Warhammer Gold Farming Ban Rampage

[Nathan Meunier]

Warhammer Gold Farming Ban Rampage

Gold farmers circling in on the recently-launched Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning like vultures salivating for fresh carrion are being met by Mythic's mighty Sword of Banning (+10 vs. Gold Spammers).

In case you wondered, Mythic Entertainment co-founder Mark Jacobs does not like gold farming. Just how much, you might ask? A post on his blog [http://onlinegamesareanichemarket.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/a-banning-we-will-go-a-banning-we-will-go-heave-ho-off-the-servers-yo-a-banning-we-will-go/] this week gives some indication: "I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING," writes Jacobs. "And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE." Strong words, indeed.

Companies with a rogue entrepreneurial streak have cropped up en masse with unique ways to cash in on the obsessive nature MMOG enthusiasts. As gold farming spam has crept into WAR and other online games, Jacobs argues it ruins the gaming experience. With WAR now in full-swing, he has declared war on gold spammers.

"I've been waiting for the day that WAR [http://www.warhammeronline.com/] launched so I could have the absolute pleasure of instituting policies to make their lives more difficult so we could drive them out," he said. "Since WAR launched we have been banning these jerks like crazy. As of Saturday night, we had banned about 400 of them...we have a strike team whose sole job it is to get these guys off our servers as quickly as possible."

Gold spammers are not only being tossed off the servers; they're being booted in humorous ways. Players on the Phoenix Throne server have received special in-game messages when a gold seller/spammer has been banned, he said. They've also been encouraged to come up with their own creative messages. "Messages like 'Tchar'zanek has ordered the slaughter of [Spammer] and all others of his kind who weaken the Raven Host by providing wealth and power to the unworthy' have been seen all weekend," he said. Jacobs intends to expand his crusade.

"After all, this is WAR," he writes.


Permalink

 

[Mr.Bubbles43]

Yeah I saw one of those messages yesterday, can't remember it exactly but I remember laughing for a good 5 minutes.

 

[Amnestic]

"I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING," writes Jacobs. "And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE."

I have to wonder, did he actually shout those words? Does he also hate the caps lock button? I have to wonder whether they're actually as hardcore as they say. Blizzard are supposedly tough on gold farmers and sellers, and...well, they're anything but in my personal playing experience. It'd be interesting to see whether Mythic are more effective against them.

 

[cainx10a]

Yeah I saw one of those messages yesterday, can't remember it exactly but I remember laughing for a good 5 minutes.

I even died while reading it

 

[Bretty]

I get a thank you from the CSRs for reporting these guys!

Screw you gold spammer!

 

[tendo82]

I still don't understand the rage against gold farmers. If anything gold farming is a wonderful example of globalization as well as a treatise on free market economies.

I find it funny that one of the illusions these MMORPGs try hardest to preserve is that of the meritocracy.

 

[absinthe21]

I still don't understand the rage against gold farmers. If anything gold farming is a wonderful example of globalization as well as a treatise on free market economies.

I find it funny that one of the illusions these MMORPGs try hardest to preserve is that of the meritocracy.

Ah, but you're missing the point somewhat. The game is supposed to be seperate from the real world. What happens in WAR stays in WAR, and vice versa. While in the real world yes, it is an example of the free market and the glories of capitalism, in the game it shatters any attempt to create a genuine economy. This is one of those things that has to be seen from the point of view of the game.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I still don't understand the rage against gold farmers. If anything gold farming is a wonderful example of globalization as well as a treatise on free market economies.

You failed infinitely by saying that. Gold farming destroys the economy of the game and unbalances everything, not to mention it also encourages lazy play.

 

[Smiles]

would they ban you for giving away free gold? I do that sometimes in MMORPG's...

 

[Jhereg42]

would they ban you for giving away free gold? I do that sometimes in MMORPG's...

Not usually. Helping out a new player or giving away gold you don't need is usually not looked down upon. It's the guys who make accounts, then try and make money through intrusive ooc advertising that piss people off.

 

[LazyAza]

I get gold spammed at least 4 or 5 times a day in war. Thank you Mark Jacobs, more power to him I say.
Fucking gold spammers.

 

[Nathan Meunier]

They also make heavy use of the cancel or chargeback features on credit cards (whether legit or stolen - think about how many different offers you get in the mail for just one person), which ends up costing the gaming companies when the credit card industry assesses punitive fees or rates due to the perceived problems with their service - 'why else would all these upstanding customers cancel or chargeback, and we can't be bothered to look into your claims, we've up to our horns in money; would you like a low interest rate card, no annual fee?'.

Their advertising methods (they're called spammers for a reason) reduce the average gamer's enjoyment of the product, even causing some to leave in extreme cases, costing the gaming companies money. Dealing with them and the issues they raise, whether from the customer support side or financial side, costs game companies money. This is money they won't be using for content, so in the end, all the players end up suffering for it.

 

[Arbre]

Remind me who put, into their game, a system which permits and gives a reason for gold farmers to exist again?

 

[Doggabone]

I still don't understand the rage against gold farmers.

You must have an email address that never gets spammed. Lucky you!

Ok, I can edjumicate you a little. Post your cell number, and I'll send you a text message from a different random phone number every five or six minutes. Each one will offer you the same service over and over again. You will not be able to decline my offer or block my messages - each time you do, I will select a new number anyway.

Understanding the rage is easy. You don't even need to feel it to understand it.

When they hocked their wares outside of the game it was distasteful, perhaps objectionable. I didn't care about it much, but there were some who bought gold or accounts and skipped learning how the game or their purchased class worked. I avoided those people. Overall, it was a non-issue, and on my fourth or fifth character, I was strongly tempted to "leg up" the new characters with a little gold purchase myself. I understood the objections others had to gold selling - but as long as it was out of my face, I didn't care.

"And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE."

When they started flooding /ooc it was annoying. Some worthwhile tidbits got lost in the flood. (Imagine watching your favorite program, with the sound from The Shopping Channel playing at equal volume.) That was annoying but mostly ignorable. When they started sending me tells over and over and over and over ... that was infuriating.

If anything gold farming is a wonderful example of globalization as well as a treatise on free market economies.

By this, do you mean that leveraging someone else's work product for unlicensed profitablity, earned by underpaying workers in small work environments, by hiring in underdeveloped countries where the work is too disadvantaged to argue is a good thing? Or that globalization is horribly flawed? It's a huge industry. It's enticing criminal organizations. And why not? Easy money, no risk and it's "legit".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7575902.stm

I find it funny that one of the illusions these MMORPGs try hardest to preserve is that of the meritocracy.

You write that as if it were a bad thing.

mer·i·toc·ra·cy [ mèrri tókrəssee ] (plural mer·i·toc·ra·cies)

noun
Definition:

1. system based on ability: a social system that gives opportunities and advantages to people on the basis of their ability rather than, e.g. their wealth or seniority

Works for me - RPG's are inherently meritocratic constructs. Do great things, acheive status/wealth/power - do nothing, and be nobody. You start a farmer, you end as a king. Just because we all play together doesn't change that ideal. A well built MMORPG will try to sustain the illusion they inherit from the RPG construct - there will still be some who want to buy and download the larger e-peen. You inherit that from the MMO half of the equasion.

Online deathmatches use PunkBuster to preserve the illusion that you should aim a gun to shoot it accurately. I don't see an aesthetic or ethical difference between that and banning gold spammers. Each is working to preserve the essence of the game type. Because that's how you sell games.

They're never gonna be able to stop everybody, but there are ways to limit the incursion and the intrusion. I wouldn't underestimate how effective Mythic and Blizzard actually are - imagine if they had done nothing to prevent gold spamming. I absolutely LOVE the pop up messages.

 

[Grumman]

Remind me who put, into their game, a system which permits and gives a reason for gold farmers to exist again?

I don't see how they could remove that reason, unless they removed all ability to exchange items or gold within the game. Not letting people drop, trade or give away things seems like a drastic step to take.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

i think it's great that they are banning the gold spammers

in WoW they come up with so many excuses as to why they can't/won't ban them. at least WAR is doing a great pr thing and saying "we're banning them as we catch them" it's a great pr move on their part AND it give WoW a bit of a black eye.

i've long said just ban the ips they come from as they live in china and connect via certain ips but the gm's and such in WoW say "oh no they connect thru proxies and other convoluted methods that we can't possibly try to interpret and neither should you mr user" which to me just says "we're getting paid from them and a paid a lot so bugger off"

gold spammers are easy to get rid of, all it takes is a bit of logging and a bit of investigation and some router reconfiguration to drop packets from their ips

 

[tendo82]

By this, do you mean that leveraging someone else's work product for unlicensed profitablity, earned by underpaying workers in small work environments, by hiring in underdeveloped countries where the work is too disadvantaged to argue is a good thing? Or that globalization is horribly flawed? It's a huge industry. It's enticing criminal organizations. And why not? Easy money, no risk and it's "legit".

The point Doggabone makes here further addresses my frustration with the above news article. When you launch an MMORPG - globally - you have to look at the possible repercussions through a similar lens. If we assume the problem is roughly analogous to the "drug war" the US has been fighting for over 20 years, clearly attempts at slowing the incoming drug supply have proved futile. Shouldn't we expect a similar outcome in the efforts to ban gold farmers?

What's troublesome is that the anger isn't being directed at those responsible for the demand. Jacob's statement should read "I hate people who use gold spammers with every fiber of my being." My guess is those people aren't nameless, faceless "others". I would guess those responsible for the demand reside a little too close to home and comprise a valuable group of subscribers.

 

[Bretty]

If people have a demand for Gold sellers this early on they need to look at themselves and ask why they are even bothering playing a game.

Of course Jacobs has basically 'called out' these gold farmers. And I think it is for this reason they are so active now.

Ultimately it is up to the player to use these services. And as there are many asses in this world that will, the rest of us are going to be spammed. On the bright side though, every banning means a new game these people have to buy. So I am sure the more that are banned the more they will look at the cost ratios.

We can all hope!