Boycott the Gold Farmers? 207
Next Generation is running an editorial penned by former PC Gamer Editor-In-Chief Gary Whitta, wherein he calls on gamers to shut down gold farmers. From the article: "PCG's refusal to accept their advertising is a bold first step toward suffocating these reprobates. But it won't do the job completely: there will always be less-scrupulous outlets who won't be so picky about where their ad dollars come from. The only way to really cut off gold farmers at the knees is not by refusing to take their money, but by refusing to give it to them. And that responsibility falls to you, the community of players they target."
Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I play games for fun- not as a second job. Farming for gold isn't fun. Its mind numbing, boring, tedious work. Yet due to flaws in game design, many MMOs require it. Since I don't like doing it, I'd rather pay someone else to do it for me, allowing me to skip directly to the parts which are fun. Its a win/win/win. The gold farmer gets cash, I get to have fun, and the game company continues to have me as a subscriber.
You want to stop farming? STOP MAKING FLAWED GAMES THAT REQUIRE IT! Remove the god damned grind already. Get rid of uber items. Get rid of items that drop once a week or once a year. There you go- we now have no reason to farm, so we have no reason to buy gold. And the game is better as a result- you've removed a monotonous, repetitious bore from the game. Until the industry evolves away from the EQ idea of time sinks as content (hint to developers- no, its not), gold farming will live on, as its the only thing that makes the games playable.
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:2)
The other side of the issue you present is that some people do put more time in the game, and feel they should have greater rewards for it. To use Warcraft as an example, I only have the time to run the 5 and 10 man instances such as Blackrock Spire, Scholomance, etc. I will never have the uber elite items that drop from raid instances such as Onyxia. By your logic, we shouldn't even have Onyxia or Ragnaros or any of the other raid bosses. However, some people want more challenge than running Stratholme ove
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:3, Insightful)
For some reason though, these MMORPG developers seem to see themselves as above this basic design principle.
The question is, why?
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:3, Insightful)
The question is, why?
They have over 5,000,000 subscribers and rake in millions of dollars per month. Their shit doesn't stink.
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:2)
Oh, sorry. Wrong issue.
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with solving the issue is that MMORPG business model is built on monthly payments. In order to make money, you have to keep people playing the game, preferably forever. This, of course, requires there to be some play content. Now, how
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to pay a monthly fee to be able to play the game you already paid for. You have to pay someone else to play for you because you think the game is boring.
Why did you buy the game?
Why do you still play the game?
Boycott the game, not the farmers.
Re:Does anyone like Gold Farmers? (Score:2)
Before then- I found some parts fun, and some parts not. I payed someone to skip the not parts, and found the cost to do so acceptable. Much like in real life. For example- I like to drive. But I pay someone else to change the oil.
Competitive feature of the game? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, isn't the gold farmer there specifically because it does reduce the most boring part of the game? I think this is exactly what the game needs to prove that the money situation is broken. If money is so easy to get by "farming" it, it means the gaming companies need to come up with a new way to handle the situation of money (preferably by fixing the amount available and only allowing more of it through mining or what not). I'd even say dump the gold-is-the-only-money idea entirely, and fix commodities based on the amount of PC players rather than the amount of NPCs in a game. This will let other commodities find value as a bartering mechanism.
I don't see the reason for ignoring something valuable such as the gold farmer -- if it saves YOU time, then it is worth the cost. Money is a store of time, nothing more. If something saves you time, you give them your money (stored time) in exchange. Someone elsewhere in the world is willing to do your dirty work, compensate them if you can't do it yourself.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
The Auction houses in Wow for instance, represent a capitalist economy with all the dynamics of supply and demand. That hardly eliminates gold farmers.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the auction house represents a market system. Markets have been around since the dawn of civilization. Supply and demand is a market force, but not necessarily and indicator of capitalism. Socialist counties also have markets you know.
Capitalism implies that the means of production (factories, farms, etc) are privately owned. WoW is definitely not capitalist in that there are no in game assets that produce income, AKA Capital.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
> produce income, AKA Capital.
Really? What would you call that Sword of Uberness that you paid an arm and a leg for and that you just used to kill the mob with the really keen drop, which would have been difficult/impossible to kill without the uber weapon? Looks like a game asset that produces income, AKA Capital, to me...
Chris Mattern
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2, Informative)
Nobody ever accumulates much wealth by selling to NPC's anyway. It is by selling on the players market that you make significant sums of coin.
If I sell an item to you on the auction house, we trade an item for gold. You have less gold, I have more gold. Gold is neither created nor destroyed (well there is a cut that's taken, but it's not much). However, I regularly pick up all the vendor trash (gray items) when I run level 60 instances. I can make 4 or 5 gold each run. Some of the high level gray items w
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
This provides a situation where certain game players can have a massive influence on the entire game world. That would not a good thing but now the game you just bought is being run by some unknown random people on the network that can do whatever they want.
There are surely ways to balance this but it ain't gonna be easy.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
The gaming world is no different -- the value of an item versus another item are completely dictated by supply and demand. If some ten year old can spend 90% of his waking hours hording gold, this is no problem from a free market persp
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:3, Interesting)
Remove trading (Score:2)
Then everything your character has is his. No gold farming--the most you could do would be character selling.
Of course, this would also force a change in MMORPG game design, but quite frankly the grinding has got to go anyway.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Farmer that I am, I gave it to a friend of mine because he needed it, and couldn't have afforded it.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
By far, the most realistic and player driven economy around. It only works because there is 25,000 people playing at the same time, ON A SINGLE SERVER INSTANCE. Try it.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Anyone interested in MMORG economic principles should definitely give Puzzle Pirates a look.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
Not anymore sadly - over the virtually unanimous outrage of the playerbase, they've implemented a 'universal purse'. All your POE is available to you everywhere you go - and is safe from brigands so long as it isn't in your [ships] coffers or booty chest.
They did this to 'make the game more understandable to newbies'. I always find that explan
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultima Online did early on. People hoarded. The system broke. It sounds good in theory, but there are too many variables you can't easily account for in practice. What about the guy who has a nice collection of some commodity, then doesn't log in for six months? Do you release his supply back into the system? What about when he returns to the game -- is he screwed out of his stuff, or is his supply allowed to go over the limit? I think this is exactly what the game needs to prove that the money situation is broken. The situation needs deeper analysis. MMORPGs are a new layer on top of the RPG. Classically, the "economy" in an RPG is a combination of game world flavor, a way to inflate the game's play time, a flow controller (i.e. to prevent you from buying powerful high-level equipment too early), and a sub-game of decision-making about things like exactly how important it is to have the Uber Sword of Donkeylizard Slaying or if the Elite Sword of Donkeylizard Slaying is good enough.
Single-player RPGs contain things look like economics but really aren't -- it's just part of the game.
Early MMORPG designers built the game systems the same way, without giving much thought to how real economics were going to come into play. It's just a game, one that happens to be multiplayer, right? It's obvious to add in trading of stuff between players. But, as soon as you do that, a real economy emerges. The real one interacts strangely with the fake one built into the game world. The classical RPG economy has the hero being uber-rich by the end of the game, because accumulated money is just another scorecard. But when that useless stuff can be traded between players and the game is designed for all players to get steadily richer over time, then you end up with this huge disconnect between the value of money in terms of the game rules and the value of money between two players. A friend signs on, you give him a small fraction of all the excess money you've piled up, and that little gift allows him to never have to worry about gaining money in the game on his own.
In an MMO, currency has the dual role of being a scorecard in a sub-game, and being real currency for player-to-player transactions. On the game engine side, the system is immutable. On the human side, the value of the currency fluctuates constantly in response to uncountable things. It just doesn't work right. No matter how much you bandaid it.
The key is to fix it so that the game engine "economics" adjust themselves dynamically in response to the real economics that happen as a result of player action. Ultima Online took a small step in that direction a few years back, when they made it so that NPCs would adjust their prices in response to player purchases and sellbacks. It was shown to be a successful experiment when, later, an NPC shopkeeper was placed in a dangerous and hard to access are of the game world. Players found it preferable to spend the gold they gained in that dungeon locally with that shopkeeper, because it was literally not worth their time to truck the loot back out for deposit into their bank accounts. Prices on that vendor skyrocketed to more than ten times the price for the same item in an easily accessible part of the world. They eventually stabilized when players began finding it worth their time to truck goods into that area specifically to sell to that vendor. That simple little change in game mechanics allowed actual economics to emerge in that game.
On the whole, MMO developers aren't generally interested in playing with economic theories. They are much more interested in providing a fun play experience that is visually stunning. Experimentation with the basic game design is a Bad Thing because the results might be unknown and if you f
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
In fact, I believe if a game properly reflects supply and demand in real time, we'd see the inflationary problems that we face in reality very quickly in a game that allowed an endless supply of "money" or any commodity that is over-created without labor of another.
Good post.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think it's cheating that someone can buy gold from another player, do you also think it's cheating if your guild donates money and equipment to new members? Is it cheating if you give your buddy a bunch of extra gold you don't need? If you don't, then why do you object to the use of real-world money to purchase something when you d
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I think you've hit the nail on the head with this statement: What the real deal here is, is that gold buying in an MMO becomes almost exactly like real-world vice crime. When something victimless like pot smoking or prostitution is legal and is reasonably regulated like any "legitimate" business would be, then it doesn't cause a stir. Brothels are peaceful, secure places where money changes hands, people enjoy themselves in privacy, and disease is not spread. Herb dens are like pubs except full of happy stoners instead of rowdy drunks.
But, when those things become illegal, that doesn't stop the basic human desires that lead to the demand that creates the market; people want to enjoy themselves, get laid, or whatever else without being bothered and without hurting anyone. So, they do these things anyway. But, without the protection of law, they have lots of negative ancilliary effects and secondary crime, all of which reinforces the negative perception of the original vice and clouds peoples' judgement over what the real solution is.
On the gold farming thing, I think the best way to handle it is to sanction it and not try to stop it. You'll waste a lot of time and effort trying to stop it, ruining the game experiences of the "cheaters" who just wanted to skip over some of the boring parts along the way, and you won't really stop it. By "criminalizing" it, you're exacerbating the problem that you created in the first place. It's better to noturinate into the wind, right?
I think creating a real no-grind MMORPG will require creating a whole new kind of beast. These games must have huge subscription revenues to be profitable, because they cost boatloads of money to make and maintain. You can't put content into the game cheaply enough and in enough volume to keep your playerbase engaged and still make a profit. So, you have to put in the level grind and the loot grind to give players more hurdles than just the quests and instances you build into the game. Otherwise, they power through all your content in no time, and you might as well have sold them a single-player game, because they won't subscribe and will move on to the next RPG. Since the grind is required for an MMO to be sustainable long-term, then you have to embrace the "seedier" side of people just engaging in capitalist economics vis-a-vis gold farming and gold buying.
It's interesting watching things like Second Life emerge and evolve. SL is all about being a virtual world and not about being a game; there's no grind to it and there's an officially sanctioned currency market for it. But, it's not a game. However, I do bet that eventually we'll see an MMO that is somewhere between Wow and Second Life, where player-generated content provides enough playability to eliminate the ridiculous grind.
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I agree completely. We're already seeing this trend in MMOs
Re:Competitive feature of the game? (Score:2)
I don't know how I feel about it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know how I feel about it... (Score:2)
That way, it won't be a case of someone having the rug pulled out from under them, they'll have time to find a new job as the demand for gold winds down in one game while it dies, and it'll becomes clear that there's no demand in any of the growing new games.
Re:I don't know how I feel about it... (Score:2)
And please, nobody get all righteous in the name of the poor poverty-stricken Chinese clutching at the final straw of gold farming. Anyone who can get access to a WoW subscription and
Re:I don't know how I feel about it... (Score:2)
You realize that these gold farmers work for companies that provide WoW and a computer, right? And that they work in cramped, hot cubicles in 12 hour shifts while they do their farming? It isn't exactly some guy who comes home from work, decides to earn a little extra money, and logs on to his computer and WoW account to sell gold. Not even close. Most gold farming companies are run like sweatshops.
Re:I don't know how I feel about it... (Score:2)
Wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only way to really cut off gold farmers is for companies like blizzard to change the game such that there isn't so much focus on "gold". I don't like the idea of having to spend 3 months of farming herbs to be able to afford to buy an epic mount, hence i go buy gold to get the epic mount. If they made it based on completing quests we wouldn't have this issue? No gold necessary to get the epic mount. Just quests. The reason above is the only reason that I've yet bought money in an MMO.
I agree there's a need for some currency to be used in MMOs, but the current implementation of it in games like WoW is the issue.
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
Fortunately other elements of the game are more enjoyable, but the sadistic bastards
aren't happy just taking your money, they want you to suffer through their notion of
a personal growth experience, and enjoy the savor of the crushing disappointment you
feel when you realize you've endured all that crap for....nothing.
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
The only reason in the world that they make you pay for things like mounts, epic mounts, skill training, repairs, etc, is to remove money from the world. This is necessary to counterbalance the constant i
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
But with MMOs like WoW, with so much of the econo
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
Personally I think the game should implement sanctioned gold shops. After all, game companies like Blizzard are out to make money, there is not reason they shouldn't be allowed to do so.
Nobody would take the risk of purchasing gold from a gold farmer if there was a sanctioned source for doing it. At the same time, because nobody will buy from a
Re:Wrong! (Score:2)
Ummm ok, here's one for you (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ummm ok, here's one for you (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ummm ok, here's one for you (Score:2)
That's the point, buying gold is against the rules. Blizzard has made that quite clear. If you do so, you are breaking the rules. Well, what I say is if you don't like the rules, don't play the game. If the game isn't fun for you when pla
Re:Wrong! (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny I though the whole point of playing the game was to have fun. I'm sorry if my idea of fun doesn't line up with yours, but please don't imply that I'm wrong because of it.
Summary: I'm paying money not to play the parts I don't like. Say I make $50 bucks an hour in real life. Should I pay $60 bucks for gold to get an epic mount, or spend 3 months of game time doing something I don't like to get that mount? I'd rather blow the $60 b
Wow, how insightful. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, I thought that the point of playing the game was to have fun.
Clearly, nobody purchases fragging services in Counterstrike because that would not be fun. You'd be paying someone to play the game for you.
Just as clearly, people do purchase gold from gold farmers because grinding for gold...isn't fun. Grinding faction isn't fun.
The fact that gold farmers exist, the fact that leveling services exist, these things speak to deficiencies in the game design. There's this game, that people are paying millions each month to play, and yet on top of the monthly fee many of them feel that it is worth additional money to pay others to essentially play part of the game for them. Why? Because that part of the game isn't fun.
If MMORPG designers want to eliminate farmers, they need to look at what parts of the game people are paying them to play, figure out why those parts of the game aren't fun, and change them to make the fun. Bitching about people who are willing to provide a service at a rate people are willing to pay is, like in every other aspect of life, silly.
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
And there's also the fact that your lack of skillz will be readily apparent the first time you join a game with leet players.
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Take the arcade game, it has a score card, the human wants to beat the other players to the top and if they can't they don't play the game for long - that's why the score card gets reset occasionally, and that's why they ban the people that just keep scoring the highest and fill up the score card as soon as
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that fun is (obviously) highly subjective. What you deem as fun may be entirely different than what I think. The vast majority of gamers in WoW don't buy gold. The process of slowly accumulating wealth (which includes gold, equipment, and other loot) is supposed to be challenging and rewarding. That's just a part of the game design.
Now the issue is always going to be "how much is too much?". I'll take WoW as an example. From most people that I've interacted with in the game, accumulating the 90 gold or so necessary for a mount at level 40 is a challenge, but it's something that everyone achieves. However at level 60, the epic mount costs around 800-900 gold, and that's something that many people (myself probably included) will never reach. So I can understand the argument that the cost of the epic mount is too high, and that might be considered bad game design. But that's not the problem.
All it takes for one person to think that the normal mount cost is too much, and bingo, the gold farmers have a business. Heck, you can say having any type of economic system is going to invite farmers, since there will always be those lazy individuals where ANY amount of work is too much. These gamers are probably the same folks who cheat and hack their way through every single-player game, blowing through them in a fraction of the time that it's supposed to take. In my opinion (and many others would agree), that's a poor way to play a game. But all it takes is a few of these gamers to generate a business. I think of it the same way with spam. The only reason we still get e-mail spam is because there are a few idiots who still fall for the "Former King of Nigeria" tricks or buy Viagra through their inbox.
I think TFA makes a good point. It usually is obvious when you've got someone who just paid his way to a high level character. Make it so they never want to do it again (don't group with them, ban from guild invites, etc). It should be the same stigma as someone who cheats in real life: cutting in front of a long line, snags a few dollars from a donation box, takes credit for other people's work, etc. General asshole behavior, even in on-line games, should not be tolerated.
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
No it doesn't! For the gold farmers to have a business, there has to be a significant number of people interested in buying what they sell. One person will not make a business for them. The fact that there has to be alot of people out there willing to do it is an indication that it is a game flaw more than anything.
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Actually, you do bring up an interesting point. How many people are needed to make gold farming a viable business?
With a game like WoW, with a tremendous subscriber base, all it takes a small percentage of the playerbase to be dis-satisfied, and gold farmers have a business. For example, WoW has 5 million subscribers (last I checked). If just 1% of that audience were lazy gamers that wanted to buy their way to level 60 characters, that's already 50,
No, it's not. (Score:2)
I've played that game since it was released. You start off at lvl 1 with nothing. At lvl 5 you can pick up a gathering skill, and, if you choose mining, or herbalism, you can go right out and make a decent amount of money. Copper bars sell for more than a gold a stack, most times.
Re:No, it's not. (Score:2)
Getting an epic mount isn't a challenge, its a grind. A challenge is something that sees wether I have the *skill* to complete it. A difficult quest, perhaps with a timer you need to complete it in, is a challenge. Go kills stuff until you have 1000 gold is not a challenge, its merely a time sink. You could have no idea what you're doing, you'll still eventually achieve it. Timesinks ar
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it being 'lazy' if player A with 10 hours a week buys gold to get a BoE epic to keep up with player B who plays 40 hours a week and has superior BoP epics?
People buy gold in world of warcraft for two reasons:
1
No not so much (Score:3, Insightful)
"Clearly, nobody uses aimbots in Counterstrike because that would not be fun. You'd be having something play the game for you."
But people DO use aimbots. All they do is click the mouse to fire, and some don't even do that, they auto fire. The game is being played for you. Why play then? Well because they are people with ego issues that want to have an edge over other players. They want to win, but aren't willing to get good at the game, so they cheat.
Same thing w
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
However, there is obviously an incentive to do it, which is to buy the best items and upgrade them to be stronger........ and then what? you "finish" the game?
You did all that just to be the strongest and finish the game, but the game goes on...
Did you enjoy the journey of levelling up all that way?
You did? Great, then your money was well spent. If you're bored, go do something else.
You didn't? Then why did you even play? Learn your
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Re:exactly (Score:2)
There are very few ways to take money out of the WoW economy, and gold-farmers artifically increase the supply of it.
I call bullshit. Gold farmers may behave differently than other players, but they are still players. They don't have some magical ability to increase the gold supply. What they do is tilt the balance of gold that is already there. They take gold from other people (generally people who buy gold from them and can afford their prices) and sell it back to them. It's rather silly overall, but h
Re:Wow, how insightful. (Score:2)
Level is capped at 20 and quite easy to get.
The bonuses of higher quality equips are pretty minor, but can give an edge.
Wearables are customized for a character and untransferrable.
The only thing you can really gain is new skills/spells which are well balanced between themselves. i.e it's possible you'd do the endgame missions and PvP with skills you gained early on.
The only stronger spells are "elites" which aren't that hard to get and you can only have one in your skill set at each time.
The skil
Until it cannot be done, it will be done (Score:2)
As long as games have an economy where individuals can exchange items for in game coinage this will remain an issue.
2 possible ways to fix this that I can think of, however, they would have to be implemented together.
#1 Remove the ability to exchange in game coin directly between players.
#2 Restrict pricing on items to within certain values - ie - allow the economy to
Re:Until it cannot be done, it will be done (Score:2)
At that point, if someone is willing to pay someone else to play a game that they're already paying for, I'm not going to stop them.
It will, however, as you agreed, stop gold farming, and will make item trade a less than profitable experience.
All in all, it should reduce the amount of farming i
I don't see why this is such a passionate issue (Score:2)
If a guy wants to buy 100G rather than farm for his mount, or decides to power level tailoring/enchanting and needs 500G to do it - who cares? To bad they didn't do it 'the hard way', but why is it your right to tell that person hes a cheater?
Its a game and grinding and f
Because they ruin the market and the game (Score:2)
In an MMORPG, there is no direct connection between influx and exit of money. Money is generated spontanously by hacking down a monster. Money disappears when you buy something from an NPC (be it a skill, an item or a service). The NPC is not spending the money i
Re:Because they ruin the market and the game (Score:2)
Neither of those points are true in MMORPGs. People who have the "power" to generate money don't give a damn about the game (if this game falls, they'll move on to the next).
The market system in an MMORPG is akin to handing people the power to print money, given that they invest time. Kinda like handing them mo
I admit it. (Score:5, Informative)
I *really* don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people find that simply playing a game is enjoyable. Others find winning is the enjoyable part.
Personally, I don't play at these sorts of games, because the reason I play is to have social (read face to face) interactions. But if I find a new "finesse" I don't see why I wouldn't use it. If there is no enjoyment for me, or other payback, why would I bother?
If "gold farmers" cause angst to the games operators, or if they cause people (who pay to play) to leave, the games operators would adjust the rules of play.
Exactely the same thing happens at, say, chess. If I play an unbalanced game, neither I nor my opponent would enjoy it. So we make a rule of "spotting pieces" until parity is reached.
The "game market" will take care of the problem, if it exists at all.
Ratboy
Whos fault? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that gold farmers are just performing rote in game tasks. If they're automating it that would be cheating, of course - but assume we're talking about a person who manually farms gold. It's their choice what they do in-game - if gold farming is really so harmful isn't it the fault of the game designers for not programmatically stopping it? Can they truly not structure it in such a way that gold farming isn't effective?
That said, have the ill effects of gold farming actually been proven? I don't think I've actually seen anyone name a real game that has been destroyed by such activities, I'd be interested to know if one (or more) actually exist.
Re:Whos fault? (Score:3, Interesting)
Who says getting gold isn't fun? (Score:2)
Hell, I wish I could earn a living in real life that way. (Oh wait, I can -- it's called being a
Re:Who says getting gold isn't fun? (Score:2)
It's quite common, especially in RPGs, for you to be forced at some point to carry out each action at least once, just to make sure you know it's there.
So maybe they reckon that after 60 levels, players will be sick of the quest->money+experience ladder, and
Banning capitalism usually doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember visiting a communist country back in the late 80s. We were deluged with requests from folks on the street to exchange money, buy our jeans and a dozen other transactions ranging from officially frowned on to downright illegal. We had something they wanted, and they'd break the law in a second to get it. Remember that most of the Chinese gold farmers are seriously poor by Western standards- this is a major step up the success ladder for them, and they don't even need to break any laws. just violate an agreement with a game company. The "War on Drugs" has utterly failed to stop drug sales despite endless "Just Say No" anti-drug messages and serious law enforcement. Here all we have is "Just Say No" and Blizzard banning a few accounts now and then.
Ban capitalism at your peril- if things can be traded, there will be a marketplace.
Stop Making Lame ass Games (Score:4, Interesting)
Good luck with that... (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally hope gold farmers keep hosing up these poorly implemented and derivitive systems and dragging the game down with them. Force the developers hand and make them come up with a solution. FARM ON!
Genre-bashing gets tiring (Score:2)
It seems like there's always RPG-fantics lambasting how every
Re:Genre-bashing gets tiring (Score:2)
The idea is the world is huge (we're talking 400x400km of land+oceans) and the flora and fauna grows and travels proceduraly, striving to keep the balance. For example if the sheep in some area ate all the grass, they will travel to find more grass or starve to death. If you kill those sheep, they don't just respawn after a minute.
Doing recon and huntin
Re:Genre-bashing gets tiring (Score:2)
The idea is the world is huge (we're talking 400x400km of land+oceans) and the flora and fauna grows and travels proceduraly, striving to keep the balance. For example if the sheep in some area ate all the grass, they will travel to find more grass or starve to death. If you kill those sheep, they don't just respawn after a minute.
Doing recon and huntin
Re:Genre-bashing gets tiring (Score:2)
Maybe a different take on the mmorpg world can prove to be funner?
The following is wishful thinking, nothing that really exists...........
What about a game where being a non-fighter can prove not only profitable but also fun?
For example, to craft a sword you couldn't just put 3 pieces of iron + 1000 gold and click "create", but you'd have a mini-game of doing things in different way that can produce different kinds of items with differing qualities. You'd work a long tim
Re:Good luck with that... or economic tradeoffs (Score:2)
Let's say Player A makes $100,000 a year, plays a game only 2 hours a week.
Let's say Player B makes $50,000 a year, plays a game 20 hours a week.
If Player A uses his/her additional resources (cash) to purchase the equivalent of the missing 18 hours a week that Player B spent to get the in-game resources (gold), and it only cost $50, is Player A:
a. smart;
b. wise;
c. getting way more sex than Player B;
d. able to understand how real life works; or
e. All Of The Above (TM)?
I
yeesh (Score:2)
Another reason (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't have any studies to back me up, I would be willing to bet that someone who buys there way to the highest level and equipment plays the game a significantly shorter time than someone who earns their way to the top. The reason why is simple...it takes a serious amount of time to amass the gold that those guys do. If you cut out that time by paying a $50 or so, then thats a good month or two of subscription fees.
When you start looking at things in terms of shortened subscriptions, you can see why companies like Blizzard are concerned. Of course, they probably make up for it by having the gold farmers just buy a new copy of the game every time they get banned.
Re:Another reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another reason (Score:2)
boycott the gold farmer makers (Score:2)
How about instead we boycott the games that make gold farming a viable strategy? I play to relax and have fun, not shoot wamprats all day. Probably why I haven't liked an MMO game since Diablo 2 (which to be fair had some farming, but nothing like today's games).
Re:boycott the gold farmer makers (Score:2)
When the gaming community wakes up to the real desires of players, then we can talk.
Such an odd request! (Score:2)
There's A Blocklist Available from Tim Buckley (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/news.php?i=1011 [ctrlaltdel-online.com]
" A few days ago I talked a bunch about gold farming and its adverse effect on MMO's. This caused the google ads on our page to specifically display the gold selling ads in their inventory, so we could effectively block them.
We've now compiled the list we're using it and made it available to you [cad-comic.com]. If you run a website that used google ads, feel free to use this list to help block these gold farmers. If you frequent a website that uses google ads, email them this list and ask them to use it to block gold farmers.
Like I said, I doubt gold farming will ever disappear, but every one less customer makes the business less profitable for them."
I found this rather helpful.
An outsider's opinion... (Score:2, Interesting)
I do not play MMORPGS, I likely never will. I have issues with them(ethical and cheapskate).
But I think that all of this opposition to gold farming is pointless. The games are designed to require large amounts of gold to get the good items. Gold takes a lot of time to acquire in any large quantity. So people who don't have the time to put in to get all of that gold but still want the good items in order to play the better quests are either locked out of them or forced to acquire
come on.. (Score:2, Interesting)
i dont see anything that wrong with them they are only a minor inconvenience
they found a way to make money 'playing' a game
plus when you see these guys working in sweat shop like conditions for so little money, and this is the best they can find in their area you have to almost feel sorry for them
so some people are minorly inconvenienced ON A GAME (oh crap my favorite farming spot has a couple chinese guys in it booo hooo they dont speak english)
gold farming is some of these people
Eliminate the grind. (Score:2)
On the other hand, I completely understand why they exist and can accept their presence because of that.
Developers like Blizzard have done a careful job of balancing grind so that it provides a sufficient emotional response that encourages gamers to keep playing. The more they play and the more they care about the characters they've put so much effort into the longer t
Lineage (Score:2)
Re:Economics Behind Gold Selling (Score:2)
So it's not the cheating aspect that is mainly at issue. This is why your lawn mowing analogy doesn't work. Your neighbor's kid mowing the lawn doesn't have negative ramifications, unless he sucks and destroys your roses or something.
When you try to make a claim and then place essential parts of the argument in a "disclaimer," you're making an ineffective argument. The problem IS w