Broken Toys

Umm…it tells you it’s going to go look for hacks/bots/cheats/etc, and that it’s going to go send that back to Blizzard.

How much more explicit do you want it to be? Some folks want Blizzard to tell them EXACTLY what it’s looking for so they can hide again. Ain’t gonna happen.

The problem with black-box programs like this is that it’s got good intentions and those good intentions pave the way to a little place called Hell. It doesn’t matter what it was MEANT to do, it matters what it CAN do. What kind of damage could be done if there’s a chink in Warden’s armor? Sony learned that lesson the hard way. Some of the audio CDs they published came with a rootkit DRM program that autoinstalled whenever you put the CD in your computer. It turned out that said DRM program had a flaw that could compromise a machine’s security and allow a third party to access data on that machine. Sony released a program to remove it but the damage was done. How many compromised machines still exist because the user never heard of this stealth program Sony slipped in?

This, in turn, affects everyone. The current use of compromised machines (estimated in the 9 figures range) is to do nasty things like spam and DDoS attacks, all at the whim of the people who compromised them in the first place (Russian mafia, etc). I hope like crazy that Warden doesn’t have any holes because heaven help us all if there’s 8 million more zombie PCs out there doing that crap.

Amber:
For starters it’s just too easy to slide down that slippery slope of logic (whee!). Don’t like the new crafting patch? Hey, don’t play. They nerfed your class AGAIN? Shut up about it already and just don’t play the game, there’s plenty of ‘em out there.

No company (except maybe a government backed one) survives long if nobody buys the products or services the company provides. So in a capitalist society, the best way to influence a company is to stop buying from them until they listen. Boycotts are quite effective (see MLK and Montgomery Buses) but you need a critical mass to make your voice heard. In-game issues that are limited to one segment of the population really can’t do this. If 100 pallies go ZOMG and quit over a nerf out of a population of 8 million, do you, as a company, care? So it’s less of a slippery slope than it is a question of importance. Is this issue really worth going to war with The Man over and is there any remote possibility that you can prevail? Boycotts are a last resort, after all other avenues have been exhausted, not the first battle cry after a perceived injustice.

“Is there a more casual friendly fantasy MMOG than WoW in existence right now?”

Dungeon Runners.

The economy argument is a red herring. WoW is a tremendously popular game with a large PvP aspect – they’d need a way to combat keyloggers and performance hacks even if gold sellers didn’t exist.

I rolled a character on a new server a few weeks ago. I already have 850 gold there, and the toon isn’t even 40 yet. My regular characters on other realms are, well, rich. This isn’t even a character I play all that much, by the way, just one I started because I wanted a break from my mains.

Afford to repair twice as often? Respec twice as often? A day’s worth of daily quest rewards and whatever incidental loot you pick up will keep the average raider in repair money for a whole week, with enough left over to respec for PvP on the weekends. How much more often do you want?

Anyone who doesn’t have all the gold they need in WoW is simply not willing to put in a little effort (mostly spent in web-surfing) to get it. Open the faucet? It’s not a faucet, it’s a bloody fire hydrant, and it’s already on full blast.

Everytime I hear about how evil Blizzard is for preventing cheaters from cheating, I have a huge desire to subscribe to WOW even though I don’t really like it all that much.

It took me about 2 months to get to 40, I was almost able to afford my first mount then, and that was after a fair bit of messing around with auctioneer. The game works pretty hard to keep you poor. I got tired of the drudge work around level 65. I never even reached level 70 which is where the game really starts.

If I’d had a bot to grind the timesinks and goldsinks for me maybe I’d still be paying a subscription today

“It took me about 2 months to get to 40, I was almost able to afford my first mount then, and that was after a fair bit of messing around with auctioneer.”
My first character had to scrimp and save for her L40 mount, my second one had a handful of gold spare, and my third char could have bought one by L30 or so. My *blood elf* alt could just about afford one by the time he left Ghostlands at L20. Partially improved drops in the new zones, but mostly due to taking advantage of the inflation at the AH. Items which were selling for 10 silver when I started playing are selling for 40-50 silver nowadays, and here’s why:

There’s lots of gold entering the economy at high levels plus people playing alts (PvP twinks, powerlevelling, whatever) equals selling greens & tradeskill stuff on the AH for an insane profit. My main server regularly has mediocre L29 blues selling for up to 100gp each…and that’s assuming you’re just talking lower levels. L70s can just fly around Outland and run daily quests or work on various factions, get the income from them, and then sell any dropped loot/TS stuff (*cough*motes*cough*) for even more cash.