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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.""
That makes it interesting, as they'll be one of the first MMORPG's to truly enforce an even playing field. While many companies do not condone the sale of in-game items, most allow for the sale of an individual's "time and effort" put into recieving those items. Seems like a fine line, and I'm glad Blizzard chose not to cross it.
Ruin my economy.THEY'RE the reason my gnome has been out of work for the past 6 months...
"I work outa the home"
How can people with no skill ever hope to buy their way to the top? This is insane!
Because it makes the game shit which results in everyone leaving your game. To make a stupid analogy, what you're asking is similar to asking why golf clubs don't offer a for-pay service to knock your ball closer to the hole before your competitors get close to the green.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"And lastly: if the business is so lucrative, why haven't any of the companies themselves decided to sell "special" accounts to people and cash in on the money?"
When the game has it so that it takes time and effort to get ahead, getting ahead is valued. Once you can just spend a few shillings to become a grandmaster in some skill, it's not worth your time because you could just pay to be there. You'd never be exposed to the content, and most people would follow a path of lesser resistance and just pay to have higher level chars.
Entertainment on this scale isn't open to everyone; it's open to the people it targets. If people beyond that target also enjoy it, more the better. Enjoying it isn't a right, and people shouldn't destroy parts of the in-game balance just so they can enforce their own ideas of how the game should unfold on it.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Well, shucks. If you design a game where being logged in and doing something mindless generates value, and where social status is determined by a simplicistic system of fancy items and levels, then yeah, you're going to have a market of people willing to do the mindless things to sell to the rest of the world.
It's a basic problem with this design, especially in an open economy were cash and value are just spawned in game. I don't think you can effectively police it; and I doubt you can social-engineer the problem. But you could consider bringing economists in on your next game design session, and figure out how to make hoarding and transfer of resources unprofitable. For example, have a large closed economy where hoarded wealth beyond a certain quantity has to be stored in a PvP-friendly area of the game. Got a lot of cash? Well, it's gonna cost you security to store it. Suddenly cash farming, while still possible, costs three times as much (one person to collect, one person to guard, plus losses), and its value to the average player decreases considerably. But what do I know?
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.
Oh, for the people who can't join the dots and see why this is relevant: Second Life is the supposed MMOG which "encourages" real world exchange for virtual world currency. The result is that no-one actually does anything in Second Life except try to figure out some way to make a buck. If games like WoW were to take a lenient stance against gold farming, WoW would become just as bad.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No need to get all draconian about this. Just pay the farmers NOT to produce gold.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It is similar to the "exploits" in single player rpgs where a mob keeps respawning to give in theory infinite xp. If you got the patience to kill the same mob, go through the same conversation, clear the same dungeon again and again.
The problem is that most MMO designers are pretty clueless about basic economy (why do they insist on "repair" or whatever costs to get money out of the system instead of simple taxes?) but worse the few clever ones think that real world capatalism is the thing to emulate.
Small problem is that capatalism isn't much fun for the majority wage slaves. In real life the wage slaves ain't got much choice but in game they do. They can stop paying and find something else to do.
The problem is that unlike the real world it is very easy to calculate expenditure vs profit in an mmo. Weapon A costs so much but will allow me to gain that much profit in its lifetime that I make enough profit to buy a new one. In general the more powerfull a weapon the more costly but also the higher the return on investment. Result, in order to make a reasonable income you got to invest in good weapons meaning you have to do the money grind.
MMO's need to stop thinking they are single player games, they need to stop thinking that real world economics work in a fun enviroment.
Single player RPG economies are already screwed up enough. Or I am the only one swimming in unneeded and even unspendable money in games like Baldurs gate, Neverwinter Nights, Deus EX, Morrowind, etc etc. Add taxation and tax the high earners more. But at all costs avoid where a big enough group of superrich exists to ruin it for the rich. Or at least if you want this similarity of the real world add other things from the real world as well. REVOLUTION. Murderers and thiefs. Paternity suits and frivolous lawsuits.
But frankly there are so many problems to fix with the MMO scene. First they should figure out a way for a game to remain fun for month after month without betting on the "maybe I will have fun with just 1 more level" element.
But maybe a simple way of doing both is to decrease the reliance in combat on "super" weapons but instead make for a character depended weapon performance. Meaning that both a newbie and elite warrior use exactly the same weapon but the elite will just be better at it. No expensive gadgets needed then no need for gold to pay them. Focus on character development OVER gadget hoarding.
Hard? Well yes and no. Both EQ2 and WoW apparently have added more involved combat. Expand on this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, sure, it's easy as hell to sit back here and throw out ideas. Implementing them in a multimillion-dollar venture is a different story.
But you're dead on about capitalism, if you take it in the sense of providing a free market with unrestrained controls on wealth.
I'm not sure most gamers will want to play in a socialist worker's paradise either, though. There has to be the illusion of glory.
You can certainly have taxes though, especially ones that can be bypassed using an expenditure of time several times the cost of the tax (e.g., toll bridges), or where a valued service is being offered (such as a secure two-party financial transaction).
But there's more to economics than just free-market capitalism. Hell, you could create a game where any form of interest was considered illegal (since money is "dead"), and the official rules varied considerably from economics (they already do).
Or you could use the classic technique employed in many marginal economies (such as illegal ones in federal penitentiaries), of using multiple currencies and "flipping" the exchange rates periodically. With a couple of monopolistic organizations (=run by the company) aware of when the flips are going to occur, the company can eliminate or severely reduce concentrations of wealth that it does not control. Besides, imagine the chaos of an ebay auction during the periods of wild currency fluctuations.
What? My 400 quatloons are now worth peanuts?
Ultimately, the problem is in your comment about character development vs. gadget hoarding. I've always preferred games that rely on skill and ability rather than supertoys, but the problem is not everybody has an equal shot at skill and ability. Let's face it, at any game based on such things, most people suck. And people play games to escape their own mediocrity. The advantages of time-based levelling and gadget-driven gameplay are A) like gambling you get intermittent positive feedback that keeps players addicted, B) Nobody's excluded on the basis of incompetence. Play long enough, and you'll get where you need to go. and C) It's really, really easy to write. Experience points, levels and level-based narratives. the only downside is that some people will pay to enjoy the social benefits of higher-levels (including that of seeming a bad-ass in front of one's peers), and to avoid the tedium of playing the game.
+1 Wierdest analogy EVER
music lover since 1969
The only way to stop people buying commodities is to ensure they have no value. In other words, to prevent people from trading them, they have to be useless. If they're useless, why are they in the game at all?
When there are such enormous disparities in income in the real world, and all characters can generate resources at about the same rate, the 'cheap' people will sell things to the 'expensive' people. That is just how things work.
Ultimately, it's not about commodities. Instead, it's about time. All of the MMORPGs are designed to be time sinks. That is, you spend a lot of time doing things that are 'less fun' (in theory at least) to gain the ability to do things that are 'more fun'. So people buy their way out of the 'less fun' time using real money.
The only way the Chinese people will not be able to find a way to sell their cheap time is if the game experience and items have no value. If time you have previously invested has no real bearing on time you spend later, there's nothing to trade for.
As long as the games continue to be designed as time sinks, then some method of selling the cheap Chinese time will be present. Even if you can't trade items, they could trade time helping you level up your characters. The only way to avoid it is to remove all value from time invested. Given the current design of MMORPGS, that means to make the game no fun.
Personally, I'll take a game that's fun and has gold farmers.
"If Blizzard wanted, it would be an absolute doddle for them to set up a "buy some gold" button on each player's subscription page."
It would be even nicer if they did this in lieu of monthly subscription rates.
Yep, the people who make MMORPGs for a living have no idea about online economies.. but you, random dude on Slashdot, has all the answers. Why do we even bother studying anything? All the answers are on Slashdot!
He didn't offer an answer really. Merely some thoughts about the current systems and a few ideas for improvement. As for the professional MMORPG makers, name one that has done a better-than-mediocre job of creating an in-game economy. All of the games out there have very flawed systems, which is why we see so much of this stuff going on.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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.
but Blizzard should let it happen because it attracts people to the game.
I doubt the correctness of this statement.
First of all, in a market that's increasingly competitive, people will jump ship for the next new game if they think the company running their current game isn't running it properly. That's a ton of people who don't want their game ruined by gold farmers like they ruined FFXI/Lineage 2. Keeping them happy by doing something to stop gold farming is a good business decision.
And second, there are two big obstacles that stand in the way of growing the MMOG market further: an uninformed populace and the cost of playing the game. Both of these indicate that gold farming will do nothing to increase customer base. If people don't know about a game - even if the game permits or encourages third-party gold farmers - they won't buy it. And if people are already reluctant to pay the monthly subscription costs for a game, they're certainly not going to fork over extra cash to buy gold in that same game.
Presumably, the accounts are banned permanently, which means the characters, and all the cash stored on them, is permanently inaccessible. But, as it turns out, there's no downside here.
The way these gold-farming rings work, the people who own the vast bulk of the accounts which were closed were not really playing the game.
For a given gold-farming ring, you have a number of accounts which are shared by several people. These people log in, farm gold for several hours, and then give all of the gold and items they received to a boss. The boss tabulates how much they received from a person on their shift and sells the items in-game for more gold (in WoW, this happens in the Auction House). When a customer purchases gold, the boss transfers the gold to the customer (either by trading with the customer, or as happens in WoW, through in-game mail). If one of the grunt farmers doesn't meet a quota on their gold-farming shift, they don't get paid. The grunt farming accounts, being shared by several people, are generally logged in 24/7. Even the individual characters are shared. They are powerleveled up without doing any quests, meaning they have substandard gear and make inferior opponents to regular players' characters; however, they are tailor-designed for farming whatever monsters make for the best farming.
The vast majority - if not all - of the closed accounts were involved with these gold-farming rings. That means that, with the possible exception of the bosses, it's very unlikely that a particular account was ever used by just one person to *play* the game. Since most of these rings are based in China, it's also unlikely that Blizzard will ever have to worry about somebody trying to sue them for the account closures.
I fail to see how it could possibly attract people to the game to allow gold farmers. The single biggest annoyance in FFXI are the gilsellers. They have no decency (steal logging, mining, and harvesting points), they'll MPK (violation of the ToS by the way) you without a second thought if you try to camp the same NM as them. They work in teams to monopolize NM spawns, which gives them a monopoly on the drop, which in turn damages the economy (granted, on Ramuh most of the gilsellers that camp NMs quite frankly suck at claiming them, so it's a moot point).
Allowing gold farmers to continue doesn't help the game. It ruins it for everyone that wants to play the game as it is meant. Average people will not monopolize some monster spawn, or do the same repetative task and monopolize a certain kind of item drop, day in and day out for months at a time like a gold farmer would (of course, since I've never played WoW, I'm trying to imagine what it would be like based on my experience with gilsellers in FFXI).
It's really an either-or situation. Either the company itself sells in-game money for a fee to their players, and that's really the only worthile way to get the money (which puts everyone on the same level field), or the company does not allow anyone to buy in-game money and makes sure that there are plenty of ways to earn decent money in-game (again, putting everyone on a level field, except WHMs, who can't farm for crap =P). You can't have both without totally hosing the economy.
I just canceled my account today, after (and this has been grating in my mind for sometime now) a young member of my guild asked a player who was level 60: "Wow, XxX, what is it like to be level 60?" To which he replied: "It's pretty cool. I just started a new undead toon." Granted this has nothing to do with gold farming--but I seriously don't see how there was a market for such things.
Compared to DAOC, at least, there is NOTHING to do in WoW after you reach the pinnacle. In other MMORPGs, you could buy a house, fight enemy realms for something tangible, etc. In WoW, you either continually raid the same dungeon or start a new toon. "But you can raid towns!" Sure, what's the fucking point? There is no penalty for death and no reward for taking over a town (for 5 minutes before the NPCs respawn).
"But the honor system will change this!" The honor system as currently outlined sucks ass. I don't have time to play forty-hours a week just to have the best items just so I can kill more players just so I can get more honor just so I can get better items.
Don't even get me started on the social aspect of the game--it just doesn't exist. There is no situation where concerted group effort is required as all fucktards can easily succeed in the grouping game.
You can't rely upon the skill and timing of the player, because lag throws that totally off.
I think there are more important obstacles than lag which prevent player skill and reaction time from factoring more into combat resolution.
1. There is the unfair distribution of "twitch gaming" skills in the customer population. MORPGs aim for the biggest possible market segment, and have partly succeeded with a old and more female user base than the average videogame. But if reaction time and mouse accuracy are required to do well, then the best players will be 14-year old males. Many of the other customers will lose interest.
2. There is truth to the saying that "MMORPGs are chatrooms with pictures". Longterm players enjoy chatting with their teammates equally or more than playing the game. (Players often comment that the only reason they maintain a subscription is to keep playing with their established online friends, and not because the game itself is compelling). The slow-paced combat in today's MMORPGs allows players to engage in chat or other distractions without endangering their prospects for combat success.