The Sword and Laser discussion
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Reamde
2011 Reads
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RM: Stephenson didn't read the FAQ (Minor Spoiler)
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That way seems a lot more traceable than the method described in the book, but not by much if the company has access to all data in the game, specifically in-game geographic locations of players.edit: I thought about it some more and it's likely a self-sustaining account that began with a prepaid time card could be untraceable. The hackers responsible for Reamde have enough similarities in their T'Rain accounts to blend in with other Chinese gold-farmers that got bit by Reamde. T'Rain engineers could still look for anomalies in gold-transfers, namely players that have a higher incidence of gold-pickups in places other characters dropped gold, but it's possible that kind of specific data might not be logged for performance reasons, especially if there are a lot of characters in a server that contains that specific geographic area. I forgot a lot about how the game operates, so I'm going by sketchy memory.
xenphi is right I think. I believe Richard and his IT guy even have a conversation to that effect at some point. (view spoiler)
I think I don´t understand what the plothole is... Yes, a player can transfer gold to another, but only if they are close by in the game and to transfer it out of the game you need to go to the special traders... What am I missing?
All of the mmorpgs that I have played have some sort of messaging systems that allow for the transferring of items and money to anyone in the game that is part of their side. Why would someone who played ten years of mmorpgs not have such an important feature? I can look over this part, but there are other parts that are glaringly painful to me. My main issue is with the transfer of credit card numbers in person. Why the hell would anyone in the security industry sell some credit card numbers in person? 300k credit card numbers would equal a few megs of a text file, nothing worthy of needing to do the transaction in person.
On top of that, when the numbers went missing why not just run the exploit again? If you already have a backdoor into the system, just grab the numbers again. At most this would take a few hours, more than likely a few minutes.
Now lets look at the Virus itself: It is an exploit in a plugin that makes Outlook work with the game. In the real world how many people would actually do it that way? While Outlook used to be quite popular in home use. Today most people in this demographic use a web based client and not Outlook. Today Outlook Express no longer is used on new systems as it has been replaced by Microsoft's mail program in MS Live Essentials. So, to get a copy of Outlook you have to pay for it.
The technology in this book has been about level to the latest Die Hard movie with Kevin Smith as the "master hacker". If you are able to turn your brain off the story is fun, but not realistic.
Zac wrote: "All of the mmorpgs that I have played have some sort of messaging systems that allow for the transferring of items and money to anyone in the game that is part of their side. Why would someone who ..."If I remember right, weren't the CC numbers ones captured from real-time transactions rather than those ripped out of a database on the exploited system/website. Hence it wasn't easy to get them again? There was also some complexity with other hackers involved.
The in person transaction makes some sense with regards to trust and traceability of funds.
I do agree I found the use of MS Outlook a little jarring in light of some of the trends you mentioned, and my feelings of the gamer culture in general, just felt a little off the mark to me.
However as to Lepton's initial post, like Alfredo I'm unsure I see the plot hole with regards to the Gold mechanic in game (T'rain)? Perhaps Lepton can clarify?
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The Outlook thing did seem off, but if it was the only tool that someone had bothered to integrate with T'Rain, it becomes a bit more reasonable that a large number of people would be using it (though, agreed it seems more likely that someone would have bothered to integrate a web-based client instead).
As for the initial post, like others I'm not seeing the plot-hole, at least not from what I've read so far.
A prime mover of the novel's action is the idea that the gold scammers could only receive their blackmail booty in T'Rain in a highly contested region. The main characters can't complete the transfer of game gold for the code, therefore Russian Mafia, therefore China, etc, etc, etc.Every MMO I have played allows for player transfers of items and game currency. Furthermore, T'Rain was specifically set up to facilitate the work of gold farmers and people seeking to convert real world money into game currency and back again. This accounted for a major component of the game's success.
It seems unfathomable to me that there would not be a simple and probably anonymous way to transfer currency in T'Rain. If such a system did exist, the entire action of the novel simply would not happen. It's one of the many coincidences or conditions that Stephenson expects the reader to accept wholesale with little to no critical evaluation.
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What got to me much more as I've read on is the cascade of improbabilities in the various action scenes that followed. For me, those definitely shifted the story into an very implausible, if still fun, ride.
@Lepton: Unfathomable. Really? *eyebrows raised*@Jlawrence: I started writing a reply along the same lines, but then I just gave up. As you said if you are going to be critical of a plot device that is reasonably well explained, then there is a lot more to gripe about in this book. Even Zula expressed some incredulity at her situation. As for me I'm just enjoying it for what it is.
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Q. Can a player transfer gold from his or her account to that of another player for any desired reason?
A. Yes.
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There, I just saved Neal Stephenson a 1000+ pages.
Perhaps I missed something, but this kind of trivial plothole makes the resulting action seem largely unfounded or at least it makes the premise for the resultant action seem trivial and largely unneeded.
Sixteen hours into the 38 hour or so audiobook and I am wandering why I should even care at this point.