CONTROVERY Controversy, Let us reason!Follow

Now, HOPEFULLY we can have a REASONABLE discussion here. I tried to open up a discussion about this on another forum, but they shut me down right away because they obviously don't believe in the power of rational, assertive, and reasonable debate.

Before I begin, I want to ask the reader to consider carefully. Don't read in order to argue back, because that is stupid. Read in order to 1) understand and 2) to offer your own educated opinion whether differing or not.

My reason for this post comes from a rather incidental experience: My guild. On our server, we were very competitive with our ranking always floating between 2nd and 3rd in terms of progression. One issue we had was retaining well geared healers. It wasn't until this uber geared priest joined our guild, and it wasnt until later that I found out that it was one of our tanks who was controling this priest. The guild purchased an account. Now these guys aren't gold buyers, account fraudsters blah blah blah, these are my guildmates that are legit wow tigers that just want to continue on with the game. So they solved the problem.

I have yet to hear a substantive ill suffered by players who choose not to participate in the secondary market apart from vague talk of damage to the in-game economy.

People who spam chat with illicit offers are, of course, incredibly annoying and can be ignored. They (the black market) exist because game manufacturers refuse to provide a legitimate feature that users of the game desire.

As far as people being "lazy", I don't see any reason why the "do everything yourself" ethos should be the de facto standard for playing games the right way. I mean, you could argue that doing something seemingly innocuous like twinking one of your alts "omg totally defeats the point of the game why don't you want to play it the right way you lazy %^&*!" ...but that would be silly.

No, this is a matter of nerd cred. Some people just can't stand the idea that some well-heeled casual gamer can plop down a credit card and suddenly have character that's just as good as theirs w/o having "paid their dues."

Get over it folks-- someone with more money than you will always be able to do something you can't.

Now I realize this may be a bit harsh, but lets seriously open a dialogue here and consider the fact that if publishers opened up to the idea of providing these services in a regulated way a few things could potentially happen:

1) People who profit wrongly in this industry would get capped
2) Publishers would have significantly reduced operational costs with their risk and customer support departments
3) Players would pay according to the actual value they want to pay for the game
4) People who don’t have the same amount of time as high schoolers can actually enjoy the game where the bulk of players are at (sorry, but peeps aren’t sitting at 1-60 anymore. Good luck LFG)
5) Game Economies could be stabilized and better monitored (i.e. the starbase exploit that went unnoticed in EVE for 4 years)

Anyway, believe it or not there are some good companies out there that are trying to pave a way to incorporate the secondary market all while fighting to keep gaming fun. You guys can check out this article I found at Ars Technica.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/11/13/diary-of-a-black-market-mmo-profiteer

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/11/13/diary-of-a-black-market-mmo-profiteer

This is a serious issue guys. No matter what, we've been playing alongside people who have traded or bought gold (my guild bought accounts for crying out loud) and not even known it. Yes, that Priest that was healing you last night... he bought gold to get the herbs to make those additional mana pots which kept him up AND YOU.

So... let it roll...

Edited, Dec 21st 2008 9:13pm by Wordaen

ALSO!!!!!!!!!!!

I read the rules for this forum! And unlike the other popular wowsite (which is also owned by affinity media), allakhazam's forum rules ALLOW for controversial topic posts, so lets just talk about it. Report it if you want to censor things, but according to their by laws this is allowable.

We allow most topics, we do not allow trolling or inflammatory drivel posted simply to advertise another site or whip people into a frenzy for the sake of doing it.

Choose your words carefully, that is a polite warning.

You would also be correct in that botting is not only frowned upon, as is buying gold or buying accounts, but all of those are a violation of the EULA Artemis. Since we ARE an official fansite of the game, we follow that EULA. Therefore, I will allow this discussion for now and I will be watching it carefully. Should I decide later that it needs to go away, that's the way it is.

Regardless of your personal opinion about buying accounts, that is a no no with Blizzard and is a no no with us.

edit - on second thought, I am killing this. Changed my mind as this could really derail into something even more inappropriate on the forums.

Edited, Dec 21st 2008 9:13pm by Wordaen