Methinks a fool is talking

The Maine GOP is trying to corpse camp State Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz with a website of screenshots of things she wrote in a forum for her World of Warcraft guild.

Most of them are out of context, like how she likes playing as a rogue that stabs people. There's also the occasional vulgarity, disparaging remark about her political opponents and one reference to her left-wing guild jokingly calling itself a socialist guild.

If the occasional joke about fantasy combat disqualifies Lachowicz for office, I'd hate to hear what they would think of the things I did for fun during the four years I played World of Warcraft.

*I started an importing business in Hellfire Peninsula selling Nethergarde Bitters, a plentiful item sold in unlimited quantities in another area, at 40 times the original cost to players undertaking a specific quest, taking advantage of the arbitrage. I wrote a script advertising my service and a second script defending my business's right to exist, as the opportunity cost of fetching the items hurt my customers more than my 39,000 percent markup.

*I encouraged my friends to create a "hit list" of players on our faction that we disliked. I would later promise those players gold and other rewards for help in a simple task to trick them into letting a warlock summon them into a special arenas where players of the same faction could fight each other. Five or six of us would ambush them the moment they arrived.

*When a joke vendor was introduced that sold useless amulets I found I could make a quick profit by selling them to other players at a markup. Instead of providing refunds, I offered buy them back for a fraction of what my marks paid. It was cheaper than buying a fresh one from the vendor and I ended up selling the same worthless necklaces over and over again.

*I adapted a classic con scheme to take advantage of greedy marks. I found a rare item worth about 80 gold and had a friend put it on the auction house with an instant buy-out price of of 200 gold. I then went around and asked if anyone had a copy of the item, offering 300 gold for it. A victim thought I was too lazy to check the auction house and they could make a fast 100 gold off me. He asked me if I was serious and we struck a deal. I saw him walk over to the auction house to buy it, then over to his mailbox to pick it up, and I signed out and never responded to him again. We kept the gold he paid the auction house and we were never caught.

*I spent nine months infiltrating a guild I disliked using an alternate character. I convinced one of the officers if he can beat my friend Eric in a duel I would pay him money and if Eric one I got to be the guild leader for a short while. Eric floored him, as I knew he would, and I cleaned out every coin and item in the guild bank. I then filled the bank with cheap blacksmith hammers and labeled the partitions "hammers" and "more hammers" and posted screenshots on the official forum to mock them. They all quit the guild and I was immune from any punishment, as I never told them the name of my main character and the Blizzard staff do not get involved with issues involving guild banks.

*In the same spirit that Lachowicz's guild called itself socialist, my guild billed itself the world's only all-gay white supremacist guild. We knew other players got the joke, but after viewing ColleensWorld.com I'm not sure the Maine GOP would get the joke.

It was never really about enjoying the profits, it was about the thrill of taking it. I loved to swindle people in the game, but that doesn't mean I am untrustworthy in the real life. It was a safe, controlled setting that didn't hurt anyone and it has no bearings on how I act in the real world.
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Diablo III to use U.S. dollars

Everyone is talking about Blizzard's decision to use a dual-currency system in Diablo III. Players will be able to use the normal in-game gold coins in their adventures and an auction house for looted items, and also be able to sell items in a special second auction house for real U.S. dollars.

The normal reaction people have is that this will allow some rich players to "cheat" the system. Here's are the details of that view:

In the past, players entered the world of Sanctuary as true equals from the same starting point, and through skill, planning and long hours their characters grew more powerful. It's how capitalism is supposed to work.

But now with these legal tender auction houses, Brigham Thaddeus Blueblood IV can spare a few bills and instantly turn his character into a powerhouse. He doesn't have to play very often and his character will trump those of hard-working students. The class struggle has moved online.

So here's why I think that view is wrong.

World of Warcraft has already shown us that tons of players are already cheating the system by purchasing from illegal gold farmers using real money. That perfect, unspoiled online world free from real money is already dead, Blizzard just has the sense to be the one's profiting from it.

That's not to say that gold farmers are completely out of the picture. Blizzard is taking a cut of each auction item when it goes up for sale, when it's sold, and when people want to cash out their account. They've got players coming, going and going home. If these fees are too high, a secondary gold-for-cash industry may exist.

In this quest for fairness, people forget that these games with high level caps and tons of items have always allowed players to become very powerful through a Faustian bargain. Players that sacrificed their own humanity by staying inside, logged on to the game to slay the same demon hog over and over again became those mighty purple-clad level 100 warriors that could push everyone around. It just cost them five hours of each day of their lives.

This has been a battlefield where the working man couldn't compete... because he was too busy at work. It benefited people with either the privilege or curse of having lots of free time to click animated goblins to death.

Yes, you will see some rare items skip the gold-house and go straight to the cash-house. I wonder if Gresham's Law will play a role and cause players to horde their greenbacks and burn through their gold quickly. And no doubt, some cheesy rich kid will gank better, more skilled players and type a series of misspelled words into the chat window.

But it was always like this. The price items command has not yet been determined, but it's possible they will be low enough where it's rational for an average Joe to finish his Monkfish Scales and get the full set bonus for once.

This cash auction house may be a fun way for some players to make a small profit, although the margins will be so low they'd be better off keeping the per-hour rate a mystery. We have plenty of other games that use real money to compare to, and none of them drove out the regular players.

I predict this will be like a Facebook update where everyone gets really upset by the change, complains for a long time, then gets used to it and forgets it was ever any other way.
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