Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Banned: Controlling the market.

Now this is pure pure bull.

If you force a market to a specific price, and control the whole market for a specific part. oooh let's say herbalism. You'll get banned. I'm not joking either. You will get banned.

Why?
Missuse of game mechanics....
I mean what the F***. Missuse of game mechanics? It''s just a monopolie...

First off all:
Everyone that reported persons for something like that, you should get banned and go back to school. A monopolie is one of the most risky things to do in game. The amount of money you have to spend to get that monopolie. And you have to camp the AH to be sure you can buyout everything thats lowerpriced then your goods. It's hard work, so don't go whining.

So this one is for my fellow Banker: Trissing, Bad luck man, hope you're alright.

Grtz
Seth

13 comments:

  1. Excuse me, someone on your server got banned for controlling a niche of a market without any bots?

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  2. Can you provide more specific details? Did happen to you? Have you got a record of a conversation with a GM that led to a ban?

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  3. Without any bots indeed.
    The specific details where:
    Controlling the whole Herbalism market.
    I personally didnt talk to the gm. Trissing did, (rl friend of mine) He was banned for "abusing" game mechanics. with other words, he pissed some ppl off controlling the market, they reported him for running a monopoly (2 weeks in a row), he got banned. my mate doesnt use any addons for conversations so I don't think he has a recording, already asked for a print screen, but he said he didn't cap one out of pure shock.

    Tbh this isnt the first time this has happened, if you look hard enough on blogs and forums, I think you can find one or two other simmilar things.

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  4. Damn, that's unfortunate. I can't imagine the time and gold he put into his work. Sucks that Blizzard bans people for working the auction house, especially since there's nothing forcing anyone to buy herbs from the AH. Instead of whining to Blizzard, they should've put that time into finding another supplier, or even gone and herbed their own supply.

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  5. Zernam here:

    This is the first I've heard of this and it is surprising. I'm trying to imagine relating this to camping mobs so no-one can do it and it doesn't fit in my mind. The amount of effort to hold a market share on something does two things - 1) Lead to low profit or break even (possibly a loss) to hold it and as a result 2) Customers win for cheap materials. If mats were that low then another enterprising AH'er can snatch up mats and resell later. If he bought up the market to dominate it then people got paid - right?

    What kind of a ban are we talking about? A few days or was it permanent?

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  6. Wait... So I am gonna assume some things here, since we don't know the full story.

    Person A has a pile of gold and nothing to do with it, so he starts buying up all the herbs and putting them back up at a higher price.

    Person B through J are pissed, because now to craft stuff, they have to pay more money and (in the short term) cannot raise prices to make money. (or they are trying to do the same thing with little to no success.

    The group of people petition Blizzard and person A gets banned?

    Ever hear the story about the thief that breaks into a house through the skylight, falls onto the counter, and cuts himself on a knife? Story goes, he sues the house owner and wins... same thing imo...

    The group of disgruntled AHers should have gotten into the herbalism market. Make the monopolist buy their herbs. He either has to lower his price and undercut, or buy out the competition. Either way, it works to break the monopoly.

    So as I see it, instead of correcting the issue in a way that would be beneficial to themselves, they just open the doors for others to fill the void.

    I mean, have you ever tried to hold a monopoly on herbs? Its not as easy as you think, even with those "bottle-neck" herbs like swift-thistle and wildvine. At least on my server, people will swarm to farm it and undercut you to rock bottom.

    Was this a low population server? And as a result the monopoly was easier to hold?

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  7. Trissing,

    Could you post a full account of what happened, as best you can remember, please?

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  8. @Anonymous: Totally correct. The population on our server is "recommended" so about 5K alliance.

    Dacheng, I'll ask Trissing to come by and post his story

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  9. Ridiculous. Gold sellers arent even stopped (or tried to) and account hackers dont get stopped, Blizz Gm's just dont give a shit.

    Why do we pay?

    My buddy's brother's account got hacked a few weeks ago and whilst this hacker was using his account my buddy logged a ticket etc that the hacker was actually playing with the hacked Toon/account and they didnt do a thing!

    Shows you, if enough people moan then Blizzard doesnt want to know the rest of the story.

    I have been reported many times for "buying honor" but no one ever asks how?

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  10. Monopoly totally shouldn't be allowed in the real world, but come on - WoW is a game! For crying out loud. Now I'm getting really worried.

    Sorry to hear that Trissing. :( It sucks.

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  11. I've looked into the issue of bannings before and here are the cold hard facts:
    1) Blizzard does make mistakes on bannings. If this is the case, take your case up and you will get your account back.
    2) Many people who get banned were doing something that they thought was ok but were not. Examples of this: AFKing in BGs.

    Doing anything with a addon is permissible since it wholly comes within the Blizzard API. For example, using a addon to perform auto-cancel, auto-undercuts, etc is all ok.

    Doing something outside the API, even though not strictly a 'bot' may be against the TOS. For example, mail only comes in group of 50. Someone may set up a mouse macro to check mail every 15 sec and then hit the 'Open All' button, thus allowing them to AFK while retrieving mail. THIS IS AGAINST THE TOS!

    So, unless we have the complete details, wishing your friend all the best! And no, you cannot get banned for controlling the economy, if that is all your friend did.

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  12. I friend of mine from my guild US server lives in the US. Is in a foreign country for an extended time. (purposely leaving out names and locations) Was banned for 72 hours two months in a row. I looked over his current auctions and saw no issues with them. He had roughly 200 or so items for bid.

    You may extrapolate where he is to your content and will probably be right. How is he doing something against TOS if he is doing same thing as he would in the US? Therefore, if I go to this country that he is in will I therefore be banned? I do not condone buying or selling gold, neither does my friend.

    I hope your friend gets this sorted out. As I do mine. Good luck.

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  13. Ano, are you sure he's banned for selling auctions?
    Maybe he said something in that particular country that was against the TOS from that region. For example, calling a foreigner a "foreigner" (yes litteraly not any discriminating word) could already put you in jail for 2 days here in Belgium.
    Also normally he keeps playing in the US servers even when he goes to another country so be sure he didn't do anything illegal with that .

    Grtz
    Seth

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