What is "The spirit of the game"?

Honestly, I think the very term "spirit" is as nebulous as its visual counterpart, and that's the intention. It's not a flat definition or an equation--it's a gestalt that's meant not to fit in a box, and we must make decisions as to what is or isn't against the spirit of the game as situations require.

In short, don't ask me to define the spirit of World of Warcraft and I won't ask you to define the human spirit.

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In America we have a sense of morals and values. These morals and values base themselves from Christianity and Jesus ect.

Our morals and values were the foundation of our country, and the laws are based around them.

Now, WoW has a sense of "spirit of the game" which defines on how the game should be played, what is sensible, ect...

Except that nothing has been defined as to where it gets its roots. Does the spirit of the game mean Anarchy? Does it mean Morals and Values? There is no foundation to where we can point and say "Okay this is how it works". And that, in my opinion, is a problem.

While human civilization has been around for thousands of years, World of Warcraft has been around for a little over three. Even with that in mind, though, the world doesn't have documented and enforced guidelines for any and all possible behavior. For example, it's against the law to assault someone, but it's only considered socially unacceptable to hit on your buddy's girlfriend. There's no law against the latter, though.

Just as there are hard and soft rules in real life, we have both hard and soft rules in the game. The hard laws are our Terms of Use and respective Policies, and the soft laws are our general community zeitgeist. Running a bot? That's against our Terms of Use. Ninjaing an item? That's just socially unacceptable, but not against the law.

The rules, hard and soft, are based not on morals and values as you keep mentioning, but instead on what benefits the community and secondarily what benefits the company, since we are a business, after all.

The reason why we don't set everything in stone is because we require, as an evolving game and community, the ability to change the rules as situations necessitate--just like in real life.

Hahaha, I see what this is all about now.

If by "end game content is now being conquered by people playing by themselves" you mean that one group managed to multi-box the entry-level 10-man raiding instance, then yeah man, endgame content's gettin' steamrolled.

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Karazhan is the beginning of endgame. Today it is soloing 5mans and duoing 10 mans. Tomorrow it is something different.

Are you actually admitting that if multiboxers were further progressed that the issue would be solved?

I have absolutely no idea how you got that from my post. You are a true master of post alchemy.

Your argument, though, is like saying that because you say a PVP video where a mage was able to solo 4 other players after the rest of their 5v5 team had been killed, then it follows that of course they'd be able to kill ten players. Twenty players!

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Have you ever seen the capabilites of a N52?

Have you? 'cause I don't see "Ability to simultaneously complete multiple thought-process-requiring objectives without complete focus" on the feature list :(

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I own the speedpad. I used to use it to multibox.

With the combination of keyclone you could program it to run through all instances of WoW.exe allowing you to move 5 characters in seperate directions at once. All it requires is a human pushing a few programmed buttons.

Un-automated and legal. Just like you want it :)

Exactly. You can move with it. Do you really think that you could, with any ease, complete true 25-man raid encounters multiboxing by yourself, though? Or even with two people? Are you familiar with 25-man content?

I'm honestly not even sure what the argument being presented here is anymore. "Multiboxing is wrong, but I multibox, but seriously it's wrong because this is a multiplayer game, but really I multibox and it's easy and it's wrong and anyone can do it and also I do it but it's wrong"?

What is the point you're trying to make, Beard?

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No, I'm saying that while the game may be developed with social aspects in mind, it's rather laughable to ban people if they choose to take a less social playstyle for their own enjoyment.

Let people play how they want to play, as long as they are not breaking any rules.

His point isn't that they're breaking rules, it's that he wants them to be breaking rules because that's his view of how the game should be.

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Blizzard has tried to refrain from secluded gameplay

Dailies.

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Why are you asking me to elaborate on a few flaws of the daily system?

The fact is that the daily system was created to get rid of the solo grind. It stopped players from secluding themselves for hours on end for gold. I don't see the problem here?

But two people socializing by multiboxing Karazhan is a problem?

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Considering the raid dungeon was designed for 10. I would say it violates the spirit of the game.

Too bad that's not your call.