Opening Volley

A few days before Christmas, I read that over a period of time 18,000 World of Warcraft (WoW) accounts were removed for players who were running third-party programs to help them "farm" gold (http://wow.warcry.com/#51145). Blizzard, the game's publisher and operator, added that "selling or buying World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in the permanent removal of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft." which is in section 8 of their Terms of Use Agreement. This got me thinking about what led to these violations and the subsequent crackdown.

In case you're not familiar with why someone who's supposed to be playing a game for fun would keep going through the same process over and over to earn virtual gold, one answer is that the virtual gold can be turned into real U.S. dollars. Some games like Second Life, sanction the real world sale of virtual goods, some tolerate it without explictly supporting or encouraging it, and some fight hard against those who would try to profit from their gaming accomplishments. In all cases, it seems, everything a player has worked for can be lost by violating the Terms of Service.

The typical marketplace for these gold and goods is eBay. There is some assurance of payment for the goods, but less protection for the buyer. You may find the seller unavailable in the game once you try to collect the virtual item or gold you purchased with your real dollars. Alternatively, some gamers use game forums to set up an online "flea market" for their virtual goods. These transactions are free of any fees to the seller. Recently, Sony Online Entertainment has created a "safer" way to conduct transactions for Everquest II through their Station Exchange. This "sanctioned" system causes the item transfer to take place at the moment of purchase by directly transferring the game assets between the player accounts. There is even a specific auction category to buy game coins using real-world money. So far this service hasn't been set up yet for their other major titles: Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies or The Matrix Online.

Which brings us back to why someone would use automated programs in WoW or any other MMORPG. My recent scans of eBay found anywhere from 1800 to 4400 auctions for WoW items or coins on a given day. The average selling price of WoW currency is around $7 per 100. This was the highest among the ten or so games I surveyed - the second highest exchange rate was $3.50 per 100. If you play 4 hours a day and earn 100 gold that's $28 a day. But if you're running a "bot" that plays for you all 24 hours of the day, that's $168 a day - equivalent to earning $21/hour from an 8-hour workday, or nearly $44,000 a year! If two thousand players (representing only .04% of WoW's 5 million subscribers) are cashing in on a regular basis, that's $336,000 in transactions a day.

So who's being harmed by the operation of these "third-party programs?" First, the living, breathing players get less bandwidth since the game servers have to devote more processing and communication to the unattended players. For the live players, that means a slower and choppier experience. Second, the rapid acquisition and subsequent distribution (through sales or gifts) of rare items will devalue them for players who work to get them while actually playing the game in person. Third, a "cheating" faction (race, clan, guild, etc.) can gain a great advantage over in-game competitors through its money and items, putting them in a dominant role in the game world. It definitely in the best interests of the non-automated player to enforce the prohibitions against this behavior.

As for the illegality of selling game "content" for real money in WoW or any other game with such prohibitions, here's my suggestion. Auction or sell the *service* of meeting the player in the game and conducting a trade (which is not prohibited in the WoW Terms of Use). After all, you have to take time away from playing the game you love to rendezvous with the other trader and perform the trade. Of course, you may want to explicitly describe what it is that you will be trading. You won't be "selling" any of the game company's content - they still own the files and data associated with the game assets.