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On July 17 2012 06:32 dudesrslywtf wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 06:05 Dosey wrote:Hackers really don't care who "endorses" them or even if people are "cool" with them. It's an ego thing. Hackers hack because they can, they couldn't give two fucks what you think about them. Even if they weren't making insane profits, they'd still do it even if just for themselves. By "hackers" I meant the people downloading and using the hacks, not the people making them. I apologize, my wording was unclear. I'm sure the people making the hacks don't give a crap about what they're doing (I read the forum's TOS which states that they believe they are making game "enhancements"), but the people who download the hacks (who make up probably the vast majority of that community) are the ones I think are going to be influenced by this.
It's all anonymous though. For all they know, it's another hacker leveling accounts as it is very common for the "better" hackers to do so anyway. It's righteous threads like these that bring to light who actually does the leveling. If it weren't for OP, the hackers would be rather clueless on the matter.
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Honestly your only argument here is that its against the EULA. Its the person who paid for its account, so let him/her risk being banned if he/she wants to take that risk.
Every other statement is personal bias or complete speculation.
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This goes back to what Browder said @ NASL Finals in his interview: PRO GAMERS AREN'T MAKING ENOUGH $$.
Once professional and semi-professional gamers make enough $ and have a stable source of income, many of these problems (Like Savior match-setting) will disappear or become much less frequent. Personally, I see no problem with account leveling -- the points you bring up about people breaking into GM don't really matter since grandmaster league doesn't mean anything -- on any given day the bottom 100 players in GM don't even belong there MMR wise -- Masters players have overtaken them. In order for the average high masters player to break into GM he/she has to play the day it comes out, if the league fills up you will have to be the #1 ranked player in Masters league in order to be moved into it. This defeats your point of the average high masters player attempting to get into GM -- simply put, they won't either way.
Addressing your point about account sharing being against the EULA -- Blizzard usually doesn't even act on infringements. Before their announcement of a mass ban, how many hackers were playing on the NA ladder (Hell, there are STILL many hackers playing on it today). Since blizzard seems to just not care enough to enforce all of its rules, there's no real punishment or way of proof to convict people of account sharing.
I don't really understand your third point. You state that the main source of customers are hackers -- what is your proof? Even so, proof aside, let's look at your statement: "These people are already willing to hack and buy new accounts to hack with, so it makes sense that they would pay for leveling." -- What? What is your point? What harm does this do besides the fact that they fact?
"The people buying these services may even advertise coaching once they get into GM and make money off it." -- What is wrong with coaching? I don't understand. If anything, this may HELP the situation of pro gamers not making nearly enough $$. Sounds like a very convenient and beneficial combination to BOTH parties -- The pros get $, the students help to gain Starcraft II skill, increasing their skill and potentially their community value.
"It's possible that the people acting as intermediaries between the pros performing leveling and the people buying the leveling keep a portion of the proceeds, similar to something like Gosucoaching. If this is the case, the proceeds are likely contributing towards the hacking communities and sustaining them further." There are ALWAYS middlemen, ALWAYS. And OF COURSE they're making money, if they weren't why would they acting as the middle man? Next, you make the assumption that these middle men use the money to contribute to hacking communities to sustain them. Excuse me? Proof? ANY sort of evidence?
Here's something pointing in the other direction: Why would the middle men use the money that they are making to benefit hacking communities? It seems that you are again assuming that these "middle men" are from hacking communities, yet this very well may not be the case. Even if they were, pumping money into an underground community instead of keeping it for themselves seems slightly foolish. This IS in essence your strongest point -- that the middle men are part of hacking communities, so that by buying leveling services one is essentially benefiting hackers. However, since you do not provide any sort of proof, only assume, it cannot be taken seriously.
Because of the lack of proof and abundance of assumptions, we can't conclude anything about leveling companies, except that they benefit professional and semi-professional gamers by giving them a source of $$. Now, if it is discovered that many of your assumptions ARE true (through proof, statements, open examination of the companies in question and the people who run them, ect) the community should taken proper action. However, I have a feeling that leveling services are actually more beneficial to the community at the present by giving gamers money, something that is very hard to come by atm.
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On July 17 2012 05:18 iAmJeffReY wrote:
I'm trying to avoid the rage out, but seriously, why does it matter. It's an icon. If your MMR is high enough, even at high masters you're considered GM. It's not a big deal.
I level names all the time for anyone that asks me to do it. I find it amazingly fun to just troll and try out new strats. There's no harm it in, what so ever.
The real question is why are you so butthurt that you made this thread? What happened to make you so angry to type out that thesis paper?
I don't understand the witch hunt over people leveling names. Nothing is really based off ladder, at all. So what, you didn't get GM this season because of people having leveled names. I think there are a bit too many white knights that care way too much about a video game ladder. It's a game, it's for fun. If someone wants to pay to have an icon, let them do it. It's probably really fun to the pros to actually have FUN and fuck around and troll people, and not be a try hard 24/7.
Hacking? That's a real issue. Account sharing, or leveling, I don't see a problem with it. Since ladder doesn't mean anything, and rank 1, and rank 99 are all the same -- no name nobodies nine times out of ten.
That's actually BS.
First of all. The ladder gets you invites to tournaments. Recently there was a hacker invited to Blizzard World Cup or whatever it was called, because he had high enough ladder rank.
Yeah we're nerds who care about a video gamer ladder. We post on a fucking video game forum - of course we care about the ladder.
This is exactly as bad as hacking, as it gets silver leaguers invites to Blizzard events.
Why would you care about hackers but not account sharing? They result in the exact same things: Deligitimizing the ladder and getting the wrong people invited to big tournaments.
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If people really didn't want things like leveling services to matter so much they'd quit making it matter so much. I for one don't expect some 14 year old kid with mommy's credit card to not go and buy these types of things because they are to naive to realize how unimportant it is. Or for that matter someone older who is to insecure to admit for reason A or B they can't play well enough themselves to make masters/gm. Because 9 times out of 10 that's the people your dealing with who buy these things. In both cases they want to feel like they matter more and are willing to pay to pretend they do.
Can I completely fault the pros for taking these people's money, yes and no. I get that some 'pros' and I use that term loosely can barely afford to keep going. Is another career path in order...maybe, are they going to do that..probably not. Would I fault leagues / blizzard / sites from banning people known to level others accounts. No I sure wouldn't because it goes against the integrity of competition and any real 'pro' shouldn't be doing that. Especially considering some leagues do use ladder as a gauge of entrance and stuff like this can distort that gauge.
All and all I think it's really up to blizzard to...
A) Build a better GM system in the first place, it's not very representative ever of the top 200 players just due to the time constraints in getting in. (IE if you can't ladder the day or two after it goes up good luck getting in). So the GM system should probably look at a top 200 MMR from the previous season or at minimum give players more then a day or two to play a game to get in.
B) Police the GM ladder better, if anyone should be under a microscope and easily could be by blizzard it's the top 200 per region. It wouldn't be hard for blizzard to have a few people dedicated to making sure the people in GM are not hackers, level'd accounts etc. It's just a matter of blizzard bothering to make their ladder meaningful or not. If they chose not to police the GM ranks better then obviously blizzard doesn't care.
The alternative...
If blizzard continues to let the GM ladder be messed up in one way or another, eventually someone will build and police their own ladder and people will stop giving a carp about blizzards ladder. (See what happened with maps after a while).
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I don't see a problem in it. The person who gets their account levelled can't actually play on it or they will just flat out lose anyway. If they never play on it, after 2 seasons it will reset. Similarly, if they play 1 game a season and lose everytime, they will end up getting demoted.
To those who think a levelled account could be picked for an event, it more than likely won't as they won't be able to play on it during the season. If anything, it's less fair to other players for a pro to have like 2-3 accounts in GM than to have a levelled account in GM.
So if we are to complain about this, we might as well complain about multiple accounts/smurfs. Which would be ridiculous to complain about too.
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On July 17 2012 07:07 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 05:18 iAmJeffReY wrote:
I'm trying to avoid the rage out, but seriously, why does it matter. It's an icon. If your MMR is high enough, even at high masters you're considered GM. It's not a big deal.
I level names all the time for anyone that asks me to do it. I find it amazingly fun to just troll and try out new strats. There's no harm it in, what so ever.
The real question is why are you so butthurt that you made this thread? What happened to make you so angry to type out that thesis paper?
I don't understand the witch hunt over people leveling names. Nothing is really based off ladder, at all. So what, you didn't get GM this season because of people having leveled names. I think there are a bit too many white knights that care way too much about a video game ladder. It's a game, it's for fun. If someone wants to pay to have an icon, let them do it. It's probably really fun to the pros to actually have FUN and fuck around and troll people, and not be a try hard 24/7.
Hacking? That's a real issue. Account sharing, or leveling, I don't see a problem with it. Since ladder doesn't mean anything, and rank 1, and rank 99 are all the same -- no name nobodies nine times out of ten. That's actually BS. First of all. The ladder gets you invites to tournaments. Recently there was a hacker invited to Blizzard World Cup or whatever it was called, because he had high enough ladder rank. Yeah we're nerds who care about a video gamer ladder. We post on a fucking video game forum - of course we care about the ladder. This is exactly as bad as hacking, as it gets silver leaguers invites to Blizzard events. Why would you care about hackers but not account sharing? They result in the exact same things: Deligitimizing the ladder and getting the wrong people invited to big tournaments.
I don't have no sympathy for a tournament organizer who is stupid enough to use the ladder as tool for invites. Do proper qualifiers and you will get the better players to your tournament.
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On July 17 2012 07:07 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 05:18 iAmJeffReY wrote:
I'm trying to avoid the rage out, but seriously, why does it matter. It's an icon. If your MMR is high enough, even at high masters you're considered GM. It's not a big deal.
I level names all the time for anyone that asks me to do it. I find it amazingly fun to just troll and try out new strats. There's no harm it in, what so ever.
The real question is why are you so butthurt that you made this thread? What happened to make you so angry to type out that thesis paper?
I don't understand the witch hunt over people leveling names. Nothing is really based off ladder, at all. So what, you didn't get GM this season because of people having leveled names. I think there are a bit too many white knights that care way too much about a video game ladder. It's a game, it's for fun. If someone wants to pay to have an icon, let them do it. It's probably really fun to the pros to actually have FUN and fuck around and troll people, and not be a try hard 24/7.
Hacking? That's a real issue. Account sharing, or leveling, I don't see a problem with it. Since ladder doesn't mean anything, and rank 1, and rank 99 are all the same -- no name nobodies nine times out of ten. That's actually BS. First of all. The ladder gets you invites to tournaments. Recently there was a hacker invited to Blizzard World Cup or whatever it was called, because he had high enough ladder rank. Yeah we're nerds who care about a video gamer ladder. We post on a fucking video game forum - of course we care about the ladder. This is exactly as bad as hacking, as it gets silver leaguers invites to Blizzard events. Why would you care about hackers but not account sharing? They result in the exact same things: Deligitimizing the ladder and getting the wrong people invited to big tournaments.
That is a tournament level problem. There are issues intrinsic to only having one ladder, and it being fully under the control of Blizzard. Firstly ladder rank is a dubious way to invite people to begin with just because of how imperfect ladder rankings must be. Secondly, even if you invite people that way, you certainly ought to screen them if your tournament is worth that much.
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On July 17 2012 07:07 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 05:18 iAmJeffReY wrote:
I'm trying to avoid the rage out, but seriously, why does it matter. It's an icon. If your MMR is high enough, even at high masters you're considered GM. It's not a big deal.
I level names all the time for anyone that asks me to do it. I find it amazingly fun to just troll and try out new strats. There's no harm it in, what so ever.
The real question is why are you so butthurt that you made this thread? What happened to make you so angry to type out that thesis paper?
I don't understand the witch hunt over people leveling names. Nothing is really based off ladder, at all. So what, you didn't get GM this season because of people having leveled names. I think there are a bit too many white knights that care way too much about a video game ladder. It's a game, it's for fun. If someone wants to pay to have an icon, let them do it. It's probably really fun to the pros to actually have FUN and fuck around and troll people, and not be a try hard 24/7.
Hacking? That's a real issue. Account sharing, or leveling, I don't see a problem with it. Since ladder doesn't mean anything, and rank 1, and rank 99 are all the same -- no name nobodies nine times out of ten. That's actually BS. First of all. The ladder gets you invites to tournaments. Recently there was a hacker invited to Blizzard World Cup or whatever it was called, because he had high enough ladder rank. Yeah we're nerds who care about a video gamer ladder. We post on a fucking video game forum - of course we care about the ladder. This is exactly as bad as hacking, as it gets silver leaguers invites to Blizzard events. Why would you care about hackers but not account sharing? They result in the exact same things: Deligitimizing the ladder and getting the wrong people invited to big tournaments.
That's just Blizzard being stupid as hell (as well as notoriously arbitrary with their invites - remember the Blizzcon roulette each year?). Any real tournament uses qualifiers. This could be a problem if people did this kind of thing in qualifiers, but it's really impractical for a variety of reasons, and also relatively easy to detect.
And honestly, you have to be really fucking intentionally obtuse in order not to see the difference between this and hacking. Hacking is literally breaking the rules of the game, making it pointless and unfun. This is essentially the same as a pro smurfing, and winning because he's simply that much better than your average Masters player. Would it also be delegitimizing the ladder if Naama bought 20 NA accounts and got them all into GM, just for shits and giggles?
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This doesn't really do any harm... If pros can make money from stupid people then great. Why the hell would you have a pro level your account though?
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This is entirely a Blizzard judgement call. While it does infringe on their EULA a bit (accountshareing and profiting of the game), it's in a area where they usualy do not ban someone for it. Allso the playes who take part in the process are high profile players, punishment of them could have consequenses for the development of the competetive aspects of the game.
Personaly I do not think this is a issue for anyone but the person who wants his account leveled and the one selling it. When you enter a ladder to play against a bunch of anonymous or at least only semi-identified strangers. You have to accept that some of them will be good and some bad. XXsephirothZZ could be IdrA or just any mr.smith(beginner). As the one playing against theese accounts you should just think of it as someone smurfing. To you there is no noticable difference, and if blizzard accepts the proceedings then you can do nothing about it except try to shame honest gamers for trying to make a living.
The player who buys this service places a huge amount of trust in the hands of a compleete stranger, with verry limited possibilities of recovering his monney in case his services are not delivered, and he's likely be laughed at if he publicly demands his monney back. Alternatively just be ignored because the guy is famous and probably gets all sorts of strange requests. If some outraged parent goes to the press this could cause some bad press for Blizzard and is in my opinion the biggest reason they should do something about theese services.
As for the whole "someone has higher rating than me but didnt deserve it". This is not for you to judge. Blizzard runns this league, shareing accounts is dissallowed in name but not in practice. Hackers are banned but theese players are as of now, not banned. If this upsetts you I sugest you petition Blizzard instead of whine on TL.
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I remember hearing that Dragon used to do this all the time on stream.
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On July 17 2012 05:18 iAmJeffReY wrote:
I'm trying to avoid the rage out, but seriously, why does it matter. It's an icon. If your MMR is high enough, even at high masters you're considered GM. It's not a big deal.
I level names all the time for anyone that asks me to do it. I find it amazingly fun to just troll and try out new strats. There's no harm it in, what so ever.
The real question is why are you so butthurt that you made this thread? What happened to make you so angry to type out that thesis paper?
I don't understand the witch hunt over people leveling names. Nothing is really based off ladder, at all. So what, you didn't get GM this season because of people having leveled names. I think there are a bit too many white knights that care way too much about a video game ladder. It's a game, it's for fun. If someone wants to pay to have an icon, let them do it. It's probably really fun to the pros to actually have FUN and fuck around and troll people, and not be a try hard 24/7.
Hacking? That's a real issue. Account sharing, or leveling, I don't see a problem with it. Since ladder doesn't mean anything, and rank 1, and rank 99 are all the same -- no name nobodies nine times out of ten.
If you feel that ladder doesn't mean anything, why do you think hacking matters? Isn't it true that the majority of hackers are bad and can be beat with superior mechanics? If so why not just shrug off the fact that they're hacking on this dumb video game ladder and get better so you can beat them?
The central problem with hacking is that it hurts the competitive integrity of the ladder. The same is true of account leveling. It results in a bunch of dead weight accounts in masters and above. It also means that whenever you play against a pro who's leveling an account, that game is just as meaningless to you competitively as if you were playing against a hacker. If you just want to throw up your arms and say ladder is complete garbage already so who cares if it gets ruined some more, then why should anyone ladder? Are we okay with the SC2 ladder devolving into something that is completely ruined, just like what happened with the BW ladder? The ladder player base is already dwindling, we don't need people being under the impression that in any given game, they may well be playing against an account leveler or hacker.
Whether you'd like to admit it or not, the ladder has meaning. High master and GM has more meaning than any other tier of the ladder. We don't know how many leveled accounts there are, but we do know that the upper tiers of the ladder would be more meaningful without them.
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account leveling is fine, pros need the income.
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this is very wrong. Not only are they taking the experience away from whoever they are boosting, but they are also cluttering the ladder up with ppl who don't deserve their rank.. It's bad enough everyone who couldnt break out of Platinum switched to either z/p to get to diamond+ but now pros are going to level ppl? I mean MajOr boosted Desrow's KR account to GM which he later lost. Thats not fair for the people who actually practice their asses off trying to get into GM just to have some scrub take their spot cause someone boosted them. Pros can find a better way to make money, and if they can't then in my opinion they need a new career
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Do you people really think that hacking is bad because it allows terrible players to get high on the ladder? It's like I'm in some kind of weird twilight zone or something. Playing against a hacker is the same as playing against a smurf of a pro? Seriously?
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It's really not that big of a deal in my opinion. I have leveled several peoples accounts to masters and the reason people like to get their accounts leveled is to learn more by playing better players. It's usually not so they can brag to their friends about them getting masters as many of you think it is. It's a legitimate way for people to get better at the game by surrounding them in a more difficult environment.
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So I guess smurfing accounts to GM is also bad? -_-
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Who needs powerleveling? All you need is a good cheese
Besides, let people use their parent's credit, ladder is a joke with the hackers anyways
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On July 17 2012 07:07 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2012 05:18 iAmJeffReY wrote:
I'm trying to avoid the rage out, but seriously, why does it matter. It's an icon. If your MMR is high enough, even at high masters you're considered GM. It's not a big deal.
I level names all the time for anyone that asks me to do it. I find it amazingly fun to just troll and try out new strats. There's no harm it in, what so ever.
The real question is why are you so butthurt that you made this thread? What happened to make you so angry to type out that thesis paper?
I don't understand the witch hunt over people leveling names. Nothing is really based off ladder, at all. So what, you didn't get GM this season because of people having leveled names. I think there are a bit too many white knights that care way too much about a video game ladder. It's a game, it's for fun. If someone wants to pay to have an icon, let them do it. It's probably really fun to the pros to actually have FUN and fuck around and troll people, and not be a try hard 24/7.
Hacking? That's a real issue. Account sharing, or leveling, I don't see a problem with it. Since ladder doesn't mean anything, and rank 1, and rank 99 are all the same -- no name nobodies nine times out of ten. That's actually BS. First of all. The ladder gets you invites to tournaments. Recently there was a hacker invited to Blizzard World Cup or whatever it was called, because he had high enough ladder rank. Yeah we're nerds who care about a video gamer ladder. We post on a fucking video game forum - of course we care about the ladder. This is exactly as bad as hacking, as it gets silver leaguers invites to Blizzard events. Why would you care about hackers but not account sharing? They result in the exact same things: Deligitimizing the ladder and getting the wrong people invited to big tournaments.
Inviting people based on ladder point is like inviting random people in pretty clothes on the street to your house, you deserve to get robbed. Once in a while you will find tournament organizers that are foolish enough to do that. You should blame them instead of ladder.
Account sharing is really common now, and Blizzard can't and shouldn't do anything about it. Various tournaments, teams organizers use shared accounts to play matches and stuff. You don't seriously suggest Blizzard banning PRIMEZZANG, IMTV, NASL A, NASL B, StarTale, .v.v.v..v. accounts, do you?
This is one of the trivial crime, the gray area, much like peeing on the street, or lying to school to get days off. They are wrong and against written documents, but also so trivial that it's not worth spending time and resource pursuing them.
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EPT
