“Do you know the difference between a hustler and a good con-man? A hustler has to get out of town as quickly as he can. But, a good con-man? He doesn't have to leave until he wants to.”
- James Woods
In the past, I've talked about how the RMAH was designed so that only high level (or should I say, the most valuable) items will be sold on it. Even Blizzard is aware of this, and they want the most valuable items only sold on the RMAH. Even if they're not directly sold by a player, it will end up on the RMAH indirectly by another player who re-sells it.
In the end, all of the best stuff will be on there.
The other day, one of our readers asked a question about the "forced" usage of the RMAH so I wanted to expand on this. My comment ended up being too long, so I just decided to answer the question as a full post:
Don't you think that making the RMAH mandatory would alienate a big chunk of their playerbase?"I don't think a "mandatory" RMAH will alienate the playerbase, because they won't even know they're being alienated in the first place. :)
If they make inferno so hard that you can't beat it without the best gear possible from inferno(which will only be available on the RMAH), I see a few problems coming up:
-How are people supposed to get inferno gear if they can't beat inferno without said inferno gear? (D3 endgame multiplayer only? o_O)
-If they are forced to buy stuff from the RMAH to progress in inferno, I can see a lot of player simply not bothering with it, just quitting. I don't think Blizzard want that.
-There will be a lot of rage against the RMAH as soon as people are forced to use it. I'm pretty sure a lot of Blizzard's fans are against the idea of "pay to win".
The way I see it: buying stuff on the RMAH will be a way to speed up your character progression. Yes, inferno will be super hard, but there's no way Blizzard is going to force you to buy stuff to progress. That would be a horrible way to promote their new and controversial business model. (D3 isn't F2P, the idea that you'd NEED to spend more money than the initial purchase price in order to beat it feels wrong).
Perception Management
The financial motivations of a company are not a subject that most gamers care to discuss, let alone even want to be aware of. They just want to play the video game, but the game ends up playing them too.
I think what will happen is that most players will actually turn around and THANK Blizzard for creating such a difficult experience. :)
They'll never make the connection between the Inferno difficulty level (and other difficulty level "steps" to get to Hell) and the RMAH.
(Unfortunately, I have to start tagging the blog URL to any pic I throw together. Flux from Incgamers likes to borrow images from this blog for his own posts without crediting the source.)Players won't get angry at Blizzard for the "mandatory" RMAH because Blizzard is an expert at perception management. And this is what it all comes down to: perception. It won't be a problem for Blizzard if they're not perceived as the problem. So, where is the real problem and who can Blizzard redirect anger and frustration?
Blizzard has kept emphasizing that the Real Money Auction House is a completely player-driven economy, it's managed by the players, and that they have no control over it. They have also said that the RMAH is "COMPLETELY OPTIONAL." Blizzard is not forcing you to use it at all. If players just happen to put items up on the RMAH, Blizzard can't be held responsible for it.. because they promised they would be "hands off."
This Is Unfair!
In situations where players complain on the public forums about Inferno or Hell being too difficult, and how they're "forced" to use the RMAH (because it's the only place with the best gear), I suspect that the following will happen:
- Blizzard CM's will rush to address the concern.. by correcting the gamer for being wrong. They'll be told that the RMAH is "completely optional" and that they're not being forced in anyway to use it.
- The Blizzard CMs will tell them that they can just buy whatever they want from the Gold Auction House. If they can't find what they're looking for, it's just a "coincidence" and they probably checked the Gold AH at the wrong time. Throughout all of this, they'll feign ignorance to the fact that the best items can only be found on the RMAH.
- Blizzard CMs will say that they don't have to buy anything at all, and they just need to farm Nightmare or Hell to get the items they want.. just like their other games. "It will be just like WoW where you need to farm bosses to get the gear you want."
- The blue army will also rush to the aid of the Blizzard CMs and correct the complainer on the forums as well. (Some will actually be Blizzard employees under the guise of regular players.) Posts will be edited or deleted, all to manage perception.
- Blizzard forums will be full of customers and fanboys praising Blizzard for making the Inferno level so difficult, and how they did an excellent job finally making a challenging difficulty level for the players. Gamers who use the RMAH, and then complain about it, will be chastised for being lazy and taking the easy path. Or, they will be called "spoiled rich kids" or impatient for trying to rush the game when they should have been farming "like everyone else." Another common one will be, "Why are you complaining? It's a subscription fee game! It's just a little bit of money, and Blizzard needs it to keep the lights on."
The Average User
Above, I just talked about users who complain, but that's a small minority.
On average, most players who use the RMAH will either feel guilty about it, or more likely, they'll think they're cheating the system and gaining an advantage over other players. In either case, these players won't say anything or complain on the forums.. just the way Blizzard likes it.
The problem is that these players won't know they're being "forced" to buy from the RMAH. They'll think that it's their own decision.
It's human nature to be easily influenced and believe that we came to a decision on our own, especially when a game developer's professional marketing and team of psychologists are constantly pounding an idea into our heads. Sometimes it is our own conscious decision, but that's only when we're fully aware of all of the facts and it's a well informed decision.
In some cases, the decision to buy from the RMAH will be because they're impatient and they want to skip ahead to get to the end-game with their friends. (The same thing that happens countless times in WOW and D2.) Or, this might just be their belief when they realize how difficult it is to get properly geared.
These players also don't want to tell anyone they bought from the RMAH so that they won't be labelled as a pariah (even though everyone else does it, and they also never admit to it.)
Forced, but not forced..
"It will be just like WoW where you need to farm bosses to get the gear you want."
But, there's a really big problem with this. You have two options to gear up for Inferno: you can farm Hell, or use the "optional" RMAH.
Is Hell really an option though? Players keep forgetting that Diablo 3 does not have any loot tables. You can't farm specific bosses or mobs for items you need, no matter what you kill, your loot is completely random.
You could farm Hell for years without ever getting the proper gear, and in the absence of free trading, it's a nearly impossible task. And, consider this for casual players!
Even the crafting system for gear will still function the same as regular item farming because you can't craft an item without the Rare Blacksmith Plan drop first. These plans will be sold on the RMAH, just like other rare items or weapons. Besides the random chance in getting the recipe, consider also that crafting the gear is completely random as well. Each time you craft a weapon, it will have random properties and modifiers, and each crafting attempt requires a large influx of Inferno level salvage and Rare Crafting Materials. And even the salvaged materials are completely random! You're back to the same problem of receiving items that you don't need. And, you're still dependent on farming Inferno for all of these materials and recipes, but you can't farm Inferno until you get the proper gear.
Given the number of items, item modifiers, and affixes, there will be billions (if not trillions) of combinations of items in the game. Because of this massive pool of items (Blizzard has stated it's an "item-centric game"), Blizzard is going to be praised for providing so many options for us. As we farm Hell, it's going to appear awesome.. "look at all of these items that are dropping! Wow!".. until the player realizes that they're not actually getting the gear they really need. These useless items (for that player) will actually end up the Auction Houses, and ultimately the RMAH in one form or another, so that another player, who actually needs it, can buy it.
Because of the amount of loot and random generators in the game, the chances of getting the right combination of items are next to impossible.. without using the RMAH. As a Demon Hunter on your own, you might just keep getting hundreds of "of the Owl" crossbows and wands.
The sheer amount of loot will blind you to the truth. You'll have a thousand spoons, but all you need is a knife.
You will be told, though, that you just need to farm Hell for the right items but you have the "optional" RMAH. You're not being forced to do anything you want.
When you consider this, it isn't just a "Pay 2 Win" problem any more. For most players, the RMAH will be needed for actual player advancement, and you can't go any further in the game without the right gear. You need to farm for the right gear, but the only epic boss in Diablo 3 with a loot table is the Real Money Auction House.. it's easy to beat, you just throw a lot of cash at it.
Blizzard has just updated their "A Day In The Life" page and they have added two more articles on top of the originally planned three.
The most recent one is about Micah Whipple aka Bashiok aka Drysc.
For most, this is no big deal.. it's just another short article. But, this was actually a website I've been watching for a while now. Not for it's content, but rather it's scheduling of releases.
(What I'm about to explain is actually a good example of my thinking process. I'm also going to touch on Bashiok for a bit, and provide some interesting insight on a specific subject.)
About Me
You see, what Blizzard has been doing is releasing small amounts of information at a time and spreading it out to keep people busy with art and information until Diablo's release date.
It's all scheduled ahead of time; the three "Day in the Life" articles, the FB beta key sweepstakes start and end date, D3 followers information, D3 gold and cash auction houses, D3 character reveals and information, D3 item database, etc. They're all released at certain times, just to keep people busy, until the ultimate goal is reach. Makes sense right?
As soon as the three "Day in the Life" articles were completed, that would mean that they would have to move onto new bits of information until the release date.
I was keeping an eye on this schedule, and I was hoping that this wouldn't happen. But, they've now redesigned the website so that they can do 5 articles now instead of 3, meaning that they're dragging everything out even further and pushing back their information release schedule. That means everything else gets pushed back too..
About Bashiok
This is something about Bashiok that's largely unknown by many players. You might find it interesting though.
You might have noticed that Bashiok is very quick to come to the defense of the Cash Auction House. One of the very first, in fact:
We've spent a very long time working with our legal departments around the globe researching regional laws and regulations, if not obtaining government approvals.As you might have noticed, there's something very wrong with these statements. He claims it's sound from a legal perspective, and the legal team has been working on it for a long time. That means there are no problems. But then he said, if there ARE issues we'll let people know. Didn't he just say it was perfectly acceptable "around the globe"?
.. we know it to be sound from a legal perspective.
If any local or country-specific laws do become an issue we'll of course be sure to let people in those regions know.
This was before the South Korea incident too, meaning that the legal team couldn't have been working around the globe and getting government approvals.. and they still haven't received approvals yet in all countries or regions.
This was a very old example, but even now, he'll be the first to jump on anything related to the RMAH and gambling.
The reason he's so involved and.. intense.. about the RMAH and the gambling issue is because there's something you don't know about Micah.
Jay Wilson said that Micah is "ALL FOR" turning Diablo 3 into a whole PVP / E-Sports game with player wagering and arena gambling. That video is one that has went largely unnoticed by players, but it shows how even Jay knows that he's a big supporter of gambling within the game.
Bashiok can't call it gambling, mind you, because he knows that gambling is illegal.. and I'm sure he doesn't want any players calling it that either.
A little something that I hope you found interesting since it explains why he responds to those posts and why he's an advocate of the RMAH.
Back To Blizzard
In that same interview, Sixen later said:
It's something Force and I brought up at the Press Event back in July... Gambling, Replays, and Observer Mode to PvP. Jay Wilson said they're all cool ideas they want to do at some point in time... Just... Later on down the road.So, these gambling features might be something later on down the road.. like what I lovingly predicted for Diablo 3 X1. :)
There are probably many other supporters of gambling within the game who also see it's potential, but they all have to be very careful about using "gambling" verbiage. It's not gambling, just "games of chance and using in-game currency". Gambling in D3 is very much possible and perfectly legal because the RMAH allows it to happen through indirect loopholes.
It's one of the reasons they need the RMAH to be successful and active for a very long period of time before before they expand D3 features (like arena wagering) or put RMAH systems into other games. They need to see how the governments react to it after at least a year of activity. If governments don't say anything about it, then they'll know it's safe to proceed because it's the same as giving approval. :)
In a year from now, when players are asking why it's taking Blizzard so long to implement arena wagering, just point them back to this old post. They're simply watching and waiting.
I think it's a very cool and bold idea, and I support the RMAH.. but, I don't support the non-transparency about the whole issue. They should just admit it's gambling, get government approvals, and get it licensed (if it's legal in the region.) Even the South Korean Blizzard employees knew that it was gambling and tried to fight against it, but Blizzard HQ forced them to launch the feature. So, we know for a fact that within Blizzard walls even they know it's gambling.
Kat Hunter dropped by and left a comment about the Warcraft 4 affair in the comments section here.
I can confirm it was indeed her (if the Blogspot account didn't give it away) as she also sent it from a Blizzard work PC.
She came here from the Reddit post if you were interested. I wonder if Mike Morhaime reads Reddit often too?
Still, it's nice that someone from Blizzard finally left a comment after all of their visits. I think it's the first time they ever commented.. I don't have access to the older blog information before August though.
Apparently that gambling post is a pretty big hit within Blizzard headquarters. Hopefully, it provides some insight and ideas that they might not have considered and so that their legal teams can further prepare or fix the potential issues.
(I would recommend removing the Listing Fee, or make it refundable if the item does not sell. If the auction is cancelled in advance, for example, then keep the Listing Fee since it was a strategic decision and had nothing to do with chance.)
Since yesterday, I'd have to guess that over 40 unique PCs and smartphones belonging to Blizzard employees have hit the blog, but I've started to lose count now.
All of the direct links seem to be from internal emails, and not by Google searches or other referrals. So, it's something making the rounds inside the office and of definite interest.
If you're a Blizzard employee and reading this, some commentary on the subject of RMT, gambling, and international law would be appreciated. :)
Earlier this month, I saw an interesting read on a player / GM interaction. These kinds of posts come up all the time, but they're always fun to read (e.g. "GM threatened me", "the GM was rude", "the GM wasn't helpful", etc.)
This particular one was about a GM threat and it went something like this:
Player: Can I talk to a supervisor?
GM #1: No. If you ask again, I'll suspend your account.
Player: A GM threatened me!
GM #2: He acted appropriately within our policies. Let's end the one-sided conjecture here. *thread closed*
Even AT&T doesn't do this. Typically, when you contact customer service departments for help, but you're not getting any assistance, consumers will ask for a supervisor. Blizzard's customer service is different though, they're not under any obligation to escalate your request or transfer to a supervisor. They'll also never speak bad about another GM. Even if they personally don't agree with their decisions, they'll still have to say "they followed our policies" in a public forum.
And a lot of their decisions will be personally motivated, just like any typical customer service provider. Or really any job when you think about it. If they like you, you'll get more leeway. If they don't like you or you asked the wrong questions, be prepared for the absolute minimum service or worse.
This situation of favoritism reminded me of a personal World of Warcraft related anecdote.
If you weren't already aware, there are multiple guilds out there that are (or were) populated by Blizzard employees. There are guilds of CMs, GMs, Management, Developers and Artists, etc. They often find their own cliques, and identities in the general populace are kept secret for obvious reasons.
An old friend of mine used to go to school with a couple of the developers, and he's been in the Dev Guild for a very long time. For the most part, he was very secretive about the Guild and he treated it like an elite society. However, when TBC was in it's prime he told me, with a wink and a smile, that his friends set him up with a "Level 71". He's not the kind of person to make a joke either and he was quite serious. He was very active in raids and very well geared already through his own work, so it didn't sound like he was just given amazing gear. From what was implied, on the surface the character looked like any other Level 70, but it had hidden modifiers that would be invisible to players inspecting his character. For example, his crit chance would show 34%, but it would actually be 49% during the hit calculations. He didn't go into any specifics, but I think that there were just subtle changes made to the character giving it a slightly better advantage that wouldn't be noticed too often (to most people, it would just be really good luck on combat rolls.) Conveniently enough, he also only partied with other Blizzard developers and their friends, didn't PVP, and didn't interact with "the lower class" WoW denizens. :)
I honestly believed what he told me.. he wasn't the type of person to make this sort of thing up. Plus, I always suspected that this sort of thing always happened and it was nice to see it confirmed. If I owned a MMORPG myself, I mean I would definitely do it. :)
I haven't spoken to him in a few years, but I continued to follow the guild and it's activities since then. These days though, they're very quiet.
Favoritism like this happens in every business, but instances of special treatment very rarely make it public. Mostly because it's just between two trusting individuals. When more individuals are party to special treatment, though, the more likely the information is leaked or witnessed (like the Martin Fury scandal). Blizzard, for example, has a lot of information about them in the wild web concerning favoritism and it's actually an issue that have addressed in the past.
Back in 2005, Blizzard transferred an entire guild from one realm to another. This was long before even Character Transfers were made publicly available too. :)
Blizzard has always had to justify why their paid services cost so much, but it's funny how all of that just gets thrown right out the window when friends or family members are involved. :)
Here's a link to the old 2005 scandal. You can also use Archive.org to see some of the old postings. Basically, an entire guild (all players) was transferred with no restrictions (they kept all gold, loot, etc no matter how large).
Blizzard said that it was a mistake, and that they'd never do it again.
Then, in August 2007 Blizzard gave freebie PVE to PVP realm transfers to more friends. (Once again, long before PVE to PVP was implemented.)
And these are just the cases that we know about. :)
If you have any personal stories, or ones you've heard about, I'd love to hear about them.
I had mentioned that it could really be explained in one sentence. Well, here it is; Blizzard's Developer Guild has been very "inactive" over the past 4 months.
What I mean by "inactive" is that there's hardly anyone logging in or playing any more. Many of them have frozen their accounts and it's just very quiet these days. Nothing like what it used pre-Cataclysm. It's something that I thought would be interesting to share and it says a lot right there. Even people who can play the game for free haven't been playing since Cataclysm. And, they're also the people who "represent" the game in a way.
Mind you, the Dev Guild isn't made up entirely of developers or even Blizzard employees. It used to be in the beginning, but over time they have invited many friends and family members who are now in the guild.
I just thought it was kind of interesting that even they seem to have gotten bored by the game, and it's not just us lowly gamers. :)
I'll have more to talk on another subject relating to the Dev Guild in future post.
Oh also, there was another thing I was mulling around. :) It's become quite an annoyance to keep switching users when posting new stuff, so I'm just going to be using the Daeity name for blogposts moving forwards. I'm not sure if Blogger has any way of changing the name, but I'll look into it. It's much easier just using a single account.
Recently, I saw a funny post on the WoW Forums where a user asked Blizzard why their paid services cost so much.
He made an interesting point: on the PTRs, faction changes, server transfers, and customizations were completely free for all players, the process is very quick, and it doesn't seem to take up that many resources. So why are paid services so expensive if it's such an easy task?
_______________________________________________________
Question:
Why do paid services like faction changes and migrations cost so much if you're already doing it for free?
Answer:
As I understand it, you want to know why paid factions like faction changes and migrations cost so much if we're already doing it for free.
Unfortunately, I'm totally the wrong person to answer this. But, I'll answer anyways.
The reason for this is because these services are non-essential and therefore SHOULD carry a hefty charge.
If that sounds fucked up to you, please remember that it cost us a lot of money to put these automated systems in place.
It also costs a lot of money to maintain them.
Once again, because these services are only for cosmetic or for personal preference reasons - that's why they cost so much.
_______________________________________________________
Other people know better though, especially those who have worked as Database Administrators.
Populating information across multiple databases or servers is not a very difficult operation, nor is it very expensive or challenging to setup. After all, that's the entire purpose of databases and how they were designed from the ground up! Blizzard makes it sound like a "QUERY" is a very difficult and expensive process.
All of their automated mechanisms are already in place and they HAVE been in place for several years now. They probably even recuperated all of their "development costs" on the first day that the paid service was made available.
Funny how they also said that the services were non-essential and only for personal preference alone. (Character Re-Customizations cost $15, Transfers cost $25, Faction Changes cost $30, Name Changes cost $10, etc.)
I agree that Character Re-customizations are mostly for preference reasons. But what if you want to change your character to make it more intimidating in PVP (a very useful tool), or changing race/gender combinations so that you're harder to target?
What if you're being stalked by another player? Or constantly grieved or harassed? Transfers and Name Changes then become essential services.
Faction Changes? Those are VERY essential if you actually want to progress in the game or collect Honor Points. Realms are so imbalanced, that this becomes an essential service for those trying to join Dungeons or Battlegrounds (or want to avoid 2-3 hour waits, whereas opposite factions wait 5-10 minutes.)
Blizzard claims that only non-essential services are paid.. does that mean that essential services should be free? =]
So why do the paid services cost so much? Quite frankly, they're good marketing numbers. The prices are _just_ high enough so that people who can afford them will pay for the service. And those who can't afford them will just pay Blizzard over a longer period by their time invested in leveling new characters on new realms.
It's also set pretty high so that it seems like it's a premium service which is very expensive for Blizzard to maintain. If you're paying the same amount that you paid for the Cataclysm expansion pack, that must mean that the service is VERY special indeed.
It actually reminds me a little of this scene from "The Invention of Lying". When Edward Norton (the cop) is asked why his bribes were so high, he responds: "I feel like when I set the price up higher, it takes it out of the realm of petty crime and helps me preserve my sense of personal integrity."
It's not just Blizzard Paid Services that does this though, it's a standard practice everywhere and you can apply this to almost any service or product. (If you work in a certain industry, you'll know how much something _really_ costs to manufacture or service.)
Many services are overpriced and given the illusion that their services are worth the price, or because they are unique or special. It's the primary reason why cartels were created too - if you goto a competitor, they'll have the same prices too. Gasoline, food, automotive mechanics, web design, applications development, technical support, etc. Hell, even DVRs (for security systems) would cost $50,000 from vendors - but if you knew what you were doing, you could buy the equipment for less than $800 and install yourself.
It's funny how just the other day I was posting about how Blizzard can (and will) ban you for any reason or for no reason at all.
Coincidentally, I just learned that Blizzard banned possibly thousands of players for using Single-Player trainers and cheats.
Check out this very interesting post from Cheathappens.com.
Here's my favorite bit:
Still though, some question Blizzard’s motives. “I’m surprised they took such a blind step without doing some research into the games played,” gm0ney added. The user has been through a similar situation before, with another game -- where he suspects the company had monetary motivations for the bans, “A bunch of people’s accounts got hacked and used cheats, so we all got banned. The company already had our money so they didn’t care about our accounts.” Many people, including Cheat Happens’ Business Operations Manager and Content Editor Chris O’Rorke, believe that Blizzard is also thinking monetarily, and points to the company’s blockbuster MMO World of Warcraft as evidence. In WoW, which (unlike Starcraft 2) carries with it a monthly fee, users who are found to be cheating are only handed temporary bans as to not interrupt the monthly flow of cash coming from those users.It echoes a lot of concerns and supporting evidence that I've been posting about. Many of Blizzard's activities seem to be motivated by monetary purposes (especially when there are so many alternative methods available that are more customer centric rather than profit centric.)
Blizzard's official announcement, however, made it sound like the users were cheating on Battle.net or during live competition with other players:
We recently took action, including suspensions and bans, on over 5,000 StarCraft II players who were in violation of the Battle.net Terms of Use for cheating and/or using hack programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair competition that’s essential to play on Battle.net, cheating and hacking can lead to stability and performance issues with the service. Maintaining a stable, safe, and secure online-gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed.I especially like the part about how cheating and hacking affects the stability and performance of their Battle.net service, hence the reason for the ban even though the single-player cheats were used offline. That's some deceptive wording.
Those banned players were also questioning the "legality" of Blizzard's actions. But, Blizzard's EULA and TOU documents are worded very carefully. Players don't actually own any of their games, they are merely "renting" the service from Blizzard who can terminate said service at any time, without notice, and for absolutely no reason at all.
Note: Even though I have a 100% clean account (I know a lot about bots and exploits for example, but I've never actually used them on my WoW), I'm pretty sure my account will get banned one day. It will probably be this Blizzard employee too.. he still regularly checks the blog, but has kept quiet with his comments since I called him out on it. He'll find SOME reason to ban me. =]
The timing of this SC2 ban-wave is definitely "coincidental" for other reasons as well. It happened on the first day (Oct 1) of the new Q4. It could have been done a few days earlier, so that it was reflected in Q3.. but no, Blizzard waited until the same Quarter as when Cataclysm would be released. This specific date was actually quite a strategic move and will pad Blizzard's profits (users need to purchase new licenses) for the same Quarter when Cataclysm is released. After all, they need to show a large profit to their investors during this time.
I had talked about this before, and how Blizzard can make these types of strategic actions to pad their numbers (especially during months when they are showing lower than expected profits.)
Here's the link where I noted an "interesting trend" about how new services, content or game releases, or bans will happen in quarters when sales are hurting.
If Blizzard's profits from WOTLK China Launch are lower than expected (Q3 statements not released yet) or Blizzard is really worried about about Cataclysm sales performance, we might see another WoW (or other BNET games) banwave during the next couple months. So if the banhammer drops before mid-December or you see new services (or paid pets for example) introduced - it means that Blizzard has some very strong doubts about Cataclysm. Blizzcon revenue (whose ticket prices keep increasing mind you) should help significantly improve their profits for Q4 however.
On another related note, the reason you haven't seen any in-game advertisements yet in Starcraft 2 is because Microsoft's Massive Inc. is closing their doors. This announcement was made to their clients (Blizzard being one of them) before the Blizzard SC2 banhammer dropped and before their public announcement was made. I'm thinking that's probably a real coincidence, but the timing (ie, Oct 1) of the banwave was definitely not a coincidence in my opinion. It fits in perfectly with what I've been writing about these past few months.
So.. this post is a little bit more in contrast (ie, evil) to the others that I've written.
But, I'd like people to be aware about just how easy it is to get a player banned, point out flaws in Blizzard's investigation process, and just how important it is to play nice and not piss off other players. In fact, these 2 methods alone have been tested and have worked for many years.. and there are even more advanced methods available.
If you're going to do this: please only reserve for your worst enemy. And they have to be completely terrible human beings too. So if someone is better at PVP than you or they consistently undercut your auctions, please just leave them be.. it might be me after all. =]
If it's a foul-mouthed brat though, go ahead and "give him the business" since it's probably not me (I'm actually very polite and helpful to players in-game.)
Blizzard Banning Policies
First thing I want to do is bring you up to speed on Blizzard's policies regarding suspensions and perma-bans.
Here are the links to their Terms of Use (TOU) and End User License Agreement (EULA).
Basically, they state:
- The game belongs to Blizzard. You're not the owner, just the guy renting the service from Blizzard.
- They can monitor you and your PC, you have no rights and no expectations of privacy.
- They can make any changes to the agreement whenever they want.
- Blizzard can do anything to your account, at any time for any reason or without any reason at all.
- If you look at a Blizzard employee sideways - you can get banned.
- If you question Blizzard on their forums (like this poor guy) - you can get banned.
- If you drink skim milk on a Sunday - you can get banned.
- Blizzard doesn't have to provide notice of any kind, you're on your own.
There are notices in big bold letters just so that you don't forget: "BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."
Who Does Blizzard Typically Ban?
Blizzard will ban you even if they suspect cheating or exploitation. Investigations by Blizzard are very fast and limited in scope, so action is decisive even when there is no supporting evidence.
Blizzard typically bans players for hacking/botting, harassment/spam, buying/selling gold, and buying/selling characters.
Since you can't force a player to hack/bot and it's difficult to get them to harass other players (but not impossible for a talented troll who can get them to say something offensive), that leaves us with the "shady underground activities" such as gold buying and character selling.
The thing is, most players are guilty of something already.. so if they're investigated, Blizzard always finds something. These are all dangers that completely innocent players can face.
Preparation Steps
- An anonymous Gmail account. Gmail doesn't attach originator IP addresses to email headers, which is an extra level of security for you when you're emailing the "hacks@blizzard.com" address.
- Firefox with FoxyProxy installed. (Proxy redirect software to mask your IP address.)
- You'll need time (You need to research the mark.)
- You'll need gold (About 10k or 15k gold. The more the better and you can use my gold making strategies.. it'll take a couple weeks to hit 10k gold.)
- You'll need a wireless laptop and real money (One method involves purchasing a new WoW account.)
Consider the costs first before making your decision.. is it really worth it?
Note: The use of FoxyProxy is optional, it might be a little overkill but it's always a good idea to mask your IP address when researching information or accessing wowarmory.com. The "hacks" department, GMs and Support Personnel don't have access to that level of detail (ie, wowarmory IP access and logs), but you never know when you might come across an overzealous IT security manager.
If one were so inclined..
Technique #1: I'm New At Selling My Account
This one has about a 60-70% success rate, and just requires an investment of time.
First, investigate the mark - the most important information you should find out is if they have any alts on the same account. Check their guild (he might be in his own guild, and all members are alts), add them as a friend to track movement, check AH auctions to see if they have any alts selling similar items, check arena partners (might have alts as backups), make friends with them on your own alt, or even join their guild if you can (learn more about them from fellow guild members).
Wowarmory.com is also an extremely useful source of information. You can actually get away with this method just using information from Wowarmory.
You see, Blizzard has a team of employees who monitor common hacking/trading webpages like MMOWNED.COM and ELITEPVPERS.DE. They're looking for new exploits or hacks, and occasionally come across players selling or buying accounts.
You will need to sign up with a new account (on the account selling forum) and pretend to be a "noob" selling his WoW account. You'll want to sound innocent, and sound like you're trying to protect your account and privacy as much as possible. Throw in some spelling mistakes too.
For example,
"hi everyone. i'm new to this, but i'm getting really bored with wow and wanted to sell my accounts. i hear its hard to sell an entire account so ill prob just sell my characters one at a time. what's a good price for this character?
*Link to their WOWARMORY.COM account*
i've been running him through ICC a lot recently, and do a little pvp. I got a ton of gold selling flasks and elixirs though and my character has 450/450 herbing.
how does $100 sound? please email me at xxxx@xxxx.com for more information
i want to make this transaction as safe as possible since this is my first time. i have a list of rules that the buyer must follow and i intend to use paypal"
Don't overdo it too much though, but try to make the person sound as "new" as possible. You can even research posts made by other users (from character selling forums) to get an idea of what exactly to write. You want to make sure their wowarmory.com account is linked, and add their alts if you're CERTAIN they're linked to the same account (adding their alts as "friends" will confirm this for you.)
Be polite, stress the importance of SECURITY in selling your account (ie, you're new so you're very afraid of selling your account for the first time.)
You also want to "poke a stick" at Blizzard employees since they'll be reading it. The idea is to upset them. For example, "Blizzard employees are so fat and lazy and they're no help at all.. I just want to get out of this game." You can say something even worse if you want. Just keep in mind that personal ego plays a large decision-making part of banning a player.
This method actually works surprisingly well, it just depends if someone from Blizzard reads it or not. I know a group of users that have been doing this for YEARS successfully. I'm not sure how well it will work now, though, since Blizzard reads this blog. =]
Try selling the target's account on Elitepvpers.de, wait a couple weeks, if the account isn't banned yet, bump it to the top and post it on MMOWNED.COM. If there's still no account activity after 2 weeks, contact Blizzard's (hacks) email address and notify them that you know someone who is selling their account. Don't link to the elitepvpers.de or mmowned.com websites though, just give them the toon's name. If they search Google for the wowarmory link, it will likely redirect them to the forum webpages where they were trying to sell their account.
The idea is not to tell them too much, but rather have them come to their own conclusions through their own investigations.
Technique #2: Pleasure Doing Business With You, Mr. Gold Buyer
This one has a 90% success rate and requires an investment of time, money and a lot of gold.
Build up enough gold, until you have about 15k. The more the better.
Access an open/public wireless access point from your laptop (desktop with wireless card would work fine too) and create a new WoW account with fake information.
Launder gold through the Auction House so that you can get the 15k gold to your new account. (e.g. buy out items 50-100g at a time, or transfer items that they can resell for much higher values. My cross-faction guide for example can quickly net the new account several thousands per day by just selling rare and limited supply items & pets, without actually involving your original account. You want to separate yourself from your original account as much as possible.)
Take your time doing this, build up a ton of gold on the fake account.
Then, all you have to do is walk up to the mark with your fake account, open up a trade window, and just GIVE THEM 10,000G. You can log out immediately after handing over the gold, or if they whisper you just say "plz follow instructions of what we told u 2 do" and logout.
Then after they go offline, transfer another batch of gold (e.g. 5,000G) to their mailbox from another toon on the same account. Delete both characters (Level 1's) after you transfer the gold, and stop using the account for a while.
Plan ahead for when you know they'll be raiding or running dungeons (humans are creatures of habit), so that on the next day you email Blizzard and tell them that a "player named x on y realm was bragging on vent about how they just bought out a bunch of gold from some gold selling webpage". You can use their armory information to find out which dungeon/raid they were in (and during which days/times) to give further confidence to your story. For example, "this past saturday at around 2PM he said.."
Typically, they'll keep the gold and not report it.
The gold transfer alone will raise some red flags (they monitor that sort of thing), it's highly unusual, and if a third-party reports the "inappropriate behavior" to Blizzard it will give them the excuse they need to ban the account.
In Closing..
There are a lot of variations to these social engineering methods too (for example, ensuring that the mark will keep the gold and not report it by convincing them it's a prize or reward from the guild. Communications of the "prize" cannot be made in game though. Most players are very greedy though and they never report it.)
There's a bunch of other methods, but these are the easy ones that anyone can do. It's scary to think of how many players have been banned for not breaking the rules but rather for being obnoxious assholes. This is just karma support.
Just a quick entry here, I've been pretty busy with some RL stuff. I also have a new CWOW account, so I'll be collecting some more information to include in the "WoW China Interesting Facts" series. Also, someone's been tweeting details from my blog too that's making some other online news sources (Hey V.S.!) =]
Anyhow, I noticed that some of the readers were interested in knowing Blizzard wages.
Below is what they are now roughly. These are based on the submissions of Blizzard employees, so some of these approx. results may include a few years of annual pay raises (1-6% per year) but for the most part they're pretty close to starting wages. Going back 5-10 years though, these jobs paid A LOT more. They've come down quite a bit since 2000-2003 (over 30% on most jobs), so if you start at Blizzard now you'll be paid much less than if you started 10 years ago. =]
Hourly Staff (Approx. $USD):
Quality Assurance: $10.50 / hr
Game Master: $11-12.50 / hr
Tier 1 In-Game Support Rep: $11.00 / hr
Tier 2 In-Game Support Rep: $12.00 / hr
Intern: $11.50 / hr
Account and Technical Services: $12.50 / hr
Web Designer: $10.50 / hr
Salary Staff (Approx. $USD):
Sr. Web Designer: $61,500 / yr
Cinematic Producer: $39,500 / yr
Animator: $43,000 / yr
3D Artist: $74,000 / yr
Technical Artist: $75,000 / yr
Cinematic Artist: $70,000 / yr
Environmental Artist: $59,000 / yr
Graphic Artist: $57,000 / yr
Modeler: $50,000 / yr
Associate Cinematic Artist: $52,000 / yr
Senior Cinematic Artist: $110,000 / yr
Software Engineer: $80,000 / yr
Senior Software Engineer: $109,500 / yr
Game Designer: $85,000 / yr
Systems Analyst: $85,000 / yr
Associate Project Mgr: $85,500 / yr
Senior Animator: $90,000 / yr
Global Manager, Localization: $120,000 / yr
There are a bunch of other jobs listed (Activision too). You can see them for yourself at Salarylist.com, Payscale.com, and Glassdoor.com. There's also Jobvent.com if you're interested in seeing more feedback from Blizzard employees. You can see that (internally) Blizzard is just like every other corporation - everyone think's their boss is an idiot and the only way to get to the top is if you're friends or family.
However, be aware that when people are pleased, they walk away happy and say nothing. When people are unhappy, they fill out surveys and complain loudly. So, you'll mostly find complaints on these types of webpages and very few compliments. =]
This is actually a little bit of history which I'd like to preserve on the blog.
Back in late January 2009, Blizzard's advertisements were accidentally swapped out with Gold Seller ads. (Links: wow.com, cgenetwork.com, 1up.com)
Other than this one incident, I recall that it happened a few times actually: on BNet Forums, WoW Forums, and the waiting room of Diablo 2.
But in each case, most (if not all) news instances started to "disappear" and people later forgot. It didn't help though that threads were locked, forum entries were deleted, and Blizzard told sites to remove the news either.
So it's difficult finding information on these accidents now and it's something that Blizzard would prefer that you forget. =]
Reading over the forums, you'll see that Blizzard employees and players alike will all insist that "Blizzard has NEVER been breached. They've never been hacked. They have security measures in place that make them foolproof and 100% protected."
(Note: I never understood that logic so I simply chalk it up to "Blizzard Indoctrination". It's funny because if a game developer creates games that melt video cards and are full of bugs, cheats, issues that take years to fix, exploits, and can easily be hacked and exploited.. why would anything else they create be so different?)
Although employees insist that "To this date Blizzard has never been breached", in an earlier post I listed many cases of Blizzard database breaches, how Blizzard employee accounts have been compromised (and used to spread keyloggers on official forums), and other hacking activities. When the Blizzard employee accounts were compromised, Blizzard sent notifications to websites to remove the information ("Reputation Management"). And those were just the breaches that made public headlines! Who really knows how many breaches there have been?
Some of these are just accidents and "glitches" while others are major security breaches.
This has been going on for years, but it's obvious that it has been forgotten by most. That's why preservation is so important. =]
NA/EU Realm Populations
In North America and Europe, realm population information is extremely difficult to come by.
You pretty much have to rely on WarcraftRealm's CensusPlus UI Mod (Link). Right now, for example it's shows a total of 5.5M characters (however, these are characters from Level 10-80 and each account can have a maximum of 50 players across all realms.)
So, you can understand that the numbers aren't that accurate.
Blizzard also doesn't share Realm Population information because of obvious reasons (those details can only hurt them, not help them.) Even the definition of Low, Medium, and High Population realms can change - there's no fixed number as I have stated previously.
Blizzard has even confirmed this to be true. The populations are relative, meaning that they can shift back and forth at any time, depending on the population of other realms and their relation to the servers (Source). Population caps can even be increased/decreased depending on the number of servers being utilized or out of commission.
(Blizzard just confirmed it to be a fact Mr. Blizzard Troll. I guess that's further confirmation that he's just a support agent, and doesn't actually know anything about Blizzard's internal operations.)
China Realm Populations
So to summarize, in NA/EU it's almost impossible to determine census information because Blizzard will not share the information.
But in China, it's operated by NetEase so it's a totally different story! They're completely open to sharing player information on each realm. =]
Census information is pulled straight from the WoW servers by Beijing Network Technology Ltd. (there's no Census UIMod needed on each user's PC), and is publicly available here. Below are the numbers during peak gaming hours on WoW. In this case, there were approx. 790,000 users logged in concurrently.
Alliance: 338300 - Horde: 451655
So basically, a 3:4 ratio which is not bad.
The number of realms in China has also been growing steadily (many new realms launched this year and last), and some Chinese players have noted that many people are now returning in CWOW in anticipation of WOTLK's imminent release.
However, the first thing you'll notice is the incredible imbalances on the realms. I've attached screenshots below.
Some servers have 1200 horde and only 40 Alliance on the server. That's a 1:60 ratio! These drastic differences have also been confirmed by CWOW players.. they'll have thousands of players on one faction, but less than 50 on the other. It's not uncommon at all.
There also doesn't appear to be a lot of realm balancing activities. As you can see, realm A:H ratios are all over the place and most realms operate with one side significantly bigger than another. Because of this, it turns most realms into a PVE (everyone working together on one side) type realm.
To confirm my assumption, I checked with several CWOW players. They said that PVP is not very common in China, and it's mostly PVE. A more recent comment even stated, "even on PVP servers, PVE is much more popular."
As opposed to NA/EU Realms, the CWOW gaming culture seems to favor "Playing Together" rather than "Playing Against Each Other" (on average). There are many realms with a 1:0.01 ratio for example. And that's very accurate information (as hard as it is to believe for US players) and can be confirmed by any Chinese players playing on those realms. Server populations have actually improved quite a bit bit over the past few weeks, which is a good sign for WOTLK. =]
It's all pretty neat actually, and also explains why Guilds and gold PUGs are so huge and why gold farming is more popular and strategies used are almost identical. (For example, rare gold farming strategies that are applicable to NA/EU might not work in China or players probably aren't even aware of them.)
Based on those figures, I have to wonder if the same is true for NA/EU realms? When talking to US players, they often claim that their servers have 1:2, 1:4, or even 1:10 ratios (either they out-number the opposite faction, or vice versa.) They never had any evidence to back up their claims though, since realm population is not shared by Blizzard.
So in an earlier post, I received a troll comment using the standard "Heil Grammatik" technique. He sounded like a typical Blizzard fanboy, so I figured I would check it out.
(Note: it was a single transposition error that didn't actually impact the calculations.. but he didn't test out the math to confirm as he was too busy salivating over his next troll snack.)
But guess what? He was from IRVINE, CA. Blizzard fanboy central. =]
"Anonymous Troll" not so anonymous anymore: ip68-111-72-78.oc.oc.cox.net (68.111.72.78) (As of Aug 27/10 anyways, I'm assuming his IP is dynamic.)
It doesn't stop there. He's a Blizzard employee too!
He uses Firefox at work and at home (on a Windows OS.. ewww) and was reading a limited number of articles from work (which I'm assuming is against their policy - e.g. personal surfing) and the remaining he read from home. Here's a small excerpt from the logs:
That IP (198.74.38.59) is one of Blizzard's external facing IP addresses by the way. =]
His most recent access from work to read the blog was Aug 26 at 7:57:57PM PST.
You know Mr. Troll, just because you're a late night worker (call center/support staff judging by the hours), it doesn't mean you should be goofing off on the internet. There are tons of paying customers that need actual help, but you're too busy surfing the internet and wasting company resources and time.
After he left work for home, that's when he returned to the same webpages and then starting posting random comments. He spent an average of 10-20 seconds (entry and exit) going through every single post on the blog. =]
For some of the more recent posts, however, he spent 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes reading them (he wanted to make sure his more recent troll posts were read for example). I guess he didn't feel safe writing the troll posts from work, as their NOC team would have records. I should note Mr. Troll, that this blog receives other visits from different Blizzard employees too by the way and they will be reading this. Now that they have one of your visit timestamps, you had best watch over your shoulder. =]
Way to represent your business too by the way: steal company time, don't support your customers, then troll webpages. Judging by your access logs and constant refreshes, I can see that you're totally dedicated to your job.. trolling that is, not supporting Blizzard customers.
If you would like to see one his posts and my retort, check out this article and scroll down at the bottom.
His other post was just to tell me to stop pulling numbers out of my *expletive* and to look at Blizzard's Quarterly Reports which are public. The thing is.. those were the numbers I was using. I copy-and-pasted the Quarterly Reports to the various blog posts, and provided links to the public information. Ouch. I guess that's what you get for only skimming over the posts (10-20 seconds per post.)
* UPDATE:
While I was writing up this latest entry, he apparently bombarded the blog (mostly swearing) with even more troll posts. WOW! He sure is pissed too and did NOT appreciate my response at all.
He's going through every single article he can find. Many of his comments have even been cancelled as well (ie, he started typing a new comment, realized a mistake, cancelled it, and then moved onto another blog post.)
I can't wait until he reads this. Tee hee. =]
My friends and I are laughing our asses off over his posts and I have some friends at Blizzard that I'll be sending these to as well. This has been a wonderful day.
* UPDATE:
The Blogspot automated spam filter apparently captured about 1/3 of his comments too. That's really hard to do! His troll posts must have a lot of common phrases and keywords used by spammers. I'm having too much fun.