Amber Night

Wherein I find myself once again defending Blizzard.  How fucked up is that?

The link to this story came to me last night from UK reader Ted.  I'll say right off that this is most likely not the post he expected me to write, and for that I hope he can forgive me.  (And just to be clear, I'm in not implying that Ted is in any way connected to the study.)

The premise: Blizzard police American servers for RMT behavior more vigorously than the European servers.  And there's a study that seems to prove it.

A couple things initially bothered me about this study, even before I took the time to fully read it.  First, it's posted on a site that blatantly supports RMT.  That's kind of weird don't you think? (Seriously, they're like Priceline for RMT'ers.  They ought to have William Fucking Shatner doing ads for them.)

The second thing that's weird is that he (the gentleman who emailed me the link) said he found the link at WorldofWar.net.  I had to do a little digging, but I eventually found the post that he must have originally found the study link on:

The University of Sheffield and MMO-gold price compare/study site GamerPrice.com have just published a study that shows WoW European subscribers are supposedly getting an inferior quality of service from Blizz farming monitoring when compared to their American cousins.

Hoo-wee.  The University of Sheffield huh?  That's like serious academia.  And stuff.

However, when I Googled "University of Sheffield Warcraft," I saw a few references to this supposed joint study, but no actual primary source.  Furthermore, nowhere in the study is The University of Sheffield mentioned, leaving me to conclude that there is no link between UofS and this study.  I'd love to know where that rumor got started, but as we'll see, the study falls on it's own with or without the help of a prestigious British institution of higher learning.

Ah yes, the study.  Here's how the logic breaks down:

1. The average cost of gold on European servers is over 8 times less expensive than on US servers.
2. Is it because demand is higher in the US?  No, according to the study "realm population statistics (see WarcraftRealms) indicate no statistically significant difference."
3. Is it because Americans have more disposable income?  Again, not according to the study.  "On this scale, the supply adjusts to the demand. All things being equal, companies will farm gold where there is most demand. Proof of this can be found in the incredibly similar prices for Alliance and Horde: overall, prices are almost identical, despite a considerable disparity in population. The difference in demand is equalled out by the economy of scale (sheer numbers involved) and by the demand adjusting to meet the supply."
4. Therefore: "The cost involved in producing (farming) gold on Europe must simply be lower than the cost involved in producing the same gold on World of Warcraft USA."

The study concludes that because costs are lower to farm in Europe, Blizzard must not be patrolling the European servers with as heavy a hand as the American servers.

For the sake of argument, let's take point 1 at face value.

Let us also take point 2 at face value.  To quote the study, "One theory is that the US servers have more demand," and "realm population statistics (see WarcraftRealms) indicate no statistically significant difference – so we can rule out population arguments."

Point 3 gets a little tricky.  They're saying that although the populations are roughly the same on a European server and a US server, then we would expect to see gold costing roughly the same, all other things being equal.  But, the study concludes, all things are not equal, because there must be more gold farmers operating on the European servers, thus driving down the price of gold.

It's the same argument Intelligent Design proponents try to make: There must be an invisible creator because something cannot be explained within the narrow scope of our investigation.  In this case, the study concludes that because the data supports the conclusion, the conclusion must be correct.  Like the Intelligent Design argument, there's no smoking gun, only a conclusion based on conjecture.

Of course, they could very well be correct.  It's certainly a plausible argument, and we would expect to see these results if Blizzard Europe behaved in the manner in which the study believe they are behaving.  Or…it could be something else.  Some other factor perhaps that drives down the price of virtual money in Europe.  For example, I wouldn't be to hasty in dismissing American discretionary income.  Americans think nothing of whipping out a credit card and typing it into a web form.  We are a culture of instant gratification and excess.  It could very well be that the European price for virtual money is the norm, and Americans are driving the price up.

And perhaps I'm guilty of that other great American trait, cynicism.  As I showed earlier, there's some interesting details surrounding the origins of this study.  I'm pretty sure there's more to this than simple "scientific curiosity." 

Which is not to say that Blizzard Europe either is or is not policing their servers properly.  If the data in this study is correct (and I should hope so, because the rest of it is rubbish), there is clearly something at work to create such a disparity.  It could be poor in-game policing, or it could be that Americans and Canadians have more discretionary income, or it could be freaking sunspot activity.  We just don't know.  But we do know that this study only succeeds in bringing to light an interesting collection of data points.  It does nothing to either prove or disprove Blizzard Europe's negligence, and players would be wrong to rally around it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 5:48 am and is filed under MMOs - World of Warcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.