Filed under: The Lawbringer

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Data breaches cost a lot of money, consumer satisfaction, and trust. In the MMO world, the trust that exists between the game's developer and the player is a tricky relationship to navigate and extremely fickle. Any number of wrong moves or postures can turn your profitable subscription MMO into a public relations nightmare forced to turn the wagon around mid-trip. Security compromises a large part of that MMO trust.

Blizzard has had its fair share of security issues and trust problems between the players and itself. As the first MMO to have to battle hackers and not just gold farmers to the scale present in WoW, Blizzard had to invent its own way to do business in the world as it was -- an insecure place dominated by gray-market gold sellers and account hackers looking to sell to an eager, ready-to-spend playerbase. While WoW isn't the astronomically large service that some others affected by recent and notorious hacks are, it serves as an example of one of the big guys in the industry doing their best to navigate a minefield.

Greg Boyd and Gary Kibel wrote an article for Gamasutra discussing seven steps to improved security in the online and gaming space. After reading over the article, I felt that many of the points discussed had Blizzard and WoW-specific analogs and real-world examples that might shed some light on the security concerns still out there, what WoW has accomplished in the MMO security space.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Before we begin today's Lawbringer, I wanted to give you all your homework for next week's topic. Greg Boyd wrote an excellent article over at Gamasutra about improving the game industry's security and data privacy issues. Blizzard is one of the companies out there with huge online security concerns but seems to get by fairly well. I will examine Blizzard through Boyd's seven steps and show how Blizzard is leading the charge and how other game companies could benefit from Blizzard's trials and tribulations.

Fifteen percent is going to be the new number that people will be talking about for a good, long time. Why? Blizzard has set a standard in the American markets for real-money auction house cuts and fees. With Diablo III literally bursting from its hellish mother's writhing, pestilence-ridden birthing sack, players will soon be entering the world of Sanctuary and wearing out mice so fast that the stress on the peripheral market's demand crushes a generation of hopeful clickers. Diablo III will consume a lot of people's souls for a while, so it's best to get them all prepared now, not later.

Blizzard has begun the arduous process of educating the playerbase about these new and radical systems coming with Diablo III. The real-money auction house is the big ticket item here, proving a safe and secure place for players to interact and auction items, much like they currently do in the seedy, potentially dangerous gray markets for virtual item trades and sales. Going to these sites is the equivalent of going to gold sites, to compare it to a WoW phenom, with the same risks and hazards coupled with the same instant gratification. Why have a company with which you have no recourse have your credit card information, when you could give it to Blizzard instead? At least you know where they live.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

At the beginning of March, Blizzard laid off 600 positions from the company in many departments, many of which came from the customer service and community side of the company. The official response and reasoning for the layoffs is internal restructuring of much of the way World of Warcraft's customer support is handled. Restructuring could mean a lot of things, after all, so the vagueness of what was happening threw people off.

I surmised that one of the reasons for the sudden downsizing of customer support had to do with the development of new, better, and more automated tools that perform many of the mundane repair or restore jobs customer service was previously responsible for. Staffed for a new subscription number and armed with a more stable infrastructure, account recovery tools, and now the automatic item restore feature, the Blizzard customer service team was able to shed personnel and keep expected services active.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Resolution is something we rarely get in life. People are cagey, issues are weird, and tying up loose ends is a business of winding down all its own. There are two fairly loose ends still waving in the wind out there that I had some more opinions on and thought you would be interested in the share. If you guys have any topics from The Lawbringer that you'd like to see reexamined, updated, or even be told the other side of, let me know. We can work something out, you and me.

The first issue that comes up in my email all the time is from people selling items on Etsy that are based on or inspired by artwork, characters, or designs from World of Warcraft. It's its own cottage industry, as the secondary and tertiary markets open up around the stadium that is Warcraft. People making WoW goods often want to sell them and have many questions in that vein. What is right? What is wrong? Maybe I can shed a little light on the subject.

Good afternoon:

Love your column; not sure if you've answered anything regarding this type of thing before, but here it goes.

I always wanted to open a restaurant/diner, regardless of the intense amount of work this endeavour would take, what if any would the legal ramifications of naming the restaurant after an inn from the World of Warcraft Universe or the items on the menu? Of course they wouldn't have the actual ingredients but it'd would be fun to have Raptor Eggs as a breakfast item for example.

Was there not a column about people selling WoW inspired items via sites like Etsy and the like? Would it be similar?

Would the laws vary if one were in a different country? Canada for example?

If it has been answered before a link to the previous article would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!!

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

I'll beat this dead horse until it rains horse pieces -- thank you all so much for coming out to the WoW Insider Show live podcast at PAX East. There was a lot of love in that room, especially for Lawbringer, which was a pleasant surprise. More people asked me about specific Lawbringer topics than anything else I write about, so you all must be enjoying something going on here.

Speaking of you, I've got a couple of emails that you sent in that I'd like to answer. Reading your reactions and opinions about the subjects of these articles is great in the comments, since there is instant gratification, but there is something about the delayed reaction and thoughtfulness of an email. I may not agree with you -- I usually don't agree with anyone, much less myself -- but I'll read what you've got to say.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

The Titanic was the largest cruise ship ever built. It was proclaimed to be unsinkable, defying natural laws to those who did not understand how the behemoth could float. In the end, the Titanic sunk not because she was a weak ship but because the ship tried to turn from an iceberg, causing catastrophic hull damage. If the ship had plowed through the iceberg and not changed course, there is a greater chance it could have avoided catastrophe.

While comparing Blizzard to the Titanic doesn't exactly evoke a positive connotation, it should. The Titanic sunk because of mistakes made. Blizzard's conservative game design attitude and philosophy have served it well -- being open to change and modification while holding on to the core concepts of WoW and trying not to deviate in profound, risky ways. The risk sometimes works -- transmogrification, void storage, Raid Finder, Real ID (and soon Battletags), etc. Sometimes, the risk doesn't exactly lead to the best reward -- the Real ID debacle, the vocal hardcore minority and Cataclysm heroics, and the Dance Studio. Blizzard understands that the juggernaut cannot turn too quickly, or it risks the type of deep, jagged incision that sinks the unsinkable.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

As I am gearing up for PAX East and getting my things in order for the trip, I did not have a chance to write the Lawbringer I wanted to for today. Instead, I was "busy" with other work for a new client that I think you guys and girls might be able to resonate with. Are you going to PAX East? You should come meet me and the WoW Insider crew and see the live podcast! Follow @wowinsider or myself (@gomatgo) on Twitter for more announcements about where and when myself and the WoW Insider crew will be hanging out at the convention.


PRESENTED IN THE COURT OF THE HIGH KING
FOR THE DISTRICT OF STORMWIND:

----------------------------------------------------------x Index No.: 5318008

Warlocks, denizens of the Twisting Nether, and other fel beings
on behalf of all other persons and demons similarly situated,

Plaintiffs,

vs.

Blizzard Entertainment, dream shatterers,

Defendants.
----------------------------------------------------------x

On behalf of all warlocks, fel beings, demons, succubi, fel hunters, demon hunters, fel beasts, fel handlers, felsteeds, infernals, female infernals, imps, fel imps, fel bears, satyrs, gnomes, and any and all other universal or otherwise beings that do not possess the ability to create green (or "fel") fire, Plaintiffs state the following complaint:

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

A number of WoW Annual Pass subscribers are upset over a change to the Annual Pass terms, which now grant access to the Mists of Pandaria beta test over successive invite batches as opposed to the originally advertised "when it goes live." When the Annual Pass was announced at BlizzCon, I had never dreamed that Blizzard would let in press, fan sites, players, Annual Pass holders, opt-in players, and more at the exact same time. It has not been the norm for Blizzard to run things in such a way, but these days, it's hard to expect the norm from Irvine.

My honest reaction to this whole controversy is that in the course of four weeks, it won't be a huge deal because a majority of people looking to get beta access immediately will probably have it. The people who have or had beta access will do what a majority of players do -- play for a little bit, check out the pandas, show their friends, and then they're gone until release day. That's fine and dandy, no doubt about it, but a lot of the rhetoric coming from the community is that beta was a chance for them to try the game and see for themselves. That's not what a beta is about, in principle.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

With Mists of Pandaria information on the horizon, players are clamoring for release dates, beta information, and everything in between. People just want something, anything, to tide them over. How about The Lawbringer? We're talking some Mists beta and the Diablo real money auction house. Won't you join us?

Mailbags are fun because the discussion topics come to me. Readers always have some great questions, and I'm more than happy to delve into an answer or two. This week's questions are ones that I get frequently and, with the recent couple of weeks' being newsworthy and fun, emails sometimes get left in the mud. Well, let's answer some emails.

Our first Lawbringer email comes from Toro, who wants to know what's up with Mists of Pandaria beta access that is guaranteed through subscription to the WoW Annual pass:

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

From what we can gather, the first half of March is going to be a fun time for Diablo III fans with a teased announcement, and the second half of March will be devoted to the Mists of Pandaria press tour's kick-off and information dump. We're all waiting patiently like good little boys and girls, mere hours from a large, gift-giving morning event, stirring and shaking with happy excitement. Well, too bad -- because once information is gathered by fan sites and news outlets, you've got to wait a week before the goods get gotten. Blizzard has stated that there will be a week-long NDA after the beginning of the Mists of Pandaria press event.

NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) are a staple of the video game industry. To understand the NDA is to understand the very unique relationship the video game industry has with its fan community. Many will enter this conversation brazenly, proclaim the absurdity of a system based on hype and advertisements of the same product being reported on, and exit stage right. There are problems with the system. The system is also young, naive, and growing into its own -- we have a long time to shape it.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

It was a shock to many on Wednesday when Blizzard announced that it would be cutting 600 positions from the company, including many support and customer service jobs and even some developer spots. Very sad news for a great group of people, absolutely. Maybe we can do a little digging and figure out why Blizzard cut these positions and make some sense of it.

You don't just cut workers "because." Activision Blizzard is a publicly traded company in the United States, where corporations are beholden to their shareholders, profits, and the bottom line. We still live in a world where the price of stock is paramount, so raising the price of stock combined with investor satisfaction is key. Every decision by Activision Blizzard must, at the end of the day, be made with the knowledge that the investors matter.

Let's start with what employee staff reductions do not mean. Blizzard is not going broke or bankrupt because of these 600 jobs. World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and unannounced titles are still being developed and pored over. Mike Morhaime himself said that the active positions cut were mostly non-developmental, which leaves support, customer service, and potential redundancies in the company's structure. All in all, 600 jobs is a large enough number that there is a reason for all of this.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Behind the scenes, people are moving about, reading papers and commenting on filings and jockeying around the words of a paragraph to make it "feel" nicer. We don't like using the word "community," one might say, because it is a sympathetic word, and we do not need sympathy at this hearing. Thousands of dollars an hour are thrown at the problem for however long the team needs to work on it. I bet there were a few nice late-night sushi orders.

These are the stars of the show -- two copyright and trademark filing teams, potentially backed up by a litigation team, positioning over the DotA trademark ownership issue. Last week on The Lawbringer, I gave a summary of what is happening between Valve, Blizzard, Riot Games, and the DotA community, concluding that the fight over who owns the DotA name has to be fought now because of a fight brewing for years as the genre grew.

In order to expand our minds just a bit and start thinking like we want to understand the problem, we need to build a framework around the DotA issue with questions about what this is all about. Let's boil the issues down to simple questions.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks.

Defense of the Ancients is a genre all unique to itself. Sure, the concepts are not brand new and the bulk of the original game was created using the Warcraft III World Editor, but the lasting appeal and standing reverence of the DotA genre continues today and shows no sign of slowing down. Part tower defense, part real-time strategy unit movement, this game type has experienced astounding growth all over the world over the last decade. As the genre grows, Defense of the Ancients-style games, or MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arenas), or ARTS (action real-time strategy), or... wait... what are we calling this genre?

My initial reaction to the entire naming fiasco was wonderfully summed up by Joystiq's own JC Fletcher: "Which giant company has the rights to the fan-created, community-promoted word 'Dota?'" He's right to be cynical -- justice will be meted out over a word that was born in the Blizzard maps community because of the actions of two super-huge gaming companies. That's not all there is to the story, however.

Therein lies the crux of the hot topic of the day -- Blizzard has finally thrown in its opposition of Valve's attempt to trademark the name Dota for its upcoming release of DOTA 2, a literal successor to the original DotA throne. The problem is that there are a whole bunch more facts, people, and anecdotes in this story than most people know.

I wrote a short post on the Dota trademark issue a few days ago that served as the basic of basics, what the news was about. Here's the short version: Valve is attempting to trademark a name that many gamers (and companies) consider to be a general term for the genre rather than the proper name for the game that spawned the genre. Hell, it could be both.

Regional advertising campaigns are both the scourge of the collector's market and a financial boon to the lucky residents of said region targeted. The most recent ad campaign for World of Warcraft features four collector's cups from ampm stores as well as the ampm sweepstakes, promising some pretty cool prizes for those lucky few. Here's the thought that's the most fun to think about: Which of these is more ad-worthy -- someone seeing a World of Warcraft cup and being convinced to play, or the mass scramble to create a nationwide cup network for collectors and WoW fans, fueling more ad presence?

It's a fun game, advertising. At some point in our lives, we were convinced that fandom and collectors could be the same consumer as the guy who bought stuff because the cup looked cool. At some point, we became complacent with advertisement as collectable, and that's fine. In fact, if anyone wants to send me a Kil'jaeden cup, let's talk.

Welcome back to The Lawbringer, where any esoteric or wacky topic concerning Blizzard gets a home or at least some tenuous connection to the law or rules in some fashion. Today's column is not the continuation of last week's column, which will be coming up soon, but rather addresses a very interesting email about a very special cake.

Reader Luotian sent me an email with a very special question. Luotian has a question regarding the ability to take an image/screenshot of a World of Warcraft character and have it placed as the design on a birthday cake. The cake shop says that it won't do copyrighted images, but Luotian really wants this WoW cake. I think you guys will like this topic.

Oh, and Kil'jaeden is at the top of the article because if I had to choose who to have on my WoW cake, it would be him.