Gold Trading Exposed: The Developers Comments by Nick Ryan
The Carrot and the Stick?
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Comments: 1-29 of 29 in total
Poster
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Well folks, it's been an interesting and fun experience writing for this site. And interesting looking into this topic. My usual 'beat' is crime stories and large features.
If anyone is interested in follow-ups to this series, let me know. cheers, Nick Ryan w: http://www.nickryan.net b: http://www.ryansrants.com p.s. this article is the *fourth* (last) in a series of *four* pieces. Just check my name for the other three that come *before* it.
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most recently on 09/04/09 @ 14:36
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I hate spammers so much, whispers, yells in realm chat, these I do not need. Oddy in my time in Guild Wars I never seen any gold sellings, guess the instancing the world or the way the trade worl makes it not worth the effort.
Also no-one is forceing anyone to read these articles, I mean I was suprised when I read an MMO article in the MMO section of a games website. I mean what the hell? |
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i dont understand how buying gold can get your account hacked? Why would buying gold require you to hand over your account name or password?
My comment on the other news item: The gold sellers are completely obvious about this too. They offer the "extra service" of logging in your character for you and transferring the gold you bought directly to the character, therefore saving you the effort. All you have to do is give them your username and password ... Anyone who does this is clearly asking for it. People who claim to have had their account "hacked" more than likely either done the above or installed a dodgy addon from a dodgy site. Both practices are pretty damn stupid and easily avoided. |
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I didn't have time/space in this series to go into organised crime and 'gold selling', but there was an interesting story from last year about a Korean gang laundering money through a gold-selling network:
[quote]Last week Korean police arrested a group responsible for laundering money generated by Chinese gold farming from Korea back to the mainland. Over 18 months, the group wired $38 million from Korea to a Hong Kong paper company as payments for purchases. In return, the group took a commission of 3-5% for purchasing the virtual currency in China, reportedly produced by traditional farming as well as viruses, and then cashing out in the Korean market.[/quote] http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/10... Nick Ryan w: http://www.nickryan.net b: http://www.ryansrants.com
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most recently on 09/04/09 @ 15:08
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CheddarFrenzy
09/04/09 @ 14:30
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This has been a great series of articles.
It's always interesting to see several sides of a story, especially one like this that usually elicits a knee-jerk reaction amongst those affected. In no way do I support RMT, but this series has served to remind me that (as ever) things are never as black and white as they seem. Thanks a lot, CF |
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kangarootoo
09/04/09 @ 14:40
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Great articles. Good solid investigative journalism.
I realise that a news site can't deliver this sort of thing all the time without a huge commisioning budget, but the odd series like this from time to time is very welcome. Hope to see more of Nick's work here. |
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4thVariety
09/04/09 @ 14:49
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Sadly, the article is only talking about MMOs as if they were valid economic simulation platforms. They are not! Not even Eve, although I admit, they did the most for their trade-sim aspects.
No, those devs require their cheaply thrown together gold systems only to maintain the most subscriptions possible. The way to maintain a subscription is to include timesinks. Never make something easy, never give the customer the feeling of closure as a regular ending cinematic would do. Gold makes timesinks tradeable, so people outsource "gaming time" to China. On top of that, many of the statements by developers are not properly analyzed: Blizzard's main problem with gold sellers is the way they steal from their own customers. Sorry, but if you buy Gold, you do just that. Pay the cash, meet a guy, apart from your character name he will never know anything. You do it any other way, you are being played and a fool not to see it. If you make somebody play your account that might be something different, but simple buying is hardly a problem for the customer, it is a problem for the subscription. It's faster drawing to an end. The series was nice, but there is certainly more to be explored about this phenomenon of "Ungaming". Because for all people involved, MMOs are but a business model at the expense of the customer. Cheap labor to compensate for cheap programming aimed not at maximizing my fun, but only their profits. |
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DoctorZoidberg
09/04/09 @ 15:04
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Great series. Thanks for that Mr Nick Ryan.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading them. Whilst not the biggest MMO player, It does irritate me that people have a viable option to advance their characters through the use of real money. Good luck with your future work, I for one will be keeping an eye on your future work. |
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romelpotter
09/04/09 @ 15:29
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Great series, interesting and informative. Nick I have just got Homeland and look forward to reading it.
Out of interest, I have a friend of a friend of a friend etc...... who plays world of warcraft and he/she told me a story of their experience of buying in game gold. Hearing reports on gold selling they searched the internet for suitable sellers. All of the websites appeared to be much the same by way of the fact that they all advertised 5 min deliveries and a new safer delivery method. So it almost seemed to be a case of pick a seller, any seller. In their time in the game, they used two different gold sellers, I was not informed of which ones. They used credit card and paypal as their payment methods. When paying via paypal, their paypal screen messed up and froze. for a small period of time, they could not access it. Shortly after they received a phone call and delivery took place in the game. When they received their next credit card statement, there was £2000 worth of fraudulent transactions on that card which was associated with their paypal account. Also weeks after the gold transfer, they received an email apparently from blizzard informing them that they were on a final warning for breach of ethical terms and conditions and would face a 72 hour ban if they did not contact Blizzard right away. They showed me this email in panic, they did not know what to do. The email was a phishing email trying to get the user to follow links to WOW account pages where they prompt you to change your user name and password. This all works on the basis that they know you have already undertaken what is supposedly deemed an un-unethical game purchase, and that you do not want your account banned for 72 hours. That's how they gain your account details. I saw the email and the wording was in broken English and if looked at properly, it actually made no sense. It told them that they were going to receive a ban for 72 hours and said that they had broken ethical codes of conduct, then moved to offer account protection measures and offered direct links to change passwords etc by way of a security measure. I told them to check directly with blizzard and ask them to confirm the account status, which they did and it was confirmed as a phishing email. I also asked if the email account was the one they used on their account management page, it wasn't but they did use it in their gold transfer process. In my opinion, less and less people are going to undertake gold transfer due to economic conditions so these sellers will use more and more unscrupulous methods of gleaming money out of people. I play WOW but do not have any opinions on people who use gold sellers. Some do, some don't and I am glad that I was able to help this person, thats one in the eye for the black market. Personally I think Blizzard should offer a service like this themselves, it's obviously profitable and would reduce these type of problems happening more in the future however I also think the same about prostitution and the government! |
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Well in the case of WoW I wouldn't be too shocked to find it isn't the gold thats the 'carrot' - it's the powerleveling 'services'.
Blizzard are making the leveling process longer and longer and devaluing content with each expantion so a lot of those players that are just in in for the 'epix' wont want to be bothered about the actal enjoyment of the leveling and just want a pre-capped character on their account so they can get the latest 'phat loot' to show off to everyone in the city areas. Their way in is you handing your money AND your user/pass over and after they do actally cap out the character, mass sell of of EVERYTHING you own and post the gold over AND lock out your account to sell on eBay... Just because the payer behind it can't be bothered actally playing the game, the gray market runs off greed, and people easly fall into it. Best way I beleave Blizzard could actally fix this is do what EVE as mentioned in the article as done, beat them at their own game, the gold side I wouldn't advise as Blizzard can't really do a GTC for gold like EVE, but the 'powerleveling' bit that could corner. Offer Level 55s for a small fee (£20-ish- thats two months game time ruff-ish time spent to actally level that far for the avg player), a lot of players would buy direct from Blizzard as it cuts out now 'irellivent content' for in most player's minds plus it's a damn good cash cow, heck if Blizzard DID offer that I'll throw my money at a few chars :). |
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4thVariety:
"Blizzard's main problem with gold sellers is the way they steal from their own customers. Sorry, but if you buy Gold, you do just that. Pay the cash, meet a guy, apart from your character name he will never know anything." Where do you think those companies get their gold? Do you think it's only botting? Where do you think all those keyloggers, phishing attempts and everything come from? That's right. All those players with compromised accounts, whether they stupidly or naively fell for a phishing attempt or got a keylogger or worm or whathever, they paid for that. When you buy gold, you're financing other players' misery. |
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It's illegal to download certain movies, songs, books or copy and paste other peoples' work (e.g. articles) from the internet too. And yet it happens...
w: http://www.nickryan.net b: http://www.ryansrants.com |
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Nick, it would have been lovely if you had taken the trouble to explain, if only in passing, the particular game mechanisms you mention - it's all very opaque for people not intimate with MMORP gaming. Even after reading all four articles in the series, I have only a very faint idea how Eve's timecard mechanism works. You do not mention at all what precisely is removed from the other game when unbalanced trading is phased out (ponies? pink lollipops? if so, why?). I don't know what constitutes a realm in WoW, and I can only guess what 'whispering' "10k gold" and "DELETEEEE" might mean - thus, the magnitude of the events your closing sentences give an account of is completely lost on me.
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@above: Well, to be fair, if I was writing in one of my usual outlets -- a newspaper or magazine -- I would make the terminology even simpler.
But as this is the MMO section of a gaming news site, I suppose I've presumed a certain level of knowledge of the reader. In fact, I've presumed most people know more about the area than I do! The flipside, as you've no doubt seen, is being flamed by readers for making things too simplistic. I guess that's an issue with the internet. (It's also an issue with time and resources, as there are less funds to go and research from new media services than traditional offline media: you've no idea how time-intensive such investigations are and how most internet readers think everything -- inc these stories -- should be "free" to them.) So, I guess, start with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_m... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MMO... |
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notmyrealname
10/04/09 @ 01:02
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nice article.
market workings dictate that there is a demand for gold selling and account selling. As long as people want it enough, there will be gold selling. If it was all such a scam as portrayed by the devs, surely the gold sellers would have lost their clientele by now? I've known many players at DII who bought their gear by credit card, that always worked. I didn't care too, if anything, it made item prices indirectly cheaper for me, which was a good thing. ''i dont understand how buying gold can get your account hacked? Why would buying gold require you to hand over your account name or password?'' - IMO Mostly fairytales made up by the devs to scare future consumers from buying gold. The only thing that is do-able is credit card scamming by charging too much, but this can be done with any product order. You'd have to be a complete idiot to submit your cd or account pass to anyone, or start opening unsecure files being sent to you. |
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The real problem is the badly designed game economies.
Take crafting in WoW. Some crafts are total money and material pits (mining + Bsmith). Others are easy to level (alchemy+herb). Why is this? If you are doing bsmithing then you will need humongous gobs of gold to buy the basic and rare mats. Hence the temptation to buy. On the other hand alchemy pretty much levels itself. (1 point of alchemy normally needs 1 or 2 harvested mats. The mind boggles and the cost of 1 point of bsmithing depending on where you are on the leveling curve. Stupid. Daft. Moronic. Crap.) Same goes for mount prices of 4000+ gold for epic (flying) mounts. Solution - have quests to achieve the damm things and ensure crafters have access to enough materials. One you deal with that then you have hugely reduced the need for gold to be bought. And no daily quests are not a fricking solution, they treat the symptom not the problem. |
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I would also inform people that BOTNETS are an easy way to get accounts.
I have seen/had a virus that wasn't detected by 20+ anti virus scans and therefore meant instant installation, no problem. You can then scan for WoW accounts or GW accounts or credit card details. I personally never did such things but just so you understand how easy it was, i'm not a coder/programmer I don't call myself a hacker and I was 15 in control of 17,000 PCs Given how easy it was I really do think that BOTNETS created by a intelligent hacker/programmer could very very very easily steal accounts without you even knowing, you wouldn't even have to click any dodgy link, it would literally install without you knowing and send your account details to the hacker. Also with reference to your great articles, if selling gold is going to become more profitable I would expect these hackers and BOTNET creators to stop going after credit cards which are easier to track and go for WoW account which are harder to track and also much less risky. Stay updated and never give your account details out! Crazy stuff. |
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http://www.blizzards-next-generation-mmo...
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 18/06/09 @ 18:38
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Comments: 1-29 of 29 in total
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