on anything. This is a part of life in which WoW, Blizzard, the law, and the public have no authority and no right to consider, comment, or enforce.

Everyone should read these guidelines carefully. They are a bizarre insight into a dangerous hubris that could one day spell the death of the game - and they are a very strong argument for looking the other way in the face of any offense.

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Blizzard and most other MMOGs have the same"non sharing of accounts" rule.

Blizzard and other MMOGs don't claim high moral ground. They believe sharing of accounts enables cheaters to be more effective, with powerleveling and use of bots which is the truth.

Sorry if you can't use your spouse's account to chat with his guildmates. Get over yourself.

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Sorry but you're wrong. Try again when flaming someone to get over themselves. Perhaps you should go look at other MMO's rules :p none of them state such a listing especially with such harsh terms of punishment kkthxbye.

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Originally posted by willgar
As i am not a gold buyer, can some kind soul tell me what they use the bought gold for? All the top items are BOP or need a group of players to get, you cant buy faction with gold, herbs and potions are piss easy to gather... so what are all these supposed millions of gold being spent on then??? anyone? please....

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Actually you can buy faction.  Twillight texts for Centarion Circle rep.  Bijous and coins for ZG rep.   Dark Iron ore plus other things for Thorium Brotherhood rep   ...

Having gold just makes the game easier.   Want to enchant your new BoP epic item having gold makes it happen.  There are many other uses for in game money.     That's probably why there is a demand for it :).

Having said that I'd be very to see all gold farmers (the ones sell their labor for real money) and all gold buyers removed for the game ASAP. 

Yeah Ban'm all!

I'm all for punishing players who break the rules.  Including banning them.   Hell there are not enough bans given out.  When I don't see evidence of botting,  gold selling or even players making obsene* statements in public chat.  Then there are probably enough bans given out.

I don't want to see truly innocent playerers get banned.   And neither does Blizzard (or anyother gaming company).   What would Blizzard have to gain from banning innocent players?  Nothing of course.

I don't fear a ban and probably neither do the majority of players who play the game without breaking the rules.

Well for one it is Blizzards game and they have the right to do what they feel needs to be done to protect the game and its subscribers.

Like the editor noted it is hard to judge on the Linux issue or the so called logging into the game at a different location because there just isnt enough information on these 2 occurences. However if the ban is because your running an operating system other then windows then this is unacceptable.. but again we dont know the full story and for anyone that uses linex or unix knows you can do a lot more hacking or other things with these operating systems.

Hopefully these issues are corrected but dont judge Blizzard on them until you get the information on what is truly going on. Unfortunately we may never know.

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Originally posted by Rugster



I've actually stopped playing wow because thier accounts system used for extending subscription only uses microsoft explorer, since i use firefox, i cannot resub, not that it matters, plenty other games to play... bf2142 for example.

 

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Originally posted by nutwithguns

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Originally posted by Rugster



I've actually stopped playing wow because thier accounts system used for extending subscription only uses microsoft explorer, since i use firefox, i cannot resub, not that it matters, plenty other games to play... bf2142 for example.

 

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          um not true i use firefox and have no problem with the account system. maybe it maybe something else.

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There is nothing wrong with farming and buying gold. If you have the money, do it. We've been buying gold since the game came out and have never been banned. Audits ? Yeah right. 4 of my 60s have over 35,000 gold on them each.

My time > money. Boo hoo hoo I can't get the new rogue book. It won't drop. I lost the roll. So and so ninja'd it. Big deal. BOE items always drop in the AH. Believe me, BOP is just as easy - I have all the full sets for all my toons, once it comes time for the roll start whispering whoever is rolling against you - gold > rolling. You will win every time.

Gold buying FTWs. Now flame away "purists". Bahaha.

EDIT : Two things to look for when hunting for a new game to play. 1) Is there gold available for purchase and 2) death penalty. The obvious "fun factor" is a given.

EDIT : Completely forgot about the faction. I went from 0 to EXALTED in less than 2 hrs from using the Bijous and Twilight Texts. All in all it boils down to time against money for me. And for, I have waaaay more money than time. Let's think about this. You log onto a farming site (I frequent 2). I purchase the highest amount of gold possible. It is delivered in minutes. Hmmm. Minutes or MONTHS of farming ? You decide. Like I said, if you have the cash, do it. Enjoy the game. Buy the pots, gear, etc., get burned out and move to the next game.

I still laugh at the people running UBRS over and over and over and still getting nothing. MC, ZG, etc. are all the same. Remember, the loudest people AGAINST gold buying, etc. are usually guilty as hell.

Get over it. If you get caught, move along...nothing to see. Just pray your new game has an ingame mailing (w/attachment) system. Ever try trading 100,000k in COH/COV ? Takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

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Originally posted by Exmond
Hating wow.  The new COOL thing to do!

I couldn't even get through the first page without noticing some errors.  Im sure they have been corrected but..

Blizzard banning Cedega users:  Nope.  Blizzard has been working with Cedega so its not the fact that people are using linux to run WOW.  It is because they are cheating and hoping Cedega covers it.

Seriously guys, grown some balls, be your own person and don't follow the rest of the sheep.

Stand tall and admit it, you like WOW.

But you know the Viva Pinata is the REAL wow killer.

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Thanks a bunch !!

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Originally posted by Onijin
Dunno about you all but I think that's a crock of horse-covered bull crap. 1) No other MMO states only you or a under 18 trustee or child can access your account. 2) You are paying their monthly fee for their services and mainteance of the server. 3) Your account to access the game is your own property.

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SWG's EULA also states that you cannot share your account. I had a few guildmates in the past in SWG who were banned for sharing their account.

Also, you are paying a monthly fee, but your account is not your property. You are paying fee for being able to access and play the game, so actually you are paying some sort of license fee. Just like software... you are not buying it, you are buying a license to use it.

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Originally posted by Jd1680a
This is sounding alot like a witch hunt for Blizzard.  Anyone who they think is a bot is automaticly banned without question.  That is not a good thing if the customer is legitmate.  I just hope alot of these wrongly banned players were to get together to do a class action lawsuit.  Since they are paying customers and is following the rules, there is no reason for blizzard to kick them off.  It is Blizzards problem and something the need to fix.  EULA is pretty paper thin when it comes between a few hundred people and a good lawyer to sue Blizzard for falsely banning people from a service they paid for.

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That's not true. They are too slow to ban even the most obvious botters. Sometimes they ban a lot of botters at the same time and post an article on their website as a publicity stunt, but as far as I know from various sources on the net, if they don't ban a botter within 9 days, the botter is making profit, so they should do it continuously, and not as a monthly campaign. These gold farming bots are ridiculously easy to spot in WoW, and still some of them are still happily farming even though I reported them almost a month ago. I'm beginning to suspect, too, that Blizzard may have a vested interest in some of those gold farming companies as an extra - and covert - source of income.

Botters do not hurt anybody? Not true. Try to do a quest when four or five bots are farming the quest mobs!! Try to mine resources when automated bot miners mine them 3 seconds after they spawn.

Also, I think, any legal action against Blizzard would be useless, and the reason why there has been none so far is that any lawyer will tell you the same. Blizzard owns the game and makes you accept their terms for gaining access to their property. If they see it OK, they can ban you without giving any reason, they can suspend your forum rights... remember you are accessing their private property where they are entirely within their rights to set the rules.

As a long time player of MMOs(only one of which is WoW), there is always more going on behind the scenes then what is portrayed by the players and the companies side.

Using WoW as an example

Known hackers using the same exact hack for 9 straight months check

Known Gold farmers making it through 3 waves of account bans even thou they were reported by 30 people every day for 90 days straight check

Working with gold farmers to get their cut of the 'virtual market' check

HAving every informative site about the game have links to virtual gold farmers check

Having GMs in game think their shait dont stink and that their game is perfect check

 Training 20 disease ridden mods onto the Night elf hunter making it die over and over again priceless...

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Originally posted by DragonSpell
I freqently Go to viset my brother in Calgary Alberta ( he plays WoW as well ) and i live in Vernon B.C. when i go there i play my acount on his sons pc so we get to play together there . So now i could lose my acount for this GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I have 5 lvl 60s and i have played from bata . and now i could lose my acount for playing with my brother at his house . I got him into the game and his son and my cusin and my girl friend , Wow neads to find another way to fix the trouble they are haveing with hackers . and i Hait Farmers they ruin the in game market for all of us

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Hi All,

Although it would be great if i can read this 6 page thread thoroughly, but i don't have the couple of hours to lay down for that time sink.

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I also feel that if you are doing something that goes against that company's policy you should be punished and have your account banned. Whether or not that company owes you an explanation is up to them. ---Garrett Fuller.

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In a games entertainment industry that is beating movie box office sales for many years now in the US for billions of dollars. I'm still befuddled that no grass roots "game consumer protection groups" have formed up. If one has please share the linkage with moi, i'll appreciate it.

I wonder if a MMO game developer publisher that bans an account without "due reason". Is not breaking some sort of national or US State consumer protection rights? Perhaps something along the lines that a Internet Provider falls under since that is a subscription based business model likewise.

As consumers many of us don't know our full rights (whether by US State or National) and thus fail to exercise them appropiately.

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Originally posted by Paks
Stop with this nonsense.  There was only a he said she said thing in the editorial about them banning different IPs, and I'll bet money there's much more to the story just like there was with the Linux portion.  I think it was very irresponsible of the author to even post this.

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I hope they continue to ban every gold farmer or buyer, power leveler and anyone using any program that may give them unfair advantages ie. cheating.

These alleged bannings of acounts simply for running on a different computer are exactly what it would look like to have a character power leveled.

The terms of service are clear and although it may be inconvenient to not be able to play on your laptop from your hotel, it's the only way to get rid of this garbage.

Well done Blizzard, keep up the good work.

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Originally posted by dragon88
There's one easy solution to stop all the gold farmers is for Blizzard to sell gold themself or lower prices for vendor items like epic mount training & faction rep rewards. Both these ideas would end or decrease gold farmers.

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Originally posted by Darraess
I will not read any posts on this topic as the issues brought up in the editorial are more or less set issues, when i say set i mean that they have been so much discussed the last years that people like me have come to a conclusion and nothing said can change our mind, as nothing new can be said anyway.

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I didn't bother to read your post.   But I did slog my way though most of the other ones (sorry folks, once you go past 3 paragraphs, I move on)

My son and his friends routinely log on their accounts both at my house and others, and never have been banned.  They playe each others characters at times (which is against the rules) and I think that reports of bannings over account sharing are more legend than fact. (but, yes, they do happens sometimes, I'm sure)

As to banning Linux users.. why the heck not... I don't use it... could care less....   (just kidding guys)

As was mentioned by others, Blizz has a right to ban thoses they wish too.... if it happens to you... go play another game... its not the only fun one on the block.

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Originally posted by Clattuc

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Originally posted by Paks
Stop with this nonsense.  There was only a he said she said thing in the editorial about them banning different IPs, and I'll bet money there's much more to the story just like there was with the Linux portion.  I think it was very irresponsible of the author to even post this.

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If you mean for Garrett Fuller to write his editorial, I totally disagree.

The game companies already have ridiculously far-reaching and lopsided User Agreements that allow them to do anything they want at any time, with or without reason or warning, with no recourse on the part of the user.  The only shred of accountability for game company behavior is the gaming press and its associated communities.  Sites like this one need to hold Blizzard/SOE/etc's feet to the fire on mass bannings, reliability problems and other stuff.  They are usually justified, but the game companies should NEVER be allowed to feel immune to criticism or justification.

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Originally posted by Sinitassu
The only reason there are bots and farmers is that the game is booring to play. The GMs haven't paid enough time making content interesting. In WoW it is just grind grind grind... day after day. Playing that kind of grind is like being the bot yourself. And don't say there are quests... The quests are just a facade for grind and even worse, running around the world for nothing. So I'd blame blizzard for the need for botting, gold buying etc.

There are things that could've been made when the game was made like:
1. Limited ammount of money as a whole (per server) That would totally destroy money farming since it'd get useless after a while since they would soon have no money to grind from. This is the case IRL

2. Making the best gear crafter made. A lot of less booring grind.

3. Making quests interesting. Quest should be something that would be emotionally rewarding rather than worth some stinky 2000exp points and some lousy ammount of money so people would do them for pleasure, not because its work to get to an instance, BG etc. Gaming should be about fun, it is not very fun to exp to get better gear to better exp to get better gear...

4. Maybe even allowing players to make a character of the level of their choice, no needs for bots when you don't have to game the booring parts... you could skip any unpleasing content, making it more suitable for even casual players.

I'm not a botter and I wasn't banned. But I think Blizzard is going at it all wrong.

- Tassu

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It seems that you have problems with the whole concept of MMORPGs. In answer of your points:
1) not sure a good idea. If the server reaches its money capacity, then there is no point of doing anything becuase u cannot get a reward from your actions. The whole idea of MMORPGs is to gain reward for your efforts, whether it be solo questing, group questing, mob hunting, raiding or PvPing. You gotta put a juicy reward for all that, or else there is no point in doing that.

2) I agree, crafting SHOULD be equaly rewarding (and challenging) as adventuring rewards. I make an even bolder idea, it would be great to have not only crafting and adventuring types of games, but would be great to have diplomacy type of gameplay (Vanguard is experimenting with this), exploration (Elements of this used to be fairly interesting in Earth and Beyond), guild management, global kingdom strategy (sort of become a king and dictate where NPC armies should concentrate their attacks/defences, what trade routes/trade items NPC merchants should concentrate one, what crafting materials should be prioritized. makes this NOT too influence global economy too much so that one bad king does screw up everyone.). Still, reward should come from effort, and often effort means... yes, it means grind, whether a well hidden grind like in WoW, or obvious in-your-face grind like EQ1 or low level L2.

3) Afree 100% with u. Unfortunately, this requires a HUGE amount of man-power and even greater amount of creativity. This is pretty much impossible with a limited amount of people controlling this aspect of the game. What COULD fix this, theoreticaly, is player added content. If Blizzard cannot afford to hire 1000 content designers, why not let millions of players create one for them like in Ryzom? There is a bad side to that though, most of that content will be, well, amature. So then they need to either hire another 100 people to review those player made mods for bugs, balance, etc and put an official stamp of approval on that mod, then streamline it into official game module.

4) Thats just silly. Why make a max level char? What to do next? Just buy the game, create a max level char and then unsubscribe becuase there is nothing left to do.

You have some great ideas, but also one or two .. weird ones, hehe. I think you, just like I, outgrew the whole concept of MMORPG. I no longer enjoy any kind of "invest 5 hours - get some reward" type of gameplay. Seems that you would preffer "play 5 mins, get instant gratification" type over the first one. Unfortunately, that means no current MMORPG will satisfy u. Right now, GW is the only game that would hold my attention for longer then a few hours, becuase its fresh for me and I can hire NPC henchman when I cant find a group of real players (surprisingly, NPCs often fight better then PCs, thus eliminating the "bad community" factor from the game).

Id recommend FPS games like Counterstrike, Planetside or Battlefield for instant gratification, or if you insist on RPGs, then single player RPGs like Oblivion. Or just wait till they release a "perfect", or close to that, MMORPG. But I doubt that one will ever be released :(  becuase our tastes change too fast for games to catch up.

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Originally posted by boognish75

well the time thing i see from a buisnees oint of view, to be playing more than 100 hours a week means more than one person is playing that account, and thats a big nono, one person to one account and thats a rule for almost all moo's and it also means more money for the mmo maker as that would require 2 people to have 1 account each, and blizz is all about making money, if yer having 2 people play an account then thats not making them money.

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I don't play WoW, dont even like it but this statement is so untrue.....there are people like me that can literally stay up for 3-5 days straight playing and only need a few hours to recoup.  If you have ever been in the military in any kind of combat situation you know you sleep very little if any at all with ongoing operations.  I play my games with the same mentality....I actually camped the FBss and SMR in one session on EQ took almost 7 days and went through 3 server down times that week.  I was the first person back online everytime so I ran the groups for those camps. 

As for everyone elses statements.....like others have stated from a business stand point its good to let the gold farmers work for a while and then ban their accts.   It makes them more money because they will buy more accts as stated and thus have another account raking in money while they get to keep whatever was left on the previous account.  Its all about money, its not about your fun or even what you want, thats not what a business is interested in.  Anyone who thinks Blizzard is different than any other big company is just plain dumb.

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Originally posted by happilpie

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Originally posted by boognish75

well the time thing i see from a buisnees oint of view, to be playing more than 100 hours a week means more than one person is playing that account, and thats a big nono, one person to one account and thats a rule for almost all moo's and it also means more money for the mmo maker as that would require 2 people to have 1 account each, and blizz is all about making money, if yer having 2 people play an account then thats not making them money.

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I don't play WoW, dont even like it but this statement is so untrue.....there are people like me that can literally stay up for 3-5 days straight playing and only need a few hours to recoup.  If you have ever been in the military in any kind of combat situation you know you sleep very little if any at all with ongoing operations.  I play my games with the same mentality....I actually camped the FBss and SMR in one session on EQ took almost 7 days and went through 3 server down times that week.  I was the first person back online everytime so I ran the groups for those camps. 

 

As for everyone elses statements.....like others have stated from a business stand point its good to let the gold farmers work for a while and then ban their accts.   It makes them more money because they will buy more accts as stated and thus have another account raking in money while they get to keep whatever was left on the previous account.  Its all about money, its not about your fun or even what you want, thats not what a business is interested in.  Anyone who thinks Blizzard is different than any other big company is just plain dumb.

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Originally posted by jimmyman99

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Originally posted by happilpie

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Originally posted by boognish75

well the time thing i see from a buisnees oint of view, to be playing more than 100 hours a week means more than one person is playing that account, and thats a big nono, one person to one account and thats a rule for almost all moo's and it also means more money for the mmo maker as that would require 2 people to have 1 account each, and blizz is all about making money, if yer having 2 people play an account then thats not making them money.

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I don't play WoW, dont even like it but this statement is so untrue.....there are people like me that can literally stay up for 3-5 days straight playing and only need a few hours to recoup.  If you have ever been in the military in any kind of combat situation you know you sleep very little if any at all with ongoing operations.  I play my games with the same mentality....I actually camped the FBss and SMR in one session on EQ took almost 7 days and went through 3 server down times that week.  I was the first person back online everytime so I ran the groups for those camps. 

 

As for everyone elses statements.....like others have stated from a business stand point its good to let the gold farmers work for a while and then ban their accts.   It makes them more money because they will buy more accts as stated and thus have another account raking in money while they get to keep whatever was left on the previous account.  Its all about money, its not about your fun or even what you want, thats not what a business is interested in.  Anyone who thinks Blizzard is different than any other big company is just plain dumb.

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The thing is, botters dont actualy BUY this game. They use trials to get free access for a few days, farm a bit money, transfer gold to their main account, or to someone who paid. So in reality, the only one who is in serious danger is the buyer itself and the community in general. I dont know how far a botter can level itself in 7 days of non-stop botting, or how much money they can grind, but it is a fact that at least some of those botters work through trials becuase there was a big issue here in MMORPG.COM where a LOT of new accounts were created with these weird names like "aigsngdslk" and obtained a trial key for WoW. Needless to say that account was never heard of nor was it ever involved in forum activities. So I believe this activity is indeed hurting Bliz business, so they are doing some fairly drastic (dare say radical?) things in order to protect their playerbase a.k.a. incomebase.

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Originally posted by Bloodharvest
 Ok well I'm not retarded but i AM for....both sides of this artical. Allthough I hate how it ruins the economy of a server, (i was on my server and a lvl 8 green was for 65s,)  I think it is fine for people to buy money. It IS their money, after all. However, I am NOT happy with powerleveling services. Why should people get to pay to have a level 60 with epic gear and epic mount when they did not WORK for it?!?!?! to me that is lazyness and ruins the point of the game, and Blizz has good reason to ban people for it. I say this and i am very lazy lol. Horde ftw.

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for those that have never sold anything via a third party and have gotten cancelled due to logging in from a different location....

two words....law suit

No matter what terms of service you "agree" to.  There are legal obligations for a company to provide the product that is being paid for.  Not just take your money and say bubye!

Now...if they ban an account and refund money for time not played...then nevermind...they can deny service to whomever they choose is they have written down somewhere.  Which they probably do.

Anyways...that's my opinion.

*watches a small child put his hand in the cookie jar, look directly at a parent and still utter the famouse words, 'I didn't do it.'" 

Bannings: Perhaps a thank you is in order. Why waste your hard earned money on a game that lacks consistancy in policy.

The "buying gold" topis is as old as MMO's. LOL!  But, I do like to jump in as devil's advocate. I absolutely love the "I worked hard to get what so and so just bougt" debate. First of all, your sitting on your butt, at a keyboard, pushing some buttons and a mouse. Work? Hardly.  Which makes me wonder, do you also go picket your neighbor's house if he/she elects to hire the neighborhood kid to cut grass when you had to actually go push your own mower through your yard?  Please, stop worrying about what your neighbor is doing and focus more on what you can do to make the entire neighborhood a cool place...go help him get his grass cut instead of complaining about how he's getting it done.

To all of those who scream how damaging it is to the economy. No, actually what damages the economy is simple human greed. Is it so easy to blame the person selling the gold, blame the person buying the gold, but never acknowledge the player asking 100 gold for a level 19 blue item.  I blame player greed coupled with poor game design for what transpires outside the game (ie., gold sales). The farmers are simply supplying something that's in demand. Shut off the need (the demand) and you kill the farmers (supply). Help your neighbor cut his grass, and the neighborhood kid will go get a paper route instead. It's very simple, unfortunatley, too many simply want to sit back and throw a childish hissy fit as opposed to do something unselfish with their time.

Welcome to the world of MMO's.

-Ashyn

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Originally posted by FergRedbeard

for those that have never sold anything via a third party and have gotten cancelled due to logging in from a different location....

two words....law suit

No matter what terms of service you "agree" to.  There are legal obligations for a company to provide the product that is being paid for.  Not just take your money and say bubye!

Now...if they ban an account and refund money for time not played...then nevermind...they can deny service to whomever they choose is they have written down somewhere.  Which they probably do.

Anyways...that's my opinion.

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Originally posted by eshi
no actually, i dont know if you read the fine print, but you have NO rights for your account.  It was in the pc gamer article if you read it, but somewhere in the fine print they state something along the lines of Blizzard holds the right to ban accounts and blah blah blah.  Its wicked annoying, but also was a smart move by Blizzard since they have supreme power over a million accounts(thats the number right?)

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Originally posted by faefrost

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Originally posted by jimmyman99

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Originally posted by happilpie

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Originally posted by boognish75

well the time thing i see from a buisnees oint of view, to be playing more than 100 hours a week means more than one person is playing that account, and thats a big nono, one person to one account and thats a rule for almost all moo's and it also means more money for the mmo maker as that would require 2 people to have 1 account each, and blizz is all about making money, if yer having 2 people play an account then thats not making them money.

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I don't play WoW, dont even like it but this statement is so untrue.....there are people like me that can literally stay up for 3-5 days straight playing and only need a few hours to recoup.  If you have ever been in the military in any kind of combat situation you know you sleep very little if any at all with ongoing operations.  I play my games with the same mentality....I actually camped the FBss and SMR in one session on EQ took almost 7 days and went through 3 server down times that week.  I was the first person back online everytime so I ran the groups for those camps. 

 

As for everyone elses statements.....like others have stated from a business stand point its good to let the gold farmers work for a while and then ban their accts.   It makes them more money because they will buy more accts as stated and thus have another account raking in money while they get to keep whatever was left on the previous account.  Its all about money, its not about your fun or even what you want, thats not what a business is interested in.  Anyone who thinks Blizzard is different than any other big company is just plain dumb.

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The thing is, botters dont actualy BUY this game. They use trials to get free access for a few days, farm a bit money, transfer gold to their main account, or to someone who paid. So in reality, the only one who is in serious danger is the buyer itself and the community in general. I dont know how far a botter can level itself in 7 days of non-stop botting, or how much money they can grind, but it is a fact that at least some of those botters work through trials becuase there was a big issue here in MMORPG.COM where a LOT of new accounts were created with these weird names like "aigsngdslk" and obtained a trial key for WoW. Needless to say that account was never heard of nor was it ever involved in forum activities. So I believe this activity is indeed hurting Bliz business, so they are doing some fairly drastic (dare say radical?) things in order to protect their playerbase a.k.a. incomebase.

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how far could they get in 7 days?  They can get to level 20, and they can transfer no more than 20 gold. Free trial accounts are capped in this manner.

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Originally posted by Ashyn

*watches a small child put his hand in the cookie jar, look directly at a parent and still utter the famouse words, 'I didn't do it.'" 

Bannings: Perhaps a thank you is in order. Why waste your hard earned money on a game that lacks consistancy in policy.

The "buying gold" topis is as old as MMO's. LOL!  But, I do like to jump in as devil's advocate. I absolutely love the "I worked hard to get what so and so just bougt" debate. First of all, your sitting on your butt, at a keyboard, pushing some buttons and a mouse. Work? Hardly.  Which makes me wonder, do you also go picket your neighbor's house if he/she elects to hire the neighborhood kid to cut grass when you had to actually go push your own mower through your yard?  Please, stop worrying about what your neighbor is doing and focus more on what you can do to make the entire neighborhood a cool place...go help him get his grass cut instead of complaining about how he's getting it done.

To all of those who scream how damaging it is to the economy. No, actually what damages the economy is simple human greed. Is it so easy to blame the person selling the gold, blame the person buying the gold, but never acknowledge the player asking 100 gold for a level 19 blue item.  I blame player greed coupled with poor game design for what transpires outside the game (ie., gold sales). The farmers are simply supplying something that's in demand. Shut off the need (the demand) and you kill the farmers (supply). Help your neighbor cut his grass, and the neighborhood kid will go get a paper route instead. It's very simple, unfortunatley, too many simply want to sit back and throw a childish hissy fit as opposed to do something unselfish with their time.

Welcome to the world of MMO's.

-Ashyn

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Why does someone ask 100 gold for a level 19 blue item? Becuase there are people who paid 10$ for that 100 gold. What would happen if there was no buying gold for money? Would anyone realy pay 100 gold for a level 19 item? Thats why gold buyers ruin economy.

Dont blame the drug-addict for purchasing drugs, blame the drug-dealer who uses drug-addict's weakness to drugs

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Using drug addiction as an anology isn't what I would consider valid for arguement's sake, not in MMO's. 

I gather from your post that you do blame the gold suppliers and it appears that you view it the same as you view those who sell drugs. Using your views, I can point out the flaws in the logic simply by stating that those who are "addicted" to the game more than likely have an adequate "gold" supply. Those aren't the primary ones purchasing the gold.

 Perhaps you would like to drop a poll onto the forums and ask to find out the number one reason for purchasing gold.  I have a good idea of what the highest percentage of answers would be; Simply the lack of time to aquire the amount of gold needed for an item, not "Omgz I'm soz addicted I can't get enough roxxerz my soxxerz goldz."

I believe the highest percentage of "buyers" out there are the casual gamers who work 40 or more hours each week, enjoy a bit of gaming time and would like to play to the fullest capacity but is limited due to either

• Game Mechanics: that make a game more difficult and/or time consuming for the casual gamer to acquire any real "game wealth" to progress
• Player Greed: players asking a ridiculous amount for an item (an amount that by the time the player actually aquires the money, he/she has leveled ten more times and outgrown the item, thus tossing it back on "game mechanics").

You and I will obviousely differ on point of view. Perhaps you do picket your neighbor's house when they hire a gardner but you have to hand plant all of your begonias. I simply don't. How my neighbor spends his money is his business. How I spend mine is mine and quite frankly, anyone who believes otherwise should perhaps move to a communist society in order to fully understand the value of personal freedom.

-Ashyn

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Originally posted by Ashyn

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Why does someone ask 100 gold for a level 19 blue item? Becuase there are people who paid 10$ for that 100 gold. What would happen if there was no buying gold for money? Would anyone realy pay 100 gold for a level 19 item? Thats why gold buyers ruin economy.

Dont blame the drug-addict for purchasing drugs, blame the drug-dealer who uses drug-addict's weakness to drugs

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Using drug addiction as an anology isn't what I would consider valid for arguement's sake, not in MMO's. 

I gather from your post that you do blame the gold suppliers and it appears that you view it the same as you view those who sell drugs. Using your views, I can point out the flaws in the logic simply by stating that those who are "addicted" to the game more than likely have an adequate "gold" supply. Those aren't the primary ones purchasing the gold.

 Perhaps you would like to drop a poll onto the forums and ask to find out the number one reason for purchasing gold.  I have a good idea of what the highest percentage of answers would be; Simply the lack of time to aquire the amount of gold needed for an item, not "Omgz I'm soz addicted I can't get enough roxxerz my soxxerz goldz."

I believe the highest percentage of "buyers" out there are the casual gamers who work 40 or more hours each week, enjoy a bit of gaming time and would like to play to the fullest capacity but is limited due to either

• Game Mechanics: that make a game more difficult and/or time consuming for the casual gamer to acquire any real "game wealth" to progress
• Player Greed: players asking a ridiculous amount for an item (an amount that by the time the player actually aquires the money, he/she has leveled ten more times and outgrown the item, thus tossing it back on "game mechanics").

You and I will obviousely differ on point of view. Perhaps you do picket your neighbor's house when they hire a gardner but you have to hand plant all of your begonias. I simply don't. How my neighbor spends his money is his business. How I spend mine is mine and quite frankly, anyone who believes otherwise should perhaps move to a communist society in order to fully understand the value of personal freedom.

-Ashyn

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Originally posted by yardwalker
If you're running a program such as auctioneer, is this considered data mining? You are gathiering data and using other people's low prices on loot to make gold for yourself. I think Blizzard is pretty vague on this.

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What I had meant to convey was that by using auctioneer, I can find stuff really cheap that people are selling and buy it. Then take the same item and sell it again at a profit. It is surprising how cheap some folks sell stuff for and how much gold I have made in the proccess.

Screw Blizzard.... here is my BBB result

---------------- SNIP ---------------------------

Now, here's the response when I tried to contact wowaccountadmin@ to investigate this matter further:

Originally posted by Madmoxi
I found this thread through Google so I thought I would add my recent experience.

I was banned yesterday, my account had been canceled last year on Oct 16th 2006 when I went back to playing EQ2, since then it has been unused, the highest char on the account was about level 18-20ish, not twinked and not rich by any means.

To my knowledge the account has not been played at all, and I have not been billed for the account since I canceled it.

Last night I received and email from blizzard saying my account was banned permanently for violations, this is the first email I received from them since confirmation of my cancellation last year.

C&P from the email:

This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account.  Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation.  While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.

I have no idea what is going on but I know the account is not played and has been canceled since last year, I have not received any answer to my questions about why I was banned.

At least they made the decision about giving WoW another chance easier, no chance of that now.

I'm used to be a real wow player. Despite i hate the game. (I was addicted to my precious friends)

I bought a second account, due to my many characters, and to be able to boost my other low levels from the second account and vice versa, to enchant my main account with second's mage (which i began to love more dearly than anything else)

But my main account held plenty of gold, (since i played this game for 4 years) I felt right to trade 100 gold from my main account to my second. About 30/1hour later, i receive an email from blizzard, sayin my account has been canceled "Invlolving online trading activities" So i naturaly want to know how in the world they can't see that im the same person, i tried to contact a GM ingame from my main account, i waited 8-9 hours for a respondse (after sleeping, it still said "Wait time currently unavaible) But he only gave me an url adress to a webform.

I followed that and completed the webform, explaining that i have multiple accounts for my own pleasure, explained that the second account was needing some gold, and since im the owner of them both, i felt right to do it.

I received an email 8 days later, in 4 languages, with text simply copy and pasted from the EULA and other agreement formulars. Which i already has read after every  major patch.

Originally posted by Prioncoatl

I'm used to be a real wow player. Despite i hate the game. (I was addicted to my precious friends)

 

I bought a second account, due to my many characters, and to be able to boost my other low levels from the second account and vice versa, to enchant my main account with second's mage (which i began to love more dearly than anything else)

But my main account held plenty of gold, (since i played this game for 4 years) I felt right to trade 100 gold from my main account to my second. About 30/1hour later, i receive an email from blizzard, sayin my account has been canceled "Invlolving online trading activities" So i naturaly want to know how in the world they can't see that im the same person, i tried to contact a GM ingame from my main account, i waited 8-9 hours for a respondse (after sleeping, it still said "Wait time currently unavaible) But he only gave me an url adress to a webform.

I followed that and completed the webform, explaining that i have multiple accounts for my own pleasure, explained that the second account was needing some gold, and since im the owner of them both, i felt right to do it.

I received an email 8 days later, in 4 languages, with text simply copy and pasted from the EULA and other agreement formulars. Which i already has read after every  major patch.

So in summary, you're either lying, leaving something out, or full of it.

I must admit, i feel insulted to be suggested to have lied, or not told everything, but thats what happened, i know its awkward, and THATS the whole reason i post it.

If i EVER had bought gold, of course i will take the consequence, but what i do, is telling that i've been unjustly banned for doing something legal.

I also hoped, that if they investigated a little further, and actualy see that it was just from my own account the gold was comming from, they'd hopefully have unbanned the account. But without question, investigation nor anything else, they simply reply with a "copy and paste" email.

My new WoW account was just recently and wrongfully banned too. The reason given?

Account Action: Closure
Reason for Action: In-Game Chat Policy Violation - Advertisement and Spamming

This account was closed because a character on the account repeatedly abused World of Warcraft's in-game chat system. This abuse includes advertising third party services/websites and repeatedly spamming in-game chat channels. Abuse of this nature pollutes chat channels shared by all players and harms the game environment as a whole.

That's incredibly strange. I keep to myself ingame and almost never talk to anyone. So when I got this ban I was very surprised. Of course I contested it, but the Blizzard auto-reply email says it's going to take several days or even weeks before a staff member has a chance to review it.

It's a brand new account and I barely reached level 30 on my druid in the free month of gameplay that comes with the box. I've accumulated over 1000 gold ingame by playing the market. You know, buying low selling high (some EvE Online habits are hard to break). I never spoke to another player except in groups because everyone is just so obnoxious and immature.

Did I buy or sell ingame gold for RL money? No. Who needs to these days now that inflation has taken its toll on WoW?

Did I spam ingame on behalf of these RMT businesses? Obviously not.

I sincerely hope someone from Blizzard is reading this. And if there is, then this message goes to you:

You, Blizzard, have by and far the worst customer service in the history of online gaming. Using a shotgun approach in regards to  account suspensions and bans is awful and morally wrong. I really hope you get slapped with the lawsuit you so desperately deserve.