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A Guide to Farmers In World of Warcraft
Trounce writes "Game Guides Online has a lengthy article exploring how farmers work in World of Warcraft, including their daily quotas, techniques, schedules, and how they hide their gold surplus from employers and possibly thieving partners. It has a section on how players can benefit from shift changes and score items at low prices (which can then be re-listed at a profit). From the article: 'Of course, farmers who stay on past the ends of their shifts, while their boss and/or partner breathe impatiently down there necks, are even more amenable to agreeing to ridiculously under-market offers; so keep looking for bargains after 6:00 as well.'"
Article is at best interesting.
Anyone ever used the warcraft game guide? Can't belive its actually worth $75...
This article is organized like the worst piece of code ever written. Total chaos.
I read Slashdot for the articles
Ill agree with the Uldaman thing. At any one time on my server (Lightbringer) you will mysteriously see 10-20 Level 60 Rogues, many of which have interesting names, most of which are Chinese.
Farming tends to bring a lot of items into the mix, however the problem is that those of us who play the games and then try to sell the items we find, find that we aren't getting anything near what we probably should because others who find a bunch of those same items sell them for much cheaper. So yeah it keeps prices down however in some cases thats bad when the rest of us want money too.
Gizmo
I found the article interesting as it does not try to judge farmers but try to bridge their world with that of the ordinary player. Worth reading.
I wonder how information like this, assuming even half of it is true, plays into larger corporations attempts at legitimizing the behavior (like SOE recently did for EQ2)? I've always argued that if the game play is boring or tedious enough that someone would consider paying real money for some advancement, it's time to consider another game. As an avid MMORPG gamer at one point, I can say that I suffered through bad game play for the social aspect of it. Now that I'm sort of off that, I tend to get bored with more MMORPGs rather quickly. I don't need l337 items that badly, and I don't like playing an easy game forever to achieve some level or other bonus.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
sure, chinese peasants are cheap, but you dont have to feed, clothe and shelter processor power.
If you play a MMO to play with your friends at your own pace, your own way, then most MMOs will fit that defination.
Gold/credit/gil farmers cater to the first group. They're the ones who want the uber-l33t gear, the level 20/50/60/75 characters with all the skills, spells and special abilities unlocked. The second group generally cares more about the journey rather than the ending. The line between the two groups obviously cross, but for the most part its pretty distinct.
...is majorly flawed. No-one has argued that the selling of large amounts of items pushes up prices. What has been argued is that people buying larger amounts of gold than they could ever get in causal play gives them a big burning hole in their pocket. Why wander around collecting herbs if you can take a minor dent out of your supply (which you can just spend money to buy more) to get them instantly from the AH?
It is exactly the same reason that the US can't solve its budgetary problems by "printing more money". Increase the supply of money and you push up inflation. The 24-hour high-pressure farmers increase the rate of gold into the server by a lot, and this has the same effect.
If you ask me this article looks like it was written by someone from one of the gold selling companies, giving helpful hints such as when to be one of the farmers customers, in order to legitimise their business. It's a pity they have to ignore and argue against basic economic principles to do so.
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.