Arguably RMT is actually rather perfect Communism. Nobody but Blizz owns the "means of production" so effectively your 1 hours of "labour" is worth exactly the same as mine. Or 1 hour of a gold farmers time.

It would only be capitalism if somehow a group could control say the mining of thorium. Perhaps on a PvP server this might be possible, but on a PvE ? There is very little a lvl 60 can do to stop a lvl 1 grabbing that herb, or mining that vein.

Yes, world items "could" but camped, the camper's cabal could fix the price at the AH, but from a communist POV there is still no real proletariat or (petit) bourgoise.

Don't real get the concept that buying gold destroys the illusion any more than say thottbot, decursive or an instance map. No doubt hard core RPGers would argue that anything that allows you to "know" where Stormwind is also destroys the illusion. Far too much like hard work for me, that !
 

effectively your 1 hours of "labour" is worth exactly the same as mine. Or 1 hour of a gold farmers time.

Where the capitalism part comes in is when I buy the gold farmers time for dollars. Because while my time in WoW might be worth the same as his time in WoW, my time doing a real job over here is worth more than his time doing another job in China. Thus I can spend one hour working, and buy the result of considerably more than one hour from the gold farmer. And the gold farmer *still* earns more per hour than doing lets say rice farm labor in China. Globalisation at its finest, or worst, depending on your point of view.

Agreed on Thottbot etc. also breaking the illusion. In fact buying gold is cheating, and using Thottbot is cheating as well. Different degrees of cheating, certainly, but from a purist point of view both cheating.
 

Regarding sites like thot and allakhazam, it will be nice to have to figure things out on my own again once BC arrives. I grow weary getting caught up in the "You need to go to dungeon XYZ to farm item ABC". I miss the wanderlust associated with taking my first character through the snow of Dun Morogh and the amazement of seeing Ironforge for the first time.

Now that I'm raiding, and the emphasis is on class utility, FR, mana pool, attack power, DPS, I find myself using these sites to locate items to eek out stats here and there. I'm tired of it.

I need a break from it. I want to play the game again and not tinker with a spreadsheet (i.e. www.ctprofiles.net, a spreadsheet with graphics) anymore.
 

Well, there's really two capitalist systems being discussed here - one in in-game, and one is in the real world.

I would say that no one is complaining about capitalism in game. In game, people are quite fond of the AH and other bastions of economic freedom. Capitalism is alive and well inside of WoW.

The complaint comes from cheating in the game - buying gold with real dollars is outside of the agreed upon rules for the WoW. Capitalism as a system depends on a fair market, and gold-buying destroys that market within the game. So in reality, opposing the selling of gold is supporting the in-game free market economy.

Granted, in the larger sense, selling gold for real money is capitalism in the real world, but that's not what people are tweaked about. Hard working Chinese making money doesn't bother anyone - it's the by product of in-game cheating that is annoying.

Sammy
 

Yes, the point about communism was related to in game economics, rather than the yankee dollah outside of it (or my hard earned sterling).

I don't think the in-game economy is really capitalism, in the way Second Life could perhaps considered to be. As I said, there is no reall way to effectively own the means of production - as the currency of WoW is time (it is just converted to gold to make it easier). Now if only I could patent an enchant, THAT would be a different thing, and licenese it cross server ;)

Whether or not gold farming (in the truest sense, people logging in and playing) destroys the economy is actually a moot point. There is not actual injection of money into the economy, just faster circulation. Still, an emotive subject. It is also a moot point as to whether the terms are actually legally enforcable, but perhaps they are just better as a moral code rather than actual law ?

I too miss the wanderlust of my early days of WoW, I was on gardening leave, and could play all day. Just wandered about doing what I wanted, swam all around Kalimdor for a giggle. All changed when I got another job, time is very very precious. Funny thing is that as I can often only play for 30 mins at a time, the propensity to do anything other than "grind" for 30 mins is low. Mon-Fri is the same, get the odd 30 mins, log in where I left off, start killing/picking flowers exactly where I logged off, then find a quite corner to logout when it is time to go. Amazing how many hours "grinding" you get this way, when time is so short. But when I get a decent amount of time, it all changes. No way would I grind all Saturday - and then just hanging out in IF, or going for a wander instead of flying - all good fun.
 

meh

everything i read in the German press is trumped up lies about America, so this is really no different.

If you read most forum posts, everyone knows it's the demand side that is the real problem. This is nothing new over here. They just cherry pick a few quotes and say "all americans are like this (the redneck cowboy fascists)" which is typical of the German media.

After all, they have a 13% unemployment rate due to their more "fair" laws that they have to stop people from thinking about!
 

No, no, no.

One of the central tenets and requirements of a capitalist system is that contracts are supposed to carry the weight of law and be enforceable by government. Since our governments recognize the EULA as a contract, everyone who engages in this activity is a criminal. But neither country practices capitalism in this sense, because neither government punishes the crime. Moreover, countless punitive measures Blizzard could conceivably include in that contract are forbidden by our governments.

The US is worse in this sense, because we hold our Constitution in uncommonly high esteem, and the 14th Amendment requires state governments to provide Blizzard & other victims of RMT a fair amount of attention. Because it's not an ugly crime, and because it involves a luxury, they don't.
 

I wish companies weren't so afraid to press the ownership of their virtual worlds in court. Else RMT could be affirmed or denied as theft and the matter settled. It doesn't matter that it breaks the illusion of the virtual world or demonstrates globalization. RMT is basically the selling of property you don't really own.

It's like any other form of information copying for monetary gain. Its fine if you make a gift to a friend of a burned cd or movie. Its small scale and could be argued under fair-use laws. But large scale operations that are set up to make money by selling copied information they don't own has been established as illegal for quite some time.
 

Oh dear, I had sort of hoped that this site would prvide some sort of adult debate. Perhaps I was wrong. Now perhaps I am coming at this from a UK law point of view, which may very well be different.

One of the central tenets and requirements of a capitalist system is that contracts are supposed to carry the weight of law and be enforceable by government.

The first assertion is has nothing to do with captitalism, the second is simply untrue. Contract law is nothing to do with governments, but the legal system. Why would the goverment get involved in your dispute with another party ?

Since our governments recognize the EULA as a contract, everyone who engages in this activity is a criminal.

Again, COURTS decide on contracts NOT governments. And if you break the terms of a contract, you are NOT a criminal. Unless somehow you are also breaking the laws of your country.

I wish companies weren't so afraid to press the ownership of their virtual worlds in court. Else RMT could be affirmed or denied as theft and the matter settled.

Mixing two things there. Is it really theft, which is a criminal act ? A games company cannot prosecute you for theft, the state does that. Personaly I think that is a very shaky legal argument.

Does it break the terms of an agreement ? That is something the government, and the police, really don't care about. Sure, we have laws, but the are "common law". It isn't necessarily a criminal act, it might be, but that doesn't mean it is.

The danger for the games companies is that they think they might lose a case were they to bring it. Is it an unfair contract clause ? Is it restraint of trade ? You are on difficult ground if you try to regulate what someone does outside of the contract with terms from inside it. If you break the terms of the contract inside the game, such as using a bot, it is fairly black and white. But buying something outside the game ? Far more difficult to prove that.

Which is why they go after the gold farmers not the buyers. And the gold farmers are usually got for using "illegal" methods, not for selling gold. And even then, it is only in game illegal not statutory.

It doesn't make it any more right, but I think we need to understand that it is wrong for the right reasons rather than some vague notion of it being "illegal" and a criminal act - which is wrong wrong (and I have confused myself !) :)
 

One of the core tenets of Capitalism is the idea of "property" rights, and World of Warcraft is the property of Blizzard. If they deem RMT to be harmful to their property, then they certainly have the right (in a capitalist system) to object to its use in their game.

There are no true capitalist societies anyway, just varying degrees of economic freedom (and some countries have more economic freedom in certain areas, but less in others). Either way though, if there were a true capitalist society, a company or individual would have property rights which would be protected by laws.

I agree it looks a bit ironic, superficially, though =)
 

The fault lies not with the gold farmer but with the game design. Blizzard should put a bit more of their millions into creating epic quests for epic mounts rather then epic price tags.
 

[quote]Agreed on Thottbot etc. also breaking the illusion. In fact buying gold is cheating, and using Thottbot is cheating as well. Different degrees of cheating, certainly, but from a purist point of view both cheating.[/quote]

Personally, I think this is a ridiculous statement. Just as I'm not going to waste an hour wandering around Azeroth looking for a bag of barley when I can thottbot it, I'm not going to wander around Bangkok for a day looking for a hotel when I can look in a tourist guide book.
 

Heath, a well designed-game won't need Thottbot because there will be fun ways to find out in-game: useful NPCs and the like.

The same applies to RMT. I think Raph once said that if you want to find out which bits of your game nee fixed, check what people are macroing. The same goes for RMT: if a bit of your game isn't fun (grinding gold for weeks to get a mount; running level 1 & 2 agent missions to afford a decent ship) then people will bypass it where they can afford to. Those bits need changed.

Unless you are Korean, of course.

And Eggman, take a hike, spammer.

Endie
 

Oh, and anonymous, you're not a lawyer:

Someone said
"One of the central tenets and requirements of a capitalist system is that contracts are supposed to carry the weight of law and be enforceable by government.

anonymous babbled:
"The first assertion is has nothing to do with captitalism, the second is simply untrue. Contract law is nothing to do with governments, but the legal system. Why would the goverment get involved in your dispute with another party ?"

Read Hobbes. Read social contract theory. Read Green on Contract. Read Gloag and Henderson. Read Justinian's Digest. Read the Competitive Advantage of Nations. For goodness' sake, even read PJ O'Rourke. Look at would-be capitalist systems without adequate sovereign powers to enforce contract law: can't work. You get Albania in the late 90's and pyramid schemes. The government needs to provide a framework of law within which contracts can be enforced. That provides the security for the safe transfer of capital.

To give an MMO equivalent, look at Eve and someone recently making off with hundreds of billions of ISK. That is one example of why CCP (the sovereign power) are introducing enforceable contracts (in MMOs, code is law). at the moment, no Eve bank can work except where stupidity exists, nor a company where direct "force" cannot suffice to ensure repayment.

Endie
 

"Mixing two things there. Is it really theft, which is a criminal act ?"

Yes it is theft. The EULA is a basic contract but besides the contract there are still laws against piracy. If you downloaded a brand new cd then started burning copies and selling them at a flea marktet then you are stealing. That's why they call it piracy.

The EULA mainly exists so that MMO companies can cancel accounts without getting sued themselves. If they company wanted to they could easily go after gold sellers and companies like IGN. However, they are afraid of trying to explain complex technology issues like virtual worlds and economies to 60 year old judges.
 

endie said...
Heath, a well designed-game won't need Thottbot because there will be fun ways to find out in-game: useful NPCs and the like.

The same applies to RMT. I think Raph once said that if you want to find out which bits of your game nee fixed, check what people are macroing. The same goes for RMT: if a bit of your game isn't fun (grinding gold for weeks to get a mount; running level 1 & 2 agent missions to afford a decent ship) then people will bypass it where they can afford to. Those bits need changed.

Unless you are Korean, of course.

And Eggman, take a hike, spammer.

I deleted Eggman's post, he was spam advertising gold guides.

And I totally agree with Endie that RMT, Thottbot, und bots are all just different symptoms of bad game design. We don't enjoy the game as it is, and so we help ourselves with crutches. If earning gold wasn't a grind, there wouldn't be a market to buy it for dollars. If finding your quest objective was fun, we wouldn't look it up on a third-party website (which incidentally is owned by gold farmers).
 

The government needs to provide a framework of law within which contracts can be enforced.

Framework, yes. It does that by providing us with a legal system. But which part of case law precedent did you skip at school today ;) It doesn't make the choice as to what is and is not a fair contract. That is made by judges not politicians, mostly.

I hire you to cut my lawn once a week. We sign a contract. You don't do it. Does that make you a criminal ? No. If you stole my new honda mower, well different thing.

Does breaking the terms of a EULA mean you are a criminal ? No.

Infering that breaking the terms of a EULA is automatically piracy is fallacy of the highest order.

We promise not to grief people in game, is that illegal ? No, of course not. It is just an enforceble term in a contract. We break that, we get kicked.

Is buying gold just a contract term, which may or may not be enforceable. Or is it piracy ? Case law decides the former. And AFAIK there have be no criminal case brought against anyone buying gold ?

So, essentially, neither of us know the real answers.

But several people's arguments appear to simply be :-

"I don't like gold sellers/buyers therefore they must be criminals".

Just can't see how you can make that connection. They might, possibly, be breaking their contract terms. But as far as it being an illegal activity, hmmm, tricky.

Is babling outlawed where you come from ?

:)