Andrés Guadamuz, lecturer in law at Edinburgh, and co-organizer of the upcoming, very-cool-looking GikIII Conference at Oxford, has waived his claim of copyright infringement against me for cutting and pasting below a recent blog posting he put up at Technollama.
It's a really interesting post. As Andres frames it, it is about how disgruntled Alliance players have come up with a clever, though perhaps somewhat EULA-non-compliant hack to enable community self-help (aka murder) as means of silencing n00b bot gold spammers on the cobbled streets of Stormwind. Screenshot at right.
So without further ado, here goes: (btw, original, llama-inclusive version here):
A curious scene has been taking place in the streets of Stormwind. The square between the Auction House and the Bank is by far the busiest place in the game, with dozens of players moving to and from the commercial hub. This is why the square is also the favourite location for gold spammers. The spammers are randomly generated Level 1 characters, operated as bots and programmed to repeat an endless stream of ads. The typical message gives the name of the site, and the current price of gold. The constant stream of chat spam is so annoying that it has become a serious problem for players. Most people ignore it, but there are some who have taken the law into their own hands.
It is not possible to hurt a character from your own faction without inviting them to duel. Even if a player from another faction got there, he would not be able to kill the spammer, as he needs to be flagged for PvP. However, someone found that a shaman can cast a totem that will give just enough damage for a few seconds to all around it, even players from the same faction. This will not hurt anyone else, but it will kill a level 1 character. Because these are bots, the corpse will sit there, and will not resurrect. One can't spam when one is dead.
There are several legal issues here. Firstly is the legality of killing another player in this fashion. Interestingly, this is an action that is considered to be a game exploit, and therefore it is a bannable offence that would fall under s B.7-8 of WoW's Terms of Use. According to that, users may not:
"7. Harass, threaten, stalk, embarrass or cause distress, unwanted attention or discomfort to any user of the Program;
8. Cheat or utilize "exploits" while playing the Program in any way, including without limitation modification of the Program’s files;"Because the exploit is a bannable offence, the thread where it was explained was deleted, but by the wonders of Google cache, you can find it here.
The second legal question is one of regulation. It seems like WoW is somewhat reluctant to completely stamp out gold selling and spam; see Judge Ung-Gi Yoon's excellent article on the subject (thanks to Nic Suzor for the link). However, there are several regulatory responses to the problem posed by chat spam. The first one is to use the top-down, legislative and contract approach, which is to make this a bannable offence under the terms of use. Sections B.2-3 of the Terms of Use deal with that:
"2. Carry out any action with a disruptive effect, such as intentionally causing the Chat screen to scroll faster than other users are able to read, or setting up macros with large amounts of text that, when used, can have a disruptive effect on the normal flow of Chat;
3. Disrupt the normal flow of dialogue in Chat or otherwise act in a manner that negatively affects other users including without limitation posting commercial solicitations and/or advertisements for goods and services available outside of the World of Warcraft universe;"While this is enforced, the solution by spammers is to create characters as soon as the old ones are deleted, which explains why gold farmers are all Level 1. As with email spam, the second solution is code. SpamMeNot is a WoW plugin which filters out most of the chat spam, and a very effective one at that.
The third solution is the vigilantism described. It is intriguing how virtual communities will revert to community enforcement when they perceive that the legal solutions are not working. Suddenly, it is the Wild West all over again.
I'm sure that Blizzard will soon plug this exploit, but on the meantime, all bots in the vicinity of Stormwind better beware. Avatars are up in arms, and they want revenge.
It's rather doubtful that this is a realistic method of stopping gold farming -- I imagine Andres would agree. Still, the post is rather relevant, I think, to our recent discussion about what constitutes an appropriate means of enforcing rules against RMT in the context of the current Blizzard litigation.
p.s. Though I can't relate this bit to virtual worlds, I feel I really ought to say that if you add Technollama to your RSS feed, you'll get regular updates the next time Andres enters into the thick of a media whirlwind over the copyright battles arising between Ood-knitting fans of Dr. Who and the BBC.
No seriously, you will -- see this, this and this. Perhaps I'm somewhat biased, but imho, that's quite wonderful stuff.
Interesting that someone's found a way to go vigilante on their own faction . . . I have to be honest, I rather wish that WoW allowed same-faction killing (with consequences, of course) just so that I could have a chance to smear some of the really annoying people . . .
On the OT stuff: !!! Knitted Oods are disturbingly cute and innocuous-looking, given their terrifying behavior in the one Ood-laden episode I've seen. For that matter, so are the knitted Daleks!
Posted by: N. M. Heckel | May 23, 2008 at 15:35
I love how you spin this as anti-cheater. I encountered players dropping this totem in the Auction House and killing newbies and bank alts alike.
Griefers are griefers, regardless of their target.
Posted by: Rohan | May 23, 2008 at 15:52
It requires a bit more effort, but doesn't broken doomguard rain of fire work just as well?
Posted by: Jezebeau | May 23, 2008 at 16:04
Rohan, is someone who defends the town square a griefer, or a sherrif?
I would really be interested in seeing the Bartle Type data for the people who discovered this, and the people doing it. A very interesting instance of depth the designers didn't know existed.
Posted by: Bret | May 23, 2008 at 20:16
As pointed out by N. M. Heckel, the ability to kill off members of your own faction is a rather seducing thought once every so often; very exploitable too, thus needing an insane amount of customer (GM) support, which nobody at Blizzard in their sane minds would offer. Costs, costs, costs.
A different solution would be equipping the level 70s with the ability to kill of spammers though and reminding them of the consequences. I doubt that many of the people, who spent six month levelling their character, would like to get a four week ban for killing of a newbie. Just my two pence.
Posted by: Nicholas Chambers | May 25, 2008 at 09:31
I seem to remember a similar "exploit" in Ultima Online. I'm a bit hazy on the details, but I think you used to be able to take a trapped chest from a dungeon, place it next to (e.g.) the bank, and then trigger the trap. This killed the nearby victim(s), without the aggressor being flagged as having killed someone in a guarded zone.
Back in MUD 1, a wizard could take the dragon, put it in a sack, and then drop it at the entrance. Great fun.
Possibly a griefer, because they don't own the monopoly of violence for that town square.
Posted by: SusanC | May 25, 2008 at 11:13
"It is intriguing how virtual communities will revert to community enforcement when they perceive that the legal solutions are not working."
***
It is common for virtual communities to practice community enforcement. Whenever. Alla time. Regardless.
Good example tho.
Posted by: dmyers | May 25, 2008 at 13:09
I commented on this over at my blog: The War Against Gold Farmers.
Please excuse some of the errors on the site as it's still in beta and we don't have all of the content and bugs 100% worked out yet.
I thought I would comment as this post ties in partly with the goal of our site which is to bring self-regulation (but with information not in-game exploits) to the RMT industry by making critical information about the (often shady, like most black market industries) industry available to consumers who can then vote with their dollars (Note: which we then get 10% of through affiliate programs). It also includes some cool charts in an attempt to create a WSJ/TheStreet.com feel to the virtual currency industry.
Right now we are putting together a database of companies that spam and planning to target them through SEO and Search Engine PPC along with a public publicity campaign to refer them to more reputable vendors. If spamming hurts a companies reputation enough that consumers go to competitors (and we plan to intentionally target the spammers potential customers to provide them with information to direct them to more reputable alternatives) it should decrease the rewards for spammers, and thus decrease spam.
Hopefully that wasn't too shameless of a self-plug, but I've been involved around virtual currency since 2000 and read TerraNova since around 03, a lot of which inspired the site so I felt like sharing what we've worked on for a while here first and hopefully someone will find it interesting.
Posted by: Andrew | May 25, 2008 at 17:39
Don't forget that all the people who kill such bots are, according to Blizzard, copyright infringers.
Violate ToS + copy game into RAM = infringer.
Posted by: xxRevenge | May 26, 2008 at 16:00
Posted by: Tim | May 27, 2008 at 11:08
Rohan, is someone who defends the town square a griefer, or a sherrif?
I think vigilante really is the word. Someone who takes the law into their own hands. I think its hilarious on a personal level, but if anyone gets banned specifically for this, I'd have some serious questions about it. Is it illegal to stop someone from acting illegally? And if you're the only one who CAN cause violence in the town square, don't you automatically own the monopoly?
Posted by: Adam Ruch | May 27, 2008 at 21:16
I hate spammers ... they're present in every MMO games I've seen !
if there's spammer advertising for illegal ways to get to the top ... it's because some lazy players buy those services ... or the gold ... or the power leveling ... just because they don't understand it's just a game ... That's a shame but there's a lot of simple players who are responsible for the spammers ...
Kill them all ...
Posted by: Christobaal | May 29, 2008 at 06:25
how do you play the games?
Posted by: natty | Jun 01, 2008 at 04:42
@Bret
Sheriffs have badges.
Posted by: thoreau | Jun 10, 2008 at 03:35
> Sheriffs have badges.
We don't need no steenkin' badges!
Posted by: Andres | Jun 20, 2008 at 03:44
As someone who grew tired of daily quests and a guild that makes Kara runs at dinner time in my house I've turned largely to playing the auction house - which I can do in 10 minute bursts as time allows. This tactic - (which I admire) - catches those of us with level 1 banks/mules as well and can be frustrating.
Guess I'll actually have to spend a little time leveling up my auction slave.... She managed to make over 10k in gold without getting past 5 xp bars.
Posted by: Lee Wilson | Jun 20, 2008 at 15:14
I love how so many people around here like to make so much out of nothing. OMG they are taking back control and fighting spammers...please lets do a study!! This exploit was used excessively NOT to bother spam bots, but to have a laugh at the dead bodies of new players in the noob zones. I am stunned that anyone turns this around as an exploit being used for the greater good. Does anyone here actually play wow or do you just study others playing wow...probably all RP servers right?
Posted by: JM | Jul 09, 2008 at 19:44