An Associated Press story ran today titled,”With real money now at stake, crackdowns on video game cheating gain currency.”
My local paper has a tendancy of printing these kinds of stories that have no substance and even fewer facts. What concerned me was that it was actually an Associated Press story. I don't write about Iraq and I don't expect them to write about video games.
The premise of the article is that people cheat in Second Life and World of Warcraft and this is concerning because there is real money involved. Huh? Perhaps in Second Life, the video game industry's equivalent of hardcore porn. And selling items, characters, or accounts in WoW is against the rules and is punishable by having your account banned and the items destroyed.
There are some anecdotal accounts of hacking in general and problems with security. MMORPGs have had these problems from the beginning. Most people would agree however, that games like World of Warcraft are probably the best at keeping track of this kind of cheating. As you can see, you could drive a truck through this story; as I said earlier, I wish the mainstream media would keep an eye on what they do best, not what game journalists do best.
The story...
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