What Would Matt Do

First, Second Labs doesn’t fair so well when holding their TOS up in front of a judge. From Raph:

What it boils down to, though, is that the court is saying that some pretty common elements of TOS agreements may be considered unfair by law

Is this big news to people? Really? TOSes have been thought by more than a few to be pretty unenforceable in a court of law for a good long time. From the ones on the inside of shrink wrapped packages to the click-through versions we play MMOs with, it’s been pretty iffy. But I think the holy trinity of guys I linked above are on to something, this could have a big effect through out the industry…

Second, a Class Action lawsuit is being brought against…IGE! I know, confusing, right. What are they charging in this lawsuit?

Because of IGE’s infusion of gold, virtual currency being held by honest Subscribers is constantly devalued. The devaluation of this virtual currency has an economic value in real dollars as reflected on Defendants’ website. This devaluation of Plaintiff and the Class’s gold, which was caused by Defendants’ sale of gold in World of Warcraft, is conservatively, in the millions of dollars.

This seems to present all kinds of problems to me. One, to devalue something, doesn’t it have to have value in the first place? And doesn’t Blizzard’s TOS clearly (heh) state that you can’t buy and sell anything in their game because you don’t actually own any of it? Oh, right, the above TOS problems. Well, still, if the gold has a real world value, who defines it? If anyone, isn’t it IGE, the biggest gold farmer in the US? Second, assuming they can get by that problem, and that’s a huge if, then they have to prove IGE devalues the currency. Devalues something which by the TOS (I know, I know) says doesn’t exist.

Both of these things are really interesting in terms of what MMOs allow, either through inaction or directly, and should help shape future MMOs.

Interesting times we live in. The MMO industry is still just a baby and we could be witnessing some harsh growing pains.

What Would Matt Do: Get some popcorn, keep on eye things and as Lum does in his piece, wonder where Blizzard falls on the suit about the value of their gold.

I was reading an article a bit back about some words Jeffrey Steefel said.

“…we all know that something will happen in the next two to five years to business models in general, so we’re paying attention to what’s going on; watching what’s going on with Sony Station whose servers support and manage this.”

He’s very right. Something in regards to allowing purchase of in-game items will definitely happen. But I don’t think he’s thinking big enough.

Let me take in into the future, the maybe not to distant future, a dark future some might say, a grand vision others might suggest. I say a future that is inevitable.

In this future, you log into your MMO, similar to how you do now, but instead of being greeted by the latest changes, notes on the world changes, etc, you’ll be greeted by the deal of the week, “Click here to buy a mount at half price!”. If you, the intrepid gamer, were to click there, you would be brought to a page that shows a price, lets say $10 cold hard cash, and asked to confirm your purchase price. And if you confirmed, by the time you finished getting into your character, you’d have a deed to redeem for a mount in your backpack. No long quest, no requirements that you can’t meet yet, no harvesting two bazillion of some creature/resource. Just a few clicks and you’ve caught up with the Joneses. Well, kinda. Because I bet you haven’t yet purchased an elite mount or super fast hooves for your new mount and so on.

At this point you might be saying, ok, yeah, I can see that, it’s coming. But here’s the part you maybe aren’t seeing. This dark super-future will also so you just about anything else in game you want to buy. And it will be guaranteed. Yep, guaranteed. If someone hacks into your account, or you at the very least claim they do, you will be refunded either the money or just be given back the loot. The company will be responsible for your items and you will be unable to lose to them game bugs, server crashes, etc. Because the MMO company will be legally required guarantee everything they sell to you.

This future MMO company will be required to do so. And they will have records to back up all transactions in and out of the game that affect their game. You will be able to log into your account and see all purchases made on your account, when, what and to what character it was given. Maybe even where you traded/sold it eventually. They will do all of this because laws will have been passed that require virtual property to be recognized as actual property. When you buy something in the game, you’ve bought it for good. Maybe you can’t hold it in your hand, but you own it all the same.

This crazy future MMO will not only sell you items of actual value, they will sell most everything in the game in one way or another. Don’t want to spend the time working up to a Xth level char? Click here to buy one. Saw a really cool weapon on some guy down the way? Only costs $50 to have one of your very own.

This is coming. It may not be soon, but I guarantee MMO companies are only going to be able to get by claiming they don’t allow buying/selling of credits/items in their game for so long (and what’s with going after the little people when IGE has been around forever?).

What Would Matt Do: Wonder how the game will be played when the pellets can be purchased in advance…

Not only does she live, she still whoops the ass.

I realize that at some game companies, “community” consists entirely of board wrangling. However, when they call that “community,” they are what I like to call “full of moose diarrhea.” Don’t confuse a minimum wage board monkey marking time until he gets on the design team with a professional community manager.

I’ve always appreciated Sanya’s hard work on DAOC and commented awhile back how she, and the general policies at Mythic, really made the game for me. DAOC is still the one MMO I never felt like the developers hated or ignored me. So I’m glad she’s back and in an asskicking mode

I have some advice, speaking from long experience: Get. Over. Yourself. Junior high was a long damn time ago. Acknowledge that you will always be sensitive about certain things, and compensate accordingly. It’s that easy if you choose to make it that easy. Also, emo? Was never cool. Trust me.

I think I’m in love.

Not only is this a pretty good rant, well worthy of a first post on any site, much less one with a horribly cool name, she’s completely and totally right.

Are you seeing the pattern yet? If you genuinely care about your customers, both developer and player, you will make the right decisions, none of which involve going postal in public.

Giving a shit appears to be a prerequisite to doing a good job as a Community Manager. Funny that.

I’d like to nominate this entry as required reading for all current and new forum monkeys. Well, maybe just the community managers. The true minimum wage forum monkeys might cry after reading this. The whole thing is right, from top to bottom and it isn’t just the way to be a good Community Manager, it’s a good way to be a better employee, a better developer and a better CEO. You have to fricking care about all involved. If you’re doing your job and you don’t care about the people involved, you’re doing yourself and your work a disservice.

Congrats on the new site, Sanya (her site mentions she doesn’t much like Tweety anymore) and congrats on having common sense. I love ya for it!

What Would Matt Do: I done linked her. I know she was waiting with breath held!

This is the very first in a series of updates brought to you with my soon to be patented technique, the No Look Hunt and Peck™ technique. Yes it does suck. I shall, hence, be less wordy than usual (shush you). Broken finger ahoy!

On to why I’m potentially disappointed. Starcraft 2.

I know, right? I should be all excited. I should be jumping for joy. I’ve been wanting another Starcraft game for awhile now…but then I read the previews and watched the admittedly small video of gameplay footage. And I started to remember Blizzard while being the WoW, Warcraft 2 and Diablo guys are also the Warcraft 3 guys.

And then we have little nuggets of information like this:

The last group of questions concerned the game’s obvious similarity to the original. While many present thought the game looked great, it was hard to miss how closely the footage shown seemed to hew to the original’s gameplay. Pardo seemed to feel the question a bit negative and said that during the design phase of the game, the team took a look at a lot of competitive products and felt that all of the big new “meta-features” they advertised (he specifically mentioned Supreme Commander’s zoom camera) actually help keep them from being competitive.

So those new fangled features those damn kids use now days, like zooming (wtf?), are ruining those games…that doesn’t bode well.

Well, what changes do they plan on to answer the questions of similarity between this one and the original?

StarCraft II is being designed to meet the needs of both the pro and casual gamers and the team is sticking with what works and isn’t trying to go radically far afield. They’re focusing instead on much smaller innovations (often at the unit and UI level) that serve to deepen and alter the game’s strategic structure and gameplay.

Hmmm… Anyone else getting that, omg the War3 team is working on this and they saw nothing wrong with War3! feeling?

To be fair, we don’t have much to work with at this point AND they are still in heavy development. So anything could happen, the game isn’t locked down and we don’t really know much about it at this point.

What worries me is this… They see newer RTS features as holding the genre back. They don’t plan on making big changes, but instead releasing a minor upgrade, it sounds, to SC1. Blizzard, good buddy, RTSes have moved on. They have evolved. They have “meta-features” because stagnation was setting in in the industry. If you’re going to release a straight sequel to SC1 a decade later, I don’t know how interested I’m going to be. I load up SC1 from time to time for nostalgia purposes, not because the gameplay is so innovative compared to today’s games.

What Would Matt Do: One, I’ll continue to hold out hope. Maybe the game will be fun. But I won’t be half as interested in a Blizzard RTS as I was before the release of War3. And the previews aren’t making me think they’ve learned lessons from War3. Oh, just think how much raving I could have done with all of my fingers!

And I’ll be unable to update after surgery for a couple of days (probably won’t have much until next week). So while I’m away, don’t think about Sigil being destroyed or how Brad Mcquiad is a monkey ass. Instead, spend your time considering how Halo 3 is more of the same, a company called Gamecock not only exists but is publishing one of the potential AAA full on hit games of 2008(?). Or maybe how you could be gaming with Japanese Bikini models and not even know it. Even better, don’t forget, this Saturday, Blizzard is NOT announcing a Starcraft MMORPG. Personally, I’m hoping it’s Diablo 3.

Most of all though, wish me luck since I’ll now be a one handed typer for weeks to come. Stupid pins in my finger.

What Would Matt Do: If I can figure out some way to get the X-Rays online, I’ll share them. My finger looks so cool all messed up.