Hall of Monuments private?

I personally enjoy spying on random trade partners and people I witness selling high end items. Mostly to give myself a sense of the percentages of players that will be sporting which reward items in-game.

So far I've only encountered 1 50/50, but it's entirely possible I was dealing with alt accounts alot of the time.

If anything, this kind of strengthens OP's argument, but it's relatively harmless IMO.

/sign. agree that it should be made private.

but there are some interesting things u can find out about others using it, i have used it to discover

1. people looking for "LFG 90+show stones, no noobs, SC" only to discover he have not cleared UW once

2. Gold cape guild players in RA screaming, spamming and calling others noobs in RA when they don't even have a single PVP title and is full of PVE title lolz

but yep, make it private so players don't disgrace themselves

I take issue with the phenomenon (all too widespread on the net) of people with no practical legal education incorrectly trying to explain principles of law.

So I don't need any arguments. I simply need to point out why yours fails, which I've done already. But I will reiterate:

Even if you are a believer in the theory of natural law (and a debate of legal philosophy or legal theory would be really out of place on this board), you simply cannot state, with absolutely no support, that we all have some inherent right to privacy. That is simply NOT THE CASE.

"Rights" are a construct of law. For one to have a right, that right must be somehow codified in the law and supported by authority.

For your argument to hold ANY water, you must be able to say "we all have a right to privacy, created by/found in/etc." Even if you want to say our right to privacy comes from God's will (I'm not a religious guy myself, but hey, to each his own), it must come from somewhere.

Think about it - to whom do you turn when someone violates one of your rights? Yep! Your only recourse is to turn to those (i.e. government authorities) who guaranteed you that right in the first place.

So to get back OT...we have no right to privacy in the in-game achievements of our GW characters or accounts. Any right we COULD have would be seriously tempered by...well, by anything we freely do in game.

Even here in the US, the standard as applied across most states involves a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in an activity. What level of privacy can you reasonably expect when you do something in a virtual world, which is being constantly observed by hundreds, even thousands, of people you don't actually know?

lol.. For a second there I thought you actually had some arguments to back it up. Claiming to be a lawyer simply doesn't do you see. Being a lawyer is obviously not a guarantee of quality.

First of all right to privacy is found in codified law in most countries. It is especially strong in Europe and as I explained to you the same guarantees should be enforced to europeans by the US under the 'safe harbor' principles. I'm pretty sure there are articles of law concerning this in the US although obviously I can't point them out for you. Here is the european foundation btw.

Second you bring up the concept of natural law. Whether a right to privacy is considered a natural law or not is somewhat irrelevant to our situation as I've already shown you it is indeed codified law. I would still argue that it is also part of natural law. You show a glaring lack of knowledge on these fields of law, are you sure it's not you that is the fish out of water? It is a common idea that there are indeed principles derived from natural law, we find these codified in many human rights corpus'. For instance the european convention on human rights article 8 or the international covenant on civil and political rights article 17.

To answer your last question you can read what I wrote earlier, it was imo a lengthy enough explanation. As an example for your mind, what if they decided to make public actual time spent in game? That is, your /age. Wouldn't you agree that some people might want to keep that information confidential? What of chat logs that happen in game? The right to privacy IS there, but whether it can be sidestepped due to consent or necessity is another argument. All of which I explained earlier.

And to settle this thing about no legal education... I have in fact "majored" in human rights law and privacy law both. You also show an ignorant attitude by dismissing anyone not legally trained. Especially on these fields much of the limits of law are determined by "common conceptions". You may be familiar with the concept of legal standards, what the 'right to privacy' entails is not the same today as it was 20 years ago and will continue to evolve.

Anet is an American company.

Why would you assume they meet any European standards?

Furthermore, why SHOULD they meet some insane European standard of a right to privacy that is codified only in the 2nd largest corpus of unenforced law in the world? You know EU directives are only binding to states, not private actors, right? And by "binding" I mean "rather weakly suggested." Citing the ECHR for something you think Anet should do is like me claiming the first bank of New Zealand needs to honor the bylaws of the lower Manhattan chapter of the Knights of Columbus.

Ultimately, as I've said now, MULTIPLE times, by participating in the world of the game, you've agreed to abide by the rules of that world. If anything but information related to game achievement were being shared, then the laughable notion of a right to privacy (again, the ECHR? Good lord, did your classroom education prevent you from reading the news in the past decade?) MIGHT factor in.

I have real work to do. But if you want me to try to explain that whole "authority" bit to you again, let me know, and I'll try again tonight, with shorter words.

I think Sankt Hallvard made a perfectly reasonable plea there, completely by the standards you asked for so why is it so hard then to abide by it? Why do people always have to try and get their point across against all possible odds?

I myself am in favor of making the HoM Calculator more private. Yes, I enjoy watching other people's Hall of Monuments and I don't need to hide my own, but I can understand it is a kind of information people would want to keep private. I don't think it would be a very hard thing to develop as well.

So as a final verdict: /signed.

Maybe we could have the option of lockin our HoM to outsiders, set to private by default That way everyones happy...i spose?
Depends how the calculator is set up and how it retreives information from the database

Dude...he started talking about the right to privacy defined in the ECHR. That's neither reasonable, nor up to the standards he set in his original comments.

If you don't want people to see your stuff, don't put it in your HoM. If you don't want them to see what's already there, start deleting characters.

But let me be clear: I have NO PROBLEM with people who wish this were private. I don't share that wish, but I think it's perfectly reasonable.

I have a HUGE problem with idiots who come along talking about Anet violating some mythical legal right to privacy by doing this. Freaking Europeans all mock the US for being so litigious, and yet you cry legal over petty stuff like this? Gimme a freaking break, ya babies.

Why is that unreasonable? The majority of the player base is in Europe so why would it be odd to take European law into account? I'm not saying it's legally possible to make Arenanet abide by that, since they're in America, and I do not pretend that I know how all those legal structures work since I didn't study law, but it doesn't mean that Arenanet shouldn't have the moral duty to protect information people don't want to come out.


Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way. Even if you delete a character, the Monument accomplishments will still be tracked and saved. For instance: My Dervish had a Destroyer Scythe, and I deleted her, but the Scythe is still in my HoM.

Well, on the fence for this but,

If you look at Aion (NCsoft) when you logged into there official site with your account

you were dispalyed on your avatar and anyone could not only look at your char but also see what you were wearing ect (they may have changed this lately).so not only your rank/armour ect,but all your ahivements on that particular char.

The majority of the GW player base is in Europe? I don't believe you. Prove it.

I don't take issue with the "moral duty" notion. I disagree with the conclusion, but the notion is reasonable. The poster I was addressing didn't talk about a moral duty, though. He talked about the law.

If you REALLY care about it, it most certainly DOES work.

Delete all of your characters and stop playing the game. Your character names will no longer be associated with an account, and your account will no longer have any character names associated with it. If you came back to the account, sure, the hall would probably still be there, with everything in it that you put there. But if you leave the account inactive, and toon-less, other people will have nothing to search for on the calculator.

In a nutshell: All data contained within Guild Wars is the property of ANet/NCSoft who are free to do whatever they wish with it.

You bought a license to play Guild Wars - you did not purchase any data.

But what about their RIGHT TO PRIVACY!?

/sarcasm

You could also argue that favour announcements are invasions of privacy as well on the same logic as HoM...

Just sayin' ;D

Also as was mentioned above, having something in your HoM doesn't necessarily mean that you still have it. I know people who have sold on their mini pets, salvaged weapons and armour... Hacking someone based on their HoM is pretty silly as you don't know for sure if it's an active account and all the stuff is still there or if it's someone who achieved whatever goal they wanted and quit the game until GW2 comes out. What good is hacking an account which simply has heroes with upgraded armour and titles other than selling on the account which I doubt most hackers would really do.

This. Methinks someone's talking out of their posterior orifice.

The purpose of the HoM is to show off. If you are being harassed for not completing parts of it, report the users who are doing it, ignore them and find some other group who's big enough not to give a shit about that.

Or y'no.. get a better HoM. But that is neither here nor there and I agree.

If you're getting harassed over your HoM, a simple ignore list resident will fix that right quick. It isn't hard to get around people who deliberately attempt to get under your skin.

I am basing my statement of the European playerbase being larger than those of other continents on the following data:

http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...t=980&limit=10

While there can be a lot of factors that make that the European guilds are in such an abundance, it may also be a numbers thing. Remember that there's an enormous French and German player base in GW that never even visit this forum. GWG is not representative for the whole community.

/Not Signed

For one obvious reason that others seem to not have noticed. The last thing anyone here needs is another password to remember. A password on a new website, that may have security breaches not yet noticed, allowing hackers yet another way into an account. Because face it, most people always use the same password for everything they do. IE NCSoft master account hacks. We all know that the backdoor there led to many loosing their AION accounts and, I dont care what anyone thinks, has led to people loosing their GW accounts as well.

Privacy in a game is a silly thing to be worried about, when you are running around in a public arena.

I could leave our guild tomorrow and go start a Euro guild if I wanted.

All this data means is that Euro guilds have a better PvP reputation, and/or they're currently over-represented in the top 1000. Nevermind the fact that you're showing me GvG from the present "anemic" era. A lot of the original top guilds and players have long-since abandoned the format and the game (this is what a number of old-school pvpers tell me at least).

The ONLY thing that will back up your absurd statement is if you present server and IP data, for a period of at least 6 months, showing more discrete European log-ons than North American.

Oh...but then there's the rumor that, by anecdote, at least, the vast majority of bots log on in Europe...

Ultimately, though, you missed my most important point. It's pitiful to start citing freaking Euro human rights "law" (it's not even legitimate law in EUROPE FFS) to pressure Anet to make the HoM private. Especially considering you people are always talking trash about people in the US suing each other.

It's a joke, but less funny than PATHETIC. Give it up.

I've referred to the safe harbor principles twice now but you have obviously no clue what I'm talking about. You can find them here.

EU directives are binding to private actors when they are implemented so you claiming otherwise shows either lack of knowledge or a desire to get lost in semantics. I cited the ECHR as an example of right to privacy being considered part of natural law. I simply know this corpus better than its american counterpart, but for your leisure you can consult the american declaration of the rights and duties of man art V or the american convention on human rights art 11. Also relevant for the US are the OECD guidelines governing the protection of privacy and transborder flow of personal data, especially the use limitation principle.

The criteria for european law to apply is that the processor is 'established' here or 'makes use of equipment' located here. As far as I know Anet does not have a separate branch in europe, but I would argue they make use of equipment located here - that is, their servers. This still applies even if they have contracted the servers to a 3rd party.

I'm glad you at least admit that if other types of data were being published it might be a matter of privacy invasion. I've been trying to explain over some posts now that there is no clear cut line that divides non-vital information from sensitive information. The line is viewed differently from person to person. My whole point of voicing myself in this thread was to alert people that this publication is bordering to what might be said to be an invasion. The fact that several people have voiced concern attests to that. The fact that many people, including yourself, have had strong objections might indicate otherwise. Personally I view the latter with skepticism, many people have problems seeing how something may turn into a problem in the future. It is indeed hard to argue why the right to privacy is so important when you can't point to certain facts in the future, consult my earlier posts for more on this.

I also find it disturbing how you reason and argue. You use very loaded words to describe your counterparts and employ shady techniques in your arguing in a way which I frankly find unfit for a lawyer, leading me to question if you are what you claim.

Here are some of your other statements:

What makes you believe 'freaking Euro human rights "law"' is not legitimate in Europe? Not only is it legitimate, it has been elevated to constitutional status or near constitutional status in many countries.

The problem with people in the US suing each other is related to the 'penal element' added to damage claims. I don't see how pointing out that europeans criticise this is relevant to our discussion, though. If you are interested in the problem of excessive legal action in the US, you can check out this clip.

This is an ad-hoc fix that simply won't do. The damage is done as the information is released. Imagine if the data concerned were credit card info, your personal name or similar. My principal claim was simply that making the HoM public was unnecessary and therefore should not have been done. It would likely be possible to add the calculator as an option in game or on the login-screen, or even with a personal 'cookie' referring to a webpage. I'm not a computer wizz but I believe it likely could have been implemented in a different way.

I mentioned the ECHR as an example of codified law based on natural law by your petition. I only got into the legal basis after someone else asked me for the legal basis for my reasoning, something I agreed to. I usually do not jump on my guns and call for legal action or claiming to be judicially trained for authority. I put forward my arguments to show that there IS a right to privacy(both in codified law, in human rights law and part of natural law) and that Anet might be wise to give it more emphasis. I personally don't mind my information being public on the HoM, but if they were to publish total time I've spent in game or other personal data I would strongly object. From a business perspective Anet would do wise to make a clear line here and reassure us that this type of publication won't happen again without our explicit consent. Buying products from a company you don't trust is a bad basis for making money.

I am an 'idiot' and the right to privacy is 'mythical'. Europeans are 'freaking' and apparently we 'mock the US'. Voicing concern on this issue is 'petty' and anyone disagreeing with you(The Lawyer) are 'babies'. Out of curiosity, is this how you argue in the court room or do you mentally reduce your age when posting on the internet?

Snograt, I've always held you in the highest esteem.

Personal data belongs to the individual. You do not think other companies can make public your shopping list on the internet? Say you just went to the supermarket and bought a bread, a milk, some apples, tampons for your sister, condoms for your brother and some drugs to treat an STD on a non-specified family member. Having your purchased goods go up on a webpage for all to see would constitute an invasion of privacy wouldn't you agree?

People will object I'm sure, but human rights are actually relevant for americans too.

Ok, it works like this:

PERSONAL information does not include information about your in game character or in game achievements/details. It only refers to your REAL LIFE PERSONAL INFORMATION. A-Net would have the right to showcase a character/guild in a press release without your say so but they would not have the right to disclose your IRL information such as address, date of birth, email address etc. That is how data laws work. If tried to sue them about HoM being visible, you would be laughed out of court. They own all the rights to your account in terms of characters, titles, items, gold and can revoke that at any time. That is the user agreement that you sign. The only thing belonging to you is the information that you give to them when you sign up and the amendments you make to that information. They own the copyrights to all in game things, therefore they have the right to do what they will with it. In this case, they choose to use it to display your achievements in the HoM. If you don't like it, uninstall.

I honestly hope you are trolling because if you're serious about this, then you really need to re-read the user agreement again.

Here's what I see as different from what GW has been in the past. To see someone's accomplishments, another player would need to see them in GW, depending on what you are displaying. When the HoM came out, one would need to be in your party to come visit your hall and your accomplishments. With the implementation of the calculator, anyone, not just another GW player, can view your accomplishments on the internet, whether you want to display them or not. I am not implying the legality of the change, only that it is a large difference from how GW has operated in the past. To this, I only ask that we have a say in the change. Let's put a box there that says I want to share or not.

I agree you should be given the option to let it be visible to everyone or not.

I'm not trolling btw, are you seriously under that impression? If people get so worked up over this I'll happily abstain from the debate, however.

Data that say something about you as a person and can be directly or indirectly linked to you are considered personal data. A detailed profile of how people have spent their time in game is considered "profiling" and is considered personal data.

I'm not sure what part of the user agreement you think I have missed? Things that I notice areall from the privacy section of the user agreement)

Antithetically information that permits identification is personal information, even as considered by Anet.

This sounds like they take privacy seriously to me and I can't find anything stating a willingness to make more information than necessary public. All I'm saying is that on this background they should have considered implementing the calculator in another way more consistent with their willingness to be discrete and honest stated in the user agreement.

To use a metaphor: It is a scratch in the paint.

If you honestly believe that then all rankings should be scrapped in Guild Wars and every game out there.

-rolls eyes-

They own your account, not you. They own your characters and achievements, not you. It is their intellectual property and they have the right to do with it what they wish. Personal information is what I stated before: information regarding you offline.

For someone who is allegedly so well read up on law, there's a massive hole in your argument right there. HoM is just another "rank" system.

-sighs-

Namecalling or emoting rolleyes or sighs still do not count as arguments. Personal data is exactly not anyone else's intellectual property as you claim. It is inherent to the person they relate to and the holder has a right or an interest to their use. How I have spent my time online does in fact say something about how I have spent my time offline.

The difference with the rankings and similar is that these are obvious upon participation. The sole difference is that the publication of your various in-game achievements would NOT be made public on a website some 5 years into the game without explicit consent. It can be considered a breach of confidentiality.

I'm sorry, I don't see where I called you anything there. I also apologise that you don't like the way I word things. Game data =/= personal data. Can you not comprehend that? Game data = your toons, their items, their titles... -headdesk- Therefore they have the right to do what they like as it is their intellectual property.

Look, I've played enough MMOs to know what the legal blurb says. It generally boils down to "Your ass is ours unless we give out real life details which people can track you down by. We reserve the right to delete your account and everything on it should we want to and if we want to use your account for our own ends, we can and will". There is also always a clause saying that features may be added or change and you will still have no rights to complain, therefore it is not a "breach of confidentiality". Still doesn't answer my question about existing rankings or those that are introduced in other games after someone has signed up (HoM calculator has been around for how long by now? It's also linked on the game site so there's no way of saying "Oh well I didn't know" because they'll say you didn't look through the site properly).

You claim to be a lawyer/law student/whatever and yet you know so little about the legalities of gaming? I'm sorry but you're taking this so far it's actually hilarious, especially with how uninformed you are. I'm no lawyer but I HAVE been witness to a lot of legal disputes with gaming publishers over private servers and therefore do kinda know what is THEIR property and what is YOURS. Your game data is on THEIR database. Therefore they can do what they like with it.

How can you not grasp that?

P.S. This is a VIDEO GAME you are arguing about.

P.P.S.

Now you know who owns your game data. Clearly you didn't read the User Agreement or you just plain didn't understand it.

I dont mind that HoM is open to the public. It would be courteous to have them password protected. But, I dont want to make up a new password just for HoM(I have too many as it is). And most people will just use the same password they already use for GW and that would enable more opportunity to hack accounts.

I don't think your in-game name is enough to hack your account (unless you use the same name as the one of your e-mail and your password is weak).
People don't have problems showing their obby armour and expensive minis and weapons and titles (to be read gwamm) so it's almost same situation as being able to see someone else hom on the net.

I disagree with the idea that someone account that is 50/50 and maybe has gwamm will be a target of hackers. You can get to 50/50 with relative cheap minis, your storage can be low on plats and without ectos or obby shards, no extreme expensive weapons in it (most of the weapons u need for hom can be oppressor that are extremely easy to get and will not cost u a single coin, in fact you will earn money by doing the quests).

The fact that someone account is 3/50 or 50/50 don't really tell how that person is actually playing. You will see noobs with 50/50 and pros with 3/50. I actually refuse to use cons, mainly cause my guild can't really make a guild party (u can hardly find 5 people online in the same time) and cause using cons with pugs usually = wasting useless money for a fail in 5-10 mins (cons will never compensate the fact that you are a noob, that you have no idea what to do in that area, that the tank is not tank and it's some sort of useless melee damage dealer (gloom hm as an example here), that you don't want to listen to the 2-3 players that know that area... ).

I personally helped a couple of players with ideas on how to get more points for hom without spending plats.

I didn't really read all the comments here but from what I read I didn't saw a solution on how to hide what u have in hom (as I said I didn't read all the comments so maybe i missed some where there were solutions). If they will want to allow hom to be private the best option will be to add an option in your own hom to make it private or not (probably at kimmes the historian) or a more drastic approach to change that calculator to be available only for you (being able to see it only by talking with kimmes the historian; let's just say that someone with the same accomplishments will see the exact same page as you see).

I'm kinda indifferent to this suggestion but an option to turn hom off from showing to all of players can't be too bad. Anyway first I want to see that we are allowed to add keiran in hom (it's a hero and as all the other heroes we should be allowed to add him), to see ethernal skillz being considered an pvp title (you pvp to get this title, you can't always pvp to get points but you have to pvp so it should be a pvp title).

i am 50/50 and used all my money on mini pets, weapons, party points, alcohol points, sweet points and a set of obsidian armour.
after that, all i m left with is 8k 255g till today. whoever checks that i m 50/50 and decides to hack into my account is in for a good surprise

Man why would anyone be so defensive about something like a HOM, or is it embarrassment? I reckon people are upset because after playing for so long and doing so much, they realise just how little they have achieved in the game aside from having fun

Freedom of information and all that so.... /notsigned

PS. Feel free to check me out, Vallen Nightstalker. No reason to be embarrassed

Spending time to change silly things like this takes away from time getting out Derv Updates and Hero Updates, and Real Fixes that are needed. I can't believe there are 6 pages of back on forth on this topic....

No. Seeing as they are achievements and meant to be show off.

I do wish the HoM would list the actual minipet names. 'Unique Miniatures (x)' is not nearly as impressive as 'Vizu, Panda, Shiro'ken Assassin, etc' that should be showing under mine . Not that I regret the minipet purchases, I don't care for extravagantly stupid looking weapons and crap; It's better than letting money go to waste sitting in storage while the economy is constantly inflating during a break from the game.