Virtual Worlds #20: Putting Your Money Where Your Mouse Is

That's the good. On the other hand, I was not pleased at all to see that the account password was being passed to and from their web server during the signup process in plain text, as far as I could tell. It also showed up in my email receipt together with my account name not once but twice, and that's certainly not a secure practice. Yes, they need the password to access the account, but there's no way they need to be sending me emails containing it.

Nothing came of it -- Dark Horse didn't change the password on the account while they were using it, and as soon as they relinquished it, I changed it myself, but the potential for a hijack is obvious nevertheless. Not good, and not particularly bright on the part of their techs, either.

I should point out, though, that my credit card payment went through Paypal and not Dark Horse's servers. Although Paypal might have its detractors, I know they're probably not going to send my card number around in plain text, and I'm happy with the payment system overall -- just not the method they choose to confirm my Warcraft account details.

Still, all's well that ends well. Dark Horse delivered more than they promised, a couple of days early, and considering that this is necessarily a time-consuming service, the price seems pretty fair to me. So far, the account remains unbarred, and I haven't been inundated with tells calling me a lousy gold farming scumbag either. Fix the stupid security holes and I'll have no complaints at all.

Of course, Blizzard doesn't condone this activity, although I don't know whether it's something they actively dish out bans over. I don't see any particular reason why it would be. Sure, if a Blizzard rep were to look through my account history they'd see a password change followed by a week or two of almost continual access from a foreign machine, then another password change; a suspicious sight. But it's not in itself evidence that I've broken the terms of service, although I'm sure I certainly have.

What would be incontrovertible grounds for a banning, though, would be evidence of hacking program usage. Dark Horse say they don't use hacks - but then they would say that, wouldn't they? I have no way of knowing either way, and it's certainly a possibility in principle, and if that account takes a trip to Bansville in the next round, I won't be in too much doubt as to what happened. We'll see -- but getting its customers banned isn't a good way for Dark Horse to guarantee repeat business. I doubt it's an issue.

It's tempting to wonder how much the people that played Cyril were paid. I tried to talk to the employee (or, more likely, employees) playing the character, by logging on with another account and posing as an acquaintance, but I was not successful. No big surprise, as the Dark Horse website plainly states their workers will ignore all attempts at communication from other players. Besides, given what most Warcraft players know about gold farming and powerleveling firms, it's probably a reasonable assumption that they didn't speak English anyway.

Reading between the lines, though, It's possible to do a little handwaving and come up with at least a plausible guess at an hourly rate for these individuals. I paid the company $275, and the account came back with five days and four hours of played time. What's a realistic profit margin for the company, allowing for equipment, premises, electricity and so on? 50% probably isn't out of the question. They logged 124 hours with my character, putting their overall revenue at $2.22 per hour. I'd be surprised if the people actually doing the work made more than a buck and a quarter per hour, and it could well be a lot less.