Blizzard disqualifies top teams from Arena tournament
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
May 14th 2007 at 4:55PM
According to Sam Lingle at Amped eSports, Blizzard has disqualified several top teams and many players from its Arena tournament regional in San Diego. The top eight arena teams lost twelve players, leaving three of them unable to compete at all and two more missing key players. While previous rounds of disqualifications were due to location issues (sorry, Canadians), these DQs were for players whose names didn't match up with the names paying for their accounts. While theoretically, this could be caused by someone using someone else's credit card (like a family member's) to pay for the account, it's more likely due to account sharing -- which many of the players admit. Of the four disqualified players Lingle interviews, three say it was due to account sharing or just plain buying/taking over accounts. Note that Lingle's story is pretty dang biased in favor of the players, so I would take the whole interview with a grain of salt.
I think by this point, everyone knows that account sharing is against the terms of use -- although I'd also say that nearly everyone has done it at some point. My first character ever was a lowbie nelf on a friend's account, and in the past I've helped a friend by mining ore while he sat in the same room and played Zelda. If everyone who'd ever played on another person's account was banned, there wouldn't be that many players left.
On the other hand, I'm also not trying to compete nationally in WoW, and the excuses used by the players just suck. Leveling is a "huge time commitment"? No, you've had like two years to level. Endgame raiding is a huge time commitment. Leveling can be done practically in your sleep. "Because 1-60 is terrible and when u need a class u can't really wait for someone to level and gear so they get characters from a friend or whatever"? If you're seriously competing at a professional video gaming level, is it too much to ask that you put the relatively minor amount of time into leveling your own character?
There's a big discussion about this on the forums, and I can see both sides. What do you think?
Filed under: Blizzard, News items, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Matt May 14th 2007 5:12PM
I'd be careful about making the assumption that "just about everyone has done it at some point". Are you kidding me? I have never done it, nor would I ever. Why on earth would you??? Would you give your friend your ATM PIN number? I would not risk my account to let a friend play for free. Pony up the $15 or go play hopscotch. It's one thing to have a friend come over and try out the game for a few minutes. It's another thing entirely to give someone your user name and password to play whenever they want...
goatbird May 14th 2007 5:27PM
I for instance have my brother's info and he has mine. Doesnt make much of a difference b/c we play the same race/class combo as our mains. This is mainly for tradeskills or other things while the other cant play. Keep in mind, we leave a few hours away from each other. Ive only given 1 other person my account info, and then I changed it the next day.
Pritchard May 14th 2007 5:28PM
Take your own advice, Matt.
Just because you haven't doesn't mean their assumption of "just about everyone" is wrong.
goatbird May 14th 2007 5:29PM
should say we live a few hours away from each other.
Ragbar May 14th 2007 5:30PM
I don't think the problem is people who have let a friend log onto their account at various times (to raid for them, or let their girlfriend play, etc).
This is talking about the name of the person who signed up for the tournament, not matching the name on the account. THAT is the problem. Basically, if you want to compete in a tournament, make sure you're playing with the account you currently pay for.
Frankly I'm shocked at the amount of people who are top PvPers who don't pay for or weren't the original owners of their account.
Matt May 14th 2007 5:32PM
@ Prichard #3
I guess you're right. Just because I haven't, doesn't mean that "almost everyone hasn't". You bring up a good logical point, but I'm still curious/skeptical. Does everyone else agree with the author's point that "almost everyone" has shared their account? Just curious. Sorry if this is OT but Prichard got me thinking...
robodex May 14th 2007 5:32PM
Leveling 1-70 is HARDLY a quick thing.
1-60, the fastest people have done it is a little under 4 days. If you include doing 58+ in hellfire, it probably shaves about 6 hours off of this time (I leveled 58-60 on my hunter in an afternoon, on rested experience.)
60-70, I'd say MAYBE 1.5 days at the very least. If you have all of your quests exactly mapped, it could be faster, but on average I'd say you'd be hard pressed to do 60-70 in less than that.
So we're talking at the very least 5 days /played time to level a character from 1-70. This doesn't include gearing up (pvp or instances.) You're not going to pvp in greens. This is probably going to take at least another day of /played time; less if you're lucky on drops or have guildies who are always there to help you.
While I don't condone buying accounts or account sharing, it's very short-sighted to saying 1-70 is easy.
Ragbar May 14th 2007 5:34PM
You have to define "shared". Letting a friend play for a few hours to try out the game? Letting a sibling play your character for a bit cuz he wanted to? What do you define as "sharing"?
To me, "sharing" is equal time played on one character/account. Where people used to schedule Honor Farming during the old PvP system.
Eldiablohijo May 14th 2007 5:37PM
I think the whole thing was the name of the account holder didn't match up to the name / addresses supplied to blizzard when they were going to Book Flights/Hotels for the final tournament.
Not who was paying for the account.
The article doesn't make it sound to me that they looked at billing information on the account, just the orginal Account Holder's name and address that you supply when you register.
It'd be to easy to just hide who's paying for an account by using a game card.
Eldiablohijo May 14th 2007 5:45PM
@ robodex #6
Your numbers are slightly off.
4 days 20 hours is the current (known) record for 1 - 60. It's not a reasonable record to think you can get anywhere close to. Most people following a leveling guide closely and having help leveling (IE heal bot) can expect to take around 6 days /played to get to 60.
60-70 can not be done unless you have LOTs of people helping you. The person who did it when the expansion came out had tons of people helping him (his whole guild)
Someone leveling solo/duo can expect to do 60-70 in 4 days played if they are following a good guide and having someone help them (or playing a good solo class)
So that's about 10 days /played total, which can be done in about 2-3 weeks time by a hard core player. To do any faster than that you'd have to have a LOT of help.
Hank May 14th 2007 5:46PM
I think this type of thing shows that Blizz needs to create a sort of amnesty for people who have, for whatever reason, an account name that does not match their real info. Obviously, Blizzard should charge a fee for this, and it should be a limited-time only thing.
Just like lots of cities do with parking tickets. Because what difference does it really make to Blizzard? People are still paying their $15/mo for the game time.
aeromaster May 14th 2007 5:47PM
what about boyfriend/girlfriend? Husband/wife? Say for example that the husband is good at playing druid, but suddenly he wants to play warrior. His wife leveled a warrior to 70 prior to them getting married and have different accounts. This is kinda getting complicated, but what then? Do you ban the husband for "stealing" his wife's account? Sounds ridiculous, but since I know a lot of Husband/wife combos that are playing WoW, this wouldn't really surprise me at all.
Eldiablohijo May 14th 2007 6:00PM
@11
Blizzard has a nice solid stance against anything they consider against the "spirit of the game", which includes selling/trading accounts. Mostly cause this is money that blizzard doesn't recieve in the transactions. It's more beneficial for Blizzard if someone buys the game/expansion and then begins paying the monthly fee (While some other experienced player quits the game).
Than to have a player who's quitting sell his account and profit to allow a new player to have an account/copy of the game.
Now a good way to work around this is if Blizzard set up their own acution system like SOE has, then they would profit off of the sales/trades of accounts/gold.
@12
The husband wife thing is covered in the TOS, you can have one person besides you who is related to you play your account. If you share the same last name I don't think it would end up being an issue.
The boyfriend/girlfriend thing is not, which is why if you get a g/f of yours to start playing WoW get her on a seperate account, mostly just for your safety, some women can be pretty vidicitve when they break up with a guy.
s1kat May 14th 2007 6:02PM
Is it also against the Blizzard EULA to currently play on an account that is under my younger brother's name? He introduced me to the game and we leveled characters on the same account separately. Soon after, he gave up WoW but I continue to play. Is this wrong?
Martel May 14th 2007 6:05PM
I definately don't agree that almost everyone shares accounts. The people who do share probably assume that everyone else does also but they are wrong. This whole situation just goes to show that hardcore pvpers can be clueless noobs just like anyone else. Anyone who thought this contest through would realize playing someone else's account wouldn't fly.
John Vilsack May 14th 2007 7:59PM
Interesting.
I pay for three accounts in my household: Two for me and one for my fiance. I wonder if it is considered a violation of the TOS for me to own her account?
To take it a technical step further, what if someone's parents were paying for the account?
bitbot.cc May 14th 2007 6:07PM
If you feel that it takes too long to level 1-70, you're playing the wrong game. You need to play a different game. It's really as simple as that.
While I do understand and generally applaud the modern, typically PC gamer mindset that malleability of a game/game mechanic is almost as important as the game itself (modding, hacks, etc) when you enter an open, public arena you have to play by the rules, or the entire system is ruined. It's cool if you don't care about things being ruined, but it's also cool that you get your characters deleted and account banned.
tython25 May 14th 2007 6:13PM
The problem was Blizzard did not have the tournament rules out there for people to see well in advance. I'm sure many of these guys would have covered their basis if they knew they could disqualified.
But I'd go so far as to say that not only is the tournament now a joke but so is Blizzard.
Arturis May 14th 2007 6:26PM
Regarding the "Leveling from 1 to 70" issue, a small side note: When World of Warcraft first came out, it was ridiculed by fans of other MMOs for being "easy mode" simply because you could reach the level cap in a fraction of the time needed to reach the level cap in, say, EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot. While this statement may or may not be accurate (It would vary based on a near endless list of factors, but thats another conversation) it was still a point of contention.
My point being, I think it's just plain hogwash that the players that are striving to be what would amount to Celebrity Athletes couldn't find the time to level their own characters in the past 2 years that Warcraft has been playable.
Pingmeister May 14th 2007 6:28PM
I have never shared an account and to the best of my knowledge my dozen or so good friends who play(ed) WoW have never shared an account.
Then again, we are older players who are far less likely to bring up the game with our peers at work.