Slashdot Mirror
Confessions of an Ultima Online Gold Farmer
petbath writes "A long time UO player who is moving on makes some interesting confessions on how he managed to earn over 100k in real world money by setting up a bot farm." Commentary available on Terra Nova. From the post: " Between the pressures of my competition, the required maintenance work and the impending doom of on-line game markets, I decided to retire my bot farm in favor of other possibilities that required less work to maintain. Last May I sold off the last of my game assets and today I have posted my bot army for sale on Ebay. I don't want to part with these beasts of burden, but I do have to close this final chapter in the gold farming adventure."
There are no confessions, other than "this takes too much time, I have too much money... buy my old hardware"....
the problem is, the game quickly ceases to become fun for all but 5 or 6 players trained in computer programming. the other hundreds of thousands of players end up having a crappy time. the very concept of "game" is based on the idea of rules. the rules are there to keep the thing fun. without them, the magic drains out of it rather quickly.
i could live a little longer in this prison
The UO gold rush is dead. You can not possibly make this kind of money any longer. The article even states that the way he did it doesn't work anymore.
So what does this look like to me? It looks like the scammer is trying to get his last "piece of the pie"
to use a tired meme...
1. scam UO players into buying gold for real money
2. quit that and put up computers used on ebay
3. post slashdot article to draw attention to auctions
4. ????
5. profit!
Just looks like another scamming scamming to me.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Many are concerned that if Blizzard takes too long to act, the in-game economy will be irreparably damaged.
I have a level 60 human paladin in WoW. I farmed gold for about a week to pay for my epic mount and since then I've been running instances with a guild to get all the best bind on pickup gear. At this point I see no point at all in collecting or having gold. My repair costs are covered by gold picked up in instances, I get free enchanting done by the guild enchanter using materials gathered from useless bind on pickup items.
I believe that gold has no value at endgame, and therefore farmers will not ruin the experience of anyone. If someone wants to pay $10 to get their level 40 mount a few days early, or $100 to get their level 60 mount a few weeks early, that dosn't bother me because these are small parts of the game. I'm sure that farmers will always be able to make a profit selling gold for mounts but since it dosn't have much affect on endgame, they arn't really hurting anybody.
This doesn't sound so much like he was playing a game, but rather doing monotonous, brain-numbing programming in order to have the computer play the game for him. What's the point?
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
you're still missing the point, which is to maximize the fun for the most number of people. a tiny minority breaking the game's mechanics and economy comes at the cost of the fun of hundreds of thouands of others. that's not a game, that's real life. people play games to get away from that kind of frustration.
i could live a little longer in this prison
I was thinking about discouraging camping through GM actions, disabling camped spawn points for a few weeks or occassionally spawning a really big monster instead that simply wipes out all the campers, perhaps have the monster not drop any items if it wasn't in play long enough, etc.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Or the game companies could just kill the market by offering themselves to sell those killer objects.
Mark them as bought (special mark?) but as strong as the other ones. People that are short on time and easy on money (working population, that does NOT have the time to camp at spawn for 3 days) would buy there and people with too much time on their hands would get the "l33T" version from the drop.
As soon as the companies start competing on the offering, the demand will shift to them and the farmers will stop...
On the other hand, you can be sure the hardcore players would complain about it anyway.