How is GGG going to stop D2JSP and similar scum?

What really needs to happen is for someone (probably not GGG, since they're a small company) to just sue D2JSP out of existence. They like to pretend they're legal, but they're not, and demonstrating damages in court would be trivial. Blizzard just hasn't bothered because the damages haven't been sufficient to justify the legal costs. Which will probably remain true, but maybe it won't if they're directly taking away from Blizzard's cut on D3.



Anyway, if nothing else, as Slicer says: things can be done. Didn't RuneQuest implement some thing where items can only be traded with a reasonable range of equality, so that selling (i.e. an out-of-game item for an in-game item) became impossible? Fairly certain it did.

But yeah, just banning everyone who goes near it would be a good start.

They aren't going to stop it. What are they going to do? Ban people when they can just create a new account for free?

D2JSP saved d2.

You don't ban accounts, you delete characters and ban IPs. Someone goes "I LOST MY SHIT WAAAAA" and some GM posts logs of him buying items. Or GGG makes accounts pretending to be potential buyers or sellers. Once they find a guy willing to make the deal, his characters go byebye. A few rounds of that will discourage all but the most determined, and severely diminish the potential market for RMT. Add some public humiliation if the guy was on the top of the ladder, especially if he ever said anything embarrassing that he thought was private.

Yes, I am advocating that some part-timer or volunteer at GGG go through RMT buyers' chat logs and post the most mortifying stuff they can find. This is called hardball.

To quote Tyrion Lannister, "Heads. Spikes. Walls."

D2JSP didn't save anything. D2 is a festering shithole of bots, SoJ sellers, and more bots. It's disgusting.

But the point is probably moot. D3 is the target, not us. Why would any serious operation come here when there's a presumably much bigger market in D3, which has its own cash-money system already lined up?

See sig.

There are only a few choices when it comes to stopping RMT in games. The only perfectly effective one is to control the trading with NPC vendors and no player to player trading of any kind. Problem solved.

I know nobody will like that option because they know there will be few opportunities to gain orbs from drops. GGG already hinted that more players = lower drop rate. That means, once this goes live, you WILL be farming to get the few orbs you can get your hands on. Or will you?

Raise your hand if you believe that orbs or their equivalent will not be sold though the GGG store. If you raised your hands, you might be highly disappointed. There are only a limited number of ways to make money through micro-transactions. Those are access to additional content, conspicuous consumption (fluff items), and commodities (orbs).

Lets look at these items as they will be valued by players.







So why does this matter to RMT? No matter what, orbs will be highly desirable and more easily obtained though farming than any other method. Since farming of lower level areas by high level characters will be trivial and an acceptable way to obtain orbs, you can bet that someone will take up the call to make some real life money off of it. Also, it will happen in game unnoticed among all the real players doing the exact same thing. Therefore, it will be impossible to stop without selling game advancement in the in game store.

Thus, the only solution that provides any security against RMT is to not allow player trading or to artificially designate the value of items in game to prevent any profit motive by players.

Edit: There is always the income from private servers and I have purposefully disregarded that as an income choice as I have no information to point to its actual value. That is a rather unique choice and hope it pans out well for GGG. I am curious as to the cost though.

GGG has already unequivocally said that they won't be selling power-enhancing items for real money. The moment they start is the moment I uninstall with no regrets.

I bet some cosmetic effects will be power enhancing. Like maybe make a spell so flashy it adds an element of pseudo-stealth or blinding.

If your own spells are blinding in their effects, the first person to be blinded will be you.

"

Slicer wrote:

If your own spells are blinding in their effects, the first person to be blinded will be you.

Here is some protection against flashy spells.