Unless (and I have one of those cars where this can be tracked) I leave my car unlocked. Or, in the case of my convertible, the roof down. In this case, my insurance company disclaims any reimbursement. I have to take “reasonable precautions” to be entitled to reimbursement.

Which is one side of the story. The other one is what’ll happen to the thief. In all of the above scenarios he’ll see a judge and go away for a while. Blizzard does state that they’ll go against the perpetrator, but they’ve added “leaves his car unlocked” to the insurance coverage.

I am all in favor of harsher penalties for theft, ID or bank. I am against the coddling of those who act grossly negligent (not those who are taken unaware, more about this in a second). For that matter, I’d be delighted to see Blizzard actually start harsher penalties for a lot of things.

There are exceptions. Like many other people I had an envelope with passwords and account data for all my civilian stuff sitting with my parents when I shipped out to Iraq. In my case nothing happened. A friend of mine, however, had his envelope opened by his little brother who logged into WoW with my friends’ credentials, emptied his gbank, sold his stuff, then sold the gold to a classmate for real money. Blizzard refused to intervene or to restore after my friend came home. In that case, yes, there should be something done. Same with hacked accounts.

Remember Alcry on KT? He came from some other guild he’d just cheated out of Thunderfury. Moved to KT, was invited into the ill-named and ill-fated Opus Dei, ninjaed them, went to another guild who guilded him because of his Thunderfury, he ninjaed them on their only Instructor kill, and transferred off. Under Blizzard’s new approach, those people would be reimbursed. For guilding a known ninja. Why should they?

If Blizzard had said “in some extreme cases we’ll restore what was stolen, and in most cases we’ll ban the thief”, I’d have been ecstatic. But considering the last two thefts on Misha were restored (one BT-ID by someone who’d left the guild and took a T5 guild into the instance, actually downing Council, one guild bank by a guy who’d been gkicked from two other guilds prior to that for similar offenses) while the thieves are still around (and re-guilded for that matter)…

Another example – player organizes Sunwell trash raids. After third raid he refuses to hand over the ML’d gems and other things, transfers. Arrives at new server, doesn’t change his name. He’s found and well documented to have done this. Player gets guilded with top progression guild, is made co-RL and master looter. One raid he keeps the gems, again, hearthes out, loots the bank, leaves guild.

He’s still around, selling the gems and still does T5/Sunwell raids for PuGs. The ninjaed bank has been restored.

That’s the wrong way round. Let those who enable thieves suffer, and remove thieves from the game. Wouldn’t you agree?

In “RL” it might be the police; in WoW, it’s Blizzard. An analogy (flawed somewhat, as all analogies are): I want to cross the street. I know I should (a) look both ways before stepping off the side walk (or investigate a potential guild recruit for issuing a /ginvite) and (b) cross at the crosswalk (or ensure my guild bank permissions are such that a brand-new recruit can’t take everything out of it).

But if I cross in the middle of the street and get hit by a hit-and-run driver, even though I failed to exercise “due diligence”, that driver isn’t permitted to get away scot-free. And similarly, neither should a guild-bank thief or a Raid ID ninja.

But don’t we? That’s the whole basis for my argument. I don’t see players shunned throughout for doing this. I don’t see guilds shunned for guilding thieves. And I don’t see very many of us saying “so you got ninjaed by someone with the moral fortitude of a rock and prior conduct on his rap sheet, tough luck, next time choose your alignments more carefully”.

In a sense we now encourage tolerating this kind of behavior. After all, it can be remedied, so what’s the harm of guilding, taking into raids, in short “rewarding”, players that are not of the more integer kind.

Maybe I am too much a “personal responsibility” kind of guy to understand this.

First, the degree to which people would “cheat” (for want of a better all-encompassing word): hack accounts, rob guild banks, ninja raid IDs, or generally harass other players.

Second, the degree to which “the rest of us” would not tolerate those actions.

No, a few hundred—or even a few thousand—accounts canceled by disgruntled players isn’t even a drop in the bucket, but the loss of goodwill among not only those people, but “the rest of us” who are affected, directly or indirectly, by some of the crap that goes on, is considerably more than just a drop.

You or I can influence many (even without benefit of our respective blogs) to either buy, or not buy, WoW and its expansions. Blizzard (and/or Vivendi) don’t want to risk that sort of loss of goodwill.

Usually they’re vendored or sharded (AH would be way too risky, I think), but I think Blizz will continue to be very cautious about possibly taking something from an “innocent bystander.”

I hope the trend keeps up and they continue to try and do something for people who are abused in game, whether it be hacked accounts or stolen raid id’s.

2. What if the Raid ID is stolen by someone not in a guild?

To put the blame for asshats (and the responsibility to police them) on the guilds themselves is a bit short-sighted, I believe. But if you think that’s what needs to be done, then I would think you’d also be willing to give Guilds (and/or Guild Leaders) the tools for recovery. (No, I’m not serious about that, which is why I applaud Blizzard’s new policies. We don’t need vigilantes and anarchy.)