Blizzard's view on ebayers

Urme the Legend

Fledgling Freddie
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If it's true it is an awesome job from Blizzard imo! .. Canceling the account before it even got sold.
 

Darksword

Can't get enough of FH
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november, december, january, february...

is it just me that thinks 4 months spent in a game, with all that stuff he says he has, and now he wants 2 quit, shows a lack of depth to the game at large? :S <Shrugs>

well anyway good on blizzard :)
 

Ctuchik

FH is my second home
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Darksword said:
november, december, january, february...

is it just me that thinks 4 months spent in a game, with all that stuff he says he has, and now he wants 2 quit, shows a lack of depth to the game at large? :S <Shrugs>

well anyway good on blizzard :)


well. some ppl gets bored fast.. hes probably one of those that grined to 60 in a week and missed 99% of the game and now he cant be arsed to do it the other way.. and posting a screenshot with the name probably wasent the best of ideas, even tho the name isnt readable on that screenshot doesent mean there isnt program that can enlarge it so u can see the name :p hell i can do that in photo shop... ;)
 

Ashandar

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Darksword said:
november, december, january, february...

is it just me that thinks 4 months spent in a game, with all that stuff he says he has, and now he wants 2 quit, shows a lack of depth to the game at large? :S <Shrugs>

well anyway good on blizzard :)


No! I think its more lack in depth of a player.... 4mths to accrue all that then wants to sell it off? Hardly a shock if someone plays ANY game in that sort of period of time, then 'gets bored'. More fool him. Better off without that kinda person imo ! :wanker:
 

Evoknox

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It is true, read the COC. Your characters will always be property of Blizzard, so selling them would be like selling your neighbours car behind his back.
 

Archeon

Fledgling Freddie
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Nice to hear people who Ebay won't be able to prosper to such a degree as they did in DAoC.

And lol at the guys whine, that made me laugh :D
 

Darksword

Can't get enough of FH
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Evoknox said:
It is true, read the COC. Your characters will always be property of Blizzard, so selling them would be like selling your neighbours car behind his back.


that was the same with daoc i believe, but they did nothing about it :)
 

Naewae

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The only way I can think that Blizzard knew which account this was would be to compare email addresses. (His pictures don't give away account details and just reading his notes could not really GUARANTEE it was the correct account.)

In this case wouldn't it be easy to bypass by simply opening an Ebay account with another email address??

(I am against account trading btw, this is just my wonderings.)
 

[TB] Benedictine

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Evoknox said:
It is true, read the COC. Your characters will always be property of Blizzard, so selling them would be like selling your neighbours car behind his back.

Yes I know it's true it's against the CoC but if you read the VN story there was some doubt about the actual ebay sale's veracity...
 

Meduza

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Its not legal for Blizzard to do so.

If a customer has payed for the account, its a commodity (sry for spelling) good like anything else, nomatter what CoC or any other "agreement" says. Customers cannot be put less than the law in EU countries. (the story above was in USA so.... who knows what they can do over there ;))

Its like ur car dealer saying "If u dont use my brand of gasoline, then i have the right to take back ur car, and if u sell it, i can take it back also" (they can do that in some cases, ofc, if the car loan hasnt been paid ;))

Consumer protection rox :)
 

Snikch

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Meduza said:
Its not legal for Blizzard to do so.

If a customer has payed for the account, its a commodity (sry for spelling) good like anything else, nomatter what CoC or any other "agreement" says. Customers cannot be put less than the law in EU countries. (the story above was in USA so.... who knows what they can do over there ;))

Its like ur car dealer saying "If u dont use my brand of gasoline, then i have the right to take back ur car, and if u sell it, i can take it back also" (they can do that in some cases, ofc, if the car loan hasnt been paid ;))

Consumer protection rox :)


So you cant cancel accounts if you break an agreement? You really really think so? So its not legal for blizzard to cancel an account if the person who has it is hacking? Or abusing bugs? Or in some way breaking the CoC which you havent even read.
Im afraid your just guessing here, and its not like your cardealer forcing you to buy Gasoline, thats a stupid comparasion.
 

Fana

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Meduza said:
Its not legal for Blizzard to do so.

If a customer has payed for the account, its a commodity (sry for spelling) good like anything else, nomatter what CoC or any other "agreement" says. Customers cannot be put less than the law in EU countries. (the story above was in USA so.... who knows what they can do over there ;))

Its like ur car dealer saying "If u dont use my brand of gasoline, then i have the right to take back ur car, and if u sell it, i can take it back also" (they can do that in some cases, ofc, if the car loan hasnt been paid ;))

Consumer protection rox :)

You are wrong. You do not own your account, blizzard does. You are only leasing it. You cannot sell what you do not own - a better analogy would be if the car dealer leased you a car and you then tried to sell it, which would be highly illegal. The only thing you own is the CD's, gamebox and manual. In the same way Blizzard owns all items/content of the servers as their intellectual property, you are in no way in possession of any items, they are all still in the possession and control of Blizzard.
 

tris-

Failed Geordie and Parmothief
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what about the login details then, are they owned by blizzard? if not then you could go on ebay and sell your login details ONLY, no mention of characters etc.
 

Tallen

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Fana said:
You are wrong. You do not own your account, blizzard does. You are only leasing it. You cannot sell what you do not own - a better analogy would be if the car dealer leased you a car and you then tried to sell it, which would be highly illegal. The only thing you own is the CD's, gamebox and manual. In the same way Blizzard owns all items/content of the servers as their intellectual property, you are in no way in possession of any items, they are all still in the possession and control of Blizzard.

Legally it´s still very vague.

Blizzards IP statement is very poor and i doubt it would hold water in a legal court.

It is true that they claim they hold all IP rights and its all their property, but as Tris pointed out, they cannot legally stop you selling a password or an account name as long as you do not make any reference to the intrinsic value of the account.

You own the account details, you buy the key-code to activate it, as a consumer you have rights. EU consumer rights conflict greatly with the Blizzard IP statement mainly as it is written with US legalities in mind and in any European court of law i think you´d it a lot less black-and-white.

This is all a bit daft really, if someone wants to sell an account and someone else wants to buy one it benefits both parties AND Blizzard as its more subscribers for them...sure they dont make the sale, but their long-term profit comes from subscriptions, not purchases.

Flame Mythic all you like, but they realised this and dropped the totalitarian approach that Blizzard are trying to adopt.
 

Whisperess

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Tallen said:
Legally it´s still very vague.

Blizzards IP statement is very poor and i doubt it would hold water in a legal court.

It is true that they claim they hold all IP rights and its all their property, but as Tris pointed out, they cannot legally stop you selling a password or an account name as long as you do not make any reference to the intrinsic value of the account.

You own the account details, you buy the key-code to activate it, as a consumer you have rights. EU consumer rights conflict greatly with the Blizzard IP statement mainly as it is written with US legalities in mind and in any European court of law i think you´d it a lot less black-and-white.

This is all a bit daft really, if someone wants to sell an account and someone else wants to buy one it benefits both parties AND Blizzard as its more subscribers for them...sure they dont make the sale, but their long-term profit comes from subscriptions, not purchases.

Flame Mythic all you like, but they realised this and dropped the totalitarian approach that Blizzard are trying to adopt.
You own the login/password combination, you do not own the account itself. You try selling a login/password combination without pointing out what it's good for. (even ever so vaguely)

You sign away whatever extra rights you have when you accept the user agreement when creating the account.

Daft? Not really.

There's been court cases where players have sued a company for losing items in a MMORPG. (was in Korea, I believe)

Only way out of it is to maintain all the IP rights to everything they possibly can, making it illegal to sell/buy anything violating those rights.
 

Fana

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Tallen said:
Legally it´s still very vague.

Blizzards IP statement is very poor and i doubt it would hold water in a legal court.

It is true that they claim they hold all IP rights and its all their property, but as Tris pointed out, they cannot legally stop you selling a password or an account name as long as you do not make any reference to the intrinsic value of the account.

You own the account details, you buy the key-code to activate it, as a consumer you have rights. EU consumer rights conflict greatly with the Blizzard IP statement mainly as it is written with US legalities in mind and in any European court of law i think you´d it a lot less black-and-white.

This is all a bit daft really, if someone wants to sell an account and someone else wants to buy one it benefits both parties AND Blizzard as its more subscribers for them...sure they dont make the sale, but their long-term profit comes from subscriptions, not purchases.

Flame Mythic all you like, but they realised this and dropped the totalitarian approach that Blizzard are trying to adopt.

Also wrong :) You do not own the login details either, they are provided to you by blizzard so that you can access the account your are leasing, just as they keys to your rental apartement are provided to you by your landlord. You can sell a non registered key ofc, since no account as been created, and you are just selling what you own (i.e. the contents of the box).

And as far as holding water in a legal case, well, as a law student i can tell you it would definetly hold alot of water - there is no saying with a hundred percent certainty what the outcome would be in a european law tradition, as the specific details have not been tried here yet to my knowledge, but just looking at the facts i would bet my money on blizzard. It has been tried in favor of gamecompanies in the US - a different legal tradition, but still indictative of the outcome in the EU.
 

tris-

Failed Geordie and Parmothief
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well, if i were go to onto ebay now and put "selling un/pw for WoW, email for details". blizzard cant do shit, im not selling blizzards property, and anything in their ToS, CoC what ever cannot supercede(sp?) the law.

if i sell you the keys to my house, for £80k, all you own is the key to my property. same thing here - i sell a un and pw to someone, they just own the 'key' to access blizards servers.

also, they cant stop you selling your time for a price. if ive played for 100 hours, then i can say "well, you can buy 100 hours worth of my time". they dont own time now do they?! wouldnt suprise me, soon you wont be allowed to sell the mouse used to operate the game.

and how exactly do blizzard supply me the details? if i remember rightly, which i do, i created the details and gave them to blizzard.
 

CplCarrot

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I find this very hard to believe for one reason.

Blizzard seem to condone Cosmos and to some extent push it.

Cosmos / Thottbot is owned by IGE / OGaming, which make a business out of selling in game items for real cash - a very succesful business too in the world of everquest and lineage.

How can Blizzard take no steps to prevent Cosmos from logging items, where they dropped, what value they have and who sold them (all very powerful tools in trying to make the AH prices prohibitive and hire full time drop seekers to sell items to some fool for stupid prices). If you use Cosmos you are effectively "working" for IGE - they own all the info of your activities, right down to which mob u fight at which location, which drop u got , how long it took to sell it and for how much.

People may think this is some crazy conspiracy theory but really it isnt, the MMORPG world is big business in the US. http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/15/161219&tid=209
http://www.grimwell.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1457

Blizzard have NO MENTION on either official forum of gypsymod, or any other alternative to cosmos - are they in bed with them? (now that is a conspiracy theory). So how can they do this to someone who wants to sell his character and on the other hand allow a business to do it on a massive scale?


Double standards if you ask me.
 

Whisperess

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tris- said:
if i sell you the keys to my house, for £80k, all you own is the key to my property.
If you own the house, all is fine.

If you are renting the house, you're breaking the law (or rather, breach of contract) by selling the keys to it.

See the difference? It's not really that hard to understand. You'll figure it out once you start signing some real life contracts and try something stupid :)
 

Fana

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CplCarrot said:
IBlizzard have NO MENTION on either official forum of gypsymod, or any other alternative to cosmos - are they in bed with them? (now that is a conspiracy theory). So how can they do this to someone who wants to sell his character and on the other hand allow a business to do it on a massive scale?

Who says Blizzard allows the Cosmos operators to sell ingame stuff for irl money? Im sure Blizzard will crack down hard on them if they try to make a buisness out of it. Nothing that Cosmos is intended for by the users is breaking the ToS, so Blizzard have no reason to not allow it. What the creators intentions are with it is a whole other matter and not linked to how the players use it.

Blizzard have made it easy to create and use UI addons in their game, and this is to give a better gaming experience, not to allow certain other companies to make money off of their game - once anyone else but Blizzard tries to make money off of their property then you can sure Blizzard will take action.

Also, it might well be that Blizzard, in the future, will grant certain companies a license to trade in their property irl, in which case it will be legal. Who knows what their plans are.
 

tris-

Failed Geordie and Parmothief
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Whisperess said:
If you own the house, all is fine.

If you are renting the house, you're breaking the law (or rather, breach of contract) by selling the keys to it.

See the difference? It's not really that hard to understand. You'll figure it out once you start signing some real life contracts and try something stupid :)

correct me if im wrong, as i dont rent a property, but are you not actually renting the property its self? ive never seen an agreement for renting a property, but does it always state that your paying ONLY FOR THE KEY?

please be specific, the agreement either says you rent the property OR you rent the key OR you rent both. then i will be able to understand your point more easily.
 

LordjOX

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Tbh, kinda sux you can't leave the game with abit cash in the hand... I can understand all the gold selling for rl cash, but accounts dont rly do much "harm".
 

Whisperess

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tris- said:
correct me if im wrong, as i dont rent a property, but are you not actually renting the property its self? ive never seen an agreement for renting a property, but does it always state that your paying ONLY FOR THE KEY?

please be specific, the agreement either says you rent the property OR you rent the key OR you rent both. then i will be able to understand your point more easily.
Your land lord owns everything, the property, the keys - everything. The only thing you own is stuff bought from other sources that you happen to have inside the land lords property.

You are paying rent to gain access to the property. Should you lose the keys, the locks will be changed and you'll get access to the new set of keys if you pay rent.

You are not free to sell/give/lend the keys to others without the approval of the land lord, as doing such would be a breach of contract. You are not even allowed to make copies of the keys without the approval of the land lord.

You pay rent to get the priveledge to live in the land lords property, using the land lord's keys to get inside.

In respect to WoW, Blizzard is the land lord. You pay (monthly rent) to be able to play the game (gain access to the property), you are not paying to own (in the possesive way) characters, items or money.
 

Morchaoron

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cool, i know some assholes who i wanna get banned, better start photoshopping and make a ebay auction :D




.........
 

Danya

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If you sold someone the username/password for your account it's illegal for them to use them anyway as they have not agreed to the licence agreement with Blizzard for use of their servers. So while you could sell them, it would be useless for them to own them.
 

CplCarrot

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Fana said:
Who says Blizzard allows the Cosmos operators to sell ingame stuff for irl money? Im sure Blizzard will crack down hard on them if they try to make a buisness out of it.

Erm. Sorry mate, but they already are and have been for over 5 years (Everquest and Lineage)- the company itself has recorded growth profits year on year , proving that this is a viable business model and more are sure to follow.

Read the links, search for the terms in google - you will see a link to the financial times in England that had an article on just how succesful selling Virtual World items in the real world can be.

I will post these two again, this time take a read mate honest.

People may think this is some crazy conspiracy theory but really it isnt, the MMORPG world is big business in the US. http://games.slashdot.org/article.p.../161219&tid=209
http://www.grimwell.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1457


Dont shoot me, im only the messenger ;)
 

Fana

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CplCarrot said:
Erm. Sorry mate, but they already are and have been for over 5 years (Everquest and Lineage)- the company itself has recorded growth profits year on year , proving that this is a viable business model and more are sure to follow.

Read the links, search for the terms in google - you will see a link to the financial times in England that had an article on just how succesful selling Virtual World items in the real world can be.

I will post these two again, this time take a read mate honest.

People may think this is some crazy conspiracy theory but really it isnt, the MMORPG world is big business in the US. http://games.slashdot.org/article.p.../161219&tid=209
http://www.grimwell.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1457


Dont shoot me, im only the messenger ;)

Your talking about the buisness they are making of other games - afaik they have yet to try to go "commercial" with WoW. And i think and hope that when/if they do, Blizzard will take them to court over it.

I know just how lucrative a buisness it is, not questioning that there will be companies such as the one behind Cosmos that will try to parasite on the success of WoW. What im saying is that i believe Blizz will try to do something about it.
 

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