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Blizzard Drops the Hammer on Gold Farmers
evviva writes "Blizzard has kept its word and finally closed over one thousand accounts related to gold-farming and character sales. It was about time!" The post reads: "Over the recent weeks we have been investigating the activities of certain individuals who have been farming gold in order to sell it in exchange for real world currency. After researching the situation, we have issued permanent suspensions to over one thousand accounts that have been engaging in this practice. We do not condone such actions and will take decisive action as they are against our policy and damage the game economy as a whole.""
It's good to see Blizzard taking real action on this. Hopefully, WoW hasn't been around long enough for there to have been serious damage to the economy already.
Most of what I'm about to say is based on my experiences in FFXI, where there have also been well-publicised problems with money-selling and recent attempts by the GMs to crack down on it (yes, I tried WoW, but I didn't like it, so I went straight back). However, it should hold true for any MMORPG where you have to "farm" (be it by killing monsters, crafting items, fishing or whatever) to make in-game cash. Basically, the selling of in-game cash is one of the biggest cons I've ever encountered. Two basic reasons for this:
First of all, as many posters have remarked in previous threads on this subject, all the gold/gil-sellers are selling you is a quantity of a virtual resource which has no independant physical or legal status. If Blizzard or Square-Enix go broke, the money you spent is lost. Ok, this isn't very likely. However... let's just say that the GMs decide to "evaporate" all the large sums of money that were transferred out of the characters who were suspended for selling money. This is one of the perfectly plausible responses they may choose to make. It'd be perfectly legal for them to do this, as it wouldn't be "real" money they were taking away and the player who bought the in-game money wouldn't have a leg to stand on, as he would have been in violation of the Terms of Service by buying the game-cash to begin with.
The second reason why it's a huge con is more subtle. As many FFXI players have noticed, gil-sellers attempt monopolise some of the scarcer (yet still essential) items in the game. By doing so, they drive up inflation across the game. Chances are that a lot of the people who buy money from gil-sellers are people who feel (wrongly) that they need to buy the money in order to not get left behind this inflationary trend. In other words, gil-sellers often have to create a problem before they can milk it. If they didn't exist, the "need" for them would be greatly reduced. If you're wondering about the effect that gil-seller driven inflation has had on FFXI, it's instructive to keep an eye on the prices at www.ige.com (link provided for instructional purposes only, please don't buy anything and support them), who are the largest of the MMORPG-cash-and-items traders. I started watching these in October (and yes, I admit that this was largely due to wanting to gloat over how much my legitimately-obtained gear would sell for in real life). At that time, 1 million gil cost around $160 dollars. Today, you could buy 1 million gil for £36. The irony here is that the people who bought gil back in October essentially wasted their money and, if the trend continues, the same goes for people who buy it today.
In short, the game-cash-for-real-money trade sucks. Don't do it and don't support it. Please.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-02 -16
This has been seen before, and seems to be working rather well for the makers of Gunbound. You can play (for free) for hours and hours to accumulate "gold" wealth, or pay a nominal fee directly to the company to receive an injection of "cash". "cash" could be thought of as a service which increases the enjoyment (and thus has "value", considering that games are a vehicle for selling fun) of an otherwise free game.
The interesting thing about Gunbound's model is that "cash" and normal "gold" are not the same, nor are they directly interchangeable, as I recall. I haven't played for so long that I can't remember, but I believe you aren't able to directly transfer "cash" in Gunbound. "cash", which can only be bought, generally has (IIRC) 10 times the value of "gold", which is earned by playing matches.
This reminds me of the old, old days when BBS sysops would sell Trade Wars credits for real cash. That never seemed fair at all, however, since Trade Wars is a long-term strategy game which generally has an eventual "winner". Giving one player money would unbalance the game terribly. Note that Gunbound, however, is a simple shooting game that revolves around matches, and not an RPG or long-term strategy game. Items gained by long-term players give them a slight advantage in matches on high-ranked servers, but it is possible to play the game without worrying about economics at all.
The choice is left up to the user -- live in "high society", where (real) money and (virtual) possessions are quite important, or just play the game on the casual servers, where items are simply status symbols of cosmetic value.
Considering that the game still seems to be alive and kicking, I would say that this is a viable model for "legalizing" and regulating the currency trade in online gaming.
Perhaps an expert player of Gunbound could give an estimate of the real world value of cash, in terms of roughly how much grinding time worth of wealth one US dollar buys.