By the way, I spoke too soon about Singapore GE making amends for game disruption. After telling everyone that the unscheduled extended maintenance would replace the regular weekly maintenance, they decided to go ahead and do the weekly maintenance, too. I’m sure that caught many people by surprise after they had already activated their compensation Premium Passes: leaving them with a disruption that should be compensated all over again. I seriously doubt the gaming company will offer such compensation twice in one week.

Of course neither of these maintenances are about accomplishing what the customers want (such as getting rid of all the botters). Instead they are about putting in place the mechanism for an “event” that exchanges *elite* weapons for items bought from the cash shop (re: indirect cash purchase of elite items). I totally saw this coming!!!! Check my first comment in this thread, question #4.

That’s a big, flashing red signal the end is near for this particular MMORPG. And it just emerged from Open Beta a couple of months ago. :(

It really wasn’t fraud. It was taking advantage of people’s gullibility. Now, this may have been an urban legend, BUT… the point is that if people are willing to spend their money on it, there is literally nothing you can do… except save yourself.

Suspended disbelief in groups is such a dangerous thing.

I also view it as an abusive relationship. The wife is beating the husband, or vice versa, and the other won’t lodge a complaint because…. their spouse might LEAVE them. From the outside, this is generally a good idea. From the inside, it isn’t so.

Fortunately, the officers of the Law can usually come in and do something if there was a criminal act. Unfortunately, that can be too late, especially if the abused one keeps running into that door and breaking things.

I agree that something akin to the Better Business Bureau is the way to go. Singapore actually has a similar consumer protection organization called CASE. However, I’ve been unsuccessful in organizing fellow players to put together a group complaint – they’re afraid any sort of outside pressure will lead to GE shutting down all together. I tried filing a complaint myself over the Emilia the Sage issue, but CASE never replied: probably because I’m not a citizen of Singapore, and I wasn’t physically in Singapore when I was cheated.

IMHO, the gaming companies themselves need some real world infrastructure support. Even in large alliances, they haven’t taken down the botting underworld. However, real world government and law-enforcement agencies don’t take issues of virtual worlds seriously.

I honestly can’t see going in front of a judge – just me – and saying, “I keep handing them money and they won’t give me what they promised!”. Once, yes, but…

An odd thought came to me – well, not too odd – about this as I wrote that last paragraph. Something like the Better Business Bureau might be what synthetic realities need. Something that people shopping for a synthetic experience can go to for information and to review complaints from others. Its a thought that should probably be fleshed out more; I’m a bit tired right now.

About a day ago I posted about how human rights and avatar rights are connected – the MacArthur Foundation had something in SL today about it, but I didn’t think much of the premise. But here’s the rub: If your avatar is getting screwed over financially, the human is too. And a human does have rights, as you say.

I honestly don’t know what to say. Second Life has a similar problem with policy and Landbots – automated software clients that buy mistakes people make when people sell their land, or glitches involved related to latency. It bites people over and over and over, but Linden Lab does nothing – it cost over $10,000 US in the prominent cases in one week last year. I even wrote about it in my ebook in Second Life (which is not a bestseller, btw!), I write about it in the blog, so do others… people still go right back into it. So what do you do? You feel that something should be done. You ask hard questions, you tell people, and… then what? After a while, you insulate yourself emotionally and decide that you are no longer going to try to save the world from itself. Or you get lucky and find that one thing that can change the minds of either the legal entity in charge or the people using the world.

Two words: It sucks. :-)

Coincidentally there was just some speculation about how many working adults were participating in Granado Espada, and the guess is 30-40%. So I guess quite a few might be capable of taking legal steps if they had to.

There were enough adults to advocate for and support GE’s original subscription model. I was personally willing to pay for customer service and bot control. However, the business model just shifted to pay-to-play: a great victory for the whiny broke, but not promising as far as the future development and maintenance of this particular virtual world.

I digress.

If people cannot or choose not to take enough control of their lives to put the brakes on, then I don’t see who would lobby for any Law.

I have a Tom Bombadil perspective. Sorry.

Once those attachments are in place, it’s really hard to walk away. If you vote with your feet, you’re not just protesting a corrupt business, you’re walking away from friends and family. That’s why it’s laughable to see someone threaten to quit the game on the forum: everyone, including the business entity, knows its just a hollow threat. The only thing that pulls people away is another game that they sample long enough to build an alternative community.

Often the decision to jump games is made by a community as a whole. Whole groups attempted to jump to HellGate London, though apparently this was a disaster and some server error caused everyone’s characters to be wiped. Then they sheepishly came back to Grandado Espada.

By the time people quit in droves, it will probably be too late for the business to recover. It’s a shame because Granado Espada had incredible advance buzz in Asia, and it really does offer a rich gaming experience.