On August 01 2011 12:08 acker wrote:
Your first paragraph doesn't make any sense. No one has ever been able to stop hacking, but it Blizzard has been able to minimize it in recent games. The second part after the comma is not at all self-evident. Indeed, it largely relies on the assumption of the second paragraph; since black markets will continue to exist, the ability to safely launder money will be unhindered, and therefore illegitimate users will be able to exploit lower barriers to entry.

The problem is, your second paragraph would have to assume that black markets will be fixed, held constant, in order to fulfill the following logical step. This is a terrible assumption. Unless, of course, you explain WHY every single person in the black market business, or even a majority of people, would prefer to keep using "malware-ridden websites" over Blizzard's market.

You don't know anything about how Blizzard will implement this. All everyone knows at this point is that people can buy items with real cash on the official auction house. For you to claim "this will happen and I can say why", you would need proof that no one else on the planet outside of Blizzard has. Your rant breaks down there. Because if even some people abandon sites like d2jsp, it becomes some variant of Economics 101, albeit with complications...

There are other problems in your post...like, for instance, the fact that people who would never enter an illegitimate market would enter Blizzard's market helps economies of scale for Blizzard, making illegitimate markets less competitive, which would cause even more problems for your first paragraph. But those problems are minor compared to the assumptions behind the second.

The point is that given that hacking hasn't be stopped, it's safe to assume that Blizzard will probably not be successful this time around as well. It doesn't imply certainty, obviously, but it's the most likely outcome given past scenarios. I was hinting at the possibility of hacking being more rewarding due to the ease of translating virtual goods to real, tangible ones. I'm not sure why you think this makes no sense at all or why you chose to focus on Blizzard minimizing hacking, which is arguable at best. Sure, they try -- it's in their best interest -- but that hardly means a thing when hacking is quite rampant, even more so on games where farming is a sort of, say, crux, like WoW.

As far as the second paragraph goes, I believe that illegitimate sites MIGHT be reduced to very few key communities which might limit themselves to setting up dummy transactions on, for example, forums such that they would, then, use Blizzard's system whilst avoiding higher royalty fees - removing a barrier to market flooding and setting themselves up without much of an investment.

I actually never claimed that what I was saying was gospel and I made it quite clear when I, myself, mentioned that we still do not by any chance know how the system will work. It was mere speculation given a very simple framework and basic assumptions. I don't really get how or why you'd even bother to point this out in the first place after I had put a disclaimer up on this same issue.