The Lawbringer: Mailbag 5.0
by Mathew McCurley 
Aug 26th 2011 at 1:00PM
Oh my, look at the time. Mailbag-o'clock already? That means we have questions to answer! If you'd like to send me a question for The Lawbringer, point a message from your email client of choice to mat@wowinsider.com with something having to do with Lawbringer in the title and ask away. This week, we've got some fun questions to go through.
Our first email comes from Lee, who wants to know if the Diablo 3 currency trading on the real-money Auction House could ever be big enough for a foreign currency exchange-type of marketplace for Diablo gold.
Lee asked:
You've talked at length about gold farming and the repercussion of gold farming in mmos. Much of it is related to currency trading. You've pointed out that Diablo's new model of selling cash on the auction house will eliminate gold farming and selling as we know it by creating gold to blizzard dollar currency exchange. Do you think we'll see the development of Forex style black box trading, using a Trading API add-on most likely?
I don't think that we will see foreign market currency trading in any huge scale with the Diablo 3 real-money Auction House, mostly because I don't think the volume of currency sales is going to be as large as forex would require. The scale probably won't be there. Also, it's not exactly freely tradeable, considering Blizzard holds all the cards. Diablo gold isn't like Linden dollars from Second Life, where there is a currency exchange with exchange rates and the whole backend. Plus, there's no real way to pull out your Diablo gold other than selling it through an auction system, not a currency exchange. It doesn't retain value the same way currency does, for the most part.
Blizzard reserves the right to pull the plug on this kind of thing at any point, as well. I don't think the aim of the system is to have a robust currency exchange market and, if things got to the point that this type of trading was going on, you can bet you'd see some restrictions placed on the system. Remember that there is also a flat fee for sales and purchases, which devalues the currency a bit more, as you're never getting a perfect conversion. Also, Diablo 3 expressly forbids addons from the game, which means you won't be seeing any trading apps or addons automating the process -- not according to the terms of service or the EULA, at least.
The ultimate catastrophe
Our second email comes from Pierre, who wants to know about the catastrophic failure of World of Warcraft and what Blizzard's liability as per our stuff would be.
Pierre asked:
Hi Mat,
I really enjoy your column and especially your recent writings about micro-transactions.
I do have a suggestion for a next topic based on what I think would be the most catastrophic scenario for WoW. What if Blizzard irremediably lost all in-game data for players?
Imagine all players were to log-in to find all their characters, achievements, gear, etc... gone with no way for Blizzard to get these back.
What would happen then? Would Blizzard be liable? Would players be entitled to claim past game time back? Could players sue Blizzard for "killing" their virtual self? (far-fetched, I know, but you guys do live in America)
How could Blizzard possibly respond from a PR perspective and to avoid losing players in all of its other games too?
That's it. I think it could make an interesting topic and would be grateful if you could cover some of it.
Kind regards,
Pierre
Liability is a fun thing, especially with the things that you "own" in World of Warcraft. We have to go back constantly to the license issue, since we just don't actually own anything we've collected or earned in WoW. Rather, we pay for access to a service that can be shut down at any point. Without this type of indemnity, well, there's lots of potential problems for the service as a whole.
At some point, if you did own all of your stuff or had any claims to it, Blizzard would essentially be forced to keep the servers running forever until the end of time, because you can't take the things out of the game that you "own." This is a huge onus on the part of the developers and publishers, especially with the costs associated with running, maintaining, and facilitating an MMO. Factor in WoW's size, and that's a lot of money being spent to guard against a whole bunch of liability concerns. There has to be some kind of indemnification, or WoW wouldn't be able to exist.
Now, what would happen if tomorrow Blizzard lost all data with no backups? I don't really know. There must be a total catastrophe plan in a super-secret envelope at the bottom of a bomb shelter under Mike Morhaime's home where, in the event of the end of the World of Warcraft, key members of Blizzard get together and discuss what to do in a Warcraft-less world. Honestly, it's not something that would be solved over a day -- so many people play World of Warcraft and expect a service that there would be pressure from every facet to provide compensation, even if none was really required by law. It depends. The catastrophe scenario is something that I haven't really thought about because, in this day and age, it seems utterly absurd that there aren't 9 million backups of the World of Warcraft databases all over the world in tons of different, safe places.
The wonderful Ashelia asked via Twitter what some of the WoW races use as governmental structures.
Ashelia asked:
It would be fun to cover what type of governments WoW races use if you haven't done that at some point.
Yes! Let's take a look at the different factions and see what type of governmental structures we can extrapolate, based on what we've seen so far.
The New Horde and Orgrimmar reminds me of a loose fascism or meritocracy-based structure. The Warchief is the supreme ruler, unquestionably, who sets the goals and aims of both the government's civilian and military arms. The meritocracy aspects come in through the fact that the Warchief is chosen either through contest or passed down to "the best." There are also confederation aspects to the Horde, as there is a mechanism for groups to join and pledge allegiance, while adhering to the Warchief setup.
Stormwind is clearly a monarchy, with a line of kings and rulership passed down through the bloodline. The Alliance, however, is a loosely constructed military alliance based on coordinated military movements outside of the Alliance members' own military interests. I guess the Alliance is more like the League of Nations than anything.
Taurens use a oligarchal tribal structure, whereas Trolls use some kind of tribal chiefdom mashup with the whole King Rastakhan thing thrown in for a supreme ruler who lives above the bounds of the tribal structure. Gnomes and Goblins both use forms of meritocracy or plutocracy, respectively, where the best or the most wealthy gets to rule. The Night Elves have a few disparate factions that each rule their own segment of the population but fall under a supreme ruler of the Night Elves, so I guess it would be an odd mix of theocracy and aristocracy? What do you guys think?
Well, that was a fun mailbag! Again, if you have a question for The Lawbringer, send it on over to mat@wowinsider.com and I'll try to include it in the topic. You can even send article topics you'd like me to cover. People do that all the time and some of the best columns have come from tips that people have sent me. Get sending, people.
This column is for entertainment only; if you need legal advice, contact a lawyer. For comments or general questions about law or for The Lawbringer, contact Mat at mat@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Lawbringer
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mheatleyadams Aug 26th 2011 1:43PM
For the Gnomes, they actually vote for a leader; that's why the whole Thermaplugg problem happened, as he wanted to be a king, which hasn't existed in Gnome society for more then 200 years.
Mathew McCurley Aug 26th 2011 4:58PM
They do vote for their leader, but from the Mekkatorque leader short story, it felt to me like they elected him because he was THE BEST tinker, hence why it was fairly meritorious.
Rex Aug 27th 2011 1:10AM
The high tinker reminds me slightly of FDR.
The country (Gnomer) was under extreme stress from outside influences and a capable leader stepped up and pulled them out of the fire. They begged him to keep his position because he was the most capable in their eyes, but there is a key difference. Mekkatorque is not in failing health and will likely not pass away anytime soon.
Does this effect the political climate? Here we have a democracy that has turned into a meritocracy that could very easily turn into a dictatorship when a leader realizes that the only thing supporting his rule is the war to reclaim their capital. If you want to delve too deeply of course ( They didn't 'retake' the city. Only a large portion of it. The conflict goes on. Why? The leader story seemed to imply that the he would gladly give up his rule at the point when hostilities are ended, but I'm curious of his compounded sense of duty for his people. Good intentions and what not always seems to be at the root of the destruction of personal liberties).
In an effort to root out a potential dictator the Stormwind king went on a personal mission to Ironforge and assassinated many of the would-be leader's forces and 'declared' that the country be ruled by a three person council (Source - the Shattering). The Alliance can hardly be considered a League of Nations when such overt subterfuge is used to keep order (I'd like to see the wording on that Mandate..)
--Note, keeping Anduin Wrynn a political hostage might have sparked the raid, but deciding how the city/dwarven nations should be ruled seems a bit beyond the scope of his authority.
RavenJet Aug 29th 2011 5:07AM
In theory all democracy should be meritocracies then - we always try to vote for who we think would be the best leader by some standard. Whether that standard is "shares my morals", "doesn't impose her morals on me" or "makes the best tinker shinies" is really beside the point. The gnomes are definitely a form of democracy, their particular choice of metric by which to evaluate candidates is just a bit unusual - but that is a consequence of their culture.
I imagine if there was ever a geek utopia founded where only FSF approved software licenses were valid and only programmers (of the original meaning of the word "hacker" variety) could get citizenship - then it would operate in much the same way as the gnome society does.
Telwar Aug 26th 2011 1:46PM
You forgot the dwarves, draenei, worgen, and blood elves!
Worgen and blood elves both seem to be monarchies, though not absolute. From the Silvermoon article, it seems that the mages in Elfistan had some input.
Dwarves also seem to be a monarchy, but there are references to a Senate, so it's also not absolute.
Draenei...seem to be a much nicer version of whatever the night elves have.
Shinae Aug 26th 2011 2:30PM
I have to agree that draenei and night elf societies are theocracies.
Law is boring to me, so I'm usually not interested in this column. (Nothing personal, Mat.) I'm sure glad I took a look at this one. Woo, lore stuff! :D
Mathew McCurley Aug 26th 2011 3:22PM
I'm going to do more of them next week!
AudreyR Aug 26th 2011 3:44PM
Dwarves were a monarchy but are now lead by a council split between different racial sects.
Telwar Aug 26th 2011 4:39PM
@Audreyr: I would count the dwarves still as a monarchy, just one in the midst of a succession crisis. The council is basically an attempt to avoid a civil war between the Bronzebeards and the Thaurissians; while technically Moira's son might be the heir, the rest of the Bronzebeards could raise issues of legitimacy, in which case Muradin is the rightful heir.
That, btw, would be a truly excellent column for next week, explaining the Ironforge succession.
Kolumbus Aug 26th 2011 4:43PM
I'd always considered the Draenei to be somewhat socialistic with a high emphasis on egalitarianism. Velen rules but their entire society seems to have given themselves over to the Naaru's crusade against the Burning Legion. Velen governs at behest of the Naaru with that singular goal in mind.
blazenor Aug 26th 2011 2:12PM
Blizzard losing all WoW data (not likely to happen) could be the only real "WoW Killer".
Seraph Aug 26th 2011 2:15PM
I definitely think the question re: catastrophic failure is a bit of a moot point like you mentioned, Mat. There's no way that Blizzard doesn't have an absurd amount of redundancy built-in so that even if a nuke hit a data center/server cluster they would still be able to repair the damage. Plus, armory data is probably on a separate storage center than the servers themselves, so they could probably scrape that to at least get a patchwork rebuild.
Mathew McCurley Aug 26th 2011 3:23PM
I agree, which is why I basically said "it can't happen." But! What if it did... and so forth.
icepyro Aug 26th 2011 3:50PM
The thing I'm more interested in is what they will do as they attempt to restore the data. I work at a casino and 6 years of its history takes quite a bit of time to gather and back up, much less restore from and that's just the gaming information. I can't even imagine how much goes into even one realm.
If the data center in Chicago, for example, was destroyed, it would take days to get back up and running and that is based on an unrealistic backup plan. In truth, it would take weeks just to get sufficient amounts of sufficient hardware, not to mention contract agreements with another datacenter, etc.
Then again, if any of the datacenters that host WoW are utterly destroyed, we would lose a lot more than just WoW. I think everyone would be surprised by just how much.
Back on topic, what would Blizzard do to appease those people as they work on the problem?
RavenJet Aug 29th 2011 8:30AM
I work in disaster recovery in IT so I can shed some light here on icepyro's points - and the reality is, you're just plain wrong :P
You don't restore servers from backups in high-availability and DR protected environments. The essential setup will be something like this: for each server in any WoW datacenter there is another server in the same center that is continuously synchronized with it (whether it's a database server or a whatever doesn't matter) - that's the HA (high availability server) - in wow's case there could even be three or four of them per server - at each site.
These servers do not serve users, they just sit there, synchronizing everything that happens on the live server every second of every day. Other servers refer to the live server by a name, NOT an IP address, should that server go down for any reason whatsoever, an automated system immediately updates the IP that the name refers to - sending requests to the next server in the qeue. No backups, no restores, just instant fail-over to a new server that is already completely up to date.
So that's HA. The next level is DR, in most setups DR is manual but it works in much the same way. Somewhere else - on a different continent usually (and we know WoW has datacenters in Europe as well) there is a clone of the entire setup as it stands at the main one - with a replica of every single server, including the live one - and these synchronize all the time as well. Now it's true that international transfers take longer, so the "live" DR server may be an hour or so behind, but not more than that - and the HA servers on that side sync to it again. In the event of a catastrophy like a natural disaster wiping out the chicago datacenter, a fairly simple process can be initiated that lets the European servers take over, you may lose an hour or so at worst (and in WoW's case I doubt it will be more than 10 minutes if anything at all).
Far smaller companies have DR setups that can do a complete fail-over to another continent in under 6 minutes, I would be surprized if WoW can't beat that.
I am NOT saying this is blizzard's setup - I'm explaining to you what is done as STANDARD with critical data in important datacenters everywhere in the world today. Blizzard undoubtedly employs something similiar but I would be surprised if they didn't have some additional levels of protection.
Now it's true this isn't ideal, if a tornado knocks out the entire chicago DC and they have to let their American susbscribers fail-over to replica servers in the EU then there will be significant lag involved until the Chicago DC is back up and they can revert again - but that's better than a complete loss of data and an utter inability for anybody to access your servers (something you are PAID to provide them).
Now I want to say to you - if the Casino you work for does NOT have complete off-site replication with the ability to fail-over all servers with under 10-minutes of downtime in a disaster without having to restore a single backup then either your system administrator or the people who write his budget is incompetent.
Halcyonairspace Aug 26th 2011 2:30PM
What if Blizzard server went belly up and everyone lost everything they've earned for however many years they've played. I wonder if Blizz have a WORST CASE SCENARIO backup plan in place. How would Blizzard hand this? will they distribute free exclusive on-the-fly mounts for everyone? will they give us a generic back up tier set while they try to fix this problem? will they give us each a set amount of gold to get by? Or would they just throw their hands up and say, "Screw it, let's start over"
WOW killer indeed. Server failure is the real hidden XPAC crisis that will be the end of WOW as we know it. HAH. (gulp)
Rhylon Aug 26th 2011 2:31PM
Blood Elves pretty much have a limited monarchy, or they did at least up until Kael'thas's betrayal. What will happen after Lor'themar dies or resigns will determine their governmental setup.
Draenei are theocratic, no question. Their racial leader is a prophet, for crying out loud.
Gilnean society was likely a monarchy, since that seems to be the trend in human kingdoms. That's not likely to change with their recent increase in furriness.
I confess, I know nothing about Dwarfish society. They just never appealed to me enough as a race for me to learn anything about them. =\
Halcyonairspace Aug 26th 2011 2:43PM
This is somewhat off-topic, and maybe, an editor on WOWinsider might turn this into a topic of discussion one day but, how freaking hilarious is ULDUM? I couldn't stop laughing the moment I appeared before the entrance of Uldum. That whole entire place is a laugh riot.
Halcyonairspace Aug 26th 2011 2:45PM
The quest out in Uldum is absurd and hilarious. That quest where I had to kill a million Gnomes. I nearly died from laughing so hard.
Badgelooter Aug 26th 2011 3:33PM
I'm not much for questing, but that is the best in the game. Should be a daily, except that you get to do it in Alliance cities. Fifty-eleven giant fireballs rolling through the SW AHs at a time...makes me think of the idiocy that was the zombie invasion back before LK launched.