Gold Farming

Gold Farmers across Ultima Online are feeling the impact of the feud between Blacksnow and the EasyUO Cartel. Rich Thurman, a leader of the EasyUO Cartel and user of the exevents code, has been repeatedly banned from Ultima Online following a conflict with the Blacksnow-Ingotdude coalition. Blacksnow is now reeling from massive account losses, attributed to the hard work of the EasyUO coalition.

Lee Caldwell, a leader of Blacksnow and Ingotdude, originally contacted Thurman and the two discussed the possibility of joining forces to control the economy of Ultima Online. Thurman’s team was made up of strong programmers, while Caldwell’s team had extensively studied the market and had already been successful at manipulating the market. If the two groups combined their skills, they could completely control the market, and would have immense power within Ultima Online, possibly even more than game developers had. But Caldwell wanted access to the exevents code in exchange for his teams’ talents, and Thurman was unwilling to agree. Thurman explained that the creator of exevents did not give it to ay outsiders, and that it was impossible for Caldwell to get the code. Caldwell and Thurman parted on good terms without coming to an agreement.

But one day later Caldwell contacted Thurman with the news that someone had been reposting his characters to game masters, and that his characters had been banned. Thurman denied any involvement and claimed that all of his characters as well as his team members’ characters had also been banned. A suspicious Caldwell found a character belonging to Josh, another member of the Cartel, and asked Josh about the widespread banning. Josh explained that exevents had been given to a blackmailer to keep him quiet. Caldwell reported this information back to Thurman who denied everything and stood by his original statement that exevents could not be given to players outside of the Cartel. Thurman also claimed that exevents had been shut down by its creator, and that other players could no longer use it. Caldwell was infuriated that Thurman gave exevents to a blackmailer after refusing to give it to Blacksnow in exchange for their cooperation. After a brief argument, Caldwell promised that he would get revenge, while Josh promised to destroy Blacksnow.

Reports now state that Blacksnow has had massive account losses, which are credited to the work of the Cartel. In response to the conflict, Blacksnow has been searching for and immediately reporting and banning every character that is created by Thurman. Thurman has not yet been able to keep a new character in the game. The Cartel is now looking to discover new bugs that will allow them to continue to farm with less exposure and less competition.

Pool's Closed

Bridget Blogdett discuses virtual protests and theories behind virtual collective action in her article And the Ringleaders Were Banned: An Examination of Protest in Virtual Worlds. Blogdett explains that hacktivism is how social movements use the Internet to advance their cause, while Computer Mediated Communication "examines the roles of communication channels in shaping social practices." Blogdett also analyzes a few different examples of virtual protests under the theoretical framework for virtual collective action. To do this she discusses each protest's degree of virtualization, legality, cultural homogeneity, and limits on participation. The degree of virtualization refers to the "percentage of the amount of organization and participation that was achieved offline or virtually." Legality is how legal both planning and holding the protest was, while cultural homogeneity is what level of diversity exists between individuals involved with the protest. Limitations on participation is a measure of how many people cannot participate in the protest and what prevents them from participating. In all of the cases Blogdett examined, participation was limited to those who had access to a computer and the specific game the protest took place in.

Habbo Hotel had an in-game protest in 2006 which has been commemorated annually since then. A group of avatars wearing identical business suits and afros gather near a pool in Habbo Hotel and blocked the entrance. At the time, Habbo Hotel did not allow avatars to walk through other avatars, so other players were unable to use the pool. This protest was in response to perceived racism by Habbo Hotel's moderators. These avatars had been gathering to block off public spaces of Habbo, but on July 12th of 2006 they planned and organized a large protest with numerous avatars. It was rumored, specifically on 4chan, that Habbo's moderators were blocking mainly black avatars, so players created the black, fancy suit-wearing avatar to represent a wealthy black man.

The Pool's Closed protest of 2006 was almost exclusively online, though not entirely in-game. The Source of unrest was in fact 4chan comments, though they referenced in-game occurrences. The planning and marketing of the protest also happened online, using a variety of different websites. Additionally, though not directly part of the protest, there were real-world implications that resulted from the Pool's Closed protest. People dressed as the avatar and rallied at the headquarters of the parent company of Habbo Hotel. Any real world occurrences relating to the protest happened after it occurred in game, but could still be considered a part of the protest.
The Pool's Closed protest was probably legal in terms of real-world law, but it's in game legality is questionable. The raids were quite disruptive and caused some big problems for Habbo, and many participants were banned. Based on the banning of numerous avatars, I'll conclude that Habbo considered it illegal or it was against their EULA.
There was a fair amount of diversity amongst those involved in the Pool's Closed raids. Though many were Americans, as the protestors marketed themselves, it became of interest to many of the users of Habbo. Since Habbo is owned by a Finnish company, it has many  international players who may have been involved with the protest. It is also quite difficult to know who was involved because the protest was advertised widely across the internet, and all of the avatars were intended to be the same.
The main limit to participation in the Pool's Closed raids was access to Habbo. To participate, a player needed knowledge of the raid and the proper avatar to make, as well as the basics of computer and internet access. Beyond that, nearly anyone could participate.

Second Life (Second Try)

Cory Ondrejka extensively discusses creation as an essential element of the theoretical Metaverse. The Metaverse is an "online environment that [is] a real place to its users". It is a virtual world where users can socialize, conduct business, be entertained, and do a variety of other things, similar to those they do in real life. Ondrejka states that the Metaverse cannot exist without creation. This makes sense since our world would not exist without innovation and invention, and the Metaverse is essentially a virtual version of the physical world.

Ondrejka sees a distinction between creation, where users have the ability to alter gameplay with objects that they have created in-game and use in-game, and crafting, where users can make items within the confines of the game designer's programming. Crafting will never allow for completely new objects or new interactions, but only lets players discover objects which are new for them. However, creating allows for the introduction of truly new items. Ondrejka sites Second Life as a step forward toward the Metaverse because of its inclusion of true in-game creation.

In Second Life I've made a boulder and a small wooden table. I made my wooden table or stool or whatever it is by using five separate shapes. I started with four cylinders, adjusted their size, placed them on an equal distance apart in a square, and then used a rectangular shape to make the top. Again I adjusted its size significantly. Then I locked them all together and picked an external texture for the whole thing. I believe it looks like cherry wood. This is a very simplified form of creating. In real life, I could make a small table out of wood and stain it to be a reddish hue. Additionally, though I made a very simplified object, I was not limited only by my inexperience, not by the game code. Using spheres, cylinders, cubes, and a whole variety of other dimensional shapes, I could have made pretty much anything. My table can be hot pink, clear, or covered in velvet. Anything I desire and that is possible in the context of the real world is also possible in Second Life. This is much different from the crafting that I've done in LOTRO. In LOTRO I simply chose to craft an item, found the materials, and then crafted it. It required no creativity, and there was very little choice involved. Though I "made" it, the object was previously designed by game designers, and I was just making a replica of it. In Second Life, I can make anything and use my own design, I'm not constricted by the designers or their code.

Ondrejka sees this as an essential component of the Metaverse. Second Life offers players the ability to take a given sphere, make it oblong, add a small indentation, create inconsistencies in its size and shape, and add a variety of textures to it. In the end it looks like a rock. But players can also copy the rock hundreds of times to make a stone wall or carry the rock around with them. More experience and knowledgeable players may be able to throw the rock or add a script to make avatars interact with it differently. The ability to make an entirely new object, and to use it, is of great important in the real, physical world. And so it's no surprise that it's of great importance to the Metaverse. After all, the Metaverse is just an online version of the real world.

An awesome user-made Second Life Motorcycle.