A WoW guildie dialed up a rather unexpected playlist on his iPod earlier this month - one that featured a diverted commercial flight, an evacuation, a grilling by the police, a bomb squad sweep, and a bit more grilling by Customs.
The story begins with "Tim," whose WoW character is, ironically enough, named "Stupid," (picture at left) boarding a flight from Chicago to Canada to visit a female guildmate.
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Here's a story which is sure to warm the hearts of those who love an underdog...
Twenty-four-year-old gamer Brian Kopp has successfully stared down the likes of Blizzard, Vivendi and the ESA in a lawsuit which accused the defendants of misrepresentation in their claims that Kopp's self-authored World of Warcraft strategy guide violated terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Last August Kopp began selling "The Ultimate World of Warcraft Leveling & Gold Guide" on Ebay for fifteen bucks. Soon thereafter, Blizzard, Vivendi and the ESA invoked the DMCA, claiming that Kopp's home brew enterprise violated copyrighted material in WoW. Ebay then forced Kopp to take down auction listings which advertised the book and eventually suspended his account.
That probably would have been the end of Kopp's career in the strategy guide business, but Public Citizen, a national nonprofit public interest organization, offered to assist the beleaguered Mr. Kopp. Public Citizen filed a federal suit on Kopp's behalf in March. On Friday Public Citizen issued a press release announcing that the defendants had capitulated and will no longer object to Kopp selling his guidebook on Ebay.
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Gold farming. Love it or hate it, it's likely here to stay.
Maclean's columnist Andrew Potter looked at the controversial MMO issue this past week, and explored the love-hate relationship between subsets of MMO gamers: those who tolerate gold farming, and those who decry it as the worst thing to vex online gaming since microphones were first used on Xbox Live.
Potter distills the never-ending argument over gold farming to a basic conflict of the real world - the quest for status. Whether it be gaining a castle, purple armor in WoW, a mount, a new addition to your secret hideout, or having a Lexus in your driveway, status symbols are the way society judges how well a person has performed in the big game of life. The more sucessfull you are, the more toys you have. The difference in online games is that the status symbol is not supposed to represent how rich you are, but rather how dedicted you were to the journey that the game represents.
The conflict arises between those who "earned" these status symbols through hard work, persistence, and long hours of gaming, and those who bought them. Those who put in the hours understandably feel that those who did nothing more time-consuming than swipe their credit card are somehow "cheating" the system. This isn't much different from the real world, as Potter notes:
"Sound familiar? Strip away the trappings of Tolkienism, and what you have are variations on the ancient positional joust of original inhabitants versus the nouveau riche, who in this case, are violating
the virtual social code by buying their way in, rather than getting there through hard work..."
Potter takes care to examine the oft-heard question from non-MMO players, "Who cares?"
"Any place," he writes, "where thousands of people can move about trading goods and building property and killing people and so on is not a game, it is a world, and its residents are not players but members of a community... For better and for worse, it will be just like the old world, but more so."
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I rarely mention my weekly Philadelphia Inquirer column here on GamePolitics for a variety of reasons. But today's piece deals with my first-person venture into a highly controversial game topic, one that we've touched on here at GamePolitics a number of times.
In an effort to report on what it's like to buy virtual goods, I purchased WoW gold from IGE, the planet's largest seller of virtual MMO items.
My conclusion? The influx of virtual cash was like hitting the lottery. Conversely, I can buy fewer real-world groceries. As far as I can tell, my purchase did not cause my WoW server's economy to crash. None of my fellow players have had any less fun. I'm quite sure none of them even took notice of my little windfall.
There will, of course, be disagreement on this issue, so fire away.
GP: As always, I will mention that that GamePolitics is an independent effort and not affiliated with the Philadelphia Inquirer or any other publication.
Last week GamePolitics reported that a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) guild in World of Warcraft had been warned for violating Blizzard's Terms of Service. The issue was whether advertising a "LGBT friendly" guild was in violation of WoW's sexual harassment policy, which stated that you could not discuss sexual orientation in an "insulting" fashion.
The official Blizzard reprimand caused an outcry in the gay community, and many accused the WoW publisher of being discriminatory toward homosexuals. Kotaku subsequently reported that Lambda Legal, an organization which champions gay civil rights, was looking into the incident for potential violations of California's anti-discrimination laws.
Yesterday, Lambda Legal took an official position on the WoW dust-up. According to Kotaku, they sent a letter to Blizzard, questioning their policies on harassment, and asking for a cessation of apparent discrimination.
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Can a group be punished for inciting harassment against themselves? Blizzard, publisher of the ultra-popular MMO World of Warcraft, seems to think so.
Recently, gay-oriented news site In Newsweekly noted that a gay & lesbian friendly guild on WoW had been warned by Blizzard not to violate their harassment policy. Sara Andrews had been sending in-game chat messages in order to recruit players into OZ, her "GLBT friendly" guild (gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender). WoW players messaged by Sarah received the following: "OZ is recruiting all levels | We are not 'GLBT only,' but we are 'GLBT friendly'! (guilduniverse.com/oz)"
Sarah subsequently received an email from Blizzard which cited her for "Harassment - Sexual Orientation" under Blizzard's "Terms of Use". When Sara queried a Blizzard GM about the citation, she was told "While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a 'GLBT friendly' guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise."
In the "Terms of Use", "Harassment - Sexual Orientation" "includes both clear and masked language which insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or other players." How advertising a "GLBT friendly" guild is "insulting" is something that Blizzard did not make clear to Sarah Andrews. In response to one email, Blizzard wrote "Many people are insulted just at the word 'homosexual' or any other word referring to sexual orientation" and even suggested that the guild was discriminating against non-gays.
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"Screw them."
Thus sayeth PC Gamer Editor-in-chief Greg Vederman, referring to the so-called gold farmers found in World of Warcraft and other MMO's. Vederman is quoted in yesterday's Next Generation as he explains the magazine's decision not to accept ads from companies like IGE and Power Leveling.
"For the record," Vederman continues, "PC Gamer's official stance on these types of companies is that they are despicable: not only do they brazenly break many MMOs' End-User License Agreements, but they all-too-often ruin legitimate players' fun. To put it mildly, we here at PCG are furious that these types of ads ever made it into the magazine... As a company, we have agreed to turn down what literally amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual ad revenue so that you, as a reader, can game easy knowing that we've got your back. I challenge my fellow PC gaming mags and websites to follow our path and to help us close down these bastard companies by attrition."
Decaf, Greg, Decaf...
On a personal note, GP doesn't quite get what Vederman is going on about. Yes, we know all about the farming controversy, but - don't be hatin' on me - I like it. Unlike many hardcore players, I can't submerse myself in an MMO 24x7 due to life's more pressing responsibilities. If I'm willing to part with my hard-earned money, what's so bad about buying a few hundred gold in WoW or selling off a high-level character when one's interest in the game begins to wane? How does that ruin anyone else's fun? Seems like a free market economy thing to me... Or am I warped?
If David Edery's look into the future of MMO's is correct, players may soon need to add an attorney to their AIM or Xfire buddy lists.
Edery, who works with Dr. Henry Jenkins in the Comparative Media Studies Department at M.I.T., also pens the excellent Game Tycoon blog. In today's post Edery looks at potential legal liabilities in massively-multiplayer online games such as Second Life, World of Warcraft
Noting a recent Terra Nova piece on the potential legal ramifications of Linden Labs' arbitrary decision to devalue virtual property in Second Life, Edery summarizes other legal entanglements which could eventually turn virtual worlds into a realm of lawyers. Edery's list includes:
- What happens when one player steals another player's property?
- What happens when players create content that infringes upon the copyrights or trademarks of real-world companies?
- What happens when players engage in 'legally indecent' acts? Can EA (developer of Sims Online) be sued for letting a ten-year old operate a virtual brothel? Can it be sued by players who suffer real financial damages at the hands of a virtual mafia?
- Can developers be sued for impeding free market forces that generate real monetary value for players?
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Earlier this week, GamePolitics and numerous other news sites reported on a suit filed by the parents of a 13-year-old Chinese boy who committed suicide in 2004. According to news reports out of China, the grieving parents blamed the death on their son's addiction to World of Warcraft.
Not so fast.
Asian game blog Pacific/Epoch claims that Chinese news agency Xinhua bungled the report, which was then widely circulated by media outside China. Shang (left), a blogger with Pacific/Epoch, makes a telling point when he argues:
"World of Warcraft (WoW) was not released in China until May 2005... the actual lawsuit claimed he committed suicide after playing the real time strategy game Warcraft III... Without WoW, it would have been much harder to pin the blame on Warcraft because it's a strategy game, not role playing. But with WoW, and the recent focus on the alleged addictive qualities of MMORPGs, the lawsuit gets much more attention... (Chinese game addiction 'expert') Zhang is also not suing The9, which is the distributor for WoW in China, even though The9 has plenty of cash."
If Shang is correct, WoW is getting a bad rap in relation to the boy's suicide. Red Herring has more on this topic today.
