Playing Warcraft Around the World

January 25, 2007 by Foton • Filed Under Etc., Noteworthy • 8 Comments 
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Here’s an interesting debate on the World of Warcraft forums about a player who games from around the world because of business travel: “Play WoW on business trips and get suspended?”

You might think by the title that he got suspended from work for exploring the Tower of Azora with a group of night elves — not so. He was suspended from Warcraft for exploring the Tower of Azora from multiple IP addresses.

Let’s assume the Original Poster is telling the truth, and I’m inclined to do so, what should a MMOG company’s policy be with accounts that are accessed by multiple IPs? Clearly there are legitimate, TOS-compliant reasons when a player would use several IPs to access his/her account. Conversely, there are non-legit, TOS-breaking reasons also.

Suspend first, argue later? Ask first, suspend later? Say nothing, spy on the player at the Tower of Azora?

I’m leaning towards flagging the account and looking for other suspicious behavior connected to the account.

My opinion, this shouldn’t be a high priority for investigations. Realize, however, that I’m in the “I don’t care if people sell/buy virtual currency and accounts” camp. People in the “I think selling/buying virtual currency and accounts is wrong” camp might consider this a higher priority and some collateral damage is expected and acceptable.

I’ll qualify that with “FOR THE MOST PART, I don’t care if people sell/buy virtual currency and accounts camp”. I’ll illustrate with a high quality graphic.

Gold Sellers Chart

Ya see? We’re not so different you and I. (In fact, I used to be much more fundamentalist in my view on IGE/Ebaying game stuffs. Over the years, I moved towards the “fuckit, I don’t care” side of the high quality graphic.)

Back to the original question: how to limit collateral damage when on a seek-and-destroy TOS-violators mission?

For future reference and for the firewalled:
(All Sizes » Original, for larger text)
Page image of WoW Forum thread



Screenshot Day!

November 8, 2006 by Foton • Filed Under World of Warcraft Journal • 3 Comments 
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A few screenshots I’d collected lately of players having fun (sometimes at the expense of others):

The ingame gold sellers/power level services have moved to fancy textual messages to hustle their shit.

Hustling for Work

Well, it would have been fancy if he could have tested his macro first.

Here’s one of my guildmates. His fun had come to an end.

The Friend Zone

Bastard still hasn’t told us the story behind that mistell.

I told you a few weeks ago that my guild had split the membership into two ranks: one for the high-attendance raiders, the other for the lower-attendance raiders. (Link) One of the officers proposed adding a third rank.

Never Count on Me

Bah! If only we had the nerve to follow through on that. I don’t know about other guilds, but mine is losing its edge with the expansion just around the corner. There’s two camps of raiders. One is “the expansion will make our gear worthless, why bother farming it anymore!” and the other is the “umm, you will need SOME gear in the expansion to start off, you twits!”

I’m on the fence. I’ve got my purplez, but I’ll help others with their purplez just cuz what the hell else is there to do besides hide in the beta?

And finally, as you can see below, I’m still winning friends and influencing people in the PVP battlegrounds.

More Battleground Fun!!

I am REALLY surprised I didn’t get reported for that. Not that I cared.

W O R T H

I T.



Massive Magazine has Game Creds

July 14, 2006 by Foton • Filed Under Asides • Leave a Comment 
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I haven’t found, or looked for either, that new ad-rag Massive Magazine, but I have read article excerpts on their website! Looks like they do a lot of “this person doesn’t exist but if they did, they would do or say this” kind of stuff. Also, they have a lengthy piece on “virtual property brokers”, which is what we all call ebay and IGE (or RMT if you’re a Poindexter), and once you’ve covered a topic as edgy and NOW! as virtual property brokers, you’ve got game creds. Here’s something you won’t read in Massive, unless they steal it or actually log into a game and play for more than 30 minutes, my guild has a throwaway account just for laundering IGE, et al, gold. It’s not talked about openly of course, but if someone needs a little extra scratch for an alt’s epic mount or resist equipment materials and they’re nervous about exposing their primo Warcraft account to the roving band of Blizzard investigators, the throwaway is available to them, including some very rudimentary methods for laundering the gold. We’re a full service guild that way.



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