WOW and Item/Account Sales in Online Auctions

[nobbie]

From the Sony Station ("EverQuest") End user License Agreement. Note especially the phrase in bold letters:

9. You may not use any third party software, programs, applications or utilities to modify the Software to change or otherwise affect, alter or modify play of the Games. You may not use our intellectual property rights contained in the Games or the Software to create or provide any other means through which the Games may be played by others, as through server emulators. You may not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure, or that interferes with the operation of our server(s). You may not sell, attempt to sell, purchase, attempt to purchase, auction or facilitate the purchase, sale or auction of any accounts, items, coin or copyrighted material relating to the Games.

We all know what the item/account sales in online auctions have done to Diablo II and hacking the game for financial profits. So, what is Blizzard's stance in this matter with respect to WOW? It seems to me that Blizzard still avoids defintive answers regarding this like the devil avoids the holy water ;) When will Blizzard make a defintive statement available for the public on their website, so that customers who are concerned about the matter can still decide whether or not they will purchase WOW?

[Bolty]

WoW's EULA is pretty clear, actually. They don't want you advertising accounts or items for sale within the game, but otherwise they will be turning a blind eye to it.

-Bolty

[Jarulf]

First of, I have a general question. How do one actually do such transaction without risk of being fooled? How do an auction site or sell site (such as eBay) make sure that someone goes inside the game and actually transfer the item? Are they just sitting on money until they get a "go" from the buyer? How do they make sure the seller doesn't get fooled? This of course applies to non game items too I guess. Just curious.

Another issue is how to actually enforce such rules for the game How can Blizzard know that character X in the game who just gave/sent an item to character Y involved the two players exchaging money some way outside the game? One have to remember the game itself has many ways to exchange items, were do you draw the line? What if someone instead of paying money simply gives you a dinner some day? Or help you out in a nother game, exchanging item for item? If it is a lucrative bussiness, it will happen no matter what and in more or less secrecy as needed. Closing accounts is in my opinion not a sufficient way to go since the risk of getting cought is so small.

As a side note, I don't personally think the "problem" really IS that much of an issue, depending on how the game is set up and how it works.

My final comment is simply an amazement that there are enought people actually interested in paying the ammount of money for, for example, items in a game to make it a possible bussiness to start with.

[Bolty]

My final comment is simply an amazement that there are enought people actually interested in paying the ammount of money for, for example, items in a game to make it a possible bussiness to start with.

Forget items, people are paying $500 US for beta accounts. Yikes!

-Bolty

[Occhidiangela]

I'd guess Blizz will turn a blind eye to what happens off of their domain. Not a big enough company, unlike Sony, to go after people. Who needs lawyers fees to eat into profits?

The way I think sales work, considering your first questions, is that on Ebay, you can provide feedback about the quality and integrity of the seller. After a couple of bad deals, the word gets out that someone is a scammer, I guess, and that is hard for Ebay to turn off until they get proof that a bad rumor was to blame.
I do not shop eBay enough to tell you more than that.

Why do people buy game stuff with money? You have seen the articles on the Lounge in re Diablo II, it also mystifies me since I play the game for fun, to fuel my creative writing, and for stress relief, and most of all . . . for the laughs!

I do miss the ability to join my friends in a game, will be back in time for WoW to go real.

Hope to see you then.

Occhi

[Cryptic]

Expect WoW to allow cash-for-virtual without ever really saying so. At the opposite end of the scale, EQ is a customer relations nightmare, and this is one of the big issues. People feel that if they work for 400 hours to raise a character to the highest levels, they earn what those characters find.

From what I’ve seen in the past, there are two tiers of MMORPG cash sellers out there. The casual group sells an occasional item here and there, perhaps to justify the cost and time investment of the game to themselves. They in no way make a living at it. I’ve done this before, when I’ve found rare items I had no other use for.

The second group plays the game with the strict focus of turning it into a profit venture. They tend to not be very fun to play with, as you can imagine.

Slow link, but interesting article:
http://internetgames.about.com/cs/gamingne.../gameassets.htm

The way that eBay transactions work: Payment is made prior to any shipping/receiving taking place; this is standard eBay policy. So be sure to check the seller’s feedback and make sure you have no compulsions sending the person money. Once payment is received, you are e-mailed instructions by the seller (meeting, account names, times, etc.).

I know that most buyers are either power gamers, who want the best items ASAP even if they don’t find them themselves, or relatively wealthy people who want to “experience the whole game” but don’t have much time to play. Odd, I know. But they’re out there in droves.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Opportunity to make Real Life ™ $ = more incentive to cheat.

[MongoJerry]

First of, I have a general question. How do one actually do such transaction without risk of being fooled? How do an auction site or sell site (such as eBay) make sure that someone goes inside the game and actually transfer the item?

It's pretty much as others have described it. The winner of the auction sends cash to the seller (usually via PayPal), and in the case of games, the seller will send the buyer a message describing when and how to contact them. (e.g. "I'll be on evenings PST all this week. Whisper me when you're on"). When the transaction is completed, the buyer and seller then go back to E-bay and leave feedback for one another, saying that the transaction had concluded to each other's satisfactions. Or, if the seller doesn't deliver, then the buyer can leave negative feedback. If you get an unfair instance of negative feedback, you can make a comment in your feedback page explaining the situation (e.g. "I kept whispering the guy, but he never responded!") One or two negative feedbacks with explanations are usually ok, depending on the number of positive feedbacks you've gotten. However, if you get too much negative feedback, then buyers will be wary of bidding on your auctions. You might think that this system is hokey, but it works surprisingly well. I've never been scammed on anything I've bought on E-bay.

Why do people buy game stuff with money? You have seen the articles on the Lounge in re Diablo II, it also mystifies me since I play the game for fun, to fuel my creative writing, and for stress relief, and most of all . . . for the laughs!

I've actually bought two Diablo II items on E-bay. I used to be ashamed of this and rarely admitted it, but time and distance makes the view clearer. Why did I do it? In both cases, there was a particular item that I needed for my character in order to complete that character's build, and it was taking way too much time and effort to get it in game. The first time was just a few months after D2 came out. I got bored playing softcore D2 after a month and almost quit playing the game (perhaps that would've been the best choice in the long run :lol: ). But I decided to try out hardcore D2 for some extra challenge, and I got hooked. However, a friend of mine and I met a guy who was an avid softcore sorceress dueler. This was at a point when sorceresses weren't very common in dueling games, and he was kind of a mini-celebrity in the dueling community. He told me what equipment and tactics he used, and after playing in some dueling games, I decided to build up and equip my preexisting sorceress specifically for softcore dueling. Basically the guy's "secret" was to bulk up on fast-cast items -- again at a time before "tweaker sorcs" were the standard build. I figured out that I had most of the gear I needed spread over my now abandoned softcore characters. I then proceeded to go on a bunch of Diablo runs and collect items to sell to vendors for gambling cash. I gambled a Twitchthroe and a Tarn Helm (this was back when there was a 5% chance of getting a unique when gambling), but I had a devil of a time gambling or finding a pair of Magefists. I spent an evening doing Diablo runs to collect over a million gold and then another evening running in and out of town to refresh the gambling screen and gambling on any light gauntlets that came up. In the end, I got nothing.

So there I was stuck in a conundrum. I had been playing a softcore character for several evenings that I really didn't want to play other than in the occasional dueling game. I was bored as hell by the whole thing and wanted to get back to playing in the much more fun hardcore games. But I needed those Magefists to break the last fast cast threshold. A friend of mine at work and I had for weeks been looking at the prices for D2 items for sale on E-bay and laughing at the "losers" who would pay real money for an imaginary item. On a lark at work, I hit up the E-bay listings and searched for Magefists. And there a pair for sale for two dollars. Two lousy stink'n dollars. So, I could either spend another 6-8 hours hoarding cash to gamble and pray that a pair of Magefists came my way, or just lay down two bucks and be done with the whole thing and go back to playing my main character. I won the Magefists auction, and I had some good times using them in dueling games. I feel I got my money's worth.

The second time was simpler than that. Last December, not too long after the 1.10 patch went live, I really wanted to get a hold of a Demon Machine. I had been very active on various sorceress forums in the discussion of enchantresses, and I wanted to try out a for-real ranged enchantress. Looking over the uniques available after the patch, it was clear that a Demon Machine was the best item for a ranged enchantress, and I wanted to try it out to see what it was like. Also, I had already had decided at that point I wanted to write an enchantress guide, and I wanted to write about ranged enchantresses from personal experience. The trouble was that I couldn't find a Demon Machine. None ever dropped for me, and when I inquired about Demon Machines in trade channels, I got two types of responses: "What is that?" and "Heh, I sold three of them to Charsi today. What a piece of junk." Remembering my earlier experiences with Magefists, I hit up the E-bay listings to see what a Demon Machine would cost. Out of the hundreds of Diablo II E-bay listings, there were exactly two listings that included a Demon Machine. One was a package of mostly junk items with a $5 buyout, and another was just for a Demon Machine with a $10 minimum bid (I doubt anyone bid on it). I though "why not," bought out the $5 auction, met up with the seller in game that night, got the stuff, sold off the junk, and I got my Demon Machine that I used for several months. Again, I felt like I got my money's worth.

By the way, I also sold a couple of small D2 items on E-bay and easily recouped the cash I had spent on these auctions, so really, I didn't spend any net cash on E-bay auctions for D2 items. However, if you want to know some of what could be the motivations of some players to pay real money for imaginary items, the above stories could give you some of the many motivations such buyers might have. This type of small-time selling of items is fine with me and I don't think harms anyone or the game.

Opportunity to make Real Life ™ $ = more incentive to cheat.

However, Swiss Mercenary hit the nail right on the head. I don't have any problem with players working hard, farming mobs, and selling items they find on E-bay. The problem is that the thousands of dollars that one can make selling items, if only one can find them fast enough, can lead people to find the fastest and easiest ways to cheat. Prices for items are always high initially and then drop quickly as the game progresses due to both a rise in supply (more items are found) and a decrease in demand (the game population decreases). This places enormous strains on semi-professional shops who do this kind of thing to find whatever exploits they can to get the items they want to sell. The result is Pindlebot type applications, designed to make it easy to get valuable items as quickly as possible. I would also say such large-scale sellers use dupe exploits, but most such sellers don't like dupes, because it massively devalues the items that they find. I guess it's more like the big sellers create bots and use dupe exploits but don't broadcast the information about them to the general community. Anyway, I agree with Swiss Mercenary. The issue isn't whether selling WoW items over E-bay is good or bad in itself. The issue is the recognition that by allowing such sales, one is incentivising hackers to spend the time to break your game.

However, there is one hope I have for Wow: Blizzard was smart to make quest rewards and fixed loot-table item drops bind on acquire, so most of the best equipment in the game can't be given or sold to other players. A few odds and ends good items can drop currently as Bind on Equip, including some "Epic" items, but for the most part the best items are Bind on Acquire. We haven't reached the point, yet, where players can find Legendary or (I forget the name -- there's one more higher item quality) items. I hope that all such items are Bind on Acquire. That way, if a person is using the item, you know that they themselves found the item and that they didn't buy it off E-bay.