A question of ethics in MMORPGs

[Count Duckula]

I am an avid gamer, and my schoolwork often reflects this. If I’m not submitting fan fiction to writing workshops, I’m writing papers and presenting projects on gaming issues.

My final project for my computer science class is a presentation on the subject of the student’s choice that reflects all the skills learned in class. My project is a PowerPoint presentation on the question of ethics in MMORPGs. I chose this topic partially because I own several of these games, and partially because I have a chance to teach the class about something that means a lot to me and that they don’t really understand.

I already have the framework of my presentation, I’m now looking for input. I can’t exactly look in the library for this kind of information. ^_^ I’m also cross-posting this on several fora, so I apologize if this is the second or third time you’re reading this. (Who knows? Maybe the topics discussed here will be different. ;))

Major points of the presentation
--Rights of the gamer vs. rights of the company. (“I paid good money for this game, so I should be able to do this” vs. “You bought our game, you agreed to our rules, you play in our universe, or else.”)
--What is considered offensive matter and material by the designers of multiplayer games, how the designers implement these censors, and tactics used by players to get around them. (Examples: “nudie packs” for Sims Online, profane character and account names.)
--Which rules apply to whom? (Should everyone be punished when a few people break the rules? A big example is Blizzard’s purge of 131,000 D2X accounts for hacks, including some 3rd party storage programs that weren’t really cheating but fell under the category anyway.)
--Selling items from the game on private websites and eBay.

What do y’all think about the points? Do you have any stories to tell, or quotes to share? I’m also looking for screenshots of strange behavior, maybe an offensive account you saw or “justified” cheater mentality. Please PM me if you wish to share.

There are also two polls up: Should a free MMORPG server become pay-for-play to curb cheating? and What would you do if your account was broken into and then deleted for cheating? [EDIT: Rather than spam up the LL, the same polls can be found here and here.

Thanks for all your help, and discuss away! :)

[Occhidiangela]

Issue 1.

Standards of good taste as regards names of characters.

Issue: how to establish good taste norms for a multi thousand player base, versus a dozen or less player base typical to the PnP game model from which all of these games spring, and whose norms are a default for a considerable section of the fan base.

The ethical issue goes back to PnP game 'Game Master and Group' tolerance, an interactive interpersonal process that finds its own level in small groups. If the GM put up with it and the other players did as well, the name was good to go. If not, it was not.

Applied to the larger MMO universe, the Game Master must consider the enjoyment of his entire game playing base. He (game Master = Company in this case) must balance the likelihood of offensive names materially detracting from the pleasure of his players with the amount of freedom and customizability presented, since the norming process of the small group does not scale to the multithousand player model one for one. The DM still has to establish the base character of his 'world.'

First Ammendment rights are NOT the issue: it is a private not government relationship.

The ethical consideration of 'legislating good taste' gets tied to customer relationships as well as prospects for future customer loyalty. The texture of each small PnP campaign was created by the Game Master <=> Player interaction. This customization is less prevalant in MMORPG simply due, once again, to scale. The Game Master is still held accountable for creating, in the RPG world, a set of cultural norms by structure that creates itself in the PnP model.

The sense of balance between taste and customer freedom to enjoy is seen quite differently by many players, not to mention the differences between Game Master and the player who wants to name his Barbarian HansOnnerTitz.

Ethics issue: How do you draw a line that makes every one happy? Simple: you can't.

Therefore, the Game Master must establish initial guidelines. Then, an interative process must be available, an appeal perhaps, to allow for the same sort of norming that took place on the small level to be available on the large level. Without the feedback loop, and opportunity for relief or waiver, the intimacy and feeling of personal touch, which is critical to the RPG, is lost: both by the player who cares not for HansOnnerTitz type names, and for those who like to stretch punnery in the ribald direction, by applying such names as Chesty_Puller (nickname of a famous Marine general) to a well stacked Amazon bow wielder.

Ethically, the Game Master is accountable to all of his customers, not just the guy with Hans as his chosen nom de player, and not just the pure, clean as rainfall Role Player whose Norse names fit norse environments, and whose Arabic names fit the more Arabic environments.

The policy decision must made with that in mind must be well communicated to the players, and appeal/relief must be available in order to approach as high a threshold of 'fairness' as good taste, which both the community and the Game Master contribute in defining, will permit. The accountability is discrete: people play or they don't, and the company lives with the reputation its decisions build.

2. Selling items:

That is beyond easy. All items belong to the proprietary game environment created in the game. Hence, no sale can be made without a payment of a royalty to the game company, whose proprietary environment enables the commercial transactions.

Selling accounts: Ungovernable. If an entire account, lock stock and barrel, complete with passwords, is sold via third party transactions, it is transparent to the host. One account still sustains. The change of billing source and address becomes the point of contention.

Is it allowed? It has to be. If change credit card company's, it makes no sense that I cannot transfer my account from my Visa to my Mastercard. Plus, if I change my name, for example via marriage or to Anglicize a foreign name, that process is in the interest of the company to protect.

It is hardly cost effective to create the administrative burden to prohibit this, see customer loyalty as a core Company metric.

That is all I have for you. :)

Hope some of it helps.

[ShadowHM]

I’m also looking for screenshots of strange behavior, maybe an offensive account you saw or “justified” cheater mentality.

http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...p=5684&linear=0

The thread there shows an example of what someone thought was 'justified' cheater mentality.

I also recall a player from my D1 days who justified her use of the program that allowed importing of items because she used it solely when she was called upon as a saviour for someone who had fallen in battle and was unable to get to get to their gear for retrieval before being lagged completely out of Bnet. Using it, she could save their gear and still not have to sacrifice any of her own back-up gear that occupied that space.

[gekko]

I've thought about this kind of thing on and off for the last few years. I think that one thing you could discuss is how this is not only a problem with MMORPG's -- it's a problem everywhere on the internet.

The internet allows people to do and to say alot of things that they could never get away with in public. In addition to the fact that there is nearly complete anonymity, it is very difficult to punish anyone in a meaningful way. The idea of charging people while simultaneously banning their accounts and CD-keys helps here, as it makes it costly for repeat offenders who wish to continue re-registering.

At this point it becomes a question of cost vs benefit -- to everyone involved. Blizzard recently banned 131,000 CD-keys -- and yet has the spam from bots advertising websites selling hacked items stopped? Absolutely not. Why? Because paying $30 or whatever it costs is small cost compared to the hundreds of dollars these sites are bringing in. Unfortunately, it's naive to think computer companies will begin charging to deter the repeat offenders -- it's to make money, plain and simple. In most cases, this is simply an excuse to raise prices which is, of course, felt by the legitamite, rule-abiding users.

From my own experiences, I've come to believe that a large online community will invariably have these problems. It simply becomes impossible for administrators to be effective. This can be seen easily in the world of diablo. Online, with thousands and thousands of players interacting, the overal quality is terrible. The "decent" players congregate in small groups or else stay mostly silent, while the channels and games seem filled to the brink with bots spamming advertisements and the "typical" bnet user: throwing racial slurs about with wild abandon, putting down players for not using "1eet" gear and using hacks at every possible opportunity (and then, of course, complaining when they're punished for breaking the rules).

Next consider the forums of popular diablo websites. The smaller the community, the higher the quality (in general). This is because the administrators can have some control over the community.

Finally, I think of the community of players still actively playing myth: the fallen lords and myth II: soulblighter. Those still playing this game are an amazing bunch. Not only is the game currently being played on a server set up and maintained for free by some really great people (the official server was shut down about 2 years ago), the community is the best I have ever seen or had the pleasure of being a part of.

This game doesn't fit into the MMORPG genre, but the quality of the community is still something to be admired. The admins are hard, but fair -- they ban accounts all the time, proof that even in a good community, cheaters abound. Their success is based on the small number of players (on a busy night, ~250 people will be online at any one time). If 5000 new players logged on tomorow, chaos would insue (and not only because of the server probably crashing under the strain :)).

In short, as the size increases, the quality of an online community will invariably decrease. There is simply no possibly way to fully control an online community. However, if a game company (or even the administrator of a small website, for that matter) decides to put a website/game/product on the market, he/she/they has a responsability to do whatever is in their power to control those who become part of the community.

gekko

hehe did I answer any of your questions, or did I just go on a bit of a rant? Oh well, I tried

[BlackLightning]

A very interesting and different topic,
This sounds pretty good! One thing, I'm only discussing one of your points, since I'm not really as determined as some of the other people here when it comes to lots of typing.

--Rights of the gamer vs. rights of the company. (“I paid good money for this game, so I should be able to do this” vs. “You bought our game, you agreed to our rules, you play in our universe, or else.”)

I suppose the fact that a gamer has purchased a game proves that they, in buying that game, accept the rules and regulations that come with it. However, the gamer does have a certain right as to what he or she wants from the game, and if the game fails to deliver, then the buyer has the upper hand. I suppose many of the succesful computer game companies have sealed this hole by performing surveys and getting the opinions of their customers. Again, this scenario is very edgy, and is something computer game manufacturers will have to work around.

Yeah, that's it. Hope my input helped :D .

[gekko]

--Rights of the gamer vs. rights of the company. (?I paid good money for this game, so I should be able to do this? vs. ?You bought our game, you agreed to our rules, you play in our universe, or else.?)

I suppose the fact that a gamer has purchased a game proves that they, in buying that game, accept the rules and regulations that come with it. However, the gamer does have a certain right as to what he or she wants from the game, and if the game fails to deliver, then the buyer has the upper hand.

I'm back again :) No seriously, I meant to touch on this and I forgot. There's a shared responsability here, and neither side seems to keep their promise (a little like politics). Consider Diablo 2. Thousands and thousands of players promise not to use third party programs, promise not to use hacks/dupes etc, then shamelessly go ahead and break all the rules. Once that happens, Blizzard really gets "the upper hand."

But consider what blizz has done with Diablo 2. They have consistently promised great things and then not followed through. And it's really unfortunate, and it's the main reason why I am critical of blizzard, despite the fact that they have done far more than was required of them in terms of the size, frequency of patches, not to mention how long after the initial release they're still working on it. Quite simply, blizzard needs to keep their mouths shut. I'm a firm believer that people should be held to their promises; I'm very critical of the broken promises the public takes for granted these days. Some people say blizzard has no responsability to people who are, after all, using bnet for free years after they paid money to blizzard. I say that when blizzard makes a promise, they MUST accept responsability for their promises.

And that, I think, is the main point of ethics in MMORPG's, just as in life: when you make a promise or put something on the market, you must take responsability for it.

gekko

[Nystul]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. So many people absolutely hate Blizzard while at the same time playing those Blizzard games more and more. The reason? Blizz makes some of the best games out there, but still manages to promise more than they are able to deliver.

Of course, it also gets hard to remember which things Blizzard actually promised and which things were the product of fansite hype...

[[wcip]Angel]

I'd really love to read the finished product. Would you post it in this thread when you're done? Obviously a PP-presentation won't require a full essay-like text, but I'm sure you'll note down some keywords and sentences? You can't possibly remember everything in your head..

[Count Duckula]

I really didn't want to post and run on this one. A deadline of a big-chunk-of-my-final-grade-in-a-class-I-refuse-to-flunk paper got moved. Roman philosophy and BG2 as stress relief. Now it's Eugene Ionesco and D2 as stress relief, coupled with ethics presentation and bike riding as stress relief. Next week: 4 minute film and primal scream therapy. Never let it be said that I'm not getting my money's worth at this place. :P

From Occhi:
First Ammendment rights are NOT the issue: it is a private not government relationship.

Company does own all, but at what point does this censoring become ridiculous? You can't say c*ck on battle.net, but you can't say l*sbian either. That always bothered me. And what about a case-by-case basis? Blizzard does nothing about these. Excuse me, but I happen to find "SlayerofJews" and "BurnStrsNstrps" offensive. (And I have caps of these too.) Blizzard disregards the email I send, and the "image is everything" trick that we Hollins girls use to get the administration's trick doesn't work with the Coldwurm the Burrower that is Blizzard Entertainment.

And can you believe that HansOnnerTitz is taken on US West? I sure can. Not sure about East.

Ethics issue: How do you draw a line that makes every one happy? Simple: you can't.

Would even a case-by-case be more feasible? From what I've been reading, even EverQuest is better patrolled than B.net.

All items belong to the proprietary game environment created in the game.

Yes, but is it ethical to charge a "transaction fee" for such items? Research on various item-selling sites has shown me that sellers put in this clause to make things okey-dokey so Blizzard won't get after 'em. Are they really protected from Blizzard's wrath if all they're charging for is the movement of an item file from one account to another, and nothing else?

This makes me wonder if and how often Blizzard patrols the realms and how active a role they're taking in enforcing their ToS. Alas, that is another PowerPoint presentation for another time. ;)

from Gekko:
The internet allows people to do and to say alot of things that they could never get away with in public. In addition to the fact that there is nearly complete anonymity, it is very difficult to punish anyone in a meaningful way.

My presentation is always coming back to this very statement in some form or another. One day I left Battle.net as a screensaver while I went to lunch. I came back and found a flame-fest between two people covering all kinds of verbal abuse, including a few pieces on their respective parentage. (Putting it politely...) Could these stellar examples of adolescents get away with it offline? Nope. Could the item-selling and other skullduggery happen offline? Nope.

Blizzard recently banned 131,000 CD-keys -- and yet has the spam from bots advertising websites selling hacked items stopped? Absolutely not.

But people are now more reluctant to purchase because they don't want to take the chance that their account will be deleted in the next purge. Here I am, doing the anime flag dance. Yay, Blizzard! Yay for following your ToS! Yay for this one-strike policy! Yay for growing a backbone! Yay! (I pity the foo with the cash on hand to pay for a bit of code. Makes one wish that the trainer for D2X was already out on some realm so all the cheaters can flock there. :P)

[color=Next consider the forums of popular diablo websites The smaller the community, the higher the quality in general This is because the administrators can have some control over the community[/color]

Which is why I love this place, Ironworks, the DSFC, the Vampirism community, for being large enough to make a difference but small enough to still be in control.

(/suckup)

hehe did I answer any of your questions, or did I just go on a bit of a rant? Oh well, I tried

I like hearing opinions. That's why I write stories. :)

from BlackLightning:
I suppose the fact that a gamer has purchased a game proves that they, in buying that game, accept the rules and regulations that come with it. However, the gamer does have a certain right as to what he or she wants from the game, and if the game fails to deliver, then the buyer has the upper hand.

Interesting...care to share more?

from Gekko:
They have consistently promised great things and then not followed through.

I can imagine Battle.net now..."Put out 1.10 or we flood the forum!" No, we have to hit them where it hurts... "Put out 1.10 or we'll mock GFrazier!" Wait, some of us already do that...hmm...

That's all for now. Time to go image hunting. I'll try to post the presentation somehow.

EDIT: Bolty, can I use this quote, pretty please? Look, these accounts were banned. Almost everyone here complains constantly about cheaters on Battle.Net, and now when something is done about it they start sympathizing with the cheaters? Don't get me started. You know with me it's always been black-and-white: you cheat in a multiplayer environment, then **** you and the horse you rode in on for robbing me of the money I paid for my game. To me, there is no limit to the lengths I'd be rooting Blizzard to take to keep any and all cheaters the hell off of Battle.Net permanently.

[Brista]

The Hacker's Plight article on diabloii.net sparked discussions here, on the AB, as well as a very interesting thread in their own forums

And yes, Bolty's words are classic :)

[LavCat]

Count, I don't have too much to add of academic interest, but I think Blizzard censors certain words to keep from getting sued. By whom I have no idea, but they must pay their lawyers for some reason.

I would think it is technically a little harder to ban strings, even those most of us here might consider hate speech, when there is nothing particularly wrong with the component parts, just how the words are juxtaposed.

True, the game won't let you use the L word, but (for example) you could create characters with names like SapphicAvenger and Tribade...though I suppose you can't do so on east.

In real life I am an advocate of free speech, but I hold that neither commercial speech nor hate speech is protected speech, at least in the U.S. Actually I am glad that Blizzard makes an attempt to keep the realms clean. I can only imagine what the chat screens would look like if they did not.

Hope your course goes well.

[BanditAngel]

Responding to random points in random order:

"The right to sell items" - I think that while a company can certain ATTEMPT to control this, it's as futile and pointless as trying to regulate the selling of accounts. Items can be traded in game, and there's no way of proving that a trade was done because of external influences (money, friendship, whatever). Also, you can just move the item to a new account and sell the account in some games (Diablo 2 and anything where accounts are free). I also think that it's the persons item, they should do what they want with it.

Diablo 2's failure to control hacks. Looking at all the MMO-RPGs out there, I notice that D2 has a MUCH worse cheating problem. MMO-RPGs respond quickly and take the time to track down who did it and what they did. All the hacked items are killed quickly, and the accounts are banned. Since an account costs you money, this hurts a fair bit.

--Which rules apply to whom? (Should everyone be punished when a few people break the rules? A big example is Blizzard’s purge of 131,000 D2X accounts for hacks, including some 3rd party storage programs that weren’t really cheating but fell under the category anyway.)

If you cheat, you cheat and you deserve to get kicked off. It doesn't matter that it was "harmless" - you knew it was a cheat and you took that risk. HOWEVER, I think companies should focus on the harmful cheating more. Whether harmless cheating should be tolerated should be a matter of unpublished policy, but that policy SHOULD be followed - It's bad to let people come to think that a form of cheating is acceptable UNLESS it really is.

--What is considered offensive matter and material by the designers of multiplayer games, how the designers implement these censors, and tactics used by players to get around them. (Examples: “nudie packs” for Sims Online, profane character and account names.)

I like how DAOC handled swearword filtering - It's on by default but it's turned off with a simple command. The same could be done with offensive names, and if you add a client-side filter then things are quite easily managed. If the client-side filters can be shared then the problem will be fairly self policing, which is always a good thing. However, I think that the company should make an effort to deal with people who are trying to get around the filters. DAOC again handles this quite well - You can appeal a name and an actual human will look at it and make a decision.

Final point before I head to sleep: Game size. I think that the problem with size is two-fold: A lot of times there isn't the infrastructure in place to deal with it, and a lot of times the GM-to-player ratio gets worse and worse. Infrastructure is stuff like having a swearword filter in place so that you don't need as many GMs focused on it. The ratio is pretty self explanitory. 1 GM for 10 people works a lot better than 10 GMs for 1,000 people. However, I think that infrastructure helps the problem quite a lot. Also, CRPGs have the nice advantage that there ARE no rules questions, and the plot can be repeated by everyone, so the GM only exists to deal with bugs and cheaters for the most part (although some writers are necessary).

[kandrathe]

Some thoughts:

--Rights of the gamer vs. rights of the company. (“I paid good money for this game, so I should be able to do this” vs. “You bought our game, you agreed to our rules, you play in our universe, or else.”)

When I was in high school, I was an extreme hacker (in the original sense). Computer time was owned by large companies, schools and universities. PC's were in there infancy, and my first programs were straight ML on kit 6502's and 6809's. My hacker friends and I would use social engineering to penetrate systems, find cool code (and we especially aimed at getting the source code to cool games), and then we would figure them out and then make them better, faster, and more cool. We reverse engineered machine language code into assembly language, added our own comments to document sub-routines for reuse or rewriting. The difference between what I see now and then is that our goal was to leave no footprints, and we did it for free, and for fun. It was wrong, but it was hard to see that when I was that age. But armed with this training and knowledge my friends and I all went straight and went to work for a software publisher and we had our dream job of writing games while we went to the University. Now, the strange thing was that I was using my former skills to prevent what I had earlier perpetrated. My standard for software has always been; "Whatever is on my hard disk is mine to play with as I will." It is not right to hack networks, or hack code for distribution or to give yourself an advantage playing a game. MMORPG's are by definition a network play, and so in my book are hands off. But if you want to take the code and pull it apart to see how it works, then that is fine. Just don't sell it, distribute it, or hack it.

--What is considered offensive matter and material by the designers of multiplayer games, how the designers implement these censors, and tactics used by players to get around them. (Examples: “nudie packs” for Sims Online, profane character and account names.)

In an adults only environement that is not an issue. It would be nice for those who don't want it, to turn it off and not have it forced upon them. When you have an open and free system like Battle Net, you can not insure (as they are not Credit Card holders) of who is actually playing the game. As a parent, I wouldn't want to expose my child to the profanity, but that is secondary to the lewdness of the conversations. Adolescence is the mission of identity formation, so I think the extreme vulgarity has a bigger impact. As Occhi and I have discussed in other threads, the naivity of childhood must be shed at some time. I am one parent who would like to have a little more control over how, and when.

--Which rules apply to whom? (Should everyone be punished when a few people break the rules? A big example is Blizzard’s purge of 131,000 D2X accounts for hacks, including some 3rd party storage programs that weren’t really cheating but fell under the category anyway.)

Yes. I think those who are raking in the profits need to factor in a percentage of it for control. Games require rules, and rules are only as good as their enforcement. I'm one who would advocate extreme measures to ensure fair play.

--Selling items from the game on private websites and eBay.

I think it is stupid for those who buy. But, in a game like DII where the chance of ever finding certain items that you really want is 1 in a billion, I can see where some are tempted. In a way I fault the game designers for this. This is only a game, not a life time venture. I don't believe that any item should be so rare that it will never be found. So, then I wouldn't have any item in the game be so powerful to tempt anyone to want to buy it on e-bay. DII as it is now (v1.09) is flawed because level (skills) are meaningless, and items are everything. Any idiot can almost effortlessly rush a character quickly to high levels, and then spend a few dollars on e-bay to get hacked or duped L337 gear. That takes away one of the prime motivators for many online players, the thrill of growing a character to high levels and to be the best, or most powerful player. Ok, so is it ethical to buy from e-bay? I think not, for the same reasons that Occhi cited. It would be very hard to stop, and if you did it would just go underground. How would the gaming company know that I traded something for money or not.

[Occhidiangela]

MMORPG, as I see it, is not what Diablo II is. The game does not reward role playing by any constructive measure, it is an attrition-based-combat-model-using dungeon crawl. And fun. :) However, as you raised this issue and choose to characterize Diablo II as an MMORPG:

From Occhi: Company does own all, but at what point does this censoring become ridiculous?

The ethics of this can be addressed, or evaded by use of a Fig Leaf: it says 17 years old/Mature on the rating, :P, so if someone can see an R or X rated film, nothing on bnet would be expected to be more offensive than that. I did say . . . Fig Leaf.

You can't say c*ck on battle.net, but you can't say l*sbian either.

So much for filters making any sense, you can't type D1ck on this forum. In an X-rated film, you can see a c*ck full frontally, and even watch two l*sbians do things in some explicit detail: if you are 17 or older. Bnet has not as yet devolved that far.

That always bothered me.

It does not bother me very much. I am confused as to why 'lesbian' is filtered out and gay or homosexual are not, given common bnet parlance by the immature jerk element. Most true MMORPG's do have either a filter or an 'appeal' function, however, since bnet has no Game Master, all of my comments on Game Master / Player relationships really don't apply in fine granularity to this case.

And what about a case-by-case basis? Blizzard does nothing about these.

Well, see the Fig Leaf issue. And, no game master. Per Bnet's structure, they don't have to. They can, however, if they choose to do so. And the Fig Leaf starts to slip a bit, IMO. Their tolerance of whatever their gamers want puts the onus of the nonsense names on The Gamers. Oops, looks like maturity level is not guaranteed by purchase!!
I will ask: why is it that you are upset at Blizzard, rather than the players who come up with the lewd names? Part of the problem is that what offends you is what some find foolishly sohphomoric, and others find clever and witty, and still others find tiresome and boorish. Thus ever with 'humor' and punnery. Note: Eddie Murphy and his early humor was grossly scatalogical, but he was also insanely popular. See also Chris Rock, and for some reason, George Carlin has held to using the Seven Words, even long after the shock value has any merit. With him, it is now habit. Still funny, but for a guy with such a mastery of words, disappointing to me.

Excuse me, but I happen to find "SlayerofJews" and "BurnStrsNstrps" offensive.

How is BurnStrsNstrps offensive? Did I miss an acronym here, did I not sound it out correctly? Burns Transcripts? Burn Stars And Stripes? (And I have caps of these too.) OK, if some one comes to take my flag from my front porch and try to burn it, gun play will ensue. If they buy their own flag and burn it in political protest, fine, I am free to consider them an asshole, a European, or an Arab: or even all three. :)

Blizzard disregards the email I send, and the "image is everything" trick that we Hollins girls use to get the administration's trick doesn't work with the Coldwurm the Burrower that is Blizzard Entertainment.

Right. Blizzard has to both cater to you, and to the fellows who think those names are clever. Note: you are both EQUAL in their eyes as customers. You can choose to NOT associate with those who employ the uncouth names. Bnet is a big place. If their mere existence offends you, then Blizzard may be able to counter your dismay and complaint about bad taste -- which I agree with you on, the badness of taste -- as 'too thin a skin, too PC' and 'why is your taste bar any more relevant than the UncouthClan's taste bar?' You have options to mitigate any irritation or dilike for those character names. You can avoid those characters. You have some control and are not required to get upset about it. That you can control. Given the speed and volume of account and char naming, the way bnet for DII is set up, how should Blizzard censor, or try to censor, these names? The folks exercising their free speech are also exercising their option to present themselves as jerkoffs.

Ethically? Blizzard hides behind the Fig Leaf that this is 'a game for mature audiences, and mature people can deal with it maturely.' My own disappointment is with the jerks, not Blizz.

And can you believe that HansOnnerTitz is taken on US West? I sure can. Not sure about East.

Of course. As are, no doubt, a Staff Barbarian named Big_DikHertzer, a Druid called MiloDelCholkya, and dozens of others. :P Sophomoric humor in an unregulated chatroom: that is bnet in a nutshell.

Ethics issue: How do you draw a line that makes every one happy? Simple: you can't.

Would even a case-by-case be more feasible? From what I've been reading, even EverQuest is better patrolled than B.net.

Yes, exactly, and that is where the game master, for pay, takes action that the un-game mastered Bnet can't due to how those two are structured differently. Everquest is more of an MMORPG, and fits your idea on how to 'clean up the act Writ Large' can be better enforced For A Price. Let's see how WoW works out before you write Blizz off, since there they will have game masters for pay. Or, so we think. :P

All items belong to the proprietary game environment created in the game.

Yes, but is it ethical to charge a "transaction fee" for such items? Research on various item-selling sites has shown me that sellers put in this clause to make things okey-dokey so Blizzard won't get after 'em. Are they really protected from Blizzard's wrath if all they're charging for is the movement of an item file from one account to another, and nothing else?

Is a finder's fee a legal fee? Yes. There you are. And, like illicit drugs, without demand there would be No Supply Requirement! Right back to The Players. Sort of like Pogo once said: We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us!

This makes me wonder if and how often Blizzard patrols the realms and how active a role they're taking in enforcing their ToS. Alas, that is another PowerPoint presentation for another time.

Blizz set up bnet as a free fire zone. They left to the players the level of taste they will apply. As you can see, the Efffed up: they trusted them all. :)

I see tasteless names all the time. Heck, I just made one myself the other day, a Sorceress called YourFez_MyAdze. If Roland finds it too offensive, I will delete it. The name is the punchline of a very old, and a bit uncouth, joke:

What did the lumberjack say to the Morrocon when he was asked "Hey, buddy, you got a match?" It is a spoof on the "your face and my arse" punchline from the same joke about some one asking for a light for their cigarette by saying: "You gotta match?"

[gekko]

Ok, so is it ethical to buy from e-bay?&nbsp; I think not, for the same reasons that Occhi cited.&nbsp; It would be very hard to stop, and if you did it would just go underground.&nbsp; How would the gaming company know that I traded something for money or not.

While I personally can't imagine paying 40 bucks US (I'm canadian, so it hurts twice as bad :)) for ANY item, I don't have a problem with it from an administrative point of view (ie if I was blizzard, I wouldn't bother trying to stop it). As you said, it's simply impossible to prove what someone's motivations were.

Where blizzard (and other game designers) should be focusing their energies is on the "hacked" items. While no one will ever create a perfectly "balanced" game, these items are so far off the scale as to destroy what balance already exists. This is obvious to anyone who has been around any of the hacked gear, or, for that matter, maphack or other 3rd party programs. I would never imagine dueling in public games with what I know exists out there.

The point is that while allowing items to be sold on ebay may not be good for the realms, hacked items are many times worse. And when blizzard fails to destroy these items and punish or ban the offenders, it does more than allow them to continue -- it encourages others to do the same. And that is where blizzard has truly failed its customers.

gekko

[--Pete]

Hi,

The point is that while allowing items to be sold on ebay may not be good for the realms, hacked items are many times worse.

I don't see where selling otherwise legit, unduped, items hurts the realms at all. There is supposed to be some form of economy in the game. D1 screwed it because there were a limited number of uber items and nothing wore out. Buzzard learned no lesson from that and did the same in D2. Without the incentive to make money, there is little incentive to trade in game (giving nice finds to friends is a different story). Thus, the e-bay trades are filling a gap that Buzzard put into the game.

Had Buzzard paid attention to what happened in D1 and realized that an economy *only* works if there is a need for a constant stream of items, then in game trading would be almost necessary and the e-bay trading would probably go away (how many people would pay real money for a virtual item that will eventually wear out?)

That said, I will go on record again as thinking anyone who *buys* items on e-bay is confused on the concept of playing. The object isn't to achieve the end result, it is the process and the fun to be had doing it. The journey, not the destination. To paraphrase Dangerfield, killing the last boss should flash an "All done, stupid." message on the screen.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

I totally agree. But I would add that by designing a game where intangible items have tangible value (to some) and also not ridding the realms of hacked, duped, and bugged items, the game company drives away the "valuable" honest players and encourages those remaining to participate in immoral activities just to remain on equal ground with cheaters.

[off topic rant about game design]
My suggestion to gaming companies is that IMO they should make the experience system very complex, where time and skill in playing will aid in revealing endless nuances of tactics and strategy. Game designers need to remember the fundamentals of what makes a game playable and repeatable. Consider a game like chess with comparitivly very simple rules, which still takes most a lifetime to master. Fundamental is that other than white getting to start first, both sides always start equally and the rules remain consistent for both sides throughout the game. IMO, what makes a great game is in defining a clear concept of winning, escalating difficulty, and rewards (like staying alive) for good tactics and strategy. For MMORPG's strategy is typically in how you direct (invest in) the growth of your character, and tactics is in how that character achieves its goals and interracts with its environment. Again, I think "special items" should only offer additional nuance to skill rather than replace it. In DII at least, I find that is the case.
[/off topic rant about game design]

[Kasreyn]

...have every item in a MMORPG have some kind of built-in factor where it degrades over time. For instance, every 10th time Halbu repairs that rare Exec for you, it loses 1 max durability, and 1 off its min and max damages (thus a 100-150 damage sword would become 99-149). Armor might lose DR over time in addition to durability; shields might slowly lose blocking % chance (if they only lose DR, no one will care anyway). This is realistic (though that's not necessarily a good in a fantasy setting), but most importantly, it helps create a steady demand for new items. Eventually, you'd have to go back into the market for a replacement, but if you were wise, you'd keep an eye out for replacements LONG before the situation with your old one becomes intolerable. Thus, you'd never just plain ignore the market.

As it is, people can get their "dream gear" and then they have nothing to ever spend money on again. My Barb (v1.03 Open) has about 600k in gold sitting around, which he can't even spend. Gamble? All his equipment are rare / magical exceptionals or else the uniques he wants; he's almost guaranteed to get garbage by comparison. SoJ hunt? Can't, he's wearing one. His repair costs aren't too high by comparison with the amount of money he can rake in doing Hell Plains of Despair.

But, if that nice sword he has slowly wears down and finally breaks (or the damage just gets too low to be worthwhile), I've got something to spend money on again! I might actually have a REASON to go to a trade channel (aside from laziness, i.e. "I'd rather not do the gambles necessary to get this unique").

I see a major problem with the D1/2 economy to be this: It is possible to get exactly what you want, and then hang onto it indefinitely. After that, what further use is gold?

Goods should be made perishible. Maybe a timer on potions; they degrade in potency over time until used (they heal less life/mana/stamina as they decay). Maybe a potion that heals 100 Life would degrade by 1 point every minute until it hits some minimum value, say, 40. Maybe increase the cost of keys in NM/Hell, and set it so that there's a % chance each key might work on any given locked chest (say, 40% in Normal, 20% in NM, and 10% in Hell); thus in Hell, carrying 10 keys at all times would give an average 100% chance that ONE of them would work). It's always seemed silly to me that Gheed just HAPPENS to have keys for all these chests out in the wilderness...

There are lots of things that can be done, there just needs to be an MMORPG creator with the guts to defy what the weenie players want and DO it, to make a quality game with an actual working in-game economy.

-Kasreyn

[kandrathe]

I see tasteless names all the time. Heck, I just made one myself the other day, a Sorceress called YourFez_MyAdze. If Roland finds it too offensive, I will delete it. The name is the punchline of a very old, and a bit uncouth, joke:

What did the lumberjack say to the Morrocon when he was asked "Hey, buddy, you got a match?" It is a spoof on the "your face and my arse" punchline from the same joke about some one asking for a light for their cigarette by saying: "You gotta match?"

:D Ok, I must be sophmoric too sometimes... I find that name funny...

[kandrathe]

Another convert! Pete has advocated generally that for long time... Oh, and I agree too. It would help, but there still needs to be play balance.