The Glade 4.0

Thought this was an interesting video:

First let me preface this in saying I am not attacking you, Lenas. Don't take this question as snarky, but what do you find "interesting" about it?

My opinions....
Markeedragon (guy on the left) was busted years ago for using glider. He's a chump who has always been in favor of exploitation of the gaming industry, even though nowdays he says otherwise. You know he's lying, because of interviews such as this one.

These guys are bottom feeders.

Why, exactly? They are offering a service many people want and use.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

And many people do not want it, refuse to use it, and feel the people that do are lazy and unwittingly making the game harder to play, mostly due to rapidly increasing mudflation.

The two sides will never agree.

I have never bought 'gold', refuse to, and agree with Sam on this one.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

It was interesting to hear him discuss the mechanics of account theft. I've been saying for years that the vast majority of account thefts probably come from community site hacks + password reuse, but that was just an educated guess on my part.

Speaking from personal experience, you can troll through google search results all day long busting sites wide open using nothing but simple SQL injection tricks and literally never run out of targets. For a cracker with a few more sophisticated tricks up their sleeve, dumping community site databases would be trivial.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

So are drug pushers, pimps, and stolen goods dealers.

These guys sell items that are against the game's rules, advocating bots and stolen accounts. Both of which harm or hinder the honest gamer.

In the same vein as Sam, I was going to say "So are heroin dealers."

I salute their entrepreneurship.

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The Dude abides.

I don't have serious problem with RMT. I do however have a problem with how they gold farmers go about their business.

Hacking and stealing accounts and purging the valuable stuff.

Also, it wasn't mentioned here, but another common tactic they use is registering accounts with stolen credit cards and then power leveling toons on them to sell, or registering an account with a credit card, then reversing the charges on it after they are finished with it (or have sold it). This costs game companies a lot of money.

Like I said, I don't have a serious problem with it the basic idea of exchanging RL money for in game money. I just wish they wouldn't use stolen/hacked accounts to do it.

I have a feeling that a lot of people who are outwardly vocal against this (buying gold/plat or power leveling), are some of the same people using their services.

I will agree that hacking and stealing accounts is bad. But selling legally obtained accounts, gold and items is not.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Since I am one of the outwardly vocal, am I to assume you mean me? If so, you would be very wrong. I've never nor will I ever buy ingame gold or services.

I have no problem with the exchange of money for game currency. I do have a problem with the black market version and the problems it brings (Bots, hacking accounts/credit card theft, etc).

No Sam, I wasn't being specific to folks here.

Just generalizing...

Sam, I'm not sure how you don't find it interesting. It doesn't matter whether you agree with the business or not, I thought this was a great look into the workings of it for someone who might not be very educated on it. I also appreciated the fact that he basically gave away the hacker kryptonite -- change your pw!!

I, for one, appreciate the service. I don't like farming stupid **** in MMO's just for cash or whatever. Those are things that cause me to quit the game. So yeah, if I can get that Darkmoon card for $20 instead of farming for a week? You bet your *** I'm gonna.

Just to play devil's advocate: even if this means that you're supporting hacking of other people's accounts and stripping them of value?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I see it as the internet's survival of the fittest. He said it himself, change your pw often (or don't use the same one ever) and you likely have nothing to worry about. I live my life every day benefiting from others less fortunate than I. That's life. Shoes don't make themselves, gold doesn't farm itself, accounts can't hack themselves.

What do you really lose when your account is hacked, outside of invested time? People waste my time in real life every day. Can I call God's CS number and get back the time I spend in traffic every morning and evening? That'd sure be swell.

I also found it to be an interesting video.

In my opinion, stealing someone's stuff and reselling it isn't a valid business model. This applies to both physical and virtual property.

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Valid complaint if that was the entire business model. He said it himself, most of the gold they get is from game companies in China or botting. The brokers aren't the ones stealing accounts, and for them to avoid getting "dirty" gold they would have to avoid buying gold from anyone, which I'm sure isn't a smart decision.

The two do not exist separately as a practical matter. It's a lot like a strip club. There's nothing inherently wrong with going to a strip club in and of itself, but a lot of the people there are involved in deeply unhealthy other things, and the strip club (working or going to it) is a symptom. You may not be doing anything wrong going there but you're not doing anyone any favors.

Let's take the analogy for what it's worth and not launch into a spirited defense of strip clubs, folks. I get that every customer and every girl there is not a drug addict or a sex pervert. It's just an analogy.

As to it being interesting, it isn't 39 minutes worth of interesting to me, but the highlights would be interesting. It's good to have intel in the gold farming that encourages the account theft.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

STRIP CLUBS ARE AWESOME!

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Holy shitsnacks!

Receiving stolen property doesn't suddenly become okay because taking precautions to not do it would **** your business model. You need to not do that business if that's the case.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's not stolen property. All in-game items and currency are always the property of the company that created the game. No one steals gold from Blizzard. Don't kid yourself, you don't own anything your character has.

You can't argue that and then argue on the other hand that they can legally sell it, as Blizzard forbids the sale of their property. There's a logical inconsistency there.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Yes, the companies can be sued by Blizzard for damages or something along those lines. No, the companies are not selling stolen property. Selling gold itself is nothing more than a breach of contract.

Isn't this sort of hiding behind legalese?

Oh it definitely matters if we were to ever start talking actual court cases, but for almost every gamer I don't imagine it ever gets nearly that far in their minds. And so long as I don't actually intend to take a hacker to court because he stole my gold, I think it's plenty fine to think of it as "my" gold that they stole from me. So when the discussion ends up covering developer policy or the morals behind these companies (brokers or farmers) I'd say it's still fair game to call it theft.

I don't know where I sit on the issue at large. I'm definitely against it and would never do it myself, but I feel like it's akin to covering my ears and trying to ignore its existence. The guy being interviewed even said that uncontrolled farming/botting/etc can ruin a game, and I think it's definitely true, but he also said that it's always going to exist (under some current game designs, at least) which is also true. I can say "don't do it! begone, gold farmers!" but it's not going to work, so... how best to address it? Has Blizzard been successful in their efforts? They do quite a lot, I gather, though it's rarely front page news... some of the things mentioned in this interview point to that, and I have on a few occasions came across discussions that touched on their efforts (most recently with the honor change in WoW leading to a new method for farming just some 2 weeks ago).

I know I definitely don't want the game companies themselves selling gold, but that might mean we have to just put up with RMT being part of the game. Game developers will need to put forth that extra effort to deal with its especially negative side effects.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting interview. Haven't read/watched anything this detailed in the RMT side of things in years and I was definitely in need of some updating.