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World of Warcraft Gold Market Soaring
Gamespot has an article discussing the realities of Virtual World economics as they pertain to the real world. World of Warcraft is used as an example throughout, and they quote some staggering statistics that remove any last shred of hope that Blizzard's bluster may be having an effect on the gold market. From the article: "Sukow discovered that the top seller of WOW gold made more than $23,000 in April, just on WOW gold. And that wasn't even a good month--in January and February the number-one seller took home more than $44,000 each month."
Same thing as the stock market , Making a fortune off of money that does not really exist . ,I would think that blizzard are probably the top seller .Well they print(as in printf) the money, they would be crazy not to do it.
If i were a more supicious man
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
While most people would probably focus on the issue of gold/gil/plat selling here, I think the more important issue here is the failure to curb these types of transactions. Blizzard had been saying that money would not be as important since the best items would be obtain from monsters, yet this happens. Simply put, either money still remains to be a major factor in the game or Blizzard totally messed up their monetary design and made it too difficult for casual players to get money.
The really scary part is that people buy virtual gold.
"It's a validation of your game when people are willing to spend upwards of $2,000 on a character," Kramer said.
OMFG.
Right, I've now officially heard it all. Excuse me while I tie this rope around my head and kick out the chaalsifysfwgbvwe fafg.g.g..
NO CARRIER+++
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Well, just like real money, money has no value by itself. The only value is what you can buy with those money. In this case: an undeserved advantage in a multiplayer game. That's what that RL money buys them.
Personally I have no respect for that kind of people. Cheating in a single player game is one thing, and I have nothing against that. But cheating in MP? That's the kind of thing that's already the mark of the low-life lamer.
Doubly so for those who actually _pay_ for that. I mean, FFS, at least the lamers with wall-hacks and aim-bots in CS have just downloaded those. But actually paying good money to cheat in MP? How desperate _can_ one get?
Methinks that that's well past the point where one should take a break and just think it all over. I'm a game addict myself, and all, and normally won't go "it's just a game", but... when one gets _that_ caught up with keeping up with the virtual joneses, when those virtual achievements become a _must_ at all cost, it's time to worry. Really worry.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"It's a validation of your game when people are willing to spend upwards of $2,000 on a character,"
What's it validate? That your game is so boring that people don't want to spend the time playing to earn their gold/levels?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The article talks about the possibility of monitoring large transfers of currency between players. Why not just eliminate currency transfers? It would have the additional benefit of eliminating all the begging in cities.
No doubt the farmers would find a way around this, like setting up auctions where they bid enormous amounts for commonplace items...but then something like that would be easy to spot.
There's another way to discourage this, by taking a tip from The Untouchables. When they couldn't get Capone for his blatant crimes, they resorted to nabbing him for income tax evasion. I would guess that a good percentage of these top farmers aren't paying taxes on their eBay incomes. Call the IRS and sic 'em, boys!
If you really want to go "Untouchables" on their asses, you need to go a bit further than that...
"How we gonna get the gold farmers, then?"
"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a gankfest, you pull a slaughter. He sends one of yours to the graveyard, you send on of his to permadeath! That's the Lordaeron way, and that's how you get them gold farmers! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?"
-Trillian
(With appologies to "The Untouchables." The original quote: 'You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send on of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?')
There is really no way to eliminate this type of behavior. One poster commented about stopping currency transfers between players. People would then begin trading in items. Much like the "stone of jordan" in Diablo 2. It has happened in other games as well. The most they can do is too monitor large sums of money or several smaller sums of money over small time frames. It is done in the real world. I believe the US Federal Governemt tracks any money transfer over 10,000. Another poster mentioned using a reward system to turn other players in. That is not something you want to begin. That only turns your player base against each other. Using the same greed that promotes gold selling.
In order to solve it, there has to be a problem and this really isn't a problem.
Jesus, I am absolutely stupefied that people do this.
I've already written one comment about this in a different article and mentioned it in a blog post at my blog, so I'll try not to repeat that stuff here.
But for real, I'm truly saddened that the "RP" in MMORPG means so little these days. Everyone keeps taking about how much they hate grinding levels. Funny, when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with my buddies, I never seemed to mind that my wizard was only level (whatever). Why? Because the point of the game wasn't to win, it was to have fun and (gasp!) socialize. Those of you who remember the old pencil-and-paper games, can you imagine a player offering a game master five bucks for 1,000 freebie gold pieces? If I were the game master, I would immediately figure out some heinous irrevocable death for that character.
What some people see as mindless grinding through levels, I see as an opportunity to meet other players, some of whom are rather interesting. What some people see as farming for game currency, I see as an opportunity to roleplay and boost my reputation. Not this silly reputation by ownership of a cool gametoy, but the reputation as someone who is fun and interesting to run missions with.
My MMORPG of choice is City of Heroes. One of my favorite characters is a Taxibot. We hardly ever level. We can't kill crap by ourselves. We have a lot of fun. The fun of the game isn't mindlessly killing mobs of enemies, although I do get fleeting enjoyment from figuring out strategies to defeat particularly tough enemies. The fun isn't even getting that new high-level power, although I do get fleeting enjoyment from seeing the cool effect of it. These things are supposed to add to the enjoyment of the game, not to be the enjoyment. My advice for MMORPG players (most MUD players figured this out a long time ago): If you really want to get long-term enjoyment from the game, get over that stuff quickly.
I get frustrated because I often wonder how many people even bother to read the mission descriptions they're given before they go to empty a warehouse full of villains. Sometimes I'll be in a group of people and I'll say something game-related ("We can't let Ubelmann succeed!"), and I often get responses that indicate that the people in my group have no clue ("Who's Ubelmann?"). Needless to say, those people don't get invited to run in a group with me again, and the people who do run with me regularly have lots of fun "grinding" levels, even if it is the 100th time we have been to disable the Rikti portal devices.
If level grinding has got you down and you've having so little fun that you feel the need to buy stuff on eBay or Sony's Station Exchange to use in the game, I'm begging you to play Progress Quest instead. We'll all have more fun, and you don't even have to spend a dime!
I know what the first replies to this post will be: Wah, people play games for different reasons. Yeah, well, if your reason is so that you can brag about your über-whatever with a gazillion gold to the lower levels, you're not playing at all; you're being a pompous ass that the game would be better off without. Do you go around in real life bragging about how much more money you've got than people on welfare? We're not impressed.
Damn, so much for keeping this post short. Oops, maybe I'll do better next time we have an "Buying virtual goods is a good thing" type of story.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Paying Game
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!