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Role Playing (Games)

Blizzard Banhammer Kills 18k 79

Posted by Zonk from the i-can-feel-the-burn-from-here dept.
Gamespot reports that Blizzard has banned 18,000 accounts from their popular World of Warcraft MMOG. From official site: " A majority of these accounts were found to be using third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players. We will continue to actively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the negative effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in the permanent removal of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft. "
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Blizzard Banhammer Kills 18k More

Blizzard Banhammer Kills 18k

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  • This just in: (Score:5, Funny)

    by llevity ( 776014 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @03:45PM (#14328030)
    World of Warcraft is now only at 4,982,000 subscribers.

    Does this mean we get another "WoW hits 5 million subscribers" news topic in a few weeks?

  • They should have listened to Celine Dion, get a nice rootkit as a bonus and be able to cheat without Blizzard's Warden client to detect them!

    Silly cheaters!

  • Plugging the hole while the dam bursts around them (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sgant ( 178166 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @03:50PM (#14328074) Homepage Journal
    Yes, 18000 people sure sounds like a lot, but since they just past 5 million subscriptions this is just a drop in the bucket.

    And I'm sure it will only be days before the gold farmers they banned will be back up and running with fresh bought copies of the game. The draw of easy cash it just too alluring for these people to just stop. I'm not really sure how Blizzard is going to stop this.

    Perhaps a better way is to ban the credit card that's being used to pay for the account. But that's not always easy as they can use a game card bought in a store.

    Anyone have a solution to this problem? Or is it really a non-problem?
    • Well, the naysayer's arguement is "I can't do quests sometimes because gold farmers are parked there 24/7"

      Who are the farmers selling their equipment to if "nobody can play the game" because of them?
    • I'm sure it will only be days before the gold farmers they banned will be back up and running with fresh bought copies of the game.
      And Blizzard's reason for wanting this cycle to stop is... ?
    • Blizzard doesn't need to stop gold farmers. Blizzard needs to keep the appearance of doing so. If blizzard doesn't maintain that appearance then those who start whining because others have more than them (regardless of whether they are hurting for anything themselves) chirp up.

      All this does is guarantee another 18,000 game purchases, and that is money in blizzard's pocket.

    • Re:Plugging the hole while the dam bursts around t (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:33PM (#14328401) Homepage
      It is a problem, but the problem is actually with the game design. Games that make gold and rare items unneccessarily hard to get are what create these markets. All you need to do is to limit the power of gold. If you want to keep gold a rarity and it is mainly needed to buy weapons/armor, then allow a second way of obtaining the same items either through crafting, or quests, or some other accessable option. You basically kill the entire value of gold because players have more than one way to get what they want and they all revolve around GAMEPLAY, not money.

      Gold is just a cheesy way to handle economies in MMO's. Gold has always been basically bullshit in every RPG, think about itif given enough time you could kill 20,000,000 rats/bunnies/slimes and get all the money you need in even the earlest RPG's... what you need is a new system that is more like the real world with multiple ways of coming about weapons/items/armor.
      • WoW actually does a suprisingly good job of limiting the secondary market. A vast majority of good gear drops in instances, so the mobs can't be monopolized, and is Bind on Pickup, and therefore can't be sold. Most of it is not that difficult to obtain either, it just takes a couple instance runs to get them. Honestly, once you get to higher level stuff you just can't buy anything that's worthwhile, it's all loot.

        Tradeskills are another matter. I can see sinking TONS of gold into materials for high end
      • Just apply what you wrote to life, and you can see what life really sucks for most of us. If only real life gave us fun ways to get what we wanted, then we wouldn't have to powergame just to get gold just to buy things. :-)

        -Jeff

    • A majority of these accounts were found to be using third-party programs to farm gold and items

      There is nothing wrong with the side-economy of gold-farming in and of itself. In fact, it is just a natural extention of the MMORPG, and if Blizzard killed it by force, it would just be making the game less realistic. In the real world, people with money pay people with less money to do their dirty work for them, why would the online world be any different? Its a game, not a Utopia.

      The whole point of the crackd

      • In the real world, people with money pay people with less money to do their dirty work for them, why would the online world be any different? Its a game, not a Utopia.

        The point you seem to miss here, however, is that the real world and World of Warcraft are supposed to be two separate things. In other words, apart from initial purchase and subsequent subscription fees, real world money shouldn't be exerting an undue influence on this online world. In particular, that real world cash shouldn't have a ne
      • the point is: WoW being a game, most of the players want to compete in terms of how good they do within the game, leaving the real world out as much as possible. It's not desirable that somebody with 500$ to spare can become top-dog within WoW.
        • "It's not desirable that somebody with 500$ to spare can become top-dog within WoW."

          That's just it... in WoW, having even 100,000 gold would still not get you gear as good as those who attend 40-man raid dungeons. There just aren't enough good sellable items - every good instance drop binds to you when you pick it up, and becomes usable only by you.

          The best you could do using gold is to buy an epic mount (which doesn't really help you much), and maybe one or two lower level epic armor pieces or weapons.
    • That's a HUGE incentive for Blizzard to ban farmers/cheaters--they'll go out and buy another copy of the game (barring piracy). Why would they put a stop to guaranteed repeat customers?
      • Piracy is impossible in MMOGs as you are paying for the registration code, not the game itself, and the registration code should be impossible to counterfit.
        • Piracy is impossible in MMOGs as you are paying for the registration code, not the game itself, and the registration code should be impossible to counterfit.
          I think that the poster you replied to was talking about actual piracy. You know, firing cannons over the bow of their ship. Then boarding them, slaughtering the crew until the captain agrees to parley. All to reap the precious boxes of WoW being shipped to china.
    • It's unclear whether the 18000 were from just the US-based servers or from their whole operation. It's known that the 5 million subscriber number includes all of their servers in the US, Europe, and Asia.

  • I Wonder.. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Intangion ( 816356 )
    I wonder if running WoW on linux with wine/cedega could somehow confuse their hack protection into thinking your cheating some how. I am not sure how their detection works...
    I guess ill find out next time i try to log in ;)

  • FSBO: Small Farm in the Country (Score:4, Funny)

    by binaryspiral ( 784263 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @03:53PM (#14328096)
    For Sale By Owner

    One small cottage, large automated gold farm, and one banned account.

  • Length of Time (Score:1, Insightful)

    by therage96 ( 912259 )
    It probably should be noted that this was "Over the last three months." But I'm not surprised Blizzard is going after the gold farmers. Annoyances to players aside, most of the gold farmers will simply buy another copy of the game (with a new serial number) to continue their farming operation which in turn earns Blizzard a bit more money. After all, if a copy of W.O.W. cost $30, and even if only 5000 of those 18000 bought another copy, thats still another $150,000 bucks to Blizzard. Probably the salarys

  • What size die did they roll? (Score:3, Funny)

    by rAiNsT0rm ( 877553 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:01PM (#14328156) Homepage
    Damn I wish I could get a roll like that, 18k dead in one fell swoop. I'm guessing their Uber-1337 peerless gossamer armor didn't help much with that one.

  • I'm impressed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:04PM (#14328176)
    This means that Blizzard decided that the gameplay experience for their rule-abideing customers was worth more than the quarter of a million dollars a month in subscription fees that they will lose from this. Either they really care about the player community, they're only killing off a token number of accounts to make it look like they care, or they're fairly confident these 18k accounts will just get re-opened under a different name tomorrow.

    • Re:I'm impressed (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Xentor ( 600436 )
      Well, keep in mind that those accounts were likely being played 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The subscription fees are likely based on some kind of budget where they figure out the average playtime, and hence the average number of players online at a time, and hence the number of servers needed.

      So if my guesses are correct, anyone who plays 24/7 is actually costing them more in bandwidth and servers than a normal player, and therefore isn't nearly as valuable to them as someone who only plays a few h
      • I doubt it.

        The profit margins are probably so high at this point, that you could play 24 hours a day, and they'd still be making money on you. Bandwidth isn't all that expensive, and servers are a fixed cost. With a population as high as they have, and bandwidth, and server costs so low, they would have to be operating at insane levels of inefficiency to not have a 90%+ profit margin on subscription fees.
        • You may be right.

          Guess it must just be that extra 18k * $30-50 from new box sales.
        • Saying that servers are a fixed cost is a big assumption.

          Most games plan a certain number of users/server. (The server I refer to here is a single node of a cluster that makes up one entity that users can select as a server.) I can't remember the source, but some games plan for about 100 players in an area, and that's a server. Sometimes a single server can serve up multiple low population areas. Some games dynamically distribute load, especially for instanced areas. But in the end, the server is rated
    • On the other hand, maybe they just made money. You kill 18,000 accounts and lose 1 mil in subscription fees per month, but if they all come back they pay for the game, buy new cards to play on, etc.

      Keep the game purchases up, etc. Looks like they'll make money off of this, not lose it if those people are so addicted they'll come back eh?

    • Theyre doing it due to the loss in money from ppl leaving due to the bots. I just wish fucking Sony would do the same in Everquest 2

  • Banhammer 18k (Score:4, Funny)

    by DragonPup ( 302885 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:22PM (#14328317)
    In the future, there is only farming.

    • A new MMO game idea! A large flat field filled with rats, you log in and kill as many as possible picking up 1G per rat, and if you find the rare golden rat you get 2G. Whoever has the most Gold at the end of each month WINS! and the ladder is reset.

      A true innovation in MMO design.


  • Such actions can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

    Wow! 0.36% of users were earning enough to severely impact the economy?
    I've observed market fluctuations of more than 25%, and I never considered it abnormal.
    I guess those farmers were earning over 50 times the normal rate.

    Seriously, I've heard lots of people complain about "farmers", but I think mostly
    they're confusing them with run of the mill jerks.

    Most farmers (toons) play 24/7.
    Farmers are going to b

    • Re:Impact? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Intangion ( 816356 )
      for a while there tons of "farmers" were trying to exploit a dupe bug on dungeon entrances by going in and out of a dungeon. It causes a new instances of the dungeons to be created and alot of work sending character information for hundreds of players back and forth between servers, each second. It was actually crashing servers and making whole dungeons/regions inaccessible which obviously caused EVERYONE some problems

      and in the event they were successful with duping they could double their gold, and double
    • This just in! 21,000,000 Million Richest people in the World suffer mysterious deaths... World economy unfazed.
      • This just in! 21,000,000 Million Richest people in the World suffer mysterious deaths... World economy unfazed.

        Considering the fact that a few hundred people control the majority of the "wealth" on the planet, I think the consequences of 21mil of the richest people in the world dying would have a very substantial effect on the world economy.

  • About damn time (Score:4, Informative)

    by 1WingedAngel ( 575467 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @04:38PM (#14328441) Homepage
    Almost a year ago, I helped found the largest and strongest economic special interest group in World of Warcraft. We have representatives on nearly every server and constantly monitor and share information on WoW's economy.

    It's no secret to us that "gold farmers" [wikipedia.org] are the dominant force in the WoW economy. Several of our key discoveries in the game have come from watching the habits and patterns of gold farmers across server lines. When a patch changes an aspect of the game relating to the economy, the gold farmers are quick to react.

    I'm glad to see Blizzard cracking down on this, although it seems to be directly related to their new "anti-virus and anti-hack" portal system, causing me to think its less about the real "gold farmers" and more about little Timmy trying out a program his friend gave him to run a little faster (a.k.a. Speedhacks [wikipedia.org].
    • Almost a year ago, I helped found the largest and strongest economic special interest group in World of Warcraft. We have representatives on nearly every server and constantly monitor and share information on WoW's economy.
      Got a website? I'd be interested to see this.
    • Sibling poster said: Got a website? I'd be interested to see this.

      Me Too.

  • CAPTCHA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CriminalNerd ( 882826 ) on Friday December 23, 2005 @05:15PM (#14328703)
    The best solution to solving all of the problems with the gold farmers is to have a CAPTCHA feature that ANY player has to answer before getting anything. It worked with web-based games such as Outwar and Kings of Chaos. Why not WoW?
    • I would imagine it would be a pretty big disruption to gameplay. A web based game isn't so immersive as a game like WoW, so it's not as big a concern. For WoW, a small percentage of players would likely be in an uproar over it, and a larger percantage may not voice anything negative, but their gameplay would be subtly negatively effected, and that equates to less substriptions.
    • that's a really good idea... mix it up so an computer couldn't read it (randomize it) and requries a human player to type in the pass code to pick up the item... if the item isn't picked up in X minutes it's destoryed and player that killed droping monster is logged... after X amount of voilation you could monitor that user's account more closly.
      • Most people would just let the cheaper items rot because typing in a word each time they want to pick one up is too big of a hassle. I don't know about WoW but the MMO I'm currently trying to set a start->total boredom timerecord in has monsters dropping three items on average, mostly cheap junk that you'd rather leave rotting than typing in a word for.
    • One, it didn't work well at all in KOC, and Outwar is debatable.

      Further, a web-based game lends itself to those checks more easily. A MMORPG, where an interupption can mean death in seconds while you try to figure out the code, is a very different beast.

      Not to mention, you don't (generally) pay-to-play on browser games, and you do on massives. You will be more likely to (loudly) protest the interruption on a massive.

      Plus, they just plain don't work. Scripters with a financial incentive have defeated virtual
    • Gold farming bots are usually supervised by humans. A CAPTCHA feature would only annoy the farmers as much as it annoyed the rest of the general population of WoW, and I imagine a number of people would be mightily annoyed by such a feature. Plus, due to limited inventory space, farm bots don't pick up everything that drops, just the most valuable stuff. So a gold farmer wouldn't have to CAPTCHA every time a bot killed a mob, just every time a decent item dropped.

    • Generally speaking the "third party programs" aren't bots - they're programs to cheat. Examples include "radar" programs that monitor resources spawning and various "hack" programs to allow teleporting in-game or various other abilities.

      The accounts are generally manned by a human at all times - because there's another form of "captcha" already in the game, other players and GMs. Since the farmers have to be able to interact with those at a moment's notice, the accounts are already monitored by an actua

  • Bare in mind this is 18000 cumulative over several months, this wasn't like they busted the big cartel in Gotham or something. Personally I'm glad, I've seen these bots running in the game and most players are at the concensus that when they see one, they will report the player, and from what I've seen, the player gets banned. Bliz makes 50 bucks (actually more maybe, they also get the days left on the character's subscription too. For me it's aggrivating to see someone running a bot to build up a charac

  • Guys, don't assume (Score:2, Informative)

    by thesnarky1 ( 846799 )
    It wasn't 18,000 TODAY, it was 18,000 over the past three months. They kill 200 a day, FTFA. Which means, they could still be easily above 5 million. In factm I'd bet they are still over, as they just reached 5 million at the end of these 18k bannings.
  • I don't think Blizzard developed Banhammer 18k. I believe that was THC.
  • i wonder if this had anything to do with that patch they had that checked if people were running 3rd party programs, but they said wouldn't send any of the reports back to blizzard themselves.

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