RW Blog

Krasloten

2011-03-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Aspireaffiliates and Hopa.com has a SEO contest now where people can win up to €2000. All you need to do is rank number one for "Geld verdienen met de online krasloten van Hopa.com" and bring at least 4 new depositors. Bringing the 4 new depositors is the hardest part and in order to do that my page would need to rank on better terms like krasloten too. Right now I'm on page 4 but the competition just started so we will see how it goes.

Shoebuy Promotional Code

2010-05-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Shoebuy Promotional Code site is a source for the best Shoebuy promotional codes. By writing the Shobuy promotional code during the checkout, you will get a decent rebate at Shoebuy.

(This is a new SEO project)

New Official Business Website

2010-02-27T05:50:00.001-08:00

The new official website for my search engine optimization business is now www.searchengineoptimize.it - An Italian top domain made into a catchy domain name. Unfortunately Google Webmaster Tools has it locked to geo-targeting Italy. So I might never be able to rank for the term "search engine optimization" on google.com but my main target is the Swedish keyword sökmotoroptimering anyways. This is because the main domain I will focus on is www.sokmotoroptimering.nu, obviously targeting the keyword sökmotoroptimering.

The domain in English will just be a translation from the Swedish one so that all potential customers can read somewhere, and I will be able to have a website in English (and Spanish) on the back side of my business card. Anyways, you can get to site in English by using the link that says "Search Engine Optimization" in the menu to the right.

High Stakes Poker Madness

2009-11-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

Being in the Poker Affiliate business I am now witnessing THE biggest online poker happening since lobbyists managed shut outside actors from serving US players. Eleven days ago, a new player "isildur1" started playing the craziest high stakes Omaha games in the history of online poker. He is continuously playing several tables of heads up against several Full Tilt Poker pros. At the time of writing he is 6.5 MILLION dollars up after these 11 days. The phenomenon has soon generated 2 million views on the 2 plus 2 forum. This is totally crazy.

And the biggest questions remain. Is this a publicity stunt?

And WHO is isildur1? We are trying to find out.

Nintendo Nostalgia

2009-10-20T17:10:00.001-07:00

RPG Stash In New Languages

2009-07-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

In order to get more of the non-English speaking market, we are now building RPG Stash sister websites in German, Spanish, Swedish and British English.

We also aim for top placement in organic searches for our most wanted terms of virtual currency like the Germans' wow gold kaufen, eve isk and runescape gold for the most popular games. Not to mention wow gold used by swedes and the spanish wow oro.

The Supposed Chinese Ban On Gold Farming

2009-06-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

A couple of hours ago the news about gold farming being banned by the Chinese government started to spread over the Internet. The first article at Newsweek claims that China is banning gold farming, but if you actually read the article, it says:

The most popular form of virtual currency in China is called "QQ coins," a form of virtual credit issued by Tencent.com.

And later:

The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities.

So my conclusion is that this is all about the QQ currency, not WoW Gold. It is just business as usual: a twisted headline for an article that is not that controversial. After all, QQ is probably used to circumvent the Chinese anti-gambling laws - and WoW gold is not.

What Is Runescape GP?

2009-06-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Another domain regstered is runescape.gp that is using the top domain for Guadeloupe. I had to send my passport to prove my identity and pay a stiff registration fee but everything seems to go well.

The interesting thing is that gp is the abbreviation for gold piece in Runescape and pretty much an acronym for money inside the game. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool shows a Global Monthly Search Volume of 8100 for runescape gp and that should be high conversion traffic.

Who is Zezima?

2009-06-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

And what makes 250 000 people search for him/her in Google each month? Zezima is a player in the game Runescape. Runescape is a game few ever heard of but it is still the second largest game after World of Warcraft in its genre. The reason behind Zezima's popularity is that he/she was at the top of the hiscore list for several years.

Now to what made in interested in Zezima - the popularity of the search term and the lack of competition makes it a good opportunity to seach engine optimize a webpage and get up to 250 000 (searches per month) / 30 (days) * 40% (of total searches) ≅ 3000 visitors a day. With Google Adwords ads with a click through rate of 2% and a cost per click of $0.20 it would give 3000 * 0,02 * 0,20 = $12 per day. If we assume the clicks get paid a little less, but the website also gets visitors from long tail searches, it is still at least $10 per day. This means a monthly income of $300.

Said and done. I registered zezima.org and put up a Joomla website still under construction. After 3 days it was already indexed thanks to its sitemap.xml that I pinged Google with. The site showed up at position #12 for its search term. The website is now being developed to a genuine website about Zezima, complete with forum, articles, polls and news feeds. I will update this post with further information about the progress of this project.

Who Is The Deadliest Warrior - Samurai Or Viking?

2009-06-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

This is candy for a genuine geek - when I was young, there were often discussions on who are really the deadliest - ninjas or samurais. The pros and cons of different martial arts were also debated generously. Now there is finally a bunch of over grown kids with a Hollywood budget that have found the truth.

It is a TV-series where different experts are testing the weapons and techniques used by the warriors through times. Data like agility, power and speed are scientifically measured and loaded into a simulator. When there are 1000 simulated fights, a winner announced and it is the closest to the true answer you can get.

The first episode includes the Apache versus a Gladiator and not later than the second features the big game of Viking versus Samurai. Later highlights are Pirate versus Knight and Spartan versus Ninja. The series can be watched online here.

World of World of Warcraft

2009-05-24T04:05:00.000-07:00

The world's biggest massively online role-playing game, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft gets a new sequel in World of World of Warcraft. There are already rumours about the next step being World of World of World of Warcraft.

At the same time, the game Close Range raises the bar of the computer gaming violence. In the game you play a man with a mysterious past that in his efforts to find his own brother... takes the video gaming violence to new heights.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

2009-03-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

A good question. Personally I believe that my many hours of killing mutant monsters with a double barrel shotgun and extraordinary ability to remember where healthpacks spawn will be very helpful in a near future.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

TrustRank outranks PageRank

2008-10-22T13:09:00.001-07:00

Unlike Pagerank, TrustRank is a secret number that there has been a lot of talk about in the SEO realm lately. And in fact it seems to be of growing importance. But no one except the guys at Google and Yahoo! knows exactly how it works. Since the web is all about it being precisely a web, incoming and outgoing links will definitely have an impact. The old saying you are the company you keep is probably the best way to describe how TrustRank works. But if there are any on-page factors that can increase the trust rank, it would be extremely useful to know exactly which what are. Below is a guess list.
Probable On-Page TrustRank Factors

Get an old domain, preferably com or .org
Make sure the domain whois data is correct and proper
Show business address and phone numbers on the website
Privacy policy page
TOS/Terms page
Help/FAQ page
Contact us page
About us page
SSL for sensitive data (guessing)
Own IP on a dedicated server
Outgoing links to authoritative websites
Seals like Hacker Safe, VeriSign, Bizrate etc.
Support for several languages
Good enough quality to get listed in DMOZ etc.

Google PageRank Still Going Strong

2008-10-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

Recently it has been a popular view to bash people that focus on PageRank. Supposedly PageRank is for newbies that thinks that PageRank automatically leads to a great search listing for anything in Google.

They definitively have a point in that PageRank is not everything. The last few years, Google has been striving to reward things like age, relevancy and relevant inlinks. It is possible to debate whether or not this is actually included in the reported 1-10 PageRank value that is most commonly presented by the Google toolbar. If reading what Google themselves say, it seems so (Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.). And if that's true, maybe the biggest argument against the importance of PageRank vanishes.

Another reason as to why PageRank is not considered powerful is that it's just a simple number, 1-10. But it really is a logaritmic number with an estimated factor of six. This means that if it takes 10 inlinks to get PageRank 1, it will take 10*6*6*6*6=12960 inlinks to get PageRank 5. In reality it most often is fewer but more powerful inlinks giving a page a high PageRank.

To find exaples of the mathematics behind this, you don't need to look
further than checking out PageRank at Wikipedia.

It may be mathematically "obvious" but what strikes me in the image above is how high PageRank page C has, thanks to its link from page B. Page B may have been working with directory submissions, link baits or paid links, while page C has almost as high PageRank. You can also tell that if there was no back link from page C to page B, page C would have had the highest PageRank in the whole net.

But in which way is this relevant for webmasters?

For starters, a high PageRank signals a lot of authority. Way more than the litte PageRank digit implies. It is also extremely powerful to get one way links from other pages with high PageRank. So what you can do is that by getting a link from an established website, you can get a lot of its authority passed on.

If you have a website that you want to promote, you might aswell submit another website of yours to web directories and link from that site to the site that you want to promote. This gives you the advantage of choosing exactly what the inlink will look like, and you can make the website it's coming from much more relevant to the anchor text. This one-way link will have the same power as all the directory submissions.

This is exactly what some people claim gives fast and powerful results in the Google rankings. For example SEO Nitro is completely built around buying old aged and trusted websites with at least pagerank 3, and the linking from them to to their customers. Another phenomenon is that hackers started to break into big websites, not in order to deface or bring them down, but to place a sometimes hidden backlink there.

But how to use all this to get results?

One way is to create a quality blog, like this one, about something that interests you enough to write at least once or twice a month. Get a decent top domain for it (I know I didn't on this one) since that looks more serious and may give you more authority and directories are more likely to accept your link. This will give you one site with authority to link from.

Internet Oddities - Red Light Center

2008-05-23T18:01:00.001-07:00

I guess this was bound to happen. While surfing on the Internet, I saw an ad for Red Light Center (wiki). No, I didn't sign up, but I found some more exposing screenshots.

When paedos targeted Second Life, it was made clear that there's a market for, as the Red Light Center slogan puts it, "Live Your Fantasy" (Though the opposite is the obviously the case). So the creation of an MMORPG entirely for this purpose was unavoidable.

Personally, I think that such games that revolves exclusively around sex will remain an oddity - at least outside Japan where they've been mainstream for years. There might be a market for some sex elements in a game that is in general solid, but as long as the game sucks, it will not keep the players. Related post: Sex and the MMORPG experience.

New RWEINC Blog in Swedish

2008-05-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

I have just started a new blog in Swedish. It will have similar content to this blog, and many posts will be translations of old posts already posted here.

Amazing Art - Someone Has Too Much Spare Time

2008-05-19T11:38:00.001-07:00

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Real World Trading - Curse Or Bliss?

2008-05-14T02:21:00.000-07:00

The so called Real World Trading (RWT), the exchange of virtual online gaming currencies and real world currencies is a controversial issue among online gamers. Many argue that the online fantasy worlds should be a place where people can create their avatars and mind their own business in a world where everybody starts out equal and real life weath does not help. A loud mob of players object to RWT, making it the politically correct stance by a gaming company to ban it completely.

Hence, RWT is banned in many games, most noticeably the biggest one of them all; World of Warcraft. Another game that has been fighting RWT is Runescape. They claim that RWT is the root source of scams and cheats inside the game. However cheats and scams were always a part of online games, long before RWT started to emerge. Some games, like Second Life, embraces the RWT and makes it a core idea of the whole gaming experience.

But do games benefit or suffer from allowing RWT? Nobody can say for sure, but I found some circumstancial evidence that the banning of RWT does not really increase the popularity of a game.

As seen on the search term statistics, eventhough nothing much can be proven by these numbers, it seems likely that Runescape lost popularity from imposing balanced trade in order to stop real world trading. The upgrade was put in place the 2nd of January 2008 and you can clearly see the increase in searches prior and the huge decline still taking place at the time of writing this.

I am, since I live off of the sales of virtual currencies, of course biased but I doubt that regulations like the ones in Runescape will worl very well. People are still selling in that game and also of course in World of Warcraft. Below is the text we posted on RPGStash.com when the balanced trade was made public by Jagex.

In response to Jagex take on Real World Trading
Below is our official post on the website after Jagex imposed the balanced trade limits to Runescape.

The official news is that items & gold will only be possible to transfer through balanced trades in the future. This limitation is already in effect on accounts created after December the 10th but older accounts will be subject to this as well in the beginning of January. This means that there are only 3 weeks left before we remove items and gold sales from our Runescape shop. After that you will have to grind the game like a bot if you want to accumulate any wealth. Which is highly ironic, considering that bots are the primary reason why Jagex are taking these measures in the first place.

They also have the audacity to brand all Real World Traders as thieves and boters, which is totally ludicrous. We can only speak for ourselves on this matter but we want to make it perfectly clear that our suppliers have always been and will always be legitimate players that choose to sell some of the surplus they are hoarding to us. We bring this stuff that has left the market back into the game; and this is done at nobody''s expense. We don't use bots, macros or other hacks and we never steal from other players. And it is imperative to point out that most players who cheat and/or steal are not in it for the money. It is the act of cheating or stealing that makes them tick.

Required Reading - The 4-Hour Work Week

2008-05-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

This is a book about things like outsourcing, management and life-style design.

It takes you on a trip in an amazing world where any person can build his/hers own multi-national business and where, since fewer go for it, making a billion is not harder than making a million. Very informative, and also entertaining, it shows you how to have your virtual assistant in India take care of your infected communication with your spouse, how to become an authority expert in any area in a matter of weeks and how to make your company get a life of its own, leaving you only the job of cashing checks.

So powerful is this book, that when realizing its impact, I put the reading on hold, just to read in it a few months later that this kind of bahaviour (avoiding painful facts) is the very problem that makes us stay busy to avoid decision-making and actions with uncertain outcome. More info at the the 4-Hour Work Week Website.

Geekery - RWEINC On Wikipedia

2008-03-20T02:48:00.000-07:00

I have started to create a Wikipedia page for Rune Word Entertainment, Inc. However I soon became aware that Wikipedia adds rel=nofollow to outgoing links. I will still keep updating the Wikipedia page though, since I still want to have an informative page about RWEINC.

Human Behaviour - The Opposite Way to Success

2008-03-18T04:53:00.000-07:00

The road to success in life, both with women and career-vise, may be counter-intiutive. The first step of success is to increase the rate of failure.

For example - Getting fired (or dumped), despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend: Someone makes the decision for you, and it's impossible to sit in the wrong job for the rest of your life.

Most people aren't lucky enough to get fired and die a slow slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.

The Opposite George is onto something here. Many such "opposite" counter-intuitive mannerisms are actually tought in the seduction community, as explained by Neill Strauss in the book The Game, with huge successes as a result.

"This has been the dream of my life ever since I was a child, and it's all happening because I'm completely ignoring every urge to use the common sense and good judgement that I've ever had." - Opposite George

Geekery - Computer gamers have a healthier life style

2007-12-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

At least according to Göteborgs-posten (in Swedish).

The full article in the paper version says the following:
A survey made from 2900 youngsters between 16 and 25 concludes that the ones playing games like World of Warcraft and Counterstrike does not differ much from the other youngsters. There is no link between computer games and bad health. The highly active gamers even report less stress, less head-aches, less stomach-aches and less alcohol consumption. The study also shows that dedicated gamers spend more time on physical excercise.

During history it has been metal music, comic magazines, TV and movies supposedly destroying the youth and lately it has been computer games being blamed for all imaginable social problems. But that picture is changing. As usual.

Sources: GP, Ungdomsstyrelsen, TT, PC Gamer

Did you know?

2007-11-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

That the computer gaming industry is bigger than the movie industry?

That the most sold computer game on earth is the Sims, and that it has more female than male players?

That the most common Internet addiction is chatroom abuse, and usually it's women taking it too far?

Based on a True Story - Reality Beats Fiction

2007-11-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

I had been up until 3 am, studying for an exam in music creation that I was studying at the university. At 6 am somebody opened the door to the student dorm room where I was sleeping. At the time I never even locked the door since this was up north in Sweden, a very calm place. In the door stood a big man in civilian clothing with a serious expression on his face.

I woke up but remained at peace. He said "You should know why we are here!" in a harsh way that I later realized was just a theater. I said no and he said he was from the Swedish IT crime unit. Behind him came two more Swedish police officers from the local police unit, also in plain clothes. Behind them was a man in black suit and tie, later introduced as a special agent David Black with the FBI.

I still was calm and assured when they asked for permission to let the FBI agent enter the room and ask questions, as their search warrant did not grant him permission.

By the way, the warrant was signed by James von Reis, a prosecutor that is a public figure from taking on numerous high-profile IT cases in Sweden. He's the evil personified. The Devil walking the earth. I will load my water pistol with holy water and gun him down with it.
Anyway, Knowing I had nothing to be afraid of, I said sure, whatever. One of the local policemen flashed a gun and the FBI agent flashed his badge. I remained unimpressed. Okay Okay, it was kinda cool to see an FBI badge being flashed like in the movies. The agent was nowhere as cool as Fox Mulder though.

When I insisted in saying that I didn't know why they were there, the police from the IT crime unit explained that I was under investigation for hacking a U.S. Military e-mail server. At the time my student dorm room was pretty spaced out with a lot of computers, synthesizers and books so the police seemed to be sure of themselves that they had found the hacker. There was a wait of about half an hour in my room so I got up to get dressed and one the police almost jumped at me, thinking that I was gonna start a fight or something.

However, I just got dressed and then showed the suit from the FBI my studio equipment. He was disappointed that I didn't even have any passwords on my computers. But I wasn't TOO concerned about disappointing him.

Then they gathered my computers and we took off to the police station. I pictured myself telling my grandchildren about how I was brought to the police station totally out of the blue. It felt totally unreal. Unfortunately the policemen assured me I wasn't dreaming. They agreed it was something to tell my grandchildren nonetheless.

At first they put me in an office where there was an inspector working with some papers. They said I could wait there because they didn't feel the need to lock me up.

I was obviously very tired after only 3 hours of sleep and sat down comfortably with my legs on another chair. This made the senior police upset and I felt like telling him to screw himself because they were the ones f**king with me and not the other way around. But clearly it would have been no use arguing with a police that was not connected to my case in any other way than baby sitting me in his office.

After some, actually quite good, breakfast at the office they let me know that the investigation needed more time so they had to put me in the remand prison. I had to change to prison clothes and my stuff was gathered by a bored looking guard. He gave me a curious look when he read in the papers that I was in custody suspected of computer hacking. And a second look when he wrote down the contents of my wallet, where I had a condom. Why he found that noteworthy, I don't want to know. I prefer not to think about what they might try behind the walls of a remand prison.

I was put in a little cell with a TV but there was nothing interesting on. The police said they had also visited my parent's house so I wanted to call my mom to calm her down. I knew she would worry about me so I wanted to tell her there wasn't really anything to worry about. They didn't allow that but they let me write a letter (that I never got the time to send).

A couple of hours and a lunch later they came to the cell and I let them know I didn't have time for this and they said it took longer than expected. They asked me if I wanted a lawyer but I said I didn't need one. Then they again asked if I allowed the FBI agent to attend to the interrogation and I said sure, why not? There was an interrogation with me, the IT unit police and the FBI agent. Again he asked me if the agent could ask me questions directly in English. Again I said sure.

During the Interrogation they started to look more and more bored as they realized I was not going to confess to anything. They also dropped their tough façade so we could talk in a relaxed manner. And they had forgotten to dim the room and point a bright lamp at my face from the very beginning.

One funny quirk was that the FBI agent was looking through all my CDs during the interrogation and he said that I spelled porn wrong as I had a CD with a Jenna Jameson porn movie on it. I explained that sometimes on the Internet, people spell it pr0n. He said: Oh, like they spell warez?

They asked if my brothers could have done the hacking but I of course said that I trusted them and that they wouldn't do anything like that. I now realized that they were probably interrogating my brothers as well, but apparently our stories matched, as I knew they would. I mean, even if we had been up to mischief, we'd at least get a matching story prepared, wouldn't we? They also explained that I was the main suspect because I was the big brother sibling that had been moving out from my parents' place first.

I did then tell them that one person that had been in our house earlier was into this sort of things. That person was in the same school class as my youngest brother and I didn't want them to mess with my brother. I was informed that the alleged hacking was done with my father's dial-up Internet account. They then claimed to have evidence that the hacking had been performed from the house early in the morning but they didn't push it further once I said that's not really possible. At the end of the interrogation they had already given up the case and I was released.

The next day at the University, everybody in my class were giving me curious smiles as my friend had told them I missed the exam because of sitting in an interrogation with the FBI. It was kinda funny because they didn't really know if I really did it or not. Everything was cool and back to normal, except that they still had my computers and it was hard to prepare for the upcoming concert without my studio computers. But I managed it.

PS. It turns out I had an alibi. It appears I was doing the military service as a fire fighter at the time of the crime... Or did I?

Cease and Desist Letter - Lawsuit Threat Escalated

2007-09-21T15:27:00.000-07:00

Jagex' fruitless attempts to threat us to stop the sales of our fully legitimate services in the game Runescape continues, as I received the letter cited below. This time the U.K. based law firm has hired a U.S. based law firm in order to create a "draft Complaint", a 50 page printout of a lawsuit that they threaten to file in the state of Nevada. However there is no way they can win in court. If they could, why spend over a year threatening to sue?

Re: Jagex v. Rune Word Entertainment, et al.

Dear Mr. *****,

We represent Jagex Ltd. ("Jagex"), the makers of Runescape, in the United States.
Enclosed is a draft Complaint that we will file in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada if you do not agree cease every aspect of your illegal scheme, as outlined in the Complaint, within seven (7) days of the receipt of this letter. To avoid litigation, you must also sign a settlement agreement, agreeing permanently to cease and desist from engaging in the unauthorized sale of Runescape items, with concomitant liquidated damages for violations of the agreement. If forced to file suit, we will seek maximum damages available to us under the law.
This letter is without waiver of any rights that Jagex may have in this matter, all of which it expressly reserves.

Sincerely,
Brett E. Lewis, Esq.

Big Brother

2007-09-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ever since 9/11 and the so called PATRIOT Act, We've been having the trouble of being supervised by the U.S. federal government, to an extent that the U.S. banks don't find it profitable to keep having us as customers (This is solved but it was surely a big nuisance). This is all due to the fear of terrorists making politicians go havoc and as a result, we will eventually relocate the business to another country, and it leaves both us and our customers worse off. Anyway this is just a rant to excuse the posting of this cool video below. It reminds me of all the CCTV cameras that are all over London. And I love the Queen's English accent of the narrator :)

RWEINC celebrates its third anniversary!

2007-08-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a rocky road with our business bank accounts being terminated thanks to the vicious so called PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts*, and some expert and some less sophisticated attempts to bring us down.

After three years an estimate of 75% of all companies have bankrupted so it is a huge success to still be in business and growing!

*These acts only weaken civil rights and in our case has made our U.S. bank accounts being under supervision (since RWEINC is a foreign owned U.S. business entity). Our business is legitimate but the accounts were still closed since no bank wants the extra work of constantly reporting its customers banking activities to the government.

Geekery - TV om MMORPGs och Internetförsäljning

2007-08-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

Apberget

Om ungdomar som köper virtuella saker och betalar med telefonen, utan tillstånd från sina föräldrar. Vi har liknande problem, vilket tvingar oss att ringa upp alla nya kunder för att prata med någon vuxen och kontrollera att köpet är godkänt.

Janne Josefsson gjorde programmet så det är inte helt sanningsenligt, tex så döljer han att föräldrarna alltid får tillbaka sina pengar bara de hör av sig till Apberget. Apberget själva har dock inte så bra säkerhet eftersom de inte har helt fungerande spärrar som hindrar överdrivna köp, något som jag har lagt ned en hel del tid på att programmera till RPGStash websida. Högerklicka för att välja 'spara som' eller 'save as'.

Se programmet här.

Kontroll om MMORPG-försäljning

Dessa reportage förklarar på ett mycket lättfattat sätt fenomenet med MMORPGs och hur försäljningen fungerar. Del ett handlar mer övergripande om MMORPGs och del två om försäljningen och hur man kan tjäna riktiga pengar genom spelen.

Reportage ett
Reportage två

Filerna är i .rm-format och kan ses med Realplayer eller Gomplayer (jag rekommenderar den senare).

EULA Madness

2007-05-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

The PayPal (PayPal is the by far largest on-line payment processor, with tens of millions of users) User Agreement used to be over 300 pages and states that they may confiscate your money at any time, for any or no reason. You also agree to waive the rights given to you by credit card providers (and law) among a lot of other things. Now it is even bigger and split into different chapters. Again I want to stress that contrary to common belief, U.S. is not a business friendly country.

Speaking of PayPal, I read this book The PayPal Wars that is written by one of the employees that tells his story about the first years of the company. It's very interesting and also it confirms some things that often annoy me when it comes to U.S. businesses... in this case PayPal; They don't have bad consciense about lying, they even consider it their duty to lie if it benefits the company as long as the lie is hard enough to prove. Obviously it would be bad for business to lose customers to bad reputation or lawsuits that comes with badly performed lies.

The book also makes no secret about the fact that many people got their money confiscated ("frozen") by PayPal, and it is obvious that it is a tactic to make the funds hard to retreive so people in dispute with PayPal give up, leaving funds in the pockets of PayPal. The author also mentions the Class Action Lawsuit against Paypal. Funnily enough, (as I claim the same in earlier posts) he blames the bad business environment in the U.S. for this, claiming that since PayPal became successful, greedy lawyers wanted to get a cut of the wealth. That may be the case but since PayPal actually DID rob many of their customers, I believe this particular lawsuit was a good thing.

MMORPG is mainstream

2007-05-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

MMORPG themes on my two favourite shows:
(right click to save)
Southpark - Make Love, Not Warcraft
The Simpsons - Marge Gamer

The U.S. is not a business friendly country.

2007-05-08T04:08:00.000-07:00

Once again I get reminded that the U.S. is not a business friendly country. One of the few payment systems we have been using that makes it possible to do business with eastern Europe is e-gold. It is U.S. based and because of that is now being punished with a 25% tax on deposits according to our eastern Europe partners. It appears that the company has been under attack by the U.S. government, using the usual false accusations that its enemies are being affiliated with child pornography and/or terrorism. This is expected, since e-gold transactions could not be controlled by the U.S. government and everything that works too well by itself is being thwarted or forbidden by the government. They want us all to work for mega corporations that can be controlled.

Read the e-gold statment about this debacle here.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-Ronald Reagan

Why Matt O'Neill (Matthew O'Neill) should be fired.

2007-05-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

During the Christmas holiday, Jagex managed to convince Matt O'Neill (Matthew O'Neill) at our former host aplus that RWE, Inc. was infringing their trademark. We did not, as will be explained further down. The reason why I post this is to inform people that Matt O'Neill acted in an extremely unprofessional and possibly unlawful way. He did not comply with the law (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Background:
First he shut down our website. Then I noticed that there was an email for me that said something about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA 512) and that response was required. It didn't say anything about how soon the response should be made though.

As can be seen on http://www.aplus.net/intellectual_property_use.html that there is no time period specified. However when I phoned Matt O'Neill he said that he had proof that I had read the email, and that I had chosen to ignore it. He was shouting this in my ear and I was kind of speechless since it was obviously complete bullshit. He was also kind enough to inform me that I was a criminal and that what I had been doing was "serious". (Then why haven't my company been sued over a year since they started threatening to sue?) He then modified what he said and said instead that he had proof that the email went into my mailbox. Isn't this guy supposed to know how emails work? Also he was saying some stuff over the phone that the Adlex guys had made him believe, for example he implied that RWE Inc. was illegitimate since it was an U.S. business entity run from abroad. As specified in the DMCA 512, he is not supposed to take sides in this way.

My point here is also that he was not doing his job. This is from aplus' own webpage:
"Under no circumstance will Aplus.Net sales or support personnel be permitted to deviate from the process, assess alternate courses of action, render opinions regarding the allegation, or take any sides in the matter."

Here is a copy of an email that Matt O'Neill forwarded to his buddies at Adlex:

Dear Mr. Taylor,

The official NOTIFICATION was delivered to the owner of the website rpgstash.com on 12/19/06. As the notification was ignored for the duration of a mandatory 48 hour response period, the website was taken down in total. The website owner has declined to file a counter-notification, but has since responded indicating an intent to fully cooperate with the notification and remove the offending content; however, that will require re-instatement of the website outside the bounds of the DMCA provisions.

Your client has the option of withdrawing the complaint and settling the matter amicably as requested by the website owner, or leaving the complaint in place, which of course will result in the website owner’s loss of access to the site, existing content, and investment in web design infrastructure.

Aplus.net will await your response.

Matthew O’Neill

Vice President Operations

My comments:
He mentions a 48 hour period, that is never mentioned on aplus.net's website, or even in the notification email that was sent to me. And he keeps saying that I ignored his email which of course I did not. He then goes on to explain how he thinks they can cause my company damage. I consider this taking sides in the matter.

Our statement regarding this debacle:

We consider ourselves innocent of the Trade Mark Violation we are accused of. There are no preceding rulings from a court of law indicating that the use of a game company logo is illegal on a sales platform where virtual items in the particular game are exchanged for real money. In 2001, Sony Entertainment brought sellers of EverQuest currency to court in an attempt to invalidate their business but Sony lost the case and that giant corporation is as of today devising their own platform for selling virtual items. And the original sellers are still around today, happily using Everquest and Everquest 2 logos on their website as they perpetuate themselves. Business pioneers like IGE.com and mysupersales.com are constantly running with no interuptions despite extensive use of game logos. This very business that we are taking part in is steadily growing and the turnover is estimated to exceed that of the online games themselves already. There is no Trade Mark Violation because there is no confusion as to origin, no intent of slander or false flag and no diversion of business from the Trade Mark owner. Being fully enrolled as user of the game whose logo and graphics we use to accurately describe our service is a prerequisite for doing a business transaction with us. You can not use our service unless you already are using the service of the game company and such a relation can not entertain a legal dispute. We are explicitly stating on our website that we are not affiliated with any game company and associated Trade Marks. Our service is clearly outlined in our terms as a transaction between two users of the game that fully acknowledge the virtual "goods" and associated Trade Marks as the property and ownership of the Game Company. The use of Trade Marks and other game graphics on our sales platform serves only one purpose and that is to accurately describe the service that we are selling. Our business is based on returning customers that love our service and use it of their own free will. People play games for recreation and we offer additional recreation on top of the basic game offered by its makers. No
financial harm is done to the Game Company.
Rune Word Entertainment, Inc. is a Nevada registered business in good standing, and we are confident we will remain this way.

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2006-05-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

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Our first lawsuit threat received!

2006-05-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Usually the business environment in the U.S. is believed to be very good by the europeans. But this is hardly the case. Companies are taxed (taxed with the meaning being burdened) by bureaucracy, government regulations and threats of being sued. The (mis-)use of the legal system to bring down competitors is videly used. Government representatives can choose who they impose the regulations on, and who not to harass.

I even read somewhere that the success of a U.S. business can be measured by the number of lawsuits and court proceedings it has to attend to. That is why I am pleased that we for the first time received a threat of somebody to "initiate formal legal steps" against us.

This threat was made both to our host and ourselves, with different deadlines in order to create pressure on us from two instances at once. However we verified that we were not guilty of copyright infringement since we are not selling anything we copied, and we are not violating their trademark since we are clearly stating that we are not affiliated with the company in question. When we didn't do as they wished, they again gave us a new "deadline" and our host an new slightly shorter one.

Now a year have passed so it seems this was nothing more than a threat. In a way it would be interesting to see what happens if the lawyers in the U.K. try to sue the U.S. business entity, but I prefer them not to do anything more regarding this case.

The Letter and email I received were both the same and had the following content:

Rune Word Entertainment Inc
PO Box 27740
Las Vegas
NV 89126
US

Dear Sirs

www.rpgstash.com (“the Website”)

We act for Jagex Limited. Our client has owned and operated RuneScape, the well-known online multiplayer adventure game, since 2001. There are currently some 4.1 million active registered players of the game in over 15 countries. Our client’s turnover in its last financial year to March 2005 was in excess of £5 million (approximately $9 million).
Our client owns Community Trade Mark E2942761 and UK Trade Mark 2302308 or the word RUNESCAPE in classes 16, 25 and 41. Our client also has common law rights in the name RUNESCAPE deriving from its extensive use outlined above.

It has recently come to our client’s attention that the Website infringes our client’s rights as follows.

The Website is being used for the sale of RuneScape items for the purpose of cheating.

Such transactions are strictly forbidden in our client’s contracts with customers. They constitute a breach of contract by the users concerned as well as a tortious inducement of other users to breach their contracts. Such transactions damage the game’s reputation and cause our client financial loss. Not only do they enable players to advance without spending time playing the game (resulting in loss of revenue) but honest players are discouraged from playing as a result.

The transactions are criminal offences insofar at they incite, counsel, procure or assist persons to gain unauthorised access to our client’s computer systems.

The Website is also being used to confuse, attract and profit from internet users seeking our client This is achieved by metatext use of RUNESCAPE (including in the metatitle / metadescription visible in search engines) and use of our client’s trade mark RUNESCAPE on the Website in a manner which is not in accordance with honest practices in commercial matters. The foregoing constitutes trade mark infringement and passing off.

Our client’s copyright is also infringed by the reproduction of game items and our client’s logo.

Furthermore, you / your company also operate websites at runeword.com, runeword.biz, runeword.us and godlyitems.com. The websites at the first three domain names link to the Website as well as to a website at the domain name godlyitems.com. The website at godlyitems.com undertakes similar infringing activities to those outlined above in relation to the Website.

Please cease all activity outlined above within 7 days from today. Otherwise our client will have little choice but to initiate formal legal steps to protect its position.

Yours faithfully

Adlex Solicitors
www.adlexsolicitors.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 207 317 8404
Fax: +44 (0) 207 317 8405
Mob: +44 (0) 7775 635 835
76A Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BJ

To begin with

2006-05-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

This blog will most likely be accessed by people visiting rpgstash.com or runeword.com so here is some information on what I do.

What the company does

Rune Word Entertainment, Inc. (RWEINC) is providing a service for Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft and Diablo II, Guild Wars, Runescape, Maplestory and Final Fantasy XI. These services are sold on a website where buyers can purchase directly with their credit or debit cards. RWEINC is a business entity registered in the state of Nevada in the United States. The company's employees and directors are currently located in the United Kingdom, United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, China and New Zealand.

What is a Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game and how is it possible to make money in one?

These are games where players from all around the world enter a fantasy world online and interact with each other. Players have their own characters that they "role-play" and go to adventures with, collecting experience points, items and skills. They gather up with other players to complete more advanced quests, or measure their relative skill in player versus player games. In order get a powerful character the players need to invest a lot of time to complete quests and gather items. This is a sometimes very tedious process. Some players don't have the time to play the game enough to keep up with the pace of other players. RWEINC offers an opportunity for players to "buy time" in the games, giving their in-game characters more powerful items, experience or in-game currency.