If this were Eq I would be suprised if they wern't collecting data. But honeslty wow must have been a big dissapointemt for IGE the demand for gold seems to be exceptionally low and wow is taking action against exploiters so they can loose accounts as well. All in all I don't think wow will be a big moneymaker.

The game is pretty easy and people don't need money to rush a tradeskill or something.
Think this game is one that doesn't have a market for selling online gold.

You have to actually purposely send data to thottbot with cosmos. Just having the thottbot feature doesn't do this automatically.

Has this information been posted on the main forums? I'm sure a larger audience should be aware.

Edited, Wed Feb 9 10:38:53 2005 by HalfEmpty

Thought you would all be interested in my detailed investigation:
http://www.corpnews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1790

If you want to tell more people about it, post that on the official wow, eq and eq2 forums.

[:lol:]

He's got you there....

[:laugh:]

Hell, I didn't even realize that an overall search existed. I see the link now that I've looked for it, but I've always used the Lookup buttons, as have my guildmates. Maybe placing a search link closer to the main section of game info might make it easier to find, as well as advertising the fact that there is a firefox search plugin, possibly by giving it a link of it's own.


Now, if a reg completely missed the fact that these existed, how about the average user? Most people just use the website to get information quickly, they're not going to be looking at the utilitarian parts of the site that aren't what they're looking for... And most of them will only see the information parts, rather than the news.


With the tool that has the best ease of use in a place that isn't the easiest to spot, it's still ineffecient.

The Firefox plugin is nice, and I'm very glad you guys pointed that out to me. It needs some more advertisement.

Now, still, the issue of ease of use exists. Alright, the search exists, and let's assume that some IE user knows of it. Now, they have a few choices:

1) Bookmark the search page. Alot of people rarely use bookmarks, alot of people use them for information that they won't be able to find without it. Bookmarking a site they know exists is likely to be lower on their list of things they want to than some random webpage they won't remember again.

Assuming that they don't do one, there are problems with:
2) Typing in the url. wow.allakhazam.com is harder to type than thottbot.com, and if they have to add /search.html or click on the search link, that's even more work. Can't shorten the URL, so if they want to use Alla, they have more work to do. Clicking on or extending the URL to the full filepath is still more work.


So, my suggestions are:

1) Create another link to the search area by the other database searchs. Possibly even make the search appear on the sidebar for even more ease of use.

2) Advertise the Firefox plugin some, give it a link on the sidebar.

___________________________



Why do you care? Because you're supporting IGE? Well, news: IGE *Does* speak with and have ties with to many of the MMORPG companies. The people who buy the currency are rarely, if ever, banned. The people who are not farming operations that sell to IGE are rarely, if ever, banned. You paying for WoW supports IGE in the sense that you are supporting the people that do business with them.


Ogaming has been owned by IGE for a while. It's not some new peice of information either. Most people will never know. Most people won't care. At this point, IGE owning Ogaming and Thott will likely never effect the users of Thott.


The thing is, giving IGE 'support' by using Thott is only using their bandwidth. It doesn't give them some special power over users.

Once they start advertising using Thott, or something that actually furthers themselves in their purpose of selling MMO currency, then I can see why it's an issue. Until then, they're just providing a resource to the community.

Wow, I guess I really am the only one that cares.

Blizzard has done a wonderful job making companies like IGE ineffective because they've designed the economy so well. OK, so IGE and affiliates have a slim to none chance of seriously effecting the WoW economy. It doesn't change my opinion of IGE and supporting them. I still don't want to be a part of anything they do.

I also believe that others should be informed so they can make that same decision if it bothers them. As it is, nobody is even aware (contrary to statements indicating this is somehow common knowledge).

And for the record, I seriously don't think Blizzard doing any sort of business with IGE, as suggested. Just because they don't feel the need to announce every person they ban for such behavior doesn't mean they aren't concerned about and dealing it and it definitely doesn't mean that they're business associates.

Edited, Wed Feb 9 15:51:01 2005 by HalfEmpty

Since when does having more money in an economy lower prices?

well i for one will be disabling the thottbot in my cosmos UI when i get a chance to log in next.

---ok looks like allah took a dump so this might turn into a multi post---

i for one will have nothing to do with IGE or any company like them.

WoW main forum they locked it and said to post it on the off topic forum which garnered little attention.

I tried reposting it anyways but it wouldnt go up.

Nerf Allakhazam's Magical Realm! It's set up better then other information sources for MMORPGs and is obviously an exploit.

I type "wow" press down arrow press enter, look it's allakhazam! =D I would like to note that this is easier than the way I get to thottbot.com, type "thot" press down arrow, press enter. Obviously I do more work getting to thottbot than alla. =P

My point being, how hard can it be to type a few letters? How much energy does it really take? I mean I just typed all of this and haven't even broken a sweat yet! =D


Ahem...sorry about that, I'm really bored...anyway I just really don't see the point in boycotting anything as an individual ever, and if you want others to boycot thottbot you're most likely going to fail, since it's not hurting anyone to exist, and in fact all it does is help...never harm. Correct me if I'm wrong. =)

Haha. On the keyboard, press the down arrow key (located between the letters section and number pad section). =P

When you start typing in the address bar in your web browser does it not have a drop down menu of sites that you've been to beginning with those letters?

i personaly feel very very violated.. ige i view as the enemy, and i view them as just as bad as chinese or any other sweatshop farmers.
the reason for that is because ige are doing the same thing, sure they arnt as agressive about it (possibly) but what they are still doing is wrong, against the sprit and moral of Earning things in the world. if you buy gold then you might as well buy a level 60 charicter. both ways your damageing the game and damageing your experance of WoW. because we all know.. theres no excuse for not haveing a charicter past at least 30 by now.
eventhe most casual of gamer can be satisfied with the leveling curve of WoW.
unless they are a spoilt brat (age has nothing to do with it) who just wants to throw their money around and make things happen fast.

my stance on in game currency buying has allways been pretty negative, less in Linage 2 since if you lost everything due to someone attacking you, you had to either buy adena, start again as a level 1, or scrounge money off friends.. and usally they are too busy struggleing with their own financial probs within that game to help. so it was either quit or buy adena.

very informative, thank you.

Something else to chew on. eqprices is owned by IGE. They even have IGE ads all over their site. eqprices is registered to ogaming...Final nail in the coffin?

Registrant:
OGAMING NETWORK
Carnegie Tower
152 W. 57th Street
New York, New York 10019
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: EQPRICES.COM
Created on: 27-Jan-00
Expires on: 27-Jan-10
Last Updated on: 19-Jan-05

Administrative Contact:
BROYER, JM dns@ogaming.com
OGAMING NETWORK
Carnegie Tower
152 W. 57th Street
New York, New York 10019
United States
2122654900 Fax --
Technical Contact:
BROYER, JM dns@ogaming.com
OGAMING NETWORK
Carnegie Tower
152 W. 57th Street
New York, New York 10019
United States
2122654900 Fax --

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.SITEPROTECT.COM
NS2.SITEPROTECT.COM

They eat babies.

They are goldsellers, meaning they sell online dollars for real life money. At 1st glace they may seem harmless, but when games like FFXI have their economy ruined by their hands, you would think twice before saying "Who Cares"

This thread got linked on Slashdot. Heh.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/15/161219&tid=209&tid=158

Personally, my main concern with Ige is their business practices. Though I disapprove of gold-selling (mainly because it completely ruined FFXI, which is much more susceptible to such things than WoW), I feel that denouncing Ige just for that removes other reasons to dislike them.

I just did a google search for (sell gil FFXI) (used FFXI because again, it's more established and pronounced there), and looked at the search results. The first three sites that offered to sell accounts too had identical prices and the same account listed first on Unicorn. This suggests to me that those non-ige sites are just fronts for ige, whether by their intent, or the intent of the other site hosts. The sites I looked at were ige, virdaq, and mysupersales (posted for verification/clarification by people who know their way around hosting info etc. My check was quick and dirty). If these sites are seprate sites who are referring ige, not ige's fault. If they are in fact owned by ige, this suggests fradulent practices to cover up a monopoly.

I find Allakhazam's revalation of a buyout ttempt particularly interesting. Was this before or after they attempted to appear "sanctioned" by this site, by buying half (rough estimate) the ad space on your ad hoster?

So, having established ige's apparent policy of assimilating competition/advertising sources (pending verification), we have a better stance for referecing the selling practices themselves without relying on them solely to win the point.

As has been mentioned, many gil-sellers out there may or may not be directly employed by ige. However, ige acts as an enabler. Suppose gil-farming group X is completely on their own; they need to have a way of moving their gil, and in a market of many small groups, that means commpetition to get noticed. They probably cannot move that much gil, because any buyer will have to choose between them and the large number of people/sites/accounts like theirs.

Add in ige, a centralized site. To those who want to buy gil, ige becomes a go-to site, due to their size and advertising. Because of their ability to move gil, ige is willing and able to buy it from the farmers, allowing them to focus on harvesting, without worrying about how they'll profit from it. In this sense ige is indeed employing more gil-farmers than it may seem. This easy payoff allows gil-farming to flourish, causing the glut of gil-farmers currently seen on FFXI. This basically keeps regular players out of most of the profitable methods of making gil, forcing them to watch AH prices rise higher and higher, and face a difficult decision.

NOTE: I have used FFXI here because it is much more susceptible. WoW's binding of items, plus Diablo II-esque item system places less emphasis on having specific items (and those items that do have emphasis are usually BoP) and thus less emphasis on having the gold for those items. Instancing, and having profitable vendor trash, are also good steps against gil-selling. I do not believe we are completely immune, though.

IGN is not IGE

I'm pretty sure Cosmos is not owned by IGE. And the utility for uploading data to thottbot is cosmos. So we don't have anything to worry about them getting any information that won;t be used on Thottbot. The Cosmos team is not corrupt. So there is nothing bad about uploading thottbot data. You're not contributing to IGE at all. You are actually just taking away bandwidth which costs money, in turn taking away thier money.

It may be owned by IGE but I bet it's the same people behind it.

One other thing. IGE owning thottbot is actually a good thing. They are a big company and what not. They have the money to support the thott servers. So no more of those week data backups.

Edited, Wed Feb 16 11:05:35 2005 by Extabyte

.... Yea, we're talking about IGE.