The stupid casinos

[Dunthor Warsmith]

anyone want to guess at the odds of the Treasury Department/FBI being remotely interested in policing EQ "casinos"

Technically against the law != actually going to be prosecuted

The question was posed "A. Is running a casino in EQ legal" which I interpret as "is it against the law?" not "will I get in trouble for it?". But maybe I'm weird that way :P I *still* have a hard time wrapping my head around the "rule/law/regulation that's on the books that the enforcers don't care about people breaking" concept, heh, but I run into it increasingly more frequently...

[Phabos]

Just to clarify, when a law/regulation is on the books, the first task of any law enforcement official (police, prosecutor, etc.) is to determine whether or not the conduct in question meets the statutory threshold for illegality. I don't have any anti-gaming statutes in front of me at the moment, but the point of my statement was that there are a great deal of hurdles to clear before one can even assume that EQ casinos constitute real-life gaming violations.

To get "in trouble" for something, it has to be against the law in the first place. My feeling is that from a technical AND policy standpoint, an EQ casino is not.

If you will look to the beginning of that sentence (everything before the comma), you'll see the process that would have to be met before even deciding that the casinos amount to real-life gambling.

Okay, no more legal stuff for the next couple of days. I'm off school and don't start work until Wednesday.


Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Attorney to the Gods
Tarew Marr

[Saleani]

As to the Play Nice Policy, I tend to disagree with it being applied in this situation. My reading is that it applies to gaining access to accounts and/or misrepresenting an identity in order to gain items or plat. This could be done through similar names, gaining access to passwords, or even telling another player that you are the alt of another character

Stuff that gets investigated by GMs includes scams where players say things like "I will give you X on my alt if you give me Y." Unenforceable without /reports. Enforceable with them. Your reading is incorrect, sorry. It applies to any deceitful method used to gain items from others. And that includes the way dishonest casinos operate.

Something that will cut out probably 10 petitions per day per server, is if those 2 shared bank slots that showed up on test make it to live. Only problem I can see is if you have a lore item in one char, put the same lore item in those shared slots from another character, and log into the one that has the lore item. Dang, those spots would save so much hassle passing viscous mana and enchanted items from my chanter to my other chars.

What is more likely, is that some state decides to apply income tax to the loots players get. With things like blades of carnage selling for $500ish, an enterprising tax agency can probably figure a way to screw players for money. You do know that you are supposed to pay sales tax (directly to your state if necessary) on the stuff you order over the internet?

[Itzena]

Simply disable the /random command in all parts of the bazaar except for inside the arena.

I like this idea.
Especially on Vallon.

[Morani]

There is one other way of looking at the question of "should I bother with a /report or not?" (Since it seems that is at the heart of some of the questions.) That is; expressing player opinion. There may be a better way of doing this, but the point is that the more complaints Sony gets about a particular issue, the more likely they are to make a change to it. If a player rips you off, tell someone. If you can't stand the spam, tell someone (and offer the suggestion of the /random filter if you like it.) The point is that Sony isn't going to bother to change anything unless THEY see it as a problem or enough people express displeasure over it. I think they've done a admirable job in the last few months of trying to show an active interest in the player's desires and I'm willing to take them at their word that they are listening.

Keep in mind that the GM/Guide may not do something about your particular incident (remember the daily message about making sure the other person has contributed to the tradewindow before you click trade). Sony also may take a while to do something about it since on an individual scale; they may feel that there are other things that are higher in priority.

Fortunately for me, I've noticed a distinct REDUCTION in casinos on my server in the past month. I have no idea what the cause is, but I'm not looking the "gift horse" in the mouth.

And while I have no faith what so ever that the casinos will be restricted to the arena, I did get a bit of sadistic euphoria at the idea. :twisted: