Evergrey said:We just "rent" the charcters we are playing on the servers
Revz said:Do you have a standard punishment for people buying accounts? Is it enforced? If there is no punishment and it is not enforced then what is the point of that section of the EULA?
GReaper said:GOA has never taken any action on a traded account, unless there has been any other problems (hacking, character deletion, etc.).
It may be against the EULA of DAoC Europe, but they've never enforced it.
Revz said:What about the enforcement issues? There were many high profile accounts sold on Prydwen as the game lost its interest for various people (Niar springs to mind for example) but the new owners were able to play with and sell the accounts on multiple times with no trouble whatsoever. Currently I'm playing WoW with at least a dozen people who sold their DAoC accounts and can point out several who post on these forums with accounts they have bought in their signatures (hello UndyingAngel).
Do you have a standard punishment for people buying accounts? Is it enforced? If there is no punishment and it is not enforced then what is the point of that section of the EULA?
Jupitus said:*waves at Gideon*
The issue is one of proof. There is not a strong enough link between, for example, someone creating an FH id and then giving themselves a 'MyChar - Sold' siggy and that meaning that 'MyChar' has been sold. However, I would guess that if the GMs were to cross check against 'MyChar''s IP address, CC used for billing, labguage spoken in PMs etc they could probably build up a strong case for action. They don't always get this evidence, though.
Jupitus said:However, I would guess that if the GMs were to cross check against 'MyChar''s IP address, CC used for billing, labguage spoken in PMs etc they could probably build up a strong case for action. They don't always get this evidence, though.
=Revz
Edit: See above post for proof! Any comments by the GMs?
Bitter much?UndyingAngel said:nice to see the TWL wanker him self about
perhabs you should reread Reqs posts, just for good measure and indepth understanding.Oboy said:nope, u cant as GOA has decided it should be so, but the only resson for it seems to be saving GM´s time with deals/trades gone wrong (and u still have to deal with this as ppl ignore the coc and still sell and when it goes wrong they blame it on a hacker)
imo this isnt a valid resson and anyone putting lots of time and money in the game atleast want the subs cost back when they quit.
Danya said:Bitter much?
You lied to get in and got kicked for it. Your own fault.
Revz said:Sadly it seems I cared about the integrity of the game more than the people running it In the early days being called an "ebayer" was a pretty big insult. But then again peoples reputations mattered and the community was quite tight. By the time I left it was just a mess of ebayed accounts and shitty egos.
I also think it had a lot to do with the fact that most guilds were desperate for members and would gladly overlook a bought account if it got them a level 50 member. If you call them on it they get all defensive. On the other hand we kicked you out for buying/selling as soon as we found out because we had a bit of moral backbone.
In general we don't enforce it very strongly as it's a victimless 'crime' and we have better things to do with our time. When an account that has been traded starts to cause problems for us however, then we won't hesitate to shut it down and the fact that it's been traded will be taken into account when determining the punishment for lesser breaches of the CoC. We still reserve the right to take action against traded accounts and uphold our CoC, but this particular area is a very low priority.Revz said:I'd still be interested to see a response from Jup (who seems to know a bit about this) or Requiel about the enforcement in light of all this. It does seem that if you keep your nose clean and aren't hacking or causing major trouble on a bought account then you can quite happily go on playing with it for as long as you want. Even freely admitting the account is bought while in game doesn't seem to warrant any action (what more proof do you need?). Basically if they were serious about dealing with this particular breach of the EULA they could - but obviously they aren't as it would create more work and massively cut into the population given how many accounts seem to be bought and sold now.
Furthermore I think the community would actually be quite upset by it since they seem to have gotten so laissez faire about the issue. I bet there are an awful lot of people out there in guids who have a couple of members with bought accounts.
GReaper said:GOA has never taken any action on a traded account, unless there has been any other problems (hacking, character deletion, etc.).
It may be against the EULA of DAoC Europe, but they've never enforced it.
Our underlying approach is that it's wrong and you aren't allowed to do it. Of course it does happen and we are aware of it. While we may turn a blind eye to most of it, we will still take action if we feel that the game is being adversely affected by someone's actions. Spamming account/RL cash trades in /br for example will get you slapped as will large scale commercial farming - I recently shut down the European operations of a well-known plats-for-cash website for example.Revz said:I see, thanks for the reply. Is this an approach that has evolved over time or has GOA always viewed account trading in this manner? Do you take any action if people report them as traded or is it just if they are guilty of other things as well? Also, how do you differentiate account trading from other real money transactions (RMT) in game? Especially if the account is laden with items and plat for example.
Obviously if plat farming accounts were causing a problem for legitimate players you would presumably deal with them but if someone is selling in game money and items for real money on Ebay it would seem to fit the profile of a "victimless crime" and hence slip under your radar. There has been a lot of talk about all of this recently with SOE bringing in Sony Exchange for certain servers in EQ2 and so it is very interesting to see the spectrum of responses from different companies. I guess as the game ages even further your response to the issue may change again?