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Mass Media on Gold Farming
The International Herald Tribune, of all places, has an in-depth look at gold farming in China. From the article: "The people working in this clandestine locale are called 'gold farmers,' for every day, in 12-hour shifts, they are killing monsters and harvesting 'gold coins' and other virtual goods they can then sell to other online gamers. From Seoul to San Francisco, gamers who lack the hours or patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are hiring young Chinese to play the early rounds for them."
Online commerce, that's all it is. People pay for labor, and they do it where the labor is cheapest. This just makes it very easy, since there is zero distribution cost for the product.
Why should the fact that the demand is driven by games make it anything different than it is in other industries?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm sure I will have the support of my fellow tech industry slashdot brothers when I say how horrible this is. Why are we, gaming geeks that we are, tolerating the export of good old American jobs to China?! There are people in this country perfectly capable and willing to earn a living farming our gold, but we ship it overseas just for a few extra bucks worth of savings and avoidance of OSHA ordinances? This is a TRAVESTY!!!
My friend is an addicted WoW player and was friends with a gold farmer from a poor area of China. From what he has told me, the $20-$30 or so they make a day by gold farming is more than they could get working at a real job.
Imagine for a moment that Blizzard ran an amusement park instead of an online game. While waiting in line for a ride, you notice when one guy gets to the front, he does not go on the ride. He sells his spot to someone else and that person goes on the ride instead.
From a legal standpoint, you know Blizzard made everyone sign agreements that they would not transfer their spot in line to anyone else. What's more, you know Blizzard does not allow customers to run any business of any kind within their park. When confronted, the "line-farmer" says that he isn't selling the ride, he's selling his time spent waiting in line. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell you who is legally right.
From a moral standpoint, you might be thinking, only one person went before me, what do I care who it was? You see the line for one awesome ride is over eight hours long, and you think, I can certainly understand why someone would pay a line-farmer to go on that right away instead of waiting. Eight hours is a long time, a lot of people wouldn't even be able to go on that ride without paying.
What you don't see is that there are hundreds of line-farmers waiting in every line in the park. Wait times for all rides have quadrupled because they are all bloated by line-farmers. Remember that awesome ride with the eight hour line? You could have gone on that after just an hour wait if not for the line-farmers. They aren't providing a nice service, they are screwing you out of a part of the experience you already paid for, and then charging you money to get that part back.
Farmers in online games don't just "give people a chance to experience stuff they normally wouldn't be able to." They wreck the in-game economy and then charge you real money to be able to play the game like you should. Do you want to know why that sword hasn't dropped after 100 kills? It's because some jerk item farmer kills 10,000 every single week, and the developers have had to drastically reduce the droprate to prevent the item from being common. You know why you can't afford to buy that pair of boots? Because gold farmers have driven the price of all items way up past what a normal player can afford.
People complain about $15 a month being too much, but they don't care that others out there are ruining that game experience to make a quick buck. That's just crazy.
MMORPGs, for the most part, revolve around fetching items. The reason items and gold are so rare is because time spend farming = money for Blizzard. This keeps people playing for months at a time, and gives Blizzard millions of dollars.
The main reason people play MMOs for any length of time is low drop rates. The games themselves are not that fun; for example, if a dungeon didnt drop anything no one would go. If you can advance your character you'll keep playing.
In reality players are "working" to have "fun". To me this isn't "fun" at all, and most people will agree it gives them "something to do" when they are bored of real life.
If farming for 10 hours for an item is fun, then why would someone complain that they have to spend 50 hours to get the item? They are, after all, having "fun" right?
MMORPGs are not all that much fun, but equipping a new item is. Most players put up with hours and hours of crap just to equip a new sword.
My point is this:
Dont be angry with the gold farmers or the people that support them, be angry with Blizzard and other makers of MMO's that create a system based on item farming and low drop rates.
The only reason I say blame Blizzard is because the game starts off (for the first 100 hours) as a very fast paced RPG where your character advances fairly quickly. As you level up the game slowly turns into something else, something not fun (at least to me). At this point Blizzard relies on low drop rates to keep people interested. If you still want to advance a character you either have to start a new one, spend hours upon hours in the same dungeons, or buy items from gold farmers. It's hard to resist a gold farmer's offer when you've already invested 300 hours into your character! GG Blizzard, you asked for it.
In conclusion, hate the game, not the players!
Let them farm gold, let those who want to buy gold do so. Farmers don't ruin games. Games are ruined by poor design and implementation.
Face it, the one commodity these developers refuse to code around is time. Those who can invest a large amount of time come out of ahead. The problem in these environments is the way things are implemented in most MMORPGs money is a driving force in the game. It only stands to reason that if you have more time to invest in the game the more money you can have. As such the ability of some people to play the game for long hours tips the balance of the game. Since the developers love to create money sinks and tweak them to keep the supply and demand where they want them they will invariably harm those with the least means. The in game economy is wrecked far before any farmer sets foot in the game. The farmer exists because people are trying to exist in this artificial economy and they don't have the one resource needed for it, time.
Gold Farmers merely point out the flaw of the game. If it so damn important that someone can make real world cash off of it the developers should instead find methods to reduce the importance instead of wasting time trying stop the actual sale. My analogy, stopping gold sales by going after the farmers is like closing plants to reduce the number of cars you build so you don't get stuck with too many unsold. The gold farmers exist because you failed to create a system where people with inordinate amounts of game time cannot dictate the economy. The cars remain unsold on the lot not because you make to many but because your goal wasn't to make them more popular and thereby sell more. Both ignore the hard issues. The gold farmer can be defeated by finding ways to remove the exaggerated affect "lifers" have on game economies and you can sell cars once you realize that that is the real goal.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
To my programmer's mind the problem seems to be in the game rather than in the politics. If people don't want to wade through hundreds of boring hours of leveling up before they are allowed to do anything interesting, the logical solution is to fix the game so that they wouldn't have to. When will MMOG writers figure out that nobody wants to kill rats for a living?
Really? I'd like to read that, instead of the fluff piece linked to in this article.
They wreck the in-game economy and then charge you real money to be able to play the game like you should. Do you want to know why that sword hasn't dropped after 100 kills? It's because some jerk item farmer kills 10,000 every single week, and the developers have had to drastically reduce the droprate to prevent the item from being common. You know why you can't afford to buy that pair of boots? Because gold farmers have driven the price of all items way up past what a normal player can afford.
The game economy is a closed system. Unless they are duping items, they aren't magically inflating prices and introducing things that wouldn't be there there in the first place. Sure you can trade real money for WoW gold, but that gold is still in the game nor does it add any extra gold other than what the players farmed off the mobs (sure they might farm less, but it isn't like people wouldn't do that anyones without being paid).
Secondly, I thought WoW instancing prevents this or at least makes everything accessible to everyone rather than camping out for unique items.
The only way you can remove gold farming is to remove the treadmill. Apparently if people are paying real money so that others do tedious tasks over and over again, then maybe they should remove some of those tedious tasks.
Make the game a game, not a job.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I don't think anyone is entitled to anything. Certainly not success in a game.
The key difference in my view and others is I do not think it is wrong to prevent people from buying their way through an online game by trading their money for the time they do not have. This has nothing to do with entitlement. Games are recreational. By default many recreational activities cost money. Some cost a large amount. Spending money on a game does not need to stop at the box or monthly subscription. It should totally up to the player what they choose to invest, their time, their money, or both.
I still believe that most games are poorly designed. I stated my reason but I will repeat it. If a developer makes a system where time is the only true investment that pays off and makes the means for the payoff to be trade amongst players they encourage the behaviour they claim they don't want. In other words, they are trying to tell people to play the game one way when they designed it a whole different way.
As for your peeve over new loot every 4 levels. Sounds like you need to stay out of these games. The new loot syndrom may actually be governed more by ruleset than want. In a number of games even a few levels can mean lots of difference. Some games are more exaggerated than others. However in any game where you can only upgrade every X levels your power falls off as you approach the next breakpoint. This is as good as a guarantee that the player will have to upgrade to stay competitive or see progression.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.