Quote Originally Posted by Penthea View Post
The players who play are not virtual people. They're real. They spend real time and money playing the game. Their joy and frustrations are also real.

Sure you don't have to care about them but it looks like you're saying "none of this is real!" to justify your stance.

You'd be better off sticking to how you're not breaking any rules because at least that stance has some merit. Going into "it's just a game" territory just allows others to say the same to house hoarders when they say SE should take away their grandfathered plots.
But your point was on whether our in game actions have moral and ethical merit. I didn't speak to the individual motivations, I was addressing your point on whether the action of taking up something for themselves could be seen as selfish in an environment that doesn't have real world consequences.

For example, it's exactly the same with sports (another form of game) one team does not have to stop scoring touchdowns on the other because of some prescribed notion. MMOs are about accomplishment and achievement. Hoarding and collecting ARE the rules and the TOS supports it. So at the time the grandfathered employees were winning this "competition of sorts", that was the norm.

Returning to the sports thing, sure the losing team can be mad, but it would be insane of them to look at the other team and say "You're selfish, and greedy how dare you score all those points". Why not? Because it's not real life in the sense that the social contract of that game is set. The Referees (our TOS) are the only rules that need to be abided by.

It actually IS just a game lol.