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On July 17 2012 01:43 uikos wrote:
To those who don't care, let me ask you this: How is this /any/ different from paying someone to take your SATs for you? It's vaguely similar to become a professional gamer. There are many different ways to get exposure in the Starcraft scene, and one of the ways is to work your way to becoming GM. At the very least, it gives local recognition.
Regarding the SAT-analogy: YES, there's a smart kid who probably deserves to have more money. YES, these tests don't really mean much anyways (we all know kids who are extremely brilliant but just didn't score well on the SATs). YES, only idiots would pay for a service like this. YES, these tests are only a fraction of what you need to achieve your goal (in the case of Starcraft: becoming profession. In the case of education: getting into a good college). And YES, a lot of us (college-kids) have thought about tutoring high school kids for quick-money, and we just need to wave our SAT scores around to convince others we're a qualified tutor.
But would you really not mind if this was a common phenomeon?
And if you do (and I'll imagine that most of us would mind), how is selling GM accounts that drastically different from offering to take someone else's SAT? Is it ridicious to want a more legitimate Starcraft ladder?
I (obviously) don't know how an ideal GM system would be implemented (with updating, and MMR-decay and whatnot). But that being said, takes one mindset to say "An ideal GM is hard to make," and a completely different mindset to say "Well the GM system is broken anyways, so who the fuck cares?" And I seriously hope that everyone who said they were part of the latter truely meant to say they were part of the former.
Because the SATs are actually tied to you. As in you need ID from a government or your school to verify your identity. Starcraft does not require this.
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if blizzard system wasn't so bad, this wouldn't be an issue.
LiquidRet was #1 master.. gm comes out and he wasn't on so he didn't get in. Only way to get out of gm is have 150+ bonus
Blizzard is the joke, not people paying for leveling.
edit~ and people getting gm with 0-1 record
LOL!
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means absolutely fuck all... people who care are the same delusional idiots who would pay for the service in the first place. If you can't beat the guys who are leveling accounts, you can't win a fucking tourny. Don't treat ladder as a status symbol treat it as a means to get yourself to where you want to be on a personal level.
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On July 17 2012 04:29 Xyik wrote:
I can't believe people think this is okay. Progamers are taking advantage of stupid kids with money, and stupid kids with money can potentially scam other stupid kids with money by offering coaching under the guise of being a GM player.
No offense to them, but if they are ill-informed in how the world works it is their fault anyway.
I don't agree that it's right, but I also think this discussion is ineffective as there is nothing Blizzard can do unless the person promotes it. And even that will lead nowhere. Blizzard should look into the map hackers more than this anyway, since that really disrupts gameplay even more than this topic does.
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To be honest I find it much more disturbing and unfair that people are in GM just by 6pooling :D
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Unfortunately, you can get a really high MMR and coast by in GM for awhile just losing 1 game every 2 weeks. I know my MMR had me playing high masters ( I was high masters when I took a break ) ppl for the like 6 months even though I barely ever played the game and lost almost every game that I did happen to play. So I don't find it unlikely you could have maybe 5% to 20% of GM being taken up by these kinds of accounts which is unfortunate but, really unavoidable. Stupid kids with parents money exist in every online game, you have the same self-entitled undeserving brats running around in every MMO pretending to be badasses in someone else's accomplishments.
Also, people making money off kids with parents money is like a staple of the US economy at least. Just look at all of our marketing, for christ's sake bathroom cleaning products are even marketed to children. Because their the easiest target market in the world to sway into wasting money. So this shouldn't be anything new for most of us ( not sure about the EU but I bet it's the same there ).
At any rate I think any intelligent person learns sooner or later that it's about the journey, not the destination. If kids want to buy meaningless ladder pts and then go brag about their GM accounts in stream chats while eating more Cheetos and drinking more Dr. Pepper .. let them. Sooner or later they might realize how much time they wasted, or not. Who cares?
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On July 17 2012 04:51 Synk wrote:
Unfortunately, you can get a really high MMR and coast by in GM for awhile just losing 1 game every 2 weeks. I know my MMR had me playing high masters ( I was high masters when I took a break ) ppl for the like 6 months even though I barely ever played the game and lost almost every game that I did happen to play. So I don't find it unlikely you could have maybe 5% to 20% of GM being taken up by these kinds of accounts which is unfortunate but, really unavoidable. Stupid kids with parents money exist in every online game, you have the same self-entitled undeserving brats running around in every MMO pretending to be badasses in someone else's accomplishments.
Also, people making money off kids with parents money is like a staple of the US economy at least. Just look at all of our marketing, for christ's sake bathroom cleaning products are even marketed to children. Because their the easiest target market in the world to sway into wasting money. So this shouldn't be anything new for most of us ( not sure about the EU but I bet it's the same there ).
At any rate I think any intelligent person learns sooner or later that it's about the journey, not the destination. If kids want to buy meaningless ladder pts and then go brag about their GM accounts in stream chats while eating more Cheetos and drinking more Dr. Pepper .. let them. Sooner or later they might realize how much time they wasted, or not. Who cares?
You know you get kicked out when you have to much bonus pool right?
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United States12243 Posts
On July 17 2012 03:47 ragz_gt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 03:44 eksert wrote:
It should be considered ban worthy i think.. many newcomer players show themselves in tourneys or entering GM. That will reduce their chances of being noticed. If you think it's a good reason to ban Startale_Rainbow, well, good luck to you.
I'd definitely push for such a ban, and I say this as someone who watched his stream more frequently than any other featured stream on TL. Rainbow is one of my favorite players.
Lots of people have issue with the ladder because it's so obfuscated, and lots of people (high-level players in particular) hate GM because it's essentially a snapshot rather than a constantly-updated definitive list of the top 200 players in a region. That doesn't mean that GM has no merit to most players, because the non-GM players look to GM as their next progression point or as a list of players to track. Players in GM league commonly wear that as a badge of honor. GM is not intended to be the same as an up-to-date "200 best" list, instead it's designed to showcase notable players for a season (and the seasons are pretty short anyway). It seems to fit that role with how often players are chatting about who's new in GM. GM does mean something in that regard, as it should.
Players who are not only boosting other people's accounts but profiting off them ruin the integrity of the most prominent league in the game. The "free market" argument doesn't apply here because there is actual system manipulation practiced. It's one thing to offer training or coaching, quite another to actively cheat via account sharing (which is also prohibited by the way).
There's another issue with GM related to the limited number of slots, and that's using multiple accounts. I've seen quite a few examples of players looking to get all 2/3/4/5 (or however many they have) of their accounts in GM. That can't really be policed effectively (every enforcement method has a workaround), but is also not as detrimental because those accounts aren't getting in under false pretenses. When this happens, instead of 200 unique players it's more like 100 unique players, which just means the people who would be #101-200 need to play that much better to break into GM the next time. That's not as big a deal.
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On July 17 2012 04:55 Roxor9999 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 04:51 Synk wrote:
Unfortunately, you can get a really high MMR and coast by in GM for awhile just losing 1 game every 2 weeks. I know my MMR had me playing high masters ( I was high masters when I took a break ) ppl for the like 6 months even though I barely ever played the game and lost almost every game that I did happen to play. So I don't find it unlikely you could have maybe 5% to 20% of GM being taken up by these kinds of accounts which is unfortunate but, really unavoidable. Stupid kids with parents money exist in every online game, you have the same self-entitled undeserving brats running around in every MMO pretending to be badasses in someone else's accomplishments.
Also, people making money off kids with parents money is like a staple of the US economy at least. Just look at all of our marketing, for christ's sake bathroom cleaning products are even marketed to children. Because their the easiest target market in the world to sway into wasting money. So this shouldn't be anything new for most of us ( not sure about the EU but I bet it's the same there ).
At any rate I think any intelligent person learns sooner or later that it's about the journey, not the destination. If kids want to buy meaningless ladder pts and then go brag about their GM accounts in stream chats while eating more Cheetos and drinking more Dr. Pepper .. let them. Sooner or later they might realize how much time they wasted, or not. Who cares? You know you get kicked out when you have to much bonus pool right?
If they lose enough they can end up playing kids within their actual MMR range (say Gold league plays) and retain a relatively low bonus pool without dropping out of GM.
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On July 17 2012 04:57 Payson wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 04:55 Roxor9999 wrote:On July 17 2012 04:51 Synk wrote:
Unfortunately, you can get a really high MMR and coast by in GM for awhile just losing 1 game every 2 weeks. I know my MMR had me playing high masters ( I was high masters when I took a break ) ppl for the like 6 months even though I barely ever played the game and lost almost every game that I did happen to play. So I don't find it unlikely you could have maybe 5% to 20% of GM being taken up by these kinds of accounts which is unfortunate but, really unavoidable. Stupid kids with parents money exist in every online game, you have the same self-entitled undeserving brats running around in every MMO pretending to be badasses in someone else's accomplishments.
Also, people making money off kids with parents money is like a staple of the US economy at least. Just look at all of our marketing, for christ's sake bathroom cleaning products are even marketed to children. Because their the easiest target market in the world to sway into wasting money. So this shouldn't be anything new for most of us ( not sure about the EU but I bet it's the same there ).
At any rate I think any intelligent person learns sooner or later that it's about the journey, not the destination. If kids want to buy meaningless ladder pts and then go brag about their GM accounts in stream chats while eating more Cheetos and drinking more Dr. Pepper .. let them. Sooner or later they might realize how much time they wasted, or not. Who cares? You know you get kicked out when you have to much bonus pool right? If they lose enough they can end up playing kids within their actual MMR range (say Gold league plays) and retain a relatively low bonus pool without dropping out of GM.
but everyone knows those kind of players actually don't belong in GM... people stop acting like GM means nothing etc just because of this. This is a very rare exception
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Honestly though, looking into everything that's gone down so far... Who gives a shit if progamers are making a bit of cash off idiots? We should support it, they probably couldn't support themselves if these "loop"holes into progaming weren't there, so we either all start flooding cash into eSports or shut up about it.
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This is the exact same thing as HuK getting top 5 on NA with Sad and Depression, and then Bomber getting into KR GM doing the same with his main and Ares, and then MKP with 베스킨라빈스 and his bar-code account.
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You know you get kicked out when you have to much bonus pool right?
I thought it was just a game every 2 weeks, maybe I'm mistaken? But it doesn't really matter does it, you still end up with a ton of un-earned masters league accounts, almost indefinitely. Since I know from experience it takes like 30+ loses to get demoted from a High masters MMR. I know less people care about illegitimate Masters accounts but it's still not right. But again, I don't really think it's preventable I just acknowledge that it's wrong and move on with my day. Maybe one day some game maker will find a cost effective way of shutting it down, I don't really care that much.
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On July 17 2012 05:00 Kaitokid wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 04:57 Payson wrote:On July 17 2012 04:55 Roxor9999 wrote:On July 17 2012 04:51 Synk wrote:
Unfortunately, you can get a really high MMR and coast by in GM for awhile just losing 1 game every 2 weeks. I know my MMR had me playing high masters ( I was high masters when I took a break ) ppl for the like 6 months even though I barely ever played the game and lost almost every game that I did happen to play. So I don't find it unlikely you could have maybe 5% to 20% of GM being taken up by these kinds of accounts which is unfortunate but, really unavoidable. Stupid kids with parents money exist in every online game, you have the same self-entitled undeserving brats running around in every MMO pretending to be badasses in someone else's accomplishments.
Also, people making money off kids with parents money is like a staple of the US economy at least. Just look at all of our marketing, for christ's sake bathroom cleaning products are even marketed to children. Because their the easiest target market in the world to sway into wasting money. So this shouldn't be anything new for most of us ( not sure about the EU but I bet it's the same there ).
At any rate I think any intelligent person learns sooner or later that it's about the journey, not the destination. If kids want to buy meaningless ladder pts and then go brag about their GM accounts in stream chats while eating more Cheetos and drinking more Dr. Pepper .. let them. Sooner or later they might realize how much time they wasted, or not. Who cares? You know you get kicked out when you have to much bonus pool right? If they lose enough they can end up playing kids within their actual MMR range (say Gold league plays) and retain a relatively low bonus pool without dropping out of GM. but everyone knows those kind of players actually don't belong in GM... people stop acting like GM means nothing etc just because of this. This is a very rare exception
Where anywhere did I throw out there that GM means nothing? I simply stated that if you lose enough games in GM, you can play players similar to your MMR rating and keep the bonus pool low, therefore, not being kicked out of GM.
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On July 16 2012 16:57 Ketch wrote:
What the hell? People think progamers need the money? They are cheating the ladder, that's what it is. Cannot fathom why people would say this is acceptable. Invites to various tournaments/qualifiers are based on the ladder ranking, so it better mean something... :/
Correct me if i'm wrong but most qualifiers are open and the only one in recent memory that were even slightly based off ladder ranking were the WCS. Also yes progamers need money, if progaming isn't even slightly profitable Starcraft 2 tournaments will cease to exist. Also they are not cheating in anyway, they are simply using their own skill to level an account.
The amount of stupidity in this post is the only thing i cannot fathom.
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On July 17 2012 05:03 PlacidPanda wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2012 16:57 Ketch wrote:
What the hell? People think progamers need the money? They are cheating the ladder, that's what it is. Cannot fathom why people would say this is acceptable. Invites to various tournaments/qualifiers are based on the ladder ranking, so it better mean something... :/ Correct me if i'm wrong but most qualifiers are open and the only one in recent memory that were even slightly based off ladder ranking were the WCS. Also yes progamers need money, if progaming isn't even slightly profitable Starcraft 2 tournaments will cease to exist. Also they are not cheating in anyway, they are simply using their own skill to level an account. The amount of stupidity in this post is the only thing i cannot fathom.
Um, the extra cash they get from leveling accounts isn't going to sustain progaming either. It's a sorry excuse to say its okay to level other peoples accounts.
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On July 16 2012 19:32 dudesrslywtf wrote:
"The people most likely to buy leveling services are associated with hacking and botting communities. Indeed, many of the ads I mentioned are on hacking sites."
I feel like this needs some clarification. I've never been to a hacking site so I don't know how it works. Are these ads from pro-gamers posts in a forum or are they paid advertising banners or what? I think it's a huge problem if pro-gamers are providing financial support to the very same people who are ruining this game. On the flip side, even if they are just free ads or forum posts or something, I find the fact that pro-gamers are willing to grace these sites with their presence shows a disturbing affiliation between them that makes me uncomfortable.
Since no-one responded to my post, I decided to google for these "hacking sites" to see for myself what was going on on them. I have to admit I was shocked and disappointed by what I found.
I only browsed the first site that popped up in the search results. The site was basically just a big forum with a ton of ad banners all over it. At first I just hit refresh over and over to see if pro-gamers were buying ad banners, but I didn't notice any.
However, every forum thread has multiple ad banners automatically inserted into them, chosen at random. I found threads advertising SC2 account levelling services and they were littered with ad banners. What this means is that every pro-gamer or organization that advertises account levelling (or any service for that matter) at these forums is helping to generate ad revenue that supports a network of hackers who's only aim is to destroy this game. Honestly it's no wonder some of these pro-gamers are unwilling to disclose their identity directly in the ad for their service... they could and probably should lose their career over something like this.
I'll admit that I think account levelling is unethical and ruins the environment of fair play that Blizzard is trying to create, but at the same time I can understand the reasoning for most of the counter arguments that have been brought up in this thread (even if I disagree with them). But I don't see how there can be any debate over the fact that these pro-gamers are helping a network of hackers generate the financial support it needs to keep their website going and the hacks coming. Such a shame.
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On July 17 2012 03:41 MrRicewife wrote:No. The closest you can get is 2. C. + Show Spoiler +Exploit the Game or any of its parts for any commercial purpose without Blizzard’s express permission, with the sole exception that you may use the Game, or copies of the Game, on the Service at a cyber cafe, computer gaming center or any other location based site And that's ridiculous if you were to argue that. That means every single stream, whether it be major tournaments or hell, you can even argue team liquid as a site, would be in the wrong if you were to argue selling account leveling is against the EULA. And to be honest - your overall tone in your post... it basically sounds like you are jelly you aren't making that money. Seriously. Show nested quote +On July 16 2012 16:29 Doodsmack wrote:It IS hurting other people. The semi-pros in high master who are struggling to break into GM, because GM does in fact provide recognition to players. Ideally GM should be the top 200 ladder players, and not littered with leveled accounts. Aspiring semi-pros are being cheated out of potential opportunities by the people selling these leveling services. Moreover, these leveled accounts basically go inactive save for some occasional playing by the leveler to keep the account from falling out of GM. 1. The amount of 'leveled accounts' in GM is undetermined. It's all heresay. How you can think GM is littered is beyond me. Out of the 200, I can't see anyone arguing it would be more than 5%. Wouldn't that make GM even more prestigious, or in your logic, you would get more 'recognition'. 2. Lol @ hurting people. Semi-pros aren't being held back because of the incredibly small amount of 'fake' accounts. 3. Recognition? The only recognition would be from low-level players like you and I. Teams don't accept you based on your ladder status. Pros do not say "oh, he is GM, he must be good." LMAO. Oh boy... Show nested quote +On July 16 2012 16:29 Doodsmack wrote:people most likely to buy leveling services are associated with hacking and botting communities. Indeed, many of the ads I mentioned are on hacking sites. These people are already willing to hack and buy new accounts to hack with, so it makes sense that they would pay for leveling. I believe the IMMvp account owner hacks in team games and plays with other hackers. Replay evidence here: Ok, now my guts hurt. I'm in hysterics over this one. Are you serious?? Let me explain to you target advertisement. You advertise on websites that know people are spending money, not because "oh, they are hackers, so this is a good place to sell leveling." What kind of logic is : They already spent $60 on a game so they can hack, so OBVIOUSLY they will shell out even more money for something completely irrelevant to hacking. WAT.!!1
Um yes, teams do have ladder rank cut-offs for entry. These are the aspiring semi-pro teams some of which may even provide gear or tourney entry fees etc. And yes it's against the EULA, similar to power leveling in WoW, and general account sharing in SC2. This is common knowledge. Your mocking tone is quite ironic given how uninformed your post is.
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On July 17 2012 04:56 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 03:47 ragz_gt wrote:On July 17 2012 03:44 eksert wrote:
It should be considered ban worthy i think.. many newcomer players show themselves in tourneys or entering GM. That will reduce their chances of being noticed. If you think it's a good reason to ban Startale_Rainbow, well, good luck to you. I'd definitely push for such a ban, and I say this as someone who watched his stream more frequently than any other featured stream on TL. Rainbow is one of my favorite players. Lots of people have issue with the ladder because it's so obfuscated, and lots of people (high-level players in particular) hate GM because it's essentially a snapshot rather than a constantly-updated definitive list of the top 200 players in a region. That doesn't mean that GM has no merit to most players, because the non-GM players look to GM as their next progression point or as a list of players to track. Players in GM league commonly wear that as a badge of honor. GM is not intended to be the same as an up-to-date "200 best" list, instead it's designed to showcase notable players for a season (and the seasons are pretty short anyway). It seems to fit that role with how often players are chatting about who's new in GM. GM does mean something in that regard, as it should. Players who are not only boosting other people's accounts but profiting off them ruin the integrity of the most prominent league in the game. The "free market" argument doesn't apply here because there is actual system manipulation practiced. It's one thing to offer training or coaching, quite another to actively cheat via account sharing (which is also prohibited by the way). There's another issue with GM related to the limited number of slots, and that's using multiple accounts. I've seen quite a few examples of players looking to get all 2/3/4/5 (or however many they have) of their accounts in GM. That can't really be policed effectively (every enforcement method has a workaround), but is also not as detrimental because those accounts aren't getting in under false pretenses. When this happens, instead of 200 unique players it's more like 100 unique players, which just means the people who would be #101-200 need to play that much better to break into GM the next time. That's not as big a deal.
Definitely agree with you here
I also find Blizzard's inconsistency to be rather irritating.
They seem to have a problem with certain people sharing accounts (namely Huk and TLO) and issue warnings accordingly, but can't crack down on the account-sharing issue elsewhere.
I don't mean to bash on Blizzard, but some consistency with dealing with an issue like this would be nice. I personally don't care about account sharing, but I definitely don't agree with it either.
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