Uber upgrade?

[gekko]

My actual opinion, devil's advocacy aside, is that the sale of items for Real Life™ currency should probably not be part of the game. Blizzard should have included rules to this effect in the ToS, asked eBay to desist from presenting D2 item/character sales (much as Sony did with Everquest), and worked to shut down (using the terms of the ToS) item warehouse websites.

I absolutely agree that real money purchasing items should be more rigorously prevented by blizzard. Personally, I feel that blizzard has been terribly irresponsable concerning diablo II. After all the "hack-free realms" propaganda they spouted, blizzard proceeds to store their characters on the realms, and every few months they delete a few accounts -- slowing the spam-bots down for, what, 8 minutes?

Let's face it -- if blizzard was really serious about having a serious impact on cheating on the realms, they would be aggresively assaulting these sites, shutting them down, and banning accounts of the spam-bots who now seem more common on b.net than actual players.

So, where does that leave us? The same place we'd be if blizzard had been aggresive and succesful at keeping the realms relatively hack-free -- there are opportunities to cheat, and there are opportunities to bend the rules. The final decision is up to you, the individual. In other words, our personal responsability is our own to deal with, whether blizzard has accepted its responsabilities or not.

Oh, and more more general note, since my mentioning "communism" seems to have been taken out of context entirely.

My comment was in no way comparing communism to ANYTHING. My comment was a comparison to the lack of understanding shown by Kramer concerning communism being a "red button" and the lack of understanding shown by Unreal concerning purchasing items being a "red button."

gekko