WTB: Screenshot from Cokken

[Mokk]

Sculli is in a different class than you. Running a site and being a member of it are like comparing apples and oranges. Maybe you should take your own advice, or is it you wish you could still play and just can't afford too?

Check off topic and note the WoW forum, kthxbai.

 

[Mokk]

I love it when people look as completely stupid as possible and then finally admit defeat with "well, you don't even play why are you here god how lame." It's so predictable ... and by the way just so we're clear i could buy you and sell you in a heartbeat, my finances are none of your concern, i left because the game sucks balls, end of story.

 

[Shaunessy]

Yeah cause WoW rocks 8] I highly doubt that you could buy me though.

 

[Passions]

I highly doubt that you could buy me though.

correct because everyone is rich on the interent you see :rtfm:

 

[Mokk]

Yeah cause WoW rocks 8] I highly doubt that you could buy me though.

Your doubts don't concern me, you missed the point entirely though. You fell back to the same crap any random troll would have when pwned properly on the flameboard "you're poor, why are you here, etc" Which is why you fail. Where's those convictions? Also, take note, i'm not the one who labeled you a troll i just think it's an apt statement.

You whine and piss and moan and sling crap until the topic either drops or someone puts you in your place as opposed to making your opinion known and only attacking people who attack you for said opinion. To compare yourself to me on troll standards is basicly flattering yourself, keep trying, some day you might be able to sit at the adult table too.

 

[Sculli]

Of course values are situational. Many people believe it is wrong to kill a person, however they do not believe that it is wrong to kill and eat a plant. You end life in either case.

In this case your govering value is that you value human life above other life. There is nothing situational about that, unless you would consider sacrificing your life for a plant or an animal. Meaning you would be in a situation in which you knew ahead of time that you will lose your life, but you go ahead and save a plant or an animal.

A less extreme version: some people may not believe in killing other people, however if someone attacks them with a knife on the street, they would try to defend themselves, possibly harming or killing their attacker.

True, the value of self-preservation takes a higher priority than the value of valuing human life.

You see what I mean though?
Those are fundemental values of which we all have a bunch, and we all arrainge them in the order of importance to us.

Imagine an I-Beam on a construction site, about a foot wide (~30cm), and say 15 yards (~14m) long. It's sitting on the ground, it's a nice and sunny day in June. You are on one end, and I am on the other end. I am telling you: "If you walk on the I-Beam over to me without to fall down, I will give you $10!". Will you do it? Of course you will, it's $10 easy earned. This is to establish that one of your governing values is money. You walked across for cash, as pretty much everyone else would have done.

Take the same I-Beam, suspend it between two steel structure towers 300ft (~100m) up. Would you still walk across it for $10? Probably not.

Now imagine the same contruction site, on a November night. Freezing raid, high winds, the beam is swaying a bit and it is somewhat concave from having hung up there for so long, ice has formed on it's surface, it is dark, cold and loud.

There is something on that I-Beam, right in the middle, it's too dark to really see what it is, it is unable to reach either end on its own that much is clear, it needs help or it will fall. You are the only one around who can help, and from somewhere you hear Jack Bauer yell: "There's no time!"

What is it you would go out on the I-Beam for. It could be a person, an idea, a concept, a thing, lot's of different answers are possible. This isn't really a public question, as I feel the answer is one of the most private things one can have. It's just an extreme illustration how people can ponder what's important to them in life, and to what degree, and what isn't.

As for "Everyone has a set of rules they live by," you might want to consider not imposing yours on other people, especially as regards a game.

What if one of my rules is to impose my rules on others through? (hypothetically speaking)
Then it could be someone elses rule to not listen to my rules.

Perhaps giving a brief summary of whatever point you want to make, rather than demanding that people read what you read to think what you think?

As written, I did demand that people buy the book, though this demand was more along the lines of "Bookreading - GO!". I have no doubts about that I am in no position to actually demand from people to read a book.

However, the goal was not to "convert" people to my way of thinking, but to point out a resource that readers could benefit from in regards to their approach of ethical issues.

The above language is not conversational but didactic; it makes no provision for listening, only declaration.

I agree. In part that is because written words alone are a very poor medium of communication, in part it is I indeed wrote some of those statements as declaration of my views. What that means to me is that my views on this are right by me, and no amount of arguing is going to change that. Others are welcome to agree, or not. Thier agreement has no impact on my views.

This thread is a lot of "you are wrong", "no, you are", just written out in a more elaborate way. What cokenn did was wrong by my standards. I tried to offer some explanation as to why I think this way when countered.

Finally, consider that perhaps the economic circumstances which have developed in the game distract from the enjoyable content, and that if you were still involved in it on an everyday basis, perhaps you too would be glad to hear about a blow, even a tiny one, struck against the RMT crowd.

I pretty much addessed this in my previous reply to this thread: http://www.qcdn.org/showpost.php?p=344644&postcount=246

I will be happy to repeat it: MMO inflation is as old as MMOs. MMO inflation is not linear. MMO inflation as such is not a function of RMT. The rate of MMO inflation is affected by RMT, but it is my believe that this effect is minor in comparison to the effect that regular player generated currency influx has on an old game. What do I base those statements on? Personal experience in other MMOs, and no significant difference between FFXI and those other MMOs when it comes to the in-game economy.

Lastly, if the game is not enjoyable anymore, then simply don't play it anymore. Waiting for the publisher to fix it will only prolong one's agony and pull more money out of one's pocket. A fix of the economy without to redesign the entire economy is highly unlikely, and a complete redesign is even more unlikely.

 

[Sneezy]

current deflation

My first thought when the current market deflation started taking place was "Ohmygod they took the extra Gil out of the game by cancelling the accounts of the IGE guys!"

Seriously, think about it - the reason prices were so high was because Gil was so easy to obtain and there was a lot of it. There was too much gil available. Kinda like when Germany started nonstop printing of Marks in 1923 and caused people to literally bring wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. Exchange rate was approaching 1 *TRILLION* Marks per US Dollar. Not exaggerating.

The in-game currency has an exchange rate that has been going up remarkably fast... the only surefire way to stop it is to remove Gil from circulation. What better way than by cancelling the accounts of the gil sellers? It would take but a simple database query to see who does high volume gil transfers, you watch the account, then when it's full of gil, take it out. With the right volume, it would be pretty effective.

I wonder if that's what actually happened or not, though.

 

[Mokk]

My first thought when the current market deflation started taking place was "Ohmygod they took the extra Gil out of the game by cancelling the accounts of the IGE guys!"

Seriously, think about it - the reason prices were so high was because Gil was so easy to obtain and there was a lot of it. There was too much gil available. Kinda like when Germany started nonstop printing of Marks in 1923 and caused people to literally bring wheelbarrows full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. Exchange rate was approaching 1 *TRILLION* Marks per US Dollar. Not exaggerating.

The in-game currency has an exchange rate that has been going up remarkably fast... the only surefire way to stop it is to remove Gil from circulation. What better way than by cancelling the accounts of the gil sellers? It would take but a simple database query to see who does high volume gil transfers, you watch the account, then when it's full of gil, take it out. With the right volume, it would be pretty effective.

I wonder if that's what actually happened or not, though.

Yes and no, the average seller wasen't hit in the most recent actions but rather a large percentage of the banned accounts were exploiting some sort of duping method which resulted in their bans. The end result being a ton of gil taken out of the entire server listing, i think the exact number was 300bil or something across the boards.

 

[Valoran]

True, the value of self-preservation takes a higher priority than the value of valuing human life.

Apparently you do not view interaction with other moral values as something that changes in a given situation.

This leads to a conclusion either of a semantic difference* on that point or that the following dichotomy is true:

Your belief seems to be that one should determine a value system and apply it to life in a mathematical and absolute way.

My belief is that values should be evaluated in every case before a conclusion is reached. At a minimum, this allows one to correct errors in the "mathematical" structure of one's own beliefs; I tend to believe that it gives something more . . . I think it allows us to maintain contact with reality in a way that goes beyond playing moral checkers** of my morality vs your morality. Sophocles' Antigone is an excellent example of a man who applies his moral system uniformly -- Creon -- and misses something. Creon, for the record, believes that the just ruler should never be disobeyed, and he is right, and he is the just ruler who honors the gods, except that in one case he misinterprets what the gods want. Because of his strict application of morality, he is unable to perceive that he himself has become mistaken. (To declare that one of the tenets of a strict moral system should be to not be mistaken leads to a circular and nonsensical problem: if the system is mistaken already, it has failed, and the difference between a single failure and a twofold one -- the second coming from the violation of "Do not be mistaken" -- is negligible in a definitionally absolute system.)



* The semantic argument would be that I consider a relative position to be situationally assigned, whereas Sculli considers it to be absolute, and the system to correct for this by considering each and every tenet in order and simply not coming up with any output from those which do not bear on the situation.
Brief illustrative example:
Two people have moral tenets 1,2,3,4,5.
There is a situation which involves 2,4,5.

Person 1 takes 2,4,5 and applies them in a relation of 2 first, 4 second, and 5 third.
Person 2 applies all of them in order 1 first, 2 second, etc.

Their positional numbers thus vary situationally to person 1, but not person 2; this is the semantic difference that may have occured in this discussion.
(However, the system of Person 2 -- potentially Sculli's -- seems a silly way to go about morality, though; do we ever actually consider whether everything we believe applies when, for instance, we decide whether to give money to a homeless person? To do so would be too confusing and ridiculous.)

** chess allows for far too much diversity of play to be an appropriate analogy, the game being determined by the interplay between players' strategies rather than the simpler tactical mathematics of checkers.

 

[Valoran]

My above response misses a point, however.

My own inflexibility on this matter probably begs the question: why should it matter to me what views anyone else publically espouses.

To answer that briefly:

It seems to me that a view that espouses both:
1) Everyone has their own morality
2) I have the right to demand that others follow or consider my morality
is dangerous.

It is doubly dangerous to a community where:
3) reputation matters
4) there is a heirarchical authority structure appointed by Sculli

Thus, if Sculli so chooses, he can tell anyone who does not agree with him to "STFU" and "GTFO" and back it up by banning their IP address. The issue then becomes, what does it take for this to happen?

My concerns run as follows:
5) Sculli has strong moral beliefs that he feels comfortable declaring publically, and which do not seem to allow for a discussion with other beliefs, in that they have attributes of an absolute moral system.
6) The decisions to ban an IP address seem to be made primarily on moral considerations: Person X is too damaging/distracting/attention-seeking to contribute to the positive aspects of the board such as event-scheduling/information sharing, etc.
7) specific examples have made this fear potentially real; there was recently a discussion in http://www.qcdn.org/showthread.php?t=22385 which became closed at several points, although it was re-opened later.

Thus,
8) I feel it's important to be outspoken about "moral issues" when they arise regarding a player, as they did in this example.



It occurs to me after writing this that it may serve as an excellent example of situational values. I belive that reading the above, it is clear that the sum response actions I take is greater than a simple explication of any addition of parts above. (Especially, for instance, the doubling nature of 3,4 to 1,2; this is not a strict application of each in turn, but an interplay of the issues that arise in the situation, with a value-based response to the total and not a sum of value-based responses to each).