This weeks “Topic of the Week” looks at the secondary market and how Blizzard should deal with it on a legal basis. As everyone knows Blizzard (along with most other MMO companies, and many sites including ours) has taken a firm stance against the secondary market.

A very simplistic look at the reasoning behind this stance is that the secondary market ruins the game experience for everyone, giving players with money an advantage over those without. Being a game, everyone should be able to play in what is a balanced environment. The companies are not promoting this out of an inherent sense of fairness, but more a protection of their income. If players come to feel that a game is not fun and balanced because Joe down the street can by his way to the top and they can not compete, they will simply stop playing. If that happens the MMO company loses their source of income.

So after such a long intro. the question for this week comes down to "Should people get into legal trouble
over an MMORPG?".

I bring this topic up because of the recent post Eyonix from Blizzard made in the official forums:

WOW! People being sued over a video game? Hard to image, but it's true! Blizzard even has a solid basis for it thanks to the agreement everyone must read and accept when you install or patch WoW, that states what is and is not acceptable. It clearly states that any involvement with the secondary market is against the terms of use of the game and subject to action from Blizzard. It also clearly states that all characters, items, etc on the servers are property of Blizzard and therefore you may not sell them.

Now that Blizzard has started legal action against at least one entity, and with their past track record of banning thousands of accounts for secondary market activities, can more legal action be far away?

Everyone know's its against the rules to buy or sell gold, items or accounts in WoW (and most other MMO's), yet for some reason it still happens. There are still hundreds of companies out there that either farm or steal gold and items to resell in the secondary market. Blizzard has done a very good job with massive numbers of account bans since the launch of WoW, yet they keep coming back.

While bans effect the companies selling gold it doesn't hit them hard enough to stop them from coming back, as is evident by the huge number of companies around selling gold. The next logical step is to hit them harder through legal proceedings. Blizzard should "Sue them into oblivion" if they can. There is a problem with that though, because many of the secondary companies are hosted over sea's, and while I am not a legal expert, I would imagine that brining legal proceedings against them would be extremely hard. If they can though, I'm all for it!

The other logical next step, and one that I have heard rumour of on several occasions is going after the people that purchase the items. After all if you dry up the demand, you also solve the problem. If everyone is too scared to get sued to buy gold, then there is no more market for the gold sellers to survive in. While I strongly agree in concept with this idea, since it is the same as drug possession charges in the real world, it would cause Blizzard some sever public relations issues. I can see the headlines now "Blizzard sues Fans" and "Giant Gaming Company Sues 12 year old for Paper Route Money". Not something Blizzard really wants to deal with.

In theory though, it's an Excellent idea. It shouldn't take more than a few dozen players to be sued (and lose) a few thousand dollars, before everyone would realize that it's not smart to break the rules. If Blizzard could pull this off without getting a black eye in the press, I would say "FULL STEAM AHEAD!".

The Messiah has spoken, now its you turn...