Anyway... This past week or so has made me glad that I don't own a PS3. I'm usually a PC gamer, so I don't normally care much about consoles (aside from fanatically waiting around for the newest Zelda game), but the issues with Sony are just mind-boggling. All I can think is 'thank god it didn't happen to me.' Besides, Sony is going about this completely wrong. If all your customer data has been stolen, then you take the data and use it yourself. I mean, they're gonna need a lot of money to make up for this, and it'll probably get taken by the hacker anyway... Plus they can get away with it. Remember, whatever bad things happen to any corporation could always be worse: I could be in charge.
I normally don't comment on anything in the 'real' world that has no relevance to video games or whatever, but I thought I'd make an exception for the royal wedding all the 'sophisticated' adults are talking about (and boring me to death whenever I happen to be within earshot). Several thousand people are camping around to hopefully get a view of said wedding. Whereas a few years ago when Twilight Princess came out, there were tens of thousands of people camping out at stores to be able to play it. I think that should put into perspective just how 'important' the wedding is.
Anyway, back to W-H-related things. Unfortunately, not that much remarkable has happened, although some BM members did get a laugh out of an epic coding fail I had on our forums (now fixed). I think Rad saved the page; maybe you could ask her to show it to you? It was just absurd...
Did you just try and disguise the fact that you had nothing to say by putting in some random info that 99% of your readers don't care about?
Yes. I mean, I can't say 'nothing happened' again. Nothing has happened too many times recently. At least the flood of people starting blogs has started to slow down...
Yup, at least people aren't stupid enough to copy you.
...Go away.
Anyway, I've got a fairly unusual topic today. It's based upon the contents of this thread. Since I don't know if that thread will still be around, the basic content of said thread is that the player 'Haunted' is selling three side accounts. Except they only list two side accounts. Maybe they belong in that group of people who failed math class?
We'll just say two accounts (E-bony and Zarina). Basically they are levels 12/18 and have 6/11 points respectively on them. Other info like their gear and DP amounts aren't really that important for the purpose of this entry (due to gear/DP being worthless).
The player is selling them for points, with a starting bid of 4 points a piece. Now, before we go any farther, ask yourself if you see any problem with this. Make your decision now, and then see how it holds up at the end of this entry.
The thing is, this isn't technically illegal. There is nothing in the TOS that even mentions account sales, which is somewhat unusual, since most sites have a clearly established policy on this. However, we don't.
The only precedent we do have is a post I remember Karl making, but unfortunately was before 1.1 (I think). A certain user *coughwdkcomeonwhoelsedidyouexpectcough* made a forum thread asking if they could level accounts and then sell them on Ebay or other sites. Admittedly, this seems like a monumentally stupid question to ask, but that's my opinion. Anyway, the point of this is that Karl said that no, you can't sell the legal property of W-H for personal monetary gain. Which makes perfect sense, and is actually legally supported by law.
Unfortunately, that doesn't specify anything regarding the sale of accounts for on-site currency.
Allow me to make my position clear: I personally oppose shared accounts, as well as any form of transferring ownership of any account. You shouldn't be able to give your account to a friend/sibling, as I know several accounts have been in the past. My position on people 'babysitting' accounts is somewhat more towards the 'apathy' end of the scale, and I'm only going to deal with the permanent transfer of ownership in this entry. If people are actually interested, I suppose I could do an entry on babysitting later.
The reason I oppose shared accounts is twofold - first, the trouble created if one of the 'owners' of the account breaks the rules and then the other 'owner' claims they shouldn't be liable. I don't like dealing with that bullshit. And second, because of the unfair advantage it gives. I complained about how Coren was on for 24 hours in one day. I would complain if 24 people from different time zones split into shifts to each play an hour a day and thus give the account the benefit of 24/7 leveling. I don't care whether it's a bot pressing the keys or 24 different people - it's still an unfair advantage over the average player.
For any sort of ownership transfer, I oppose it because someone else is getting XP without actually doing anything for it. If I gave my account to my brother, would you find it fair that someone who's never played W-H before gets to start with 24 million+ XP without even working on it? (Not to mention my brother is a moron). People say the 10x XP lessens the accomplishment of high levels, and they are correct. Getting XP without doing anything at all completely eliminates the accomplishment.
Then there's the question of whether you actually have the right to transfer the ownership of an account. Technically, your account, and all your info, are the property of W-H. You are simply granted limited access to that info. If you were required to pay for your account, this would be fairly clear-cut - you don't have the authority to transfer the valuable property of another. However, since accounts on W-H are free... how much value does any given account have in real-world currency? After all, if it had absolutely no value, transferring ownership would be technically impossible (since you can't own something completely without any value), but it also wouldn't be prohibited, because if I give $0 to you, no actual currency has changed hands.
However, you probably don't want to deal with the legal issues, so let's stick to practical concerns for gameplay.
The first concern I would have if account sale was allowed is account theft and/or scamming. I mean, we've seen several accounts hacked, some of them high level. If I wanted to sell those, with a bit of work it could be done without there being any proof they were stolen, and even if they were found out, it'd be after the sale - in which case how do you refund the player who bought them? I mean, I'd probably have spent the points on something else. Maybe I bought, say, art. You can't take the points from the artist - they legitimately earned them. You can't take the art from me - it's only valuable to my character or whatever, and it's not W-H's property. And creating more points without cash behind them devalues the currency. Lose-Lose scenario.
And with scamming, it's even simpler - offer an account for sale, take payment, run away. Or give a wrong PIN, so you can take back the account afterward.
This doesn't even mention the fact that any 'sold' account is still going to have its email set to the seller, so they can recover their password at any time. And before you say 'send a support ticket'... Imagine how well that could be used on a hacked account. Hm, let's say I got access to... Byz's account. Dang, I don't know her PIN...
#1: Make sure using proxy.
#2: Make a thread by Byz 'selling' her account.
#3: Buy account with my main. (on normal IP)
#4: Send support ticket claiming to have bought acc and needing email change.
#5: With email changed, have PIN resent.
#6: Use PIN to change password.
Woot! I now have complete access to Byz's account! And it appears to be legitimate in the eyes of the majority of the site! And all it would take is having access to someone's account for maybe a week, at most, while they couldn't get on. Like, say, if they were on vacation (or in Byz's case, just inactive).
And if anyone is about to object to me 'instructing' hackers or whatever, do you honestly think the staff is dumb enough to fall for this after I posted this?
So, allowing account sales would encourage account theft, whether to own the acc yourself or for profit. I could turn around and sell Byz's account for more than I sold it for (after all, I sold it to myself, so of course I accepted a low price!). Then I wait a month, steal the account back, and sell it again for an even higher price! And repeat.
And that's with just one account.
(By the way, what I'm describing is basically the process used by gold sellers on any major game, just so you know.)
Then we've got the fairness concerns, what with XP transfer and all. So far, Karl has (admirably) avoided implementing anything that gives players XP without them earning it, excluding the 500 XP available in the point shop. And, honestly, if anyone is willing to pay the thousands of pounds it would take to get on the top 5 with just buying XP, I say let them. I mean, for that much money, the site could make big enough improvements it wouldn't matter.
But for the most part, I'm against getting XP you don't earn. Buying accs provides an easy way around that. What in Sunset sold her account, since she's gone? And I mean her, not some hacker on her account. Well, then you've got the top 5 going to whoever has the most points... I think even Sea would object to that. Well, unless she bought the account herself.
And then there's accounts with customs, and selling them. All kinds of hassles there I'm not even going to get into. But you can imagine, I'm sure.
What about botting? Especially with how it's not in the TOS anymore. Due to how W-H works, I can simultaneously run multiple bot programs on different accounts from one computer, the only limit being my computer speed. So if I had a fast enough computer, I could have 10 bots running at once. Let's say I sell them at 1 million XP each, for 10 points each. Wow, I just made 100 points in a day or two with no actual effort required on my part aside from telling a program to run 10 times! Amazingly profitable! Let's do it again, but sell Legends this time! And since there are $0 in costs to me, I'll have amazingly low prices of only 2.50 pounds in points for an account with 20 million XP! There will be tons of sales!
You're wishing you thought of this sooner, aren't you?
...Maybe. But I suppose I can't do it now that it's on my blog. Oh well.
And then there's quest point issues. You can't transfer quest points from your sides to your main. But you could collect all the points from quests on your sides, then sell them for fewer points than they have, so that the buyer makes a profit, and have them pay your main. You just managed to 'transfer' those unusable points on your side to your main acc! And you can make as many sides as you want! Yay! Happy happy happy joy ha-
This is killing you, isn't it?
Dear god, yes! Pretending to be happy and enthusiastic... ugh. I feel like I want to puke.
Moving on... there's also the issue of the TOS section 1B, which forbids "using multiple accounts to accumulate money and/or points". Couldn't you fit selling accounts under that? Sure, it might not be what it was originally written about, and it's rather loose, but it still has the same end result - points generated from something on a side acc ending up on your main.
Anyway, I need to find a paper bag to throw up in, so I'll wrap this up. I think this entry should have made it clear why account sales are a bad thing. I'm not criticizing the site or the staff either (it's a miracle!) - they haven't technically allowed anything. All I'm saying is that account sales should not be allowed, and we should have the TOS clearly updated to state that. Yes, I just said 1B could possibly cover it... but it's better to be precise, so no
Besides. Updating the TOS would take maybe 60 seconds. It's not exactly hard. In the mean time, hopefully mods will at least see the sense in this and enforce it as an unofficial rule. I mean, it makes sense...
Hey, I found a bag for you.
Thanks, Se- BLAAUuuuuuuurrrrggggghhhhhhh...
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