Mark Jacobs tells Gold Sellers to "Go to hell." Literally.

I don't agree with him on his virtual property stance (prohibition never, ever works), but I agree that the large conglomerates doing this should take a long walk of a short pier, partially for their labor practices, partially for how easy they make it for criminals to launder money, but mostly because until they showed up, I could actually make decent money selling items and accounts on eBay. Much like the mom and pop stores put out of business by Wal-Mart, IGE lowered the margins to a point where small sellers couldn't justify the effort.

 

For the most part, I'd have to agree with you.  I understand how companies feel about the issue, but it seems that they're really only looking out for themselves.  I can't say I blame them... they're not making games just because they're nice guys who want us all to have fun on the interwebs, they're out there to make a profit.  All of the comments you read from devs and such saying things like, "Gold selling ruins teh economy!!!11!1!" seem like excuses to make sure their company is the only one making money from the game.

However, I applaud WHO for actually, and effectively as far as I can tell, getting rid of gold spammers within the game.  It's a minor annoyance to players (and clearly a big annoyance to Mark Jacobs), and it's nice to see a company that actually does something about it.  WoW has had their report feature for gold spammers for a long time now, and every time I log on, I still get dozens of whispers.  Granted, I'm not sure which is more obnoxious: pop ups from GM's you have to click away, or a gold spammer you have to ignore...

 

Its called intellectual property buddy.  You can pretend you're selling your "time" and your "services" all you want.  In reality, its called they have exclusive right of use which means that they can deny any activity with their property they want.

 

Oh trust me, I've heard (and understood) the whole "intellectual property" argument a billion times.  But that's not the argument they ever use.  That's how they justify their other arguments.  For example: "Gold sellers ruin teh economy!!!1!!1!  And anyways, all the gold is really ours anyways, so **** those sellers."  Of course you'll never hear that, but it's basically understood.

I think you need to read over my comment a little better, "buddy."  I'm not saying that they can't (or shouldn't) be doing what they're doing.  I'm saying that they're not doing it to A) save the in game economy, or B) save poor gamers from gold spammers.  They're doing it because it keeps the game profitable. 

The bread and butter of any mmo is the "achiever" gamer type.  The guy who just has to get to the level cap, the guy who has to have an epic mount, the guy who wants all purplez on his back.  If someone can go and buy a crapton of gold for $50 and achieve all of that (besides the level) in one go, what reason does he have to keep playing?  He'll probably just quit and move on to another mmo.  THIS is why mmo's hate gold sellers so much.

 

Intellectual property is the broad expression used for material that is protected by copyright, trademark, or patent.

Of course you would use IP protections to keep the game profitable.  But their motive doesn't have to be based on profit.  It could be for any reason not restricted by the law.

I don't know if I agree with your last contention but it could be why.  The point is they can and probably have put in their terms of service, which you must agree to, that gold selling is not permitted.  The TOS probably mentions certain remedies that Mythic may resort to in violation of the TOS.  This could be anything from banning to actual suing (although suit doesn't necessarily need to be expressly stated).  They sell you rights to access the game, play it etc, and they can revoke those rights based on the TOS.  Its just something thats pretty standard.

So... yes they would be using an IP argument.  Their motives for doing so?  Who cares?  Result: Forbid users to sell gold or as they claim "their time" in use of mythic's service/game.

 

Yeah, I don't really disagree with you at all.  It's just kind of an annoyance to me that they use the IP argument at all.

I was big into UO back in the day, and there was a huuuuuuge market for buying/selling gold, houses, accounts, etc in that game.  What's more, it wasn't against the TOS/EULA at all (I don't think they even had either), and thus, a huge market sprung up around it.  This was before goldfarmers, so it was just players selling things to other players.  It was nice and convenient if you had some extra RL money lying around.

I just keep trying to figure out why they'd ban gold selling/account selling/etc.  Gold spammers I honestly have no problem with them banning, as it's a huge annoyance.  However banning people for selling gold/selling accounts feels a bit odd.  How, really, is it hurting the game?  Really the only thing it has an effect on in the game is the economy, but even your average player can **** up the economy if they try hard enough.  Either that, or the company itself will **** up the economy.  Look at WoW.  You used to be able to buy a stack of leather for about 10s.  These days it costs a couple gold, all because they made it so much easier to get (gold, I mean).

Thus, I revert to my fall back answer whenever a big company is involved.  Why does any company exist?  To make money.  Thus, anything they do in some way is directed at making money.  If I buy an account from someone and the character is already max level, wearing awesome epix gear, etc, how long will I really stay with the game?  I'll probably get bored after killing people in RvR after a month or so and leave, because there's really nothing left for me to do.  So I'm not spending as much money as they'd like.  I'm giving a couple hundred dollars to some random person instead of to EA/Mythic.


This is all just supositions on my part, but I can't imagine what else the answer would be.

 

There are other reasons why they would want to prevent the behavior.  Fair competition being one of them.  Again could be explained as a monetary motive.  But not from the person who breaks the rules, but from everyone else who wishes to play by the rules and wishes everyone play by the rules.

I am sure there are others.  The developers wish to make the game as good as possible.  Their direction with the game surely doesn't include having gold being bought for cash.

 

im happy to hear at least mythic are getting rid of gold sellers, when i played in WOW that was so annoying and blizzard dident give a damn about it maybe one more reason to me to go buy warhammer .

 

Kinda sucks getting tells every hour for WOW-Gold and WAR gold in the same message and power-leveling services with the game not even 2 weeks old - good riddance!

 

I get about 1 every ten minutes on uthuane server - medium pop