Slashdot Mirror
Bad Press For Gold Farmers Affects Chinese Players
Next Generation is running a piece entitled Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers. Editor-in-chief Greg Vederman talks about why they decided to no longer accept advertising from 'Gold Farming' services for Massively Multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. Though there are moral grounds for this decision, it contrasts with a Eurogamer piece on the negative reactions Chinese players recieve on English-speaking servers. From that article:"Apparently there is a common belief among English speaking players that most non-English speakers are gold farmers and are only playing for commercial gain. As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected. Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem. "
And that's why English speaking players feel that Chinese speakers are probably just farmers selling gold to players in the states for money. Because if all they wanted was the game, they would be playing on the many servers in China that Blizzard has licensed The9 to run.
I never have problems with French speakers on my server, why are they capable of sticking to their own servers unlike the Chinese on my server?
If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their native language server.
In fact, as I understand it, it costs less for a Chinese version of WoW and to play it monthly.
My work here is dung.
So if you're a gold farmer, hanging around with your gold farming buddies at the gold farming office, wouldn't you just team up with them instead of trying to solicit groups with American players, who are likely to just slow you down?
And if you are a non-gold farming player, and someone wants to team up with you to help accomplish missions, what difference does it make what their motive is? Given that gold (or influence or whatever) is required to get stuff, to some extent, aren't we all gold farmers? For your practical gaming purposes, what makes a player who is accruing it to sell different from a player who is accruing it to buy a neat new sword (or new enhancements or whatever)?
If someone doesn't want to team up with foreigners, I'm guessing that there's something going on other than not wanting to support gold farming. It's probably because either a) for roleplaying purposes, you need to be able to communicate with your teammates (optimism), b) the farmer is not playing they way the group leader wishes and puts high pressure on him or her to rush through the missions (neutral), or c) they just don't like foreigners (pessimism).
but I can after 5 years on EQ1, I can pretty much predict that anyone who will only group with people who can type 2 complete sentences without mistakes is doomed to a lifetime of soloing.
Either way it's gotta be better than working in a factory making junk for the US.
~S
Like it or not, such games reflect a real-world social situtation. And when we have such situations, economies often develop. That's just the nature of human survival, be it in real life, or while playing as an elf in some online game.
What interests me the most is the attitude that is being taken towards those who are able to produce goods with a comparative advantage. Those questions are much like a tariff, for instance. They inhibit the free trade between those who harvest gold in these games, and those who wish to buy.
With the move towards free trade worldwide, it will be interesting to see how the games adopt. Indeed, it could be quite a scene to see riots of sorts taking place in these game worlds, much as happens in the real world, when tough economic issues are involved.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
In other serious news today, some WoW gamers cannot complete their quests...
...who cannut be countid on, to submit a coupel of errorfree sentences of proper correct and tpyofree English themselves.
IF some Chinese dude was willing to give a certain amount of gold to the group... He is in! Unless, of course being chinese, he decided to play on the chinese language servers so that he wouldnt be confused and feel rejected by the language differences.
Of course I know plenty of english speaking people, myself included, who sometimes cant type or write correctly.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected
Are you always playing WOW alone?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I think the underlyiing factor is that no matter ow many legit players there are, way too many ARE infact there for the selling reason. Its unfortunate that such descrimination exists now, and I can tell you at first it didnt to this extent. But way too many people ruined it for the few.
On the oposite side of the coin, many NA are accused of buying gil by the JP for the exact same reasons.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
You guys know that the gold is not real... nor are any of the items in an online game. You guys know this, right...?
Are they referring to Chinese players living in North America or Australia? Those versions of the game are in English, how are they differentiating Chinese players at all? Or is it that so-called "Chinese Gold Farmers" have US accounts as well? Perhaps that is necessary for transacting with NA players, I've never engaged their services so I'm not sure how it works.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Gosh, I can think of at least a few good reasons.
Like I said, those are just a few off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty more.
The "one or two sentences in English" thing doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'm not so sure that's the result of gold farmer paranoia.
I read the teaser from the article and laughed. I can't remember the last time someone joined my group who could type full English sentences without spelling mistakes, unless I knew them ahead of time.
CUL8R F00lz!
I mean, really....
How about most of the American players, how will they do?
"lol u wan me 2 tyep u n00b ur gay anywy"
That is the way a huge lot of native english speakers actually type.
Punctuation and sentences are unknown concepts to them. They routinely replace you with u, you're and your with ur, to with 2. And the most advanced ones even subconsciously type in cuss-filter speak too: sh1t, $hit and f*ck are in their natural vocabulary.
Can Chinese Gold Farmers sell gold on US Servers? If not, there is the reason why they play on American Servers. So they can Gold Farm and sell on American servers and get paid much more than if they Gold Farm on Chinese servers.
Linux O Muerte!
Why should it have anything to do with anti-goldfarming sentiment?
Seems to me that one good reason to have an English test would be to keep illiterate asshats from ruining your group...
And as already been mentioned, surely if there are so many Chinese players, what's stopping them from forming their own groups, where English competence isn't a requirement, and English incompetence isn't a communication barrier?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I find the claim of descrimination based on a few grammar/spelling mistakes a bit far fetched. Anyone who has played these games, or chatted on-line or read /. knows a lot of native english speakers can barely spell and the rules of grammar are right out. Insisting on someone having at least basic language skills is more likely and should be expected on the ENGLIGH servers since there are Chinese ones too.
As a long time non-american MMORPG player (I played from '99 to 2004), I'll tell you how I see it: first, localization usually sucks. Second, you don't necessarily want to meet the retarded 14 yo from your own country, at least on english-speaking servers you don't meet them, and since you're not playing during the top hours of the server you don't get hit by the TardTrains of the english speaking servers. Third, when you're playing on a US server as a european or asian, you're basically playing in the low-load hours of the server, while you'd be playing at rush hour on your own server, and it's much simpler and less stressing to play with a slightly lower population.
Other factors may include overseas/net friends (meet someone on the web, they introduce you to a game, you'll want to play it with them, even if you're chinese and the guy is canadian), desire to better your knowledge of foreign languages (spending 3+ hours every day typing mostly english can help there), ...
Considering that someone not playing on a localized server is a gold farmer is stupid and sad, it's akin to considering everyone from out of your country a proven terrorist.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English.
Just because they are asking people to pass a literacy test doesn't mean that they are descriminating because they dont like gold farmers. It might actually be beneficial to be able to talk to the people you are playing with, if just to be able to set up strategy. Nobody wants someone on their team who cannot communicate because that person might get the whole group killed for not paying attention to directions.
what would be the point of letting players who ONLY speak chinese to join english speaking guilds? you cant communicate with them, i accidently recruited a few and they never participate in any guild events cause they don't understand you when you tell them about it. But i have seen a few non-english speaking players who are obviously not farmers.. but also totally worthless as guildmates ;)
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
If this were the standard WoW players were held to, there would be very, very few groups indeed!
However, I do know plenty of people who have kicked group members for not being able to type well enough to communicate with the group. I have grouped with people like that (Chinese or otherwise, I have no idea), and I must say it sucks. The whole point of grouping is cooperation after all, which is pretty damn difficult without communication. I have a pretty high tolerance for all manner of bad grammar and spelling in MMORPGs, but if I flat out cannot make heads nor tails of what another character is saying? Some multiplayer quests in WoW take several hours -- if my hours are wasted because a party member can't understand an instruction, I'm going to be understandably pissed off and reticent to group with such people in the future.
Keep an open mind? Absolutely.
Put up with people who do all manner of stupid shit AND we can't communicate with each other? I don't think so.
Nice to see PC Gamer taking a stance on such an important moral issue.
"As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected."
Anyone who has ever played an online game knows that this cannot be true, because most American players do not have a good enough grasp of written english to pass the test!
All are good points. But God help them if they're trying to learn English in WoW. Chatting with some people there makes the part of my brain that learned English die a little bit every time.
-buzz
Yeah, but day traders don't fuck with the mechanics of my relaxation.
[reads that line again]
I'll let you parse that however you like.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
It's not racism or anything if you only group with those who you feel will help you most.
If you feel they'll snatch items, you won't group with them.
If you feel communication will be a problem and so cause you to lose battles, you won't group with them.
It's just acting in one's own self-interest. I find that people do this all the time, and the insulating effect of sitting along in a room with "society" on the other end of an ethernet cable only increases it.
It's just tough luck here.
If I played on Chinese or Korean WoW servers, how would I make out?
I know this article doesn't explicitly people are being racist about this, but it seems to be the undercurrent. Just trying to nip that in the bud.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Yes wow is racist. There are many times when people will be ostracised because they are percieved to be a farmer. These people are called names, insulted and eventually ignored by the server populations.
I believe that there is a good reason behind this however.
I have been in plenty of pickup groups where people cant speak english. it is VERY HARD to communicate with people if they dont speak your language. I've seen people pull and whipe whole instance groups because we cannot communicate to them that they should not pull when people arent ready, or that they arent the main tank. This is why people get ostracised most of the time. If you arent doing business with someone because they cant speak the language, thats another story, and i would argue more detrimentally racist.
I dont blame chinese people for inflating the market, as many people i know do. But there have been occasions where i would make water for someone, a few stacks, and they would demand i make them more. like just constantly opening the trade window saying '200' '200'. these people do not take no for an answer and it quite upsets me sometimes.
Bottom line, no matter what your race, if you cant follow orders in a raid chat then you will not be in a party very long.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I have no sympathy for these players for the following reasons 1. If they live in China, play on a chineese server. Period. 2. If they live in North America, learn the language. It pisses me off to no end when there are immigrants in this country who live in packs who talk in their native language, who have no intention of ever learning one of our national languages. 3. You arnt being pulled over and beaten by cops, you arnt getting your land stolen from you, you arnt being forced to build a railroad. FIND ANNOTHER CLAN. FIND ANNOTHER SERVER. LIVE WITH IT!!!
i'm a chinese living & working in the states. and when i log on to WoW, there is no chinese servers for me to choose from. Simple as that.
Can someone fill me in on what Gold Farming is?
Linux O Muerte!
Those servers weren't always there. I've met normal Chinese players on my server way before it was introduced in China. There's also the issue of recent immigrants to America. And some just want to play with family and friends overseas.
Even if all the Chinese on the servers were farmers, it still doesn't excuse the rampant racism that goes against all Chinese (making fun of their languages, etc).
Some gamers might applaud PC Gamers efforts, but those gamers are mostly hypocrites who use thottbot.com (still owned by IGE).
The whole issue of chinese gold farmers is full of speculation and made up "facts".
...isn't a piece at all. They're just reprinting a press release from one of the gold seller groups out there.
I guess they got tired of always getting turned in by players and generally harrassed for what they do. Why would Chinese players be playing on the US servers and *not* the Chinese servers? It's not like FFXI where everyone cohabitates the same servers.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Though the issue wasn't as loudly protested in FFXI as it is WoW, there was quite a bit of segregation between American and Japanese players as well. Japanese would refuse to group with Americans for reasons I never precisely found out, but the common sentiment was that Japanese felt Americans were too stupid to group with.
Americans would refuse to group with Japanese for the same reason.
The game didn't really require much communication to be able to function in a group, and any communication that did need to happen could be done by building comments with pre-translated keywords. And yet the two sides almost exclusively played in their own little world, despite sharing servers with others. Only the bilingual folks were able to exist in both worlds.
Based on my experiences with FFXI, I think the anti-Chinese sentiment in WoW is simply a human's innate tendency towards racism. Don't get me wrong, a lot of gold farmers are in fact Chinese, but a lot of them are European and American as well. Yet, everyone "knows" that all the farmers ruining the game are Chinese.
MacKay doesn't have an instant solution to the problem, but says that English-speaking WOW players should "Keep a more open mind and trust people a little more.
"This would go a long way to bringing some racial harmony to World of Warcraft and the world in general."
It's ironic to talk about racial harmony in WoW, since the game is completely setup along the lines of race war. You can't even talk to players in the other faction; it's prevented by the server code and if you try to circumvent it you get banned. The result is a high level of distrust between the opposing factions, which I am guessing is completely by design.
It would be interesting if Blizzard opened some servers where Horde and Alliance could communicate; I wonder what would happen (and I'd certainly start a character on one!)
I don't group with people who can't speak english because they fall into 1 of 2 camps:
1)Foreigners who will have limited ability to communicate strategy with them. They may be decent players, but if we can't talk we can't team well.
2)US morons. I won't team with them because morons get you killed.
Gold farming has nothing to do with it. Hell, I like gold farmers- they save games with horribly broken implementations that require you to grind for gold. Without gold farmers MMOs would be unplayable. Using them minimizes the boring, pointless parts of the game and lets you get on with the fun parts.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This - unfortunately - just isn't true. If a player doesn't know current events and can't understand basic English or refuses to communicate, they don't belong in a group with me. It's the sad truth that these factors invariably point to a farmer. Why would you want to play a massively multiplayer game with people you don't know and with whom you can't communicate, with the game itself written in a language you don't understand, when all those things are readily available for less overall cost and better speeds in your native language?
Answer: gold farmer.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I can't be trying to do a quest and have people who can't understand "Ok, sap that guy." or "Please don't break that sheep"
Most end game raids require CTRaid, Ventrillo, Decursive....So non-english speaking players set this up with ease? and then communicate on vent easily? No...it's a matter of "is this guy gonna wipe us..." the answer is usually yes.
Unless you are Boccd.
players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
So you have to be able to form two consecutive correct English sentences to play a damned online game, but not to get employment as tech support to English speaking American customers?
(Heh - my confirmation word is "griping").
As an english speaker, the main problem I have in grouping with non-english speakers is that it's hard to coordinate what the group is doing. So there is confusion on loot rules, who attacks what and when, etc. It's just a lot more fun to play with people you can communicate with easily. I would expect that Chinese players that don't speak english wouldn't want me in their group for the same reasons. At least half of the time I've been in a group where there was a problem with loot distribution it was because someone didn't speak english too well and didn't understand what the rules were for the group. The times that I've seen ninja looting, it's normally english speaking jerks that are quickly black-listed. I don't mind gold/item farmers being in the group, so long as they follow the loot rules.
>> If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
That will keep out over 85% of American players, too.
Without foreigners making English spelling and grammar mistakes, we'd never be able to tell them apart from us native speakers on the internet. Don't learn Esperanto, it evilly equalizes us all!
20 mil and I will! Learn Esperanto with 20M others.
First, communication is essential to every group in an MMO. People don't form a group to go off and do their own thing at a task, they from a group to work together. If it's an English speaking group and someone does not speak and understand English, they'll be unable to do what they're supposed to in the group, and it will cause the whole group to fail. Making sure everyone speaks the same language is only common sense when forming a group.
Second, Warcraft has servers in most of the world including China. There is no legitimate reason for a Chinese player to be playing on an American server.
What if the person isn't in China, and is learning English as a second language. I work in an R&D department with a lot of people who have immigrated from China to Canada, and they don't always use the best grammar, but they are Canadian citizens and would play on the North American servers. Brilliant people, they understand English much better than I understand Mandarin, but obviously English is not their first language. Heck, I'm pretty sure the grammar nazi's will tear me to shreds, because working here is degrading some of English skills.
Oh crap, I'm on fire again.
So let them just play on their own servers... Who cares? Oh God, not more intolerance!
Truth is credit farmers are easy to pick out as they are 99.9999% in their own groups doing the same missions repeatedly. If you've ever watched them work you know that they are very systematic and mostly uncommunicative. I can't imagine that most gamers would take the lone non-native speaker as a credit farmer given how these farmers operate. Sure maybe their are cases here or there with some fool blowing off a non-native speaker but I cant see this as a systemic problem.
If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their native language server.
I don't know about you, but when UO was released in Japan and Korea, a great many US players played on those servers.
1. Because there was a chance to actually have a place to put a house.
2. Most of the US servers were overcrowded and laggy at times.
3. It was soon discovered that the influx of foreign "noobs" were ripe for the theifs and player killers.
Ever have some guy scream at you in ghost language in Korean... No? Well... Its the same as US ghosts screaming at you in anger. Oh raiding Covetous dungeons... Those were days.
The funny thing was when we were building up newbie characters in the woods on the Ariang server and out of the blue (no pun intended) a red jumped out and went "cor por cor por!" and killed my friend and I shouted "wait wait! don't kill us we are americans!"
And the PK said... "Oh my bad" Rezzed my friend and went on his way.
So yeah... What you are saying works both ways. I bet a few Americans on WoW go on Asian servers to grief and their gaming sites are complaining about the American greifers.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
After RTFAing, I found myself with the impression that the magazine was quite happy to take money for ads until their subscribers started threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Yes, I know ad revenue is bigger than subscriptions, but if enough people cancel, you don't have a magazine any more.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It's somewhat difficult to give instance directions to someone who doesn't understand them, leading to wipes.
... I can definately see why communication is a lot more than just a way to descriminate against gold farmers, but perhaps mislabeled.
Ditto on loot rules. I've never had a problem with people who were foreigners but spoke decent enough english to be understood *shrug*, but when someone kills you because they didnt follow the plan and agro'd mobs they shouldn't have
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
My work here is dung.
OK, I don't know much about WoW, so maybe the answer to this is obvious, but... if Chinese players aren't accepted into English-speaking groups, why don't they just form their own groups? I'd think that that's what farmers would do, anyway - work together in groups to maximise "profits" without having to wait for/rely on "regular" players.
Or am I missing something?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
This is grossly unfair. The Slashdot editors should be as welcome in these games as anyone else.
I can't belive that both /. and Eurogamer fell for this! It's obviously a bogus article POSTED BY A GOLD SELLER to get hits on his site.
The idea that people are using English typing skill tests is ludicrous. Anyone who has played an online game (such as many of the people who have posted comments here already) will tell you that the average level of writing skill on such games is abysmal.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Neither are the play chips at pokerstars, etc. But people seem to be interested in buying them, even though it's fairly easy just to win them from some chump. Then again, if you're buying play poker chips, you're probably doing yourself a favor, because you stand to lose alot more with real $, and you obviously have not succeeded in winning play chips, which is arguably much easier to do. Also, i hear that people lose play chips on a friend/lover's account and have to replace them for fear of some type of reprisal or argument. Other than those reasons, i really can't figure out why anyone would buy any item that can only be used (and virtually, at that) in a game. Personally, i'm saving up real gold for when we return to the Gold Standard (tm).
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: That averages about 660,000,000 of each kind.
...I just see average Americans with there spelling writing about something they could care less... ;)
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Allow me to show you how to handle that kind of annoyances:
WoW has an ignore list feature doesn't it?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
If you live in America, you have to route through a proxy to get to a chinese server, yes? It is a lot easier to just use the American servers.
You may be surprised to learn that there are many people living in America who speak chinese as their native language, and have some difficulty with english. They speak it and write it well enough to do their job and grocery shopping, and thats all they need, so thats where their skill level stays.
Selling virtual online gold (and other items) for real life cash is big business. You do know this don't you?
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Add...maybe Blizz added the servers in China MUCH later than the ones in the US, and people wanted to play the game NOW! And once you have a high level player, it's not fun to start over...
By the way, much of this is FUD. I'm sure that the things in the article actually do happen, but they're so far from commonplace that it's barely worth reporting on.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
oh wait...
if 97% of stuff that comes from a certain section of the net is spam / otherwise unwanted traffic - its going to get blocked by service providers. the other 3% can find a proxy (or in this case, learn English). there's nothing racist or nationalistic about it. there's certain address blocks from the netherlands I block for the same reasons.
"What prevents Chinese speaking players from playing on their country's servers?"
What prevents black people from going to their schools? What prevents them from drinking from their water fountains?
Maybe they shouldn't have to--- I think it's unfair to those gamers who simply want to play with, and perhaps experience the company, of people of a different national origin than their own, to experience blanket descrimination because of the actions of a minority of players of their same ethnic and national background. This type of gold farming is nothing new either--- UO was plagued by it, and the majority of that gold came from gold-dupers, hackers, and from the United States. By your same logic, you should be asking people the pledge of allegiance of a respective European country, or the name of the prime minister, to exclude American hackers and gold dupers from your midst. I expect you can see how you, as a probable American, wouldn't want such a restriction placed on you by the irrational and racist views of others.
I've played plenty of multiplayer online games created by Koreans (Ragnarok Online, Helbreath, Lineage), and I've yet to be descriminated against by a single korean player--- even though people from the west are actually well known to be hackers by many korean players, and often not legitimate players.
I saw a recent article at TG Daily that describes the problem as more related to finding a common language to coordinate quests more effectively. It also mentions a history of the English test dating back to Everquest and it's relation to weeding out gold farmers.
Plus, part of the enjoyment of these games is socializing with people you're grouping with. It's a lot more fun to group with someone who has a command of the English language and who's witty, clever, and funny than it is to group with a donkey with no language skills and writes in crappy 1337-speak.
It doesn't come from one user. It comes from a whole nest of people standing around the entrances to high level instances with character names like lxpndxttt.
You should see the number of people on my ignore list.
My work here is dung.
If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
This must be the most exclusive gamer clan in the entire universe, second only to the 1337chix0rs clan with their "check for boobs" pre-screening exam.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
1. What prevents Chinese speaking players from playing on their country's servers?
I guess there are no Chinese speaking players with BAD English skills living in your country. Your country must be a great place to live, you stupid cunt.
Let's ignore the issue of where farmers are from for a minute. How about the fact that SELLING GOLD IS AGAINST THE TERMS OF SERVICE. Allowing cheaters to advertise on you site is wrong regardless of where they are and that's why PC Gamer should be applauded for this move.
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
That's not to get rid of chinese speakers, it's to get rid of 13 year olds
.Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Seems to me that one good reason to have an English test would be to keep illiterate asshats from ruining your group...
Why not have potential groupers submit disertations and book reviews on 19th century Jane Austin books and then perform the Gettysburg address from memory.
Or maybe explain Einstein's spooky distance idea in 1000 words or less or why the Communists won the Russian Civil war in 1921 and what was the economic results of it was in turkey.
Just because you know how to read and write correctly doesn't make you a well rounded person. You have to do something with that ability. (and I jest because I have poor grammar and hate Jane Austin)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you can't speak english, why are you playing an english text based PC game? Sure you can hack and slash, but 90% of WOW is reading -- either the chat text or the quest text or whatever.
HJ
"While their has been recent publicity about the gold farm factories in China, it by no means justifies thinking that every Chinese or non-English speaking player is a gold farmer."
Well, he failed the test. He's not joining our group.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
...that the initial post misspells "receive" in the third sentence?
I was in china recently and while hanging out at a dark smokey internet cafe with a room full of chinese game addicts I got to speaking to a few gamers who were certainly not gold farmers but did play on american servers. Like many people in china, gamers play in english because they would like to use every opportunity they can get to practice english, a skill that has definite value in terms of getting someone ahead in life, even if just a job at one of the fancier McDonalds, or as a tour guide. It isn't just gaming, I can't tell you how many people sat down to eat with me in fast food joints and cafeterias in hopes that they could practice some English, nevermind that all I wanted to do was practice my Mandarin.
You also overlook that not everyone in the US has perfect english, and some recent and not so reccent arrivals are still working on it. Should my neighbor from Xi'an who has been in NYC for about a year, but still has problems with the language play on servers in China??? Give me a break!
I've studied many languages and I'm glad that I haven't run into this kind of crap when I enter chats and games in spanish, or italian or german or whatever... most people are understanding, but I guess some people will use any excuse to give their bigotry a whirl.
Their high moral grounds is to be raciest! MOD UP!
You did, however, type three complete sentences. They are not grammatically perfect, but they are about what I'd expect on a MMORPG in response to a query.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Are there any organized, professional griefers in these games?
I would figure that if a professional Chinese-mafia would have no problem profiting from the ruination of the barbarians.
Your perception of it would be that Chinese characters were teaming up on you, robbing, you, etc.
You'd expect some typical "social identity" processes to kick in: white people would organize against the Chinese, figure out how to spot them, etc. That seems to be exactly what is happening (e.g. "type two lines in English").
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
You also seem to be able to speak English better than your average American "LOLZ HI@U I WHAT A ITAM PLX OK !!" gamer kid. Typing one or two sentences in English shouldn't pose a major problem for you. It's the American kids that should really be worried about this practice. =)
"Bother," said Pooh, as lightning knocked out hi%#&(F*@NO CARRIER
... I simply refuse to group with anyone I can't properly communicate with. Communication between party members is key in WoW.
(tichondrius 60 troll priest)
----- sXe
"My grammer is definately very good, i swear i live in teh US!"
BUZZZ - REJECTED!
Second, you don't necessarily want to meet the retarded 14 yo from your own country,
Yes. Use different servers to meet the retarded 14 year olds from someone else's country!
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
I never was biased against non-english speaker's possible errors in speech. It was all about talking. If all they can say is "group with me plz" or "help me kill these?" over and over then its pretty clear that they are farmers. Also I sometimes wouldn't let different people join based on class, simply because if there are 4 rogues in a group your chances of getting winning that roll is pretty low. At any rate, I call BS.
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
Yeah, there's an ignore list with a max of 25 names. I've been playing since release day, and my ignore list has been full since about an hour after I got the game installed. The idiots in WoW triumph over the ignore list feature with sheer numbers.
Game... blouses.
It's "real" in that in takes time to make/get. If it takes you an hour to get 10 gold, then whatever that hour of your free time is worth to you is the value of that gold to you.
Your argument is what, that you don't physically hold anything in your hand? Do you have money in the bank? Is that "real"? Ever bought gold (as an investment)? Did they cart it to your house? No, you have a piece of paper (or some bits on the bank's computer) saying it's yours. Obviously, there's difference in that WoW isn't regulated, guaranteed, etc. but it's "real" in pretty much the same way.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
You crit English Language for 30000 damage
English Language dies.
Dear Zonk,
It is ironical that the word receive is spelled wrongly in the submission. Please refer to the cliche above for the irony to sink in. Have a nice day at Azeroth.
100g YOU BUY OK? (couldn't resist this).
Guys, this article is clearly bullshit. I say this in the most NOT +1 funny way, if making someone type a couple sentences in English without a spelling or grammar mistake is the level you hold people to, you will NEVER get people in your group. People in WoW and EQ2 talk like fucking retarded AOL children. If you were to dump me onto a WoW server and I had no knowledge of MMORPGs, I would ask you why there are so many people who have English as a second language on the server. Hell, the foreign speakers some times have better English because they realize that capital letters and periods are okay to use. I thnk caps n perids r godd
The absolutely retarded way that people speak in the MMORPGs today is one of the reasons why I now play EvE. Playing on EvE is night and day compared to WoW and EQ2. Not only is the game far less shallow, but it is simply mind numbing to listen on a chat of 600+ people and have only a very small fraction of them banging away on the keyboard like fucking AOL illiterate pre-pubescent kids. The other night on EvE chat people were talking about good history books. The night before there was an interesting political discussion. Seeing 600 people in a chat room with only a minimal number of them pretending that they have sever brain damage is simply mind blowing.
I think what clinched me into buying EvE was when some idiot started slamming away at the keyboard with his face in all caps using AOL speak. He was promptly made fun of for typing luck a fucktard and then utterly ignored. I promptly logged out and signed up for a permanent account.
I was thinking that maybe the "type two or three sentences in english" thing was also to keep annoying kids out of the group. That's more of an immediate annoyance than any goldfarmers.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Then they should not be on an English speaking server. Case closed.
The problem is it's not one or two people, I've got so many names in my ignore list now it's pathetic. /1 LFM Healers only, UBRS /w Matty 60 Rogue, UBRS, k thx /w zxhty I said healers only, we don't need rogues, sorry /w Matty 60 Rogue, UBRS, k thx /1 LFM Healers only, UBRS /w Matty 60 Rogue, UBRS, k thx /ignore zxhty /w Matty ymznww 60 Rogue, invite /w Matty nzhy UBRS 60 Rogue /ignore ymznww /ignore nzhy
The truth of the matter is, I don't care if that person is a farmer or not. If they can't understand me, the raid leader, then they can't follow directions in the raid and they are a detriment to the rest of the group. Farmers don't pose a threat as far as loot goes (ninjaing) assuming the raid leader is smart enough to set loot to rare and master looter. Some dungeons have items that you can't use the ML option to protect the group from ninjas but it's a small amount.
but I can after 5 years on EQ1, I can pretty much predict that anyone who will only group with people who can type 2 complete sentences without mistakes is doomed to a lifetime of soloing.
Class: Grammar Nazi.
Description: A sage, specialized in the subtleties of language.
Common jobs: Deciphering ancient runes, translator for diplomacy
Bonuses: Intelligence +5, +5 bonus against chaotic enemies.
Penalties: Charisma -10, they don't use to get along with characters of age Alignment: Good, neutral or evil, but always lawful.
Common phrases: "Grammar tip of the day". Very annoying.
"Maybe he or she hopes to move to America or Europe someday and is using the game to also help practice English."
Well then this policy works in their favor anyway - it will indicate grammar errors that need improvement.
ôó
Well, many of those points you raise are valid, but they all come with a precondition:
This player, Chinese or not, knows how to speak English well and well enough to construct a few sentences in English in order to join a group to complete the quests they wish to complete.
In other words, if they have friends in America, or want to play in an American server because they like how Americans role play, they probably know English, and knowing English would be able to defend themselves from being accused of gold farming.
My page.
What prevents Chinese speaking players from playing on their country's servers?
I don't play WoW (or any other game with a monthly subscription), but I've played a fair amount of FPSs online - Quake 3, Half Life, the UT games, etc. I frequently used to play on non-English speaking servers, simply because the ping times were good and there were a decent number of players. (Well, I say non-English speaking servers - I often wasn't the only English speaker on there, but they were *primarily* non-English)
I dare say it's different for MMORPGs, but there are plenty of valid reasons for playing on foreign-language servers.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
More to the point, someone who can't communicate with the rest of the party is a serious liability in any dangerous situation. For many people, the fun of games like this lies in cooperation with a group to overcome dangerous situations.
If you can't speak english, you have every right to play on an English server, but don't be surprised or upset that people don't want to play with you. It's just common sense to want a party that can operate as a party.
Well, here's their chance: learn better English, be able to join groups in the game, get a better job in life. It all starts with education...
(Note, the last sentence was made using a "l33t translator" and reads as: who thinks they are elite because they can type in symbols.)
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I just had an argument with someone on another MMORPG's fan board about the very point you make. Some people do in fact learn english playing on english language servers, but unfortunately some of the examples of english they learn from are filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography. While I suppose it is admirable that they are making the effort to learn english, it is truly unfortunate that some of what they are learning is about as useful in real life as pig latin. Even worse, they may not even realize it and make posts in other english language venues that are a mishmash of styles, which can lead to great confusion for readers who don't know whether they should take their post seriously or not.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
I've been using a great mod called Infinite Ignore. The name of it is self explanatory and helps out a lot.
What I would really want is a mod that auto-ignores anyone level 1. Would be great to cut down on farmer spam.
Whoever you are, Chinese gold farmer, PvP addict, PvE carebear, if you join a good guild in WoW, you end up having a great time and not having to worry about group with "randoms". Just make some friends in the game, or find people you know that play on your server, and join or make a guild. Thats half the fun of WoW, seriously.
I used to play WoW religiously (clocked in 55 days of play) before I quit a few months ago. For around 3 to 4 weeks, I was a guild leader on the Blackrock realm for the Guild NoMaam on a character called "Ruins". The guild had around 100 or so people, all with max level (60) characters. We did all the high end content, including Molten Core, 40 man PvP, raiding enemy towns and the obligatory 40-man fishing squads that kill players with fishing poles in between catches. It was very entertaining, especially since we used voice chat software whenever we did things in a group. Nothing is funnier than secretly bribing a friend to wipe the entire 40-man raid out as a joke, and hearing the mixture of laughter and angry screams when a tiny gnome leads a train of 10-story tall giants towards the group.
Back on topic, I personally did not like people that only farmed gold, as it is only a small part of the game. Playing on a PvP server, which allows you to kill opposing faction players, the unspoken rule of repeatedly killing farmers is pretty much a given for most guilds. The only farming that gets done is when you are in a group, which led to the formation of farming guilds. I am not joking. I once killed a few farmers solo, and in 15 minutes, a group of 40 arrived, all from the same guild. Then, my guild arrived. Ah... good times. WoW: Gang Warfare.
I was born in Hong Kong and lived there until I was 10. I have friends in the guild that are Chinese international students, with heavy accents and poor English. I had real trouble understanding one of them when he spoke in English, typed or vocal. We always joked about their poor English, but as they are in the guild, everyone got along, especially since the higher level content demanded group work. Sometimes, we had a guy translate raid instructions to Chinese for a few of the players, which always had a lot more swearing in it for some reason. "If you get the "Living Bomb" curse, run the fuck away from your group" translates to something a Chinese sailor wouldn't say at a Bachelor Party lol.
Personally, if people play on a PvE server that is inherently based on conquering the environment, farming is inevitable. Whether the player sells what they farm on Ebay is up to them, and the punishment should be dealt by Blizzard. On a PvP server, I usually kill any opposing faction player I see unless I know them on IRC or IRL. Most PvP-oriented guilds like us had farmer-killing runs where we visit every popular farming spot and get some PvP points off farmers for our guild members. Farmers have a tough time in general, and if they want to suffer to earn money, its up to Blizzard to ban them.
The idea of using grammar and spelling levels as a filter has its good points, to allow for easier communication for giving raid instructions, loot disputes and friendly chat like "ROFL we have 3 healers not healing, a tank not tanking and me, the mage, dying in 2 seconds..." It will likely reject the following people:
1) Foreign players
2) Kids in general, of all ages (up to 30 years old at times...)
3) Most members of my Guild, including me
4) Anyone on a WoW binge, going for a full 24 hours or more
5) People that find it stupid and offensive to be tested and leave the party
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
Can someone who plays these games tell me _honestly_ if a large percentage (say over 40%) of Chinese language speakers are gold farmers? If there truly is a large percentage of Chinese speakers, or even non-english speakers who are gold farmers, that certainly seems like an entirely fair bias to me.
The difference is comparing this to an unfair bias. Like saying black people are criminals, Arab people are terrorists, etc. In these cases the vast vast majority of blacks or Arabs are NOT criminals or terrorists.
Bias is something people believe in and use every day. This idea that bias is always a bad thing is ridiculous. If you see a group of guys walking down the street swinging baseball bats in the middle of the night looking like they're drunk, It's a wise move to avoid them. Now that's bias, as you don't know them and maybe they're coming home from a costume party. But you'd be a fool to not start walking on the other side of the street.
AccountKiller
First off, Blizzard should just recognize that the reason farmers exist is due to their game design. If I am paying $15/month to play some game and I find parts of it to be boring, why should Blizzard care if I want to pay someone else to play that part? It is no different from real life, where I pay someone else to grow (and sometimes cook) my food, kill cows for me, etc. If someone is hacking their system, they should crack down on that, but most farmers have real paid accounts. You can say it causes inflation, but I would counter that this is just normal economics - market forces bringing down an artificial economy.
Second - no chinese farmers want to group with non-farmers. I actually know some farmers in China. They have about 40 people working there, each playing several characters at a time in different windows. The pay is OK and the work is easy, but the hours are long (10 hours per day, seven days a week, plus the next day off if you work the night shift). They employ a few english speakers who handle the case where someone tries to talk to them, so the idea that asking a few English questions will identify a farmer is just wrong. They are very polite and don't use bots, etc., because they don't want to be caught. Most of the problem farmers are not the chinese companies but the western college students trying to make beer money on eBay.
I think a larger part of this is racism. Look at the ads for gold on eBay. People actually say "not chinese gold" in their ads - as if the fact that a chinese person farmed it instead of a Westerner makes a difference!
The real mystery for me is why someone would pay someone else to play their character for them... THAT seems really strange... but I can imagine that it would be easier to pay $5 for an item that makes the game more fun for me than playing the same instance 100 times in a row hoping for a drop.
Were you the kid in school that had to have his mom contact the other kids moms so you would get a birthday party invitation?
The PRC government has been making gestures towards limiting PRC players to 3 hours (or some other somewhat arbitrary time), for that reason alone I wouldn't want to play on PRC servers. All sorts of things in wow take much longer than that, and I wouldn't want to invest a great deal of time on a PRC server and then find myself blocked out by their laws unable to continue to enjoy the game.
Somebody set us up the bomb! Take off every zig!
---
For great justice, click here -->
Gold farms chinese!
What a shame. Many of us use level 1 alts to store things.. and also to sell the items we've collected. When I'm puttering about in the Badlands, I don't have the time to hearth back to Orgrimmar and put stuff up for auction and then fly all the way back when instead I could simply mail any valuable items to a level 1 alt.. and then keep going. Less downtime, less pointless waiting.
It would have been nice to put an explaination in the summary.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I never heard the term "gold farmer" until now. At first I thought it sounded crazy that people could get paid real money to play a video game. Then I realized that it seems at least as crazy that people spend real money on a monthly subscription and on virtual goods just so they can spend their own valuable time playing said video game.
I have ran into many chinese gold farmers who say "i no farm, i jsut chinese, like to play game, you take me to group ok?!" You let them in despite your better judgement. Once the final boss is down they steal everyting and say "im sorry i not good english i not know rules kthxbye".
If you think this is stereotypical or racist then you haven't played WoW. YES chinese farmers DO speak like that if they speak at all. Some are fluent in english but many speak in a perfect stereotype of how a chinese native speaker forms their english sentances.
It might be racist to screen out chinese players but let me tell you that it DOES save you from being ninja looted randomly. Im not so worried about how this is a bad thing becuase they CAN play on official chinese servers if they just want to play a game.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Taco's still trying to get in...
Do you have ESP?
Who cares if they're a well-rounded person?
I just want to make sure we can communicate clearly with each other.
"College graduate" isn't a requirement. "High school graduate" is. Hence combination of a literacy test and not giving a damn about higher education.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It makes sense to me that PC Gamer wouldn't carry adds for WoW gold sellers. Gold selling or doing anything in game to make money in the real world is expressly forbidden in the terms of service, although enforcement varies. PC Gamer advertising for gold-selling services would be like a magazine about olympic sports advertising low-cast steroids to help improve your game.
The country of origin for the gold sellers doesn't much matter compared to the fact that they're not supposed to be offering those services at all.
Maybe he or she wants to play with his or her friend who lives in America.
/. You should learn to communicate before even thinking about immigrating to a country.
Then they'd have a group.
Maybe he or she wants to play on a more/less populated server.
All of the servers have reasonable populations, the location of the population varies, but there is no way of knowing where people are in the server until you go there.
Maybe Americans/Europeans are better roleplayers or otherwise generally play more in a style he or she likes.
If they can understand RP then they know english.
Maybe he or she has a nighttime job, and can only play when Americans are generally awake and playing.
Though the population of the servers does peak, the servers are only empty when they are taken down.
Maybe he or she hopes to move to America or Europe someday and is using the game to also help practice English. (Two birds with one stone!)
In game chat contains worse english than here on
Maybe he or she just likes Americans/Europeans. I know I always think it's pretty neat when I get in a group with a lot of foreigners, and often, I ponder the possibility of trying out a foreign server.
How can you like someone that you cannot communicate with?
From the article:
Mark MacKay, owner of the WOW Gold Price List website, has condemned this practice in a statement which reads: "Over over 1.5 million World of Warcraft players are from China alone, with the majority of these players being non-English. While their has been recent publicity about the gold farm factories in China, it by no means justifies thinking that every Chinese or non-English speaking player is a gold farmer."
Now, Mark MacKay does not sound like a Chinese name, but I'm having trouble believing that he's an English speaker.
Assuming a Chinese player is more likely to be a gold farmer isn't much different than assuming a Middle Eastern looking person is more likely to be a terrorist. This is prejudice, and if your prejudice translates into denying goods or services solely because of the ethnicity of the person, it's racism. So even people who consider themselves rational become racist when convenient because it's easier to assume a Chinese person is a gold farmer and deny him access than to actually find a better way to screen.
Vote for Pedro
Eventually, the chinese players will simply form their own guilds/groups. Problem solved (on their end). Life goes on. The growth of intolerance/isolation is alarming though.
These so-called "gold farmers" are freelancers who get paid to play games, so naturally the PC Gamer editors are getting irate. It's unwelcome competition! The only difference is that the farmers don't then turn around and kiss up to the publishers of the games they play so that they get to sell ad space and scoop the screenshots for the next round of titles.
Keep the gold farming where it belongs: in the reviews where games get glowing reviews and turn out to suck ass!
Then why are they trying to find another group?
Maybe Americans/Europeans are better roleplayers or otherwise generally play more in a style he or she likes.
If they can't speak English well enough to get into a group how are they going to roleplay?
Maybe he or she has a nighttime job, and can only play when Americans are generally awake and playing.
Servers are open 24x7, that's no reason not to play on the asian servers.
Maybe he or she hopes to move to America or Europe someday and is using the game to also help practice English. (Two birds with one stone!)
God help them if they're trying to learn English from WoW players!!
What other country is poor enough to make such an endeavor profitable? I highly doubt Japanese, French, German, or American people would farm for gold. Why? Because those nationals can all get jobs that pay (at least) $8 an hour. In China, $8 an hour for most is fantasy. Why spend 30 hours farming 1000 gold when you can work 8 hours of $8-per-hour wage ($64) to buy the 1000 gold?
The main quote in the Eurogamer article is from a guy who runs the "WoW Gold Price List".
"Oh yeah, you should trust people! Just because they're Chinese doesn't make them a gold farmer. Can't we all just get along?
Hey! Wanna buy some gold?!"
Game... blouses.
Isn't the author kind of assuming it's because of the whole gold farming issue? I don't know about you, but when I play WoW I generally like the other people I'm playing with to understand, "Don't run ahead or we'll all die" and "those mobs are linked, don't try to pull"
I've grouped with non-english speakers before and it's really annoying. Especially since they generally just don't tell you "I'm working on this quest," they just run around randomly and expect you to follow or something.
The whole "If the sentence contains errors" thing is a bit much, I'll agree. Especially since even on a good day we all make typso.
the negative reactions Chinese players recieve on English-speaking servers.
Article submitter is bitter from inability to join an English-speaking group, maybe?
I don't care how uber you are: your group's success is directly proportional to your ability to communicate. If somebody needs to redo a debuff or a crowd control, there's nothing that beats shouting into a microphone at the top of your lungs and adding a few cuss words for emphasis.
If everybody grew up on IRC and can type 100 WPM, you're fine. Most people can't. My girlfriend types really well, but she doesn't always notice when somebody's talking to her on the chat window. That's why you have TeamSpeak and Ventrilo. Now, I'm just doing pick-up groups these days, mostly, but the difference between playing with teamspeak and without is night and day. I ran all of Scholomance, 5-man, with only 2 60's. I, the MT, was 58 and had sub-par gear. The difference was that we were using Teamspeak.
That, and the ninjas really, really piss me off. I hardly think all of the non-English speakers who've screwed me out of loot are gold farmers, but just because they screwed me out of an inability to understand, "EVERYBODY PASS, LET'S DISCUSS" as opposed to capitalist greed does not negate the screwing. And I have noticed a correlation: nobody who I could talk to has ever stolen an epic or blue item.
I won't play with anybody who can't speak English, any more than I would work with somebody I couldn't communicate with.
I used to play "Final Fantasy XI", and the gold farmers (referred to mostly as gilsellers - per the game's monitary unit 'gil') are fairly easy to pick out. You can do a world search on the server you are on, and generally find groups of known gilsellers. While I have no problem with the gilsellers as people, I did have problems with the way they behave in the game. It was fairly common for them to drag monsters to your location for the sole purpose of killing your character. I was killed this way many times by the gilsellers. Gilsellers also can be found with names that do not translate into any readable words (and often, there can be 5 or 10 people with the same 'name', with the exception of a single character difference in the name. I have also partied certain people (who I was informed were known gilsellers), and I have to say that most of the ones accused of this are in fact legit. I can understand why people are angry, or become angry, because the economies of the games get messed up due to real money trade, or their characters get killed for trying to claim a monster that the gilsellers camp. Half of the blame should lay with the 'gold farmers', but people have to understand...a gold farmer would not be a gold farmer if "real money traders" would not buy the gold in the first place. Buying the game money, for some games, if not all, is generally a violation of the game's terms of service. Selling the money likely is, as well. Square/ENIX specifically mentions the sales and purchase of in-game commodities for real life money in their TOS, and yet countless people violate the rules every day.
;)
I quit playing this game, for various reasons, including the game's economy (and the gilsellers and real money traders), and can say that I don't miss it. On the other hand, if I decided to join back in at this point, I would most likely have to purchase in game money to get into parties, because at the point where I quit, you couldn't get invited to party with anyone unless you had the best gear available, regardless of your skills at any given job.
I have friends that still play this game.. and I had friends in game that were japanese and could not speak a word of english. The game's auto-translate function helped, but if a player knows his or her job, and role in a party, people should be less anal about allowing those people to join up. in the FFXI game, it's generally accepted that the japanese players are superior to most (not all) american players, in terms of their understanding of the game. On the reverse side of the coin, a lot of the japanese players did not like the American players due to our attitudes, ignorance, and lack of maturity.
PS: Feel free to criticize my lack of grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills..........Never claimed to have those skills to begin with...
What i dont get is why dont Blizzard make some International servers (like 2-3) which are open to ALL players, and the other servers (English etc) are open to English players only and so on, if they with to play on a english server then they can go on the International one and be in a mixed crowd.
I group with players from other countries as long as they can comunicate with the rest of the group, then its all good. But i dont carry dead weight with me that cant talk or doesnt even understand when asking them a very simple strait forward question that any average joe could answer (english speaking)
"Apparently there is a common belief among English speaking players that most non-English speakers are gold farmers and are only playing for commercial gain."
Ironic that Comunist Chinese are critized by English speaking capitalits working for economic profit.
this simply prove how ignorant you are. just from the back of my head, i can think of 2 good reasons this occurs, and i can give u more if u want.
1. wow US came out 1st. simple and easy. considering the time it took for china and even europe versions to release, wont avid gamers be playing wow US first?
2. its a game, its unique, its special. if you are a true gamer, the language barrier isnt much of a problem. take taiwan or korea and their massive mmorpg amounts. all with chinese or korean language. and i admit, while the learning curve is really tough, the games are good and i do play some myself, just slowly pointing and clicking to actually get what im doing. im sure other
derek
I find this so close minded I cannot really fully pull in the many places I see wrongs. This touches so closely to racism, but not really because these rationals are so stupid. I find a certain disdain when I see communications from people like that. I personally have never been at the edge of prejudice being a white male with no accent who looks farely normal and lives in big city America. But I have been with friends who have blatantly been treated not even as a respected human right next to me. When the world begins to turn and change again and reshapes our interactions with people, certain groups that were used to being looked upon with awe will be suddenly being seen in such an astounding way (bvy them and them alone) shock will overcome.
I know this sounds very heavy and philosophical for a small issue...but it paints such a broader implication on people. Yeah, the advertising might be annoying. But then maybe you should update the game somehow to make people be able to learn who sends them through software and learn what theyb are through predictive tech. All parts of the game are important. Even gold farmers. They have purpose in playing. A true ecosystem of a game like this is significant and all parts needs to be there for it to really work well.
Anyways....I see pig headedness.
Ode to all.
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
True that people (including myself) are biased against players who talk like "water please thx" (using a LOT of spacing and bad grammar), but do you really want to fuel someone who is breaking the game rules? I personally keep a list of people whom I prove are farmers. (e.g. in Tyr's Hand on World of Warcraft 24/7) I report them every couple of weeks. I have seen a few get banned so far, so I plan to keep it up.
Do you really want a gold farmer in your group who will just ninja any good items that drop and then quit your group? Personally, I think that it is worth it to exclude all non-english speaking people unless approved by one of their english-speaking friends. Let's face it, though, the majority of Chinese players on our servers indeed are farmers. I haven't met a normal playing Chinese person yet. I have met many foriegners (any non-USA or Austrailian players.. which is who our realms serve) and am good friends with a few of them. We just have too many farmers.
hmmmmm and from that I infer then, you have a way of checking the IP location of that player, or something? I don't play the game myself, and while what you're saying might be true, I'm just not sure how you found out the person was in fact Chinese, and not some say, korean or idiot north american teen posing to be Chinese.
...and most of the sites I see are based in the US.
Wait wait... There's AMERICAN WoW players who can type a couple sentences in English without grammar or spelling errors?!?
Let the flaming begin! *pulls out the BBQ sauce*
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I completely agree, we have localization so people can play together. If I wanted to play a game that I couldn't communicte with other people with I go load my old Nintendo. WoW is designed for people to play together and it's damn hard to do that if you can't speak the same bloody language even the slightest bit.
""High school graduate" is [a requirement]"
Well there goes the half of the MMO population that is in middle and high school!
(good riddance!)
unfortunately some of the examples of english they learn from are filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography
It is called "American English".
It might be racist to screen out chinese players but let me tell you that it DOES save you from being ninja looted randomly.
It is racist. Ninja is Japanese, not Chinese. Learn the difference or you will be called an ignorant bigot.
My other first post is car post.
Some "Chinese Gold Farmers" are probably better members for PUGs (Pick-Up Groups) than the common WoW player. I mean, they play a lot, right? As a form of income? They're probably more well-read on the guides to playing their class, group dynamics, and play strategies than the body of 'casual' players. They might only be 'easily' identified by their poor language skills, if such applies.
/Tell), I have to use the embellished, "Seasoned adventurer seeks likeminded group to Blackrock Depths, please send tell."; And I've also been contacted by Chinese players (with characters with Chinese names) with greetings and messages in Chinese, and could only reply, "Nihao ma. That's the only Chinese I speak, sorry."
The term, "Chinese Gold Farmer" is probably just a derrogatory term for any undesirable character; The "'leet dudes" whom fail the alleged language test, the loot-ninjas, and the casual-playing foreigner who doesn't speak any English.
I've even fallen into this categorization: an un-guilded rogue (must be a ninja), and a name that at two syllables could just be an actual name in Chinese. And maybe I fell into it on both sides; instead of the common acronyms of the game, "LFG 2 BRD, PST" (Looking For Group to BlackRock Depths, Please Send
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
Some people do in fact learn english playing on english language servers, but unfortunately some of the examples of english they learn from are filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography.
LOL. ne1 nos y?
You make a good point. A MMORPG is a rather bad place to learn a language. What with abbreviations and unavoidable typos and the like. Some people argue that it's a good way to learn slang and colloquialism, but a lot of those are the kind that would never be used outside an online context.
Best way to learn them, imho, movies, tv and the written word (fiction works: novels, comic books). Of course, you might end up with an accent that's all over the place (say, a mix of Frasier and Walker Texas Ranger) but what the heck.
As to legitimate chinese users on US servers: asian servers didn't come online until several months after the US servers did, and even then they were only the Korean servers. So it's not unthinkable that a chinese player might have invested considerable time and effort in leveling his chars to simply give them up for new chars on chinese servers.
He (they) might not have a choice eventually, tho. Wasn't there a rumor that China was going to impose restrictions on online games? And then curfew them? Eve online states that they have a single universe except for a separate universe for chinese players for "legal reasons". They don't explain what those reasons are, tho, so it might be something unrelated.
No sig
Do you have any facts to backup your assertion that thottbot.com is owned by IGE? The only ads I see on thottbot.com are google ads, which can pull up anyone's site, even IGE's competitors.
Oh god... I just had an image of a bunch of tourists running around screaming nothing but "Chuck Norris" and "Vin Deisel". Please don't let foreigners learn their english from WoW!
Regards,
Steve
Maybe it's humans' innate tendency towards socializing with people they can understand.
The only time I want to hang around with someone who I don't share a language with is if they've got nice boobs.
Now you're probably going to call me a sexist or something.
paintball
(1) They have localized servers. If they are wanting to "play the game" why are they not playing there?
(2) 9 times out of 10 the Gold Farmer (or as I refer to them "Foreign Language Virtual Asset Acquisition Agent") will screw things up in their greed-driven rush. Pull adds when we're not ready, have problems with Aggro Management, etc.
(3) 9 times out of 10 the FLVAAA will attempt to lie/cheat/steal in order to obtain something sellable. This includes claiming to "need" an item (using it to upgrade their character) and then instantly trying to sell it, attempting to "ninja-loot" an item (call it a "Snatch-n-Grab" in meat-space), or piss/whine/moan until the group just hands them something to shut them up. If the above fails they will attempt (typically via badly mangled English) to destroy the reputation of the group by calling them "Ninja-Looters" or something similar in open chat in Ironforge or Orgrimmar (where most of the bored higher level people hang out looking for something to do)
Why should I subject myself to this crap? If there is someone answering the LFM (Looking For More) call for a particular instance run and they can't say more than "me go" or "I want (insert Item name here). u give plz?" then I feel pretty justified in calling them a FLVAAA and adding them to my ignore list. If the person passes the "interview" but proves on the instance crawl that they're more interested in acquiring items, I'll boot them. I ran one instance crawl where the 3rd mob in dropped a decent "Bind On Equip" epic helm. 2 Hunters instantly voiced their desire for the helm and I explained that it would be dealt with at the end when we're deviding up the rest of the loot. It would be rolled for by Need basis and would have to be equipped on the spot. They both claimed the understood, but while Hunter 1 continued through the instance without further problems Hunter 2 was messaging me every 5 to 7 minutes asking for it to be rolled on *now*. After an hour of this I got sick and kicked Hunter 2 from the party. Hunter 2 was doing very little at all other than whining about the hat.
They've taken up the tatic of selling loot using "disposable characters". I see a level 1 Gnome named Jlsdkfj selling [Uber Sword] for 1250g, I know that's a Gold Farmer. I see the crap in the Auction House. They come up to me and shove Eternium and Thorium Lockboxes in my face without ASKING if I would mind opening it. 3 days later Jlsdkfj is gone and in his place spamming up IF (and now thanks to 1.9 Stormwind and Darnassus as well) selling the same items because no one BUT someone who bought the gold online would pay the inflated price they're asking.
I despise them on economic grounds. If I can buy gold, then I can afford to buy more expensive in-game items at auction. The sellers notice this and so the prices go up. As the prices go up, in order to maintain the same level of purchasing power, users feel compelled to buy gold to augment their income--which, when done, inflates the economy even more. The net effect after enough iterations of this cycle is that everyone can have everything they did before, but they have to pay the gold farmers to get it.
...in China, why don't they just play with other Chinese gamers? I would actually prefer to play games with gamers from China, and other countries, myself. Too many attention starved kiddies, playing in the USA.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
The contribution from Semen Farmers to the Fertility clinics has been great this year.
A Semen Farmer commented that watching internet pr0n 12 hours a day was the best job he had yet. The boss quotas are quite hard to reach but I do my best, "today I almost filled a bottle" he added.
The best excuse for a President, a King or others *insert your words*, is God. God has still yet to find an excuse.
So if you are so worried about losing trade, take 5minutes to get your guy to 2nd level OR a whole 15 minutes and get him/her to 5th level.
Why would you want to play a massively multiplayer game with people you don't know and with whom you can't communicate, with the game itself written in a language you don't understand, when all those things are readily available for less overall cost and better speeds in your native language?
Maybe to learn a language, meet people from different cultures. The people getting kicked out are not necessarily completely unable to communicate, it's just obvious they aren't native speakers.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
First the disclosure: I don't play games, and read only one article (besides this one) about gold farming. As I understand it, "gold farmers" are basically highly proficient (skilled) and hightly motivated (by money) players. So that in itself doesn't seem to provide reason to want to block them; a highly skilled ping-pong opponent is a great find, if one can only get him/her to play with me (a not highly skilled player). Most of the time, the skilled players don't want to bother with someone out of their league. Second, the monetary exchange part of gold farming is, again, as I understand it, basically less skilled players who are willing to pay these gold farmers for the privilege of competing at a higher level without having to put in the work to get to that level. Again, who cares? Some schmuck (can I say that on /.?) pays to compete at the 100-dragonslayer level, and presumably gets eaten quickly because he can't hold a sword.
My take on this is that it's a whirlwind in a teacup, created by the game industry, to try to keep their own sales options open (i.e., they may be planning to offer pay-for-higher-level-play sometime in the future, and view the gold farmers as competition.
I don't understand why the game players themselves would give a flying u-know-what about it.
because we've not earned a reputation as obnoxious gold farmers.
This doesn't happen in Daimonin, a free software isometric 2d MMORPG.
Crapp! Tehy not letting pogrammers partisipating no mroe?
The the second linked news article, this gem appears:
Mark MacKay, owner of the WOW Gold Price List website, has condemned this practice in a statement (where "this practice" is discriminating against non-english speakers)
This guy, Mark MacKay, runs a web site dedicated to gold farming! Not only that, but on HIS WEBSITE he spreads this "chinese are gold farmers" "myth" with this definition:
Gold Farmers - Characters (typically played by a group so they can be online 24/7) that do nothing but farm money and high-value vendor trash in order to sell gold to other players for real-world money. The typical usage is "Chinese Gold Farmer", since many of these characters are/were run by companies in China and other parts of Asia.
This Mark MacKay guy is full of crap.
In Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, there is no third-party gold farming market, because anyone who wants to spend their way to in-game wealth can do it by directly paying the company that runs the game.
The game has two currencies: "pieces of eight" (POE) and "doubloons". POE spring freely into existence from NPC battles, admin-sponsored tournaments, etc. just like your typical MMORPG coins. Most prices, prizes, wagers, and wages are set in POE. Doubloons, however, only enter the economy when they're purchased by players spending real dollars. Both currencies exit the economy regularly - POE through taxes, losing battles to NPCs, buying goods from NPC merchants, etc.; doubloons through a "delivery charge" on various items and "badges" that must be purchased with doubloons to unlock game functionality for a month at a time.
Doubloons and POE are traded on an open market, so players who don't have real money to spend can simply earn a lot of POE and trade it for doubloons when they need to buy an expensive item or a badge. Players who'd rather spend money than play for several hours a day can buy doubloons and trade them for POE.
Since items and badges are constantly wearing out and must be replaced using doubloons, there's always demand for doubloons, and since every doubloon in the game has to be purchased with real money, there's always cash coming in to keep the company in business. And since doubloons are traded for POE on an open market, spending your way to in-game wealth doesn't upset the economy: as more doubloons become available, their value in POE drops.
(Note: Only half of the Puzzle Pirates servers use doubloons. The others charge a monthly subscription fee and the above discussion doesn't apply to them.)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
The motivation to group with English-speaking players should be enough evidence that one is not a gold farmer. They are called GOLD farmers for a reason. They sell gold, and the most effective way to get gold is by farming solo, especially when compared to a P.U.G. In a group, people's objectives usually are to get quests done, or to do instance runs for items. Compared to the gold farmers' usual killing mob's non-stop in Tyr's Hand, being in a group would be a complete waste of time for them. And on the point of it costing less and better speed and native language, you only got 1/3 right. Sure, it's somewhat cheaper (if you don't play too much every month since you pay by minute in Chinese WoW), but better speed? You have no idea what kind of lag you'll get at peak hour on a server with medium-level population (Chinese medium, not North American medium). At least two people I know has come to play on North American servers because of this lag. And you say native language like it's a good thing. I personally consider that they did a pretty good job translating WoW into Chinese, since it's a lot better than most MMO's which look like they're translated in less than two weeks by a single person suffering from multiple personality disorder paid by minimum wage with only third-grade English education. However, there are still a lot of really annoying errors/quirks. For example, "Private's Tarbard" is translated as "Pirate's Tarbard". Admittedly, I'm probably a little too picky, but I most definitely won't be the only one to choose playing on an English-speaking server just so I can get the original experience. P.S. Just to give you an idea of what kind of population you are looking at on a Chinese server, here's a screenshot. (Taken on a medium-sized server called Anvilmarr when they were doing the Anachronos memory event)
This was actually a decently big problem in EQ2. On pretty much every server there's an underlying current of hatred towards the mysterious plat farmers, which degenerates very quickly into a rant about Chinese players.
There were a couple communities I actually left because I was sick of people talking about "those damn Chinese players" and crap like that, except descending into more slurs and epithets. Yeah, a lot of plat farmers are Chinese, but I found the backlash to be much more offensive than the initial "problem."
What people seem to fail to realize is also that plat farmers don't want to group with non-plat farmers. I have no idea why someone turning a profit wouldn't buy five more accounts (or whatever fills a group in WoW) and gain the ability to loot everything that drops, and efficiently. Finding a group can already be hell, and then if you turn up incompetent companions, or you don't win the roll... forget about it. Chances are you're just running into an idiot ninjalooter of the garden variety if someone with poor english skills up and offs with your loot.
I ran all of Scholomance, 5-man, with only 2 60's. I, the MT, was 58 and had sub-par gear. The difference was that we were using Teamspeak... I won't play with anybody who can't speak English, any more than I would work with somebody I couldn't communicate with.
Yanno, sometimes a game is just a game.
What these games need is a "Fed," an entity which controls and regulates the dispensation of large sums of gold. It doesn't need to be implemented in an even remotely similar way to in the real world, but some kind of control has to exist.
When the real world price of Game Gold starts going up, the "Fed" should pump more gold into the game, somehow, in order to deflate its value relative to the dollar. I have no idea how to implement this in a way that's true to the character of the game -- somebody who actually plays these games a lot might get some creative ideas about it. It seems like you should also be able to "sell short" the game gold, and increase your game wealth, since the value of the gold is decreasing relative to some other currency. Converting between game gold and real dollars give you all sorts of opportunities.
If I was a player in one of these games, and rumors got started that the game economy was about to be regulated, I would be overjoyed. I would purchase, with real dollars, huge quantities of gold, and wait until regulation caused the value of gold to rise. Then I'd auction it back off and walk away with real cash.
There is an easy (to say) answer to this. I've started playing Guild Wars, and they automatically share money and assign loot to players. Now, I've never played WoW, so I can't compare the two, but Guild Wars sure is fun and addictive. Even my D&D-hating wife enjoys it. (Plus, no monthly fee.)
I'm not necessarily suggesting that you switch, just that WoW should implement some of these features. When I play, I never worry about someone in my party running off with the treasure from the quest.
And you've gotta love if when even the news posts have spelling and grammar mistakes.
> nobody who I could talk to has ever stolen an epic or blue item.
You're lucky.
I equate Scarlet Monastery to ninjaing because someone always manages to ninja something in SM when I'm in group (and most of the time, it's an item that we all agreed I'd get)
for filipino and indian gold farmers and other english-speaking countries where chinse gold farming firms can outsource
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I Lrnd EgLSH FRM WoW ND I THNK I CN RED ND wRTR IT PRTY GUD
--
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Some people argue that it's a good way to learn slang and colloquialism, but a lot of those are the kind that would never be used outside an online context.
Oh, I don't know... What if you're a north Korean agent trying to pass for a script kiddie at a 2600 meeting?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In addition to not being secure, the Internet is not and never has been a social paradise.
People are not treated as equals on the Internet, and the reasons they're treated unequal are often more illogical than the reasons they're treated unequal in meatspace.
"ninja" is a verb used in WoW to refer to the act of stealing (usually rare) items without rolling on them or consulting group members. It has also evolved to certain usage in the BGs when referring to capturing flags or bunkers. In WoW, to "ninja" has nothing to do with race or culture.
Racism is serious, you shouldn't be so hasty to level such accusations if you are unfamiliar with the context.
Hey, anybody intelligent and motivated enough to spoof a high school education on a MMORPG guild chat is okay in my book.
Anybody who isn't? Go back to school.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Personally I don't care where you from or what language you speak or how old you are. I DO however care whether or not you can understand enough to be a contributing member of the group. If I can't count on you to follow instructions because you don't understand....I can't count on you to not steal someone elses item that they have been working for. With some items taking upwards of 50 runs through the same dungeon, thats just not a chance I am willing to take.
I don't have hours and hours to play all the time so you can be damn sure that I am going to do a communication check at the beginning of a large run to make sure everyone understands thier part and the loot rules. Some people call this a farmer check and I can't say I don't disagree, but it is not designed to discriminate because they are chineese or french or mexican. If you can't communicate effectively then you are liability. I have knowingly grouped with people from Japan and while thier english was broken they could communicate enough to get the job done and they played an active part in our group.
As far as dumping ads from gold selling services, I say good. Its kind of sketchy for a any publication to host ads for services which violate the terms of service for the games/services they review. They don't have banner ads for companies that will sell you a downloadable copy of autocad, windows xp or OfficeXP, how is gold selling any different?(yeah I guess theres the whole stolen and then sold vs bought and then sold, but if its not technically yours to sell in the first place....bah. I don't want to go down that road.)
Then farmers won't be able to compete.
For those farmers who stay in the market, selling those rare items that Blizzard won't sell (because they wouldn't want to make them available without playing), Blizzard should just buy from them, track the players when the transaction is done, and curse said characters.
And by cursing characters I don't mean deleting characters. Just giving them less chance of getting gold and worse treasure, and make them lose the occasional item.
Then very few farmers will survive.
Here's why:
1. Tactics. It's hard to coordinate with people that don't speak English well and have an effective and fun session. I already deal with non-English speakers at work, so why should I have to deal with it during my recreation?
2. Community. I saw someone said that building guilds around localization is not a good thing. Perhaps that's the case with a few, but I think people just want to socialize and have good fun. When I was playing FFXI, we had Canadians, Americans, a few Brits, and even some Japanese players who spoke English very well. You want to be able to communicate!
Now, one thing I see WoW lacking is some sort of library of international expressions which display the language of the client. I know PSO was one of the first, and FFXI did the same.
First, the english requirement is retarded. How long do you think it will be before Gold Farmer's improve their english? A week? A year? All you need is a couple of staff english speakers and you are set. So your security is at best racist and at least ineffective.
Furthermore it sounds a lot like a free market to me. Once you established a global network, and started charging, that was where this was headed.
Second, I have noticed that some MMORPG players blame everything on someone else. As with any online game, having your ass handed to you is because the other guy is clearly glitching, cheating, or somehow buying his success. It has nothing to do with their failing marriage, dropping out of college, losing their job, and their new found digital crack habit. Let's face it, It's Better Than Life(tm).
Not necessarily true. I have actually been in a guild comprised mainly of chinese-speaking players in WoW. Not only did they not ninja items, they were actually more helpful than some other guilds that I have been in.
players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
I don't get it... How do average caucasians get to join groups then?
I smell astroturfing!
This might explain other reasons for the person to be playing on a US server, however it doesn't mean they should be allowed into the group. If they cannot communicate with the rest of the group, then they will probably whipe (get everone killed) the group or possibly ninja items (take something they shouldn't) simply because they do not understand. I doubt 4-39 (ok so pickup raids are almost non-existant but for example) other people wish to waste their time because one person doesn't understand the language used in the game. Also for the record I have yet to see a legit foriegn player who truely didn't understand basic english. If he doesn't, I would say 99.9999% of the time he is, infact, a gold farmer. If not, he should at least learn enough english to explain himself.
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
From the article:
Mark MacKay, owner of the WOW Gold Price List website, has condemned this practice...
Gee... I wonder why? It's like a drug seller condemning the law against the possession of illegal drugs.
Let me save people some time and sum up a few common replies to this story:
1) "Haha, people on the Internet can't spell. This has nothing to do with the story, but it's funny. Haha. +1 funny please? Thanks!"
2) "Clearly any decision that can seperate people based on where they're from is racist. I do not play WoW, and I do not understand the mechanics of a multi-player game."
3) "You need to work in a group in order to accomplish goals in WoW. You also do not want to spend 2-3 hours in a dungeon working for an item that only drops 10% of the time, only to have some gold farmer ninja-loot the item, which is an all-too-common occurrence. This is not racism, it is not xenophobia, it is not anti-culturalism. This is something between common sense and saving yourself a boatload of time. People play this video game to have fun, not to practice for their eventual jobs in the Peace Corps."
Moo
They should not be playing on an English speaking server if they do not expect a language barrier. Playing a (rather strategic) game without being able to communicate effectively is one way to screw up a group run. Considering some group runs can take hours on end, you would not want the chance of having the entire run blown because of one person's inability to communicate.
Ninja is Japanese, not Chinese. Learn the difference or you will be called an ignorant bigot.
I see you got a Funny mod, but I get the impression you were actually serious. So just in case... Ninja-looting is a term referring to someone taking measures to ensure that once there is a corpse in the vicinity to loot, they are on it faster than you can blink, and have looted it before anyone else gets the chance to start typing the command, because it was the one and only thing they were really watching for. It has nothing to do with race at all, just the impressive inhuman speed of the Ninja.
If you were actually just going for the Funny mod, then I appologize for the lesson.
I can't find the origional post, but this seems very similar to it. Also, during a short period when Thottbot was under maintance (I recall it having an alliance/horde and realm selection area on the temporary homepage), it directed you to gold/item sales for that realm. Just because there aren't any ads doesn't mean no harm is being done. By putting the player base "to work", they can gain data on what mobs are the most effecient to farm for [insert epic item here], or which areas have the highest concentration of [insert resource here (Bastard arcanite farmers)]. Although it also assists the entire population of WoW, it certainly would serve the IGE's purpose as well. IANAKOTSOGF (I am not anyone knowlegable on the subject of gold farming), but this certainly makes sence from most perspectives that I see it from.
It's not all foreigners, it's the ones with names like Xiaoping who are somehow always on and always spamming in Orgrimmar.
I play on Warsong, we've got a lot of russians and a lot of brazilians. They're not a problem. If they don't speak english, they typically stick with other people who speak their language.
Ask anyone on any server, we know who the farmers are.
I don't play the game, but from the comments that I see, it seems to have some community and cooperation elements, and not the usual wreck and destroy theme.
Well then, is that not the beginnings of the one world community? The internet dream, that the intensification of global trade and communications has to eventually lead to a "one world language"?
How long will it be before one of us stumbles across a porn site that says something along the lines of: "Free, young, teen, lesbian, fetish sex pictures inside. Just respond to this question with a couple of sentences of correct English..."?
On my last few characters, I've been limiting myself to a couple of full runs of SM. Yeah, it has lots of great items, but in the long run, your labors are better spent getting to 60 as fast as possible. It was more fun for my first character, because back then a level 60 was kind of a rare, godlike being. Not true anymore.
I don't play WoW. But, I doubt whether the perceived gold farmers are all Chinese. If I teamed up with some strangers and looted everything in the endgame raid, I would just type with broken English all the way through even if I were a native English speaker. If you want to believed I am Chinese, the favourite black sheep of the day, I will be fine with that esp if that is not the case. How often does an affected player do a reverse IP lookup when he gets upset by a fellow player?
Gold farming can be a profitable part time "job" for many net savvy people on lower income. The gold farmer may be a Chinese, an Indian or secondary school students in developed countries. Do you feel better if they farm but know a few more sentences of English? In addition, the so call literacy test is more like the infamous "cool people" test that most geeks tried to avoid in college when ran into the playground bullies. Now, someone tries to vent their frustration in the anonymous online game world... 'No worries mate, I've just kicked out a bunch of "Chinese"'.
I am not trying to blow this out of proportion. It is just a cultural observation for the wider society. Sinophobia has its cultural and historical context and is prevalent today. But, just as many other types of phobia: it makes no sense and is not a good thing. It is a dangerous signal whenever a society start blaming on whatever evil onto another group. Blaming the Jews for whatever things went wrong was the fashionable idea in pre WW2 Europe. We now agree the blames are largely based on stereotype, but it sounded pretty reasonable that time.
I wouldn't want to go on a quest with a gold farmer. Everyone knows that gold is mined, not farmed.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Completely offtopic but, I remember the UO launch fo Japanese servers vividly. They had plans to get people to join, including instant skills and free gold.
This quickly backfired.
Not only was the server PACKED, but murderes and griefers ran rampant, and it was very easy to happen upon, oh 500,000 gold. And in UO that is impossible to carry. So suddenly I found myself in the midst of a Japanese-American war where everyone was slaughtering eachother, there was gold everywhere, and it was impossible to drag it to your bank. You were effectively stuck in one place with that much gold, and one hell of an easy target.
I amassed and lost several small fortunes that day. It was quite fucking hilarious, as well. OSI certainly learned their lesson that day and the servers soon got wiped into oblivion and got the clean start they should've had in the first place.
It's not as funny as it might seem.
Spelling doesn't really matter *that* much, generally, in terms of making yourself understood. IRC is rife with misspellings and grammatical errors, but its users still make themselves understood.
However, only educated people who have spent a fair amount of time studying and reading (and thus, are probably at least reasonably well-to-do) are likely to be able to avoid spelling and grammatical errors. This means that there is an highly-visible tool to try to judge someone's rough socioeconomic status. This means that people do so (perhaps even unconsciously). This means that other people immediately try to game the system, by having a few words of French or Latin or whatever to quote. It also means that parents of kids are likely to push them to have correct spelling and grammar so that they can pass informal, unconscious "test" for education level.
This same sort of social test happens all the time...just usually with English speakers trying to speak English, not Chinese speakers.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
the ninjas really, really piss me off
There is a very easy solution for this. It's called Master Looter. If you don't know the group, insist on it, and you can't be ninja'd (unless you pick a ninja for the master looter, of course).
Don't let a player transfer nore then 25 gold to another player.
For people that are helping someone buy a mount, it's not to incovienant.
Or, get rid of the auction house, and removed that stupid ass cross city spam the recently added. It's horrible.
OTOH, for those of us that likt to play the game normally and get stuff, some of the price inflation works in our favor.
Another tack would be for blizzard to post generic recommended resale prices, and not let the AH let you charge more. Basically you have an artifcial way of moving money between players, so you need an artificial cap.
Anytime someone sends more then 250 gold a day, look into their money habits.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Considering that someone not playing on a localized server is a gold farmer is stupid and sad, it's akin to considering everyone from out of your country a proven terrorist."
And just as stupid or as sad comparing actions on a video game to actions in real life?
About a week ago, I was by the AH in Org with my mage when a person (rather rudely) demanded, "Make me food." I was about to blow him off when I saw the character name was Chinese.
:p
I'm a white guy, living in California, but I've taken a year of Chinese, so I don't know enough to really talk to Chinese players in WOW, but I have faked it well enough to get into all-Chinese parties. =)
[lai = come
qu = go
xia = down
shang = up
"qing lai" == please come (here), etc.]
So I asked the person in Chinese if they wanted food, and, sure enough, in Chinese they were a lot more polite (using "qing", please, instead of the imperative form they used in English).
Since then, whenever the player logs in, he asks for food in Chinese, and I make it for him. In exchange, I apparently get stacks of major healing and mana potions in the mail every day. =)
So, the Chinese guy (who I later learned was a woman, living in Manchuria) has been asking me to take her to UBRS. So last night I put together a party, went to UBRS... and yeah.
My Chinese friend accidentally clicked Need on an item she didn't need. So it pissed off the party, especially when they found out she was Chinese. But I smoothed it over. Then she Needed a loxbox. That just totally pissed off the party, so they wanted me to boot her. I puzzled out what she said, and apparently she just needed it for the lockpicking. So again, I got the item from her, and then lotted it to the party. After that, she passed on everything, and gave away all the other items she even legitimately won, because she was on the verge of tears after being yelled at by everyone. So yeah. I'd left some of the people in the party as assistant leaders, and at some point down the road, they booted her. So I reinvited...
Anyhow, to make a long story short, it was a pretty crap experience. They all called her a Ninja Chinese Gold Farmer, she was desperately trying to explain that the 1st was a mistake and the 2nd was for her LP skill (and yeah, I agree she should have just greeded it and LPed it later), so she started the run happy (because she could never find a Chinese speaking UBRS party), and ended sad and hurt, and the Americans left with a further deepening of the stereotype that all Chinese people are Ninja Gold Farmers. And I was in the middle having to deal with both sides with only a year of Chinese under my belt.
Sigh, multiculturalism for the loss.
The ironic twist here, of course, is that I think she does sell gold. Or maybe she buys gold (without tone mai (buy) and mai (sell) are the same, or maybe she was just asking if all Americans buy gold. My Chinese really isn't that good.
Every gripe posted here so far is just like in Diablo II.
Whether it's goldfarmers (Baal runs), ninja-stealing drops (the one barbarian in the party who stands by the boss), or pathetic language skills across every server, these all seem to be common themes to Blizzard MMORPGs.
Maybe instead of pissing about it, we should just expose ourselves to some solar radiation.
Or stop giving Blizzard money for a rehash of an earlier game which doesn't even fix obviously broken gameplay issues.
It only took them 10 patches of D2 to come anywhere close to fixing the balance issues. I wonder how long WoW will suck this way.
What, is there only 1 chinese player?
Why wouldn't they just get 5 players in china to play together, split the spoils?
"im sorry i not good english i not know rules kthxbye"."
This is a ninja. The lowest. Why do you think they aren't just saying that to make you think they're a farmer?
"It might be racist to screen out chinese players but let me tell you that it DOES save you from being ninja looted randomly. "
SOunds like you were ninja looted intentionally, not randomly. Unless there rolling a d20 to determine if they ninja you.
I'm sorry, but your logic is so flawed, it borders inept.
I mean, is China the only country they don't speak native english? This person could have ne French, German, or Russian.
It might be racist to want black peopoe to stay at the back of the bus, but it does keep me from walking all the way back there myself.
Racism for convience is racism with an excuse.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1) open accountability - anyone should be able to see a list of any other players transactions that have occured in game. Then fellow guild members would be able to apply social pressure to the people who buy gold. aka - "Friends dont let friends buy gold"
2) built in bablephish/translator - enter a sentence in one language and have them be able to be sent to the communication channel of choice. This would help brake down communication barriers.
As for how difficult it would be to implement either of these, I'm not so sure, but for the translator, it might be possible to develop a UI mod that passed the sentence to a server that does translations.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
I'd think that Americans wouldn't be able to get a group if they had to type a sentance or two in english without errors. /American //Sucks at written english language ///Not as bad as most
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Why don't Chinese people just play on a Chinese server where everyone speaks Chinese?! I think it's kind of ridiclious for Chinese people to expect to play and have a good time with people who don't speak Chinese. It's not the rest of the world's fault that Chinese is probably one of the hardest languages to learn and it certainly isn't the rest of the world's fault that the majority of people playing WOW and other such games DONT speak Chinese.
Chinese people, stop complaining and play on a Chinese server were you will be understood.
It's used in every MMO, it used to be the hot topic in EQ1 way back, people used to be able to KS really easy then too, so ninja looters were a real pain. You make a good point, if this was a serious and not 'funny' post I wonder if the poster is a big gamer, I mean this is a prevalent term these days if you play an MMO, but non-existent in most other game genres. I Think the real propblem here is not so much gold farmers, but the racist stereotypes people use in-game, I feel like I hopped a time train 150 years back every time a farmer is mentioned in guild or general, it's pathetic, and I have a feeling half the of the younger people don't even realize how terrible they are when they promote it.
heck, what's stopping them from grouping together and planning things on their own server, then forming their own chinese horde to over-run the servers?
yes, this is supposed to be a joke, but ....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I take it that none of the Slashdot editors have been able to join a group? (===> runs for fire fighting gear and flak jacket)
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected. Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem.
/general talking trash about Chinese players, but they're vastly the exception not the rule. Play well - keep the agro off the squishies, don't forget to heal the pets, don't roll on BoPs you don't need - do that and noone cares if you can chat.
I've been in dozens if not hundreds of PuGs in WoW, and have never heard that asked. That sounds like media hype to me. Sure, I've seen idiots in
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Let us say that the amount of money a player earns on WoW is affected by: skill, time investment and knowledge (of where to go for the best income). Oh, wait a minute: skill doesn't come into it at all, and knowledge, once acquired, doesn't often need renewing and isn't hard to acquire in the first place.
That leaves time investment. Grinding... take the 'play' part of your 'work/play' ratio, and reallocate a portion of it to work, then call it grinding so you can pretend it isn't work. And let's face it, it is work. You do something you don't enjoy to acquire something you want or need. It just pays a lot less than your real job! That's where the wage difference comes in.
I don't play the game myself, and while what you're saying might be true
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Internet Discourse in a Nutshell".
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
It is racist. Ninja is Japanese, not Chinese. Learn the difference or you will be called an ignorant bigot.
True. The correct term would be 'Kung-Fu' looter. Oh, and Japanese warriors were called Samuari. Ninjas are actually American mid-west white trash.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How can someone steal the loot? That seems like a deficiency in WoW's design. I play EQ2 (for better or worse) and you cannot steal the loot unless you're the group leader and set the options to leader-loot or free-for-all. If it's set to lotto, a pseudo-random lotto is done and loot is distributed to the lucky.
However, there are certainly chinese gold farmers in EQ2, they just farm solo for adventure gold or tradeskill gold. Heck, three or four of them buy a ton of harvested raws from me and ask me if I'm chinese in very insistent and broken english (because I harvest a huge number of raws). I don't buy or sell game gold for real $$. Selling gold is just not an efficient way to make money in the USA and buying the gold seems silly.
I even went a bit loony for a while and was manipulating the market for certain raw components these botters were consuming at a prodigous rate. I'd buy anything posted at the "normal price" of 1 silver and repost it immediately at 15-45 silver. I'd buy thousands of these raws and clear the market. It was fun in a twisted way. I could easly turn 10 gold piece into 150 gold pieces in about a half hour. I assume the botters were doing even better. The trade-skill botters are easy to identify, it took about a half hour of thinking to figure out how to spot them.
Current events?
What, you ask em how they voted for?
Which is why I shouldn't write when in combat in WOW.
Should have said, "What, you ask them how they voted?"
Based on my experiences with FFXI, I think the anti-Chinese sentiment in WoW is simply a human's innate tendency towards racism. Don't get me wrong, a lot of gold farmers are in fact Chinese, but a lot of them are European and American as well. Yet, everyone "knows" that all the farmers ruining the game are Chinese.
And the really funny thing is, now that all those chinese are behaving like nice capitalists instead of dirty unwashed heathen commies, everybody is gettin all bent out of shape.
Why did we bother with that whole stupid cold war thing, anyway?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They took our jobs!
Too-kourderb!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
YES, u Amelikans come too hour schver, pray with hour peepo, and take hour gould. And when we talk u laugh at us and say we stoopid. But you amelikans more styupid. You do not know the diffelence between "you're" and "your". Then you take our normahl engrish and put it up on www.engrish.com. You peepo styupid. We build warl to protect our big cuntry, when you peepo build small warl that cannot pohtect your literl shitty, Stoopid amelikans >_*
^_^
I love humanity, it is people I hate
Isn't it racist to assume a Chinese person couldn't be a ninja?
Master looter mode FTW
Actually ninjitsu originated in china. It was "borrowed" by the japanese during times when Bushido was at it's highest and some powers thought they needed some skilled fighters with a different set of skills.
I'm like a superhero, but with no powers or motivation.
It isn't like we usian have the best grammar.
When will the british servers start banning people who cant spell civilisation right?
While I don't play World of Warcraft, I have played other MMORPGs, and grammar and spelling mistakes abound. I interpret them as a hint that the person controlling that character is young, not foreign, though. I've botched spelling in my own posts more than occasionally, mostly from typos and other side effects of my fingers trying to move faster than my brain. Assuming that someone who makes grammatical mistakes is Chinese is silly, and assuming that someone who is Chinese is a squinty-eyed sweatshop slave playing for money is racist!
I now yield the soapbox to the next in line...
Wait, they reject the players with spelling or grammar mistakes? Seems to me this approach may weed out a small percentage of foreign users, but it is certain to weed out nearly every US WoW player.
And that's how I (who live and work in China) end up working with so many people who choose "English" names like CocoCat, Neo, Pile, Uranus, and Door.
I'm not making this up.
A MMORPG is a rather bad place to learn a language. What with abbreviations and unavoidable typos and the like.
You're forgetting that a game is a far superior place to learn a foreign language than reading a book. Think about how easy it is to learn facts while playing a game, especially when they are relevant to your mission.
Also, when you take into account the way brains store location data with new knowledge in an associative way (as in, you sometimes think of a certain, unrelated 3d scene in your life when you think of a concept), I think learning language through games is a real winner.
Learning a few useless slang words doesn't matter, in fact one could reasonably argue that the jargon is actually useful for the scope of the game, just as useful as any other word in that player's life (ie. it imparts meaning like any other words do).
But I do wonder, isn't this just another aspect of the game? It seems that people are willing to put up with players who wander around and off newbies, which doesn't seem very sporting to me. Is that not worse than stealing something? Couldn't it just add to the strategy of the situation if you suspect somebody of being a gold-farmer? Can't you kill that person while they sleep or some such?
It seems to me that this phenomenon is just an artifact of the games' success. You have to be careful in meat-space when going to the ATM because you know there are bad folks out there. I guess it's the same thing in the MMORPGs.
One of the links in the OP requires accepting cookies and waiting through an ad
Users of the world: We're here to help you, but help us help you. (your IT dept)
Considering that someone not playing on a localized server is a gold farmer is stupid and sad, it's akin to considering everyone from out of your country a proven terrorist.
Oh, geez, here we go. I get your point; but at the same time, I think that soon we're going to need a new corollary to Godwin's Law...
Sounds like the sequel to Cryptonomicon.
First, I'm not confidant enough in my spelling or grammar to pass 100%. I *know* I make mistakes, as does every speaker of every language, we're all human. Now, going just for content, and understanding the person speaking is different. That I'd pass, and I would fail at least 70% of the people I see playing. There's a reason I sit with all but guild/party chat off. I wish I was on my windows boot, I've got a screen shot of something to the effect of "kthx i lrn 1st aid l8r". Seriously, I think I'm going to *start* using this technique to weed out all the annoying 13 year olds.
Second, isn't Chine supposed to be the leading place for players? And don't they have their own servers? Pardon me for sounding crass (I've seen people even called racist for what I'm about to suggest) but, if they don't like how they're treated on one server, change. If they keep having bad experiences in America|Canada|, go somewhere where the majority will speak your language. I'm an Arabic major in school, and have been in rooms filled with native speakers who didn't like that I wasn't one. Fine... I left and studied elsewhere. To be quite frank, if you don't like something, and yet don't do anything about it your an idiot and should be treated as such. Flame me if you want, I'm not a racist, nor do I have anything against Chinese people in game (haven't seen one yet, that I know of, in fact), I just apply my approach to the real world in WoW just as much as real life.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
I was playing with a female paladin who I can only assume did not speak english as a first language. "She" was exceedingly hurried, bouncing around, drawing aggro and generally careless in her actions--and didn't seem terribly receptive to the requests or recommendations of anyone else in the party.
Trying to be tactful but express concern with the behavior, I said "you're a little gung ho, aren't you?"
She replied, "what's gung?"
A while ago, there was a rash of Chinese gold farmers in the game. At least what I heard was that they were farmers. What I DO know is that grouping with them was a guaranteed waste of time. I don't know how many times they would do things that any even remotely competent player would be smart enough to do, and in other cases would not do things that they should have learned some time between 1 and 50. (I play DAoC, max level there is 50.) To put it simply - they sucked. They may have been intelligent, but they had no concept of group strategy, and most importantly, WOULD NOT LISTEN. My friend and I would routinely ask them to do something so that we would stop dying every 2-3 minutes, but they would never do it or even respond.
As a result, I refuse to group with anyone who can't speak decent English, and also have 2-3 predominantly Chinese guilds blacklisted.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Actually I find it a lot more fun starting from scratch every now again than simply grinding away at level 60. To date I have two level 60s I hardly ever play any more, a 54 that I still use at times, and a dozen or so characters at levels 10-40. On top of this I just started up yet another from scratch last night. One of my level 60s is on a server I don't really like (for various reasons, one of which is the gold farmers messing with the economy), so I switched servers. I really think the only really good reason for sticking to a server is if you have lots of friends playing there.
Disclaimer: The above comment was made while under the influence of too much coding and not enough sleep.
So how exactly do they "steal" the loot at the end? Either set it to a master looter, or do random rolls. 90% of the stuff in dungeons is Bind on Pickup anyway, so it's not like they're going to steal random crap they can sell to a vendor for two gold. And if they do manage to "steal" the stuff on the final boss, whoop-de-fucking-doo; that's one guy out of the ten or so in each dungeon, and they usually don't even have the good stuff anyway.
No comment.
What about FOREIGN STUDENTS? There are plenty of chinese here in Toronto who stick to their cliques and all. Most of them can't speak english very well, since they converse regularly in their mother tongue and don't practice english that often. Granted, there are a few who are different (and are often in the sciences).. let no one take this as discrimination on my part, I am a foreign student myself. But these students do frequently have gaming habits, and I wouldn't be suprised if they played WoW on Canada's local servers.
I play wow. My main server is the 'Shattered Hand'. My toon's name is 'Yi'. I happen to be an American Polack. Once in awhile someone will ask to check my language skills or ask if I am Chinese. Once in like 1000 groups. I'd say the vas majority of players could care less what my nationality is as long as I can play.
On the other hand, I was once in a group with someone who was apparently French. They were unable to communicate with the team and, in the end, screwed up the session pretty badly because they could not follow simple instructions.
So, yeah. I'd be reluctant to play with someone who lacked skills in the main language of the server...
Or a ninja looter.
When playing an FPS, even a team one, you can make a decent contribution to your team without any actual communication at all. When playing straight deathmatch or any other non-team based mode, communication doesn't matter whatsoever.
Nearly all MMOGs, on the other hand, are about teamwork. All it takes is one person who doesn't listen or communicate well to get an entire group killed, or even wipe an entire multi-group raid. I've seen numerous cases where the actions of one single person who didn't listen to the raid leader caused the entire raid to wipe. As a result, it's simply not acceptable to join groups/raids in an MMOG if you are unable to communicate with the other people in your group/on the raid.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
oh to have modpoints. This is a +5 insightful if I've ever seen it...
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Maybe they want to play on servers that aren't so scrutinized by Chinese Govt officials?
I just can't be bothered.
Let's respond:
- He or she should have no problems getting into the group if he/she already has a friend in said group to vouch
- He/she has plenty of less/more popuplated servers in many asian countries to fulfill just those needs
- That's a good one! When's the last time you heard of an American/European dying in an internet cafe from playing too much. Given the sheer number of asian players alon I'd say he/she will have no problem finding just the right group
- Again, asians are playing 24/7 just like americans. There's never a shortage of people to play with in WOW
- Exactly why nobody wants them in their group. I don't know about you, but when I play a game, it's not to teach someone a new language. When I say "attack teh zerg" I expect them to know wtf to do. I don't want to wait for them to pull out their pocket translator to figure it out. If they're that obsessed with learning the language they can hop on any number of IRC servers and get the same effect.
- Maybe he/she should learn english first then if they're that obsessed. Again, not that hard to meet someone on IRC/forums first, befriend them, then try and join up in game... kind of like normal people do it.
Keep em coming, horshoes and handgrenades my friend.
What prevents black people from going to their schools? What prevents them from drinking from their water fountains?
Did you just compare localized servers to segragation? I think I know a few civil rights types who would like to have a word with you.
"It might be racist to screen out chinese players but let me tell you that it DOES save you from being ninja looted randomly."
In that case, it would be better if the US government doesn't let people with dark skin on airplanes, so that we won't get Muhammed 9/11'ed, eh?
If you agree with the first, and not with the second, then you don't understand logic.
If you agree with the second, well... let's just say that's not nice, and if everyone thought about that, we'd be back in a WWII era mentality.
Instead of people complaining that gold farming detracts from the game, they should be upset that the game designers can't just figure out a way to work around it via game design, rather than trying to put in stopgap measures to ban specific practices.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Ninja-looting on MMOG's means to take loot you have no right too.
I don't think you are a bigot, just ignorant of MMOG jargon and trying to make a cheap point.
Yea- I don't say MMORG- because none of them are about roleplaying for years. Just glorified level trees of one kind or another for the most part.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Man, I wish I had mod points today! That was brialliant.
Often the group leader will forget to set the loot rules before the boss fight, also the farmers will steal BoP items and sell them to a vendor (when you're selling gold every bit counts), or BoEs and sell them on the AH.
You mean I can't use "G'day" as a greeting anymore?
Acaila
Growing Old is Inevitable; Growing Up is Optional.
um.. why keep saying "Chinese" gold farmer? I know a lot of Western Players are selling game money to IGN(a company who buy and sell game money). And I meet a lot of selfish people (around the world) who took away people's stuff.
And why non-english speaking people can't play @ english server? Oh. almost forgot, maybe those game didn't come out for their langauge, and people would like to try out those games. And please, all people who playing the game, they did pay for the service fee. You have your right to kick them out from your team/party, but they also have right to enjoy the game. Game playing is not use about story, also some player enjoying about the game system, the graphic and etc.
MMORPG just like the real world, if you don't know english, you may not find a "OFFICE JOB" in America, but they still able to find jobs as cook, taxi driver and etc. What I'm trying to say is, if WoW or other online game don't want people sell game money or breaking the rule, they can delete those "Gold Farmer" accounts. And please be nice too people who have problem with english, let everyone enjoy the game.
I agree. I knew a guy that used to do that on EQ. Behind the pidgin English was a teenager in NY with perfect English. His other character spoke completely differently.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
On pretty much every server...
Whew! I'm glad you tried 'pretty much every server' to see what the sentiments were like, because I thought that to be a pretty intesive duty and never undertook it myself.
"What people seem to fail to realize is also that plat farmers don't want to group with non-plat farmers"
Oh, yeah? Thanks for that bit of irrelevant information. How the pricks make their money is an issue, but the issue at hand is the exchange of game currency for real-life currency.
And I need to say this...
"What people seem to fail to realize is also that" This, folks, is a good example of someone who is emersed in WoWglish and tried to formulate a bonafide sentence.
+++ Invalid Concept Error. Please Install Responsibility Module And Reboot +++
Feel free. Most people I know don't know what it means.
This actually includes some of my Jewish friends!
People "selling" gold for real money are effectively taking a product of Blizzard's game engine out of circulation (theft) by charging real money for it. They're selling something they have no right of ownership to.
A bit of a grey area in the law, but that's the best analogy I can come up with. I'm sure Blizzard have something about this in their terms of service? And if not, perhaps they should...
Along the lines of "All virtual content in the WOW world is owned by Blizzard and may not be sold outside of the WOW game world". (IANAL, i'm sure a lawyer could come up with something legit).
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I have ran into many chinese gold farmers who say "i no farm, i jsut chinese, like to play game, you take me to group ok?!" You let them in despite your better judgement. Once the final boss is down they steal everyting and say "im sorry i not good english i not know rules kthxbye"
l2p, use master looter
Actually ninjitsu originated in china. It was "borrowed" by the japanese during times when Bushido was at it's highest and some powers thought they needed some skilled fighters with a different set of skills.
More likely, early nin arts were influenced by Chinese ex-pats. Dirty tricks and misdirection hew to no specific country.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It is racist. Ninja is Japanese, not Chinese. Learn the difference or you will be called an ignorant bigot.
Sub-Zero is a Chinese ninja.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
For me, a Taiwanese, non-English speaker, it is because I played before the Taiwan servers is opened, and the company Blizzard licensed is so unprofesional (i.e, unable or delay to deliver correct translation after each patch) and has doubtful attitude (i.e, strongly againt use of addons to eliminate customer service).
Me no chinese, just pretend like no good english. Silly racist! Me get you drops! You blame wrong guy. No chinese, pale skinny whiteboy instead. Me peepee Cokey too. kthxbye
I'm trying to learn Spanish and French at the moment and let me tell you something: Nothing you read in a book can prepare you for a chat room. #linuxfr has just as much crazy slang and broken French as #linux does English. Knowing a language, however, involves being able to use it to communicate in any reasonable and common venue. The internet certainly qualifies as such and so its speech should be learned along with all other dialects (if this is the proper term, IANA linguist) of the language. In fact, you could go so far as to argue that internet comprehension is as important as comprehension of the standard language, but I'm not going to support that point here.
Le français vous intéresse?
There are no Chinese servers for me to choose from.
/.) you'll like being corrected and thus taught something :-)
That's the only mistake that really popped out at me.
I'm not trying to be rude, if you're a geek like me (and you probably are, you're on
Le français vous intéresse?
I don't play WoW.
Just wondering, is this where the new word "ninja" meaning "steal" I've been hearing from gamer kids recently came from?
Le français vous intéresse?
Just like Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken are basically the exact same person.
Except Al Franken is funny and Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot
So how did the English learn to speak English?
From the Celts, Vikings, Romans, Saxons and Normans, probably filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography.
IIRC a Portuguese guy wrote a book entitled "English as she is spoke" which sold very well.
To answer some of your possible reasons:
Maybe he or she wants to play with his or her friend who lives in America
If there is a "friend" on the American servers, then said friend probably won't be giving him/her the old "Babe Ruth's Batting Average" test in the first place. So it doesn't really apply.
Maybe Americans/Europeans are better roleplayers or otherwise generally play more in a style he or she likes.
How can one role-play in text when one doesn't even speak the language being used? I can't really see this one applying either.
Maybe he or she hopes to move to America or Europe someday and is using the game to also help practice English. (Two birds with one stone!)
May the gods help that poor soul. I hope they never end up in the Barrens. Learning English on an MMO is like trying to learn computer science on #phatCrackz on irc.l33ta55h47.net
Part of the problem here is that Blizzard (or Square or SOE or whoever) has let the gold farming/selling problem get out of hand, and the legit players who don't buy gold are fed up with it. Blizzard, for example, puts few customer service resources into banning cheaters (people using teleport hacks and other third-party programs), meaning that people who've been reported a dozen times over for cheating are still playing the game days and even weeks later. And if they aren't putting resources into catching cheaters, then you know they aren't doing jack about gold farmers and sellers (though they do apparently suspend or ban spammer accounts since they're so easy to catch and generate so many complaints).
The thing is, the steps required to catch gold sellers aren't that difficult, and the CS benefits of lowering their standards from "unequivocal proof" to "almost certainly a gold farmer or seller" would far outweigh the the negatives from increased false positives. If the companies would step up enforcement, then the frustration level would be a lot less, and the anger expressed against foreigners (in particular, Asians) would be less as well.
You are most likely being suckered and Blizzard implemented a mechanism to prevent the situation you described.
WoW has Master Looter mode to prevent ninjas. What you are dealing with is not a non-english speaker but most likely a greedy american that wants you to think he's Asian.
A better reason for not letting them in your group is that most of the high end instances take extreme team work and generally some sort of third party voice program such as Ventrillo or teamspeak and most importantly complete cooperation.
My guild just got Majordomo Executus down after about 4 tries and there's no way we could have done it with someone in the group that didn't know what we were saying.
There is one "China" on my server that I will group with and it's because he's good. He knows about 8 words in english: Yes, no, come, ok, wait, give, take, thank. The only problem with grouping with him is that he whispers me everytime I get online because I'm the only person that will help him with stuff. He's not a gold farmer though, he does instance runs and I've even seen him pvp.
That said, I've played WoW since beta one, and the only players I have ever run into who do not speak English or claim ignorance as an excuse for their ninja looting/leeroy pulling/etc., have ALL been Chinese speakers without one exception. That's the experience that causes the stereotype. But, on the other hand, one of my good friends in my guild is a player from China who is a good team player and speaks very good English and he's always the first I'll ask to come with me on a run.
The issue here isn't RACE, it's a LANGUAGE BARRIER that presents a functional challenge. If you can't separate the two, you probably belong in Washington with the other PC-speaking talkboxes.
What, me? Never.
>I have ran into many chinese gold farmers who say "i no farm, i jsut chinese, l
What is funny with this is that a lot of EU/US players do this to remove blame.
For example in Eve I would routinely spam Chinese/Japanese/Korean if I get a random conversation with someone (eg. I'm about to kill/rob them or they are to me). It keeps them confused enough.
For example there is a strong belief that Chinese miners in Eve are all macro'ers/famers. So I get a mining craft, drop a can in a asteroid field and wait. Sure enough someone shows up and messages me. I spam them in Chinese and get "F'ing macroer!" they then loot my can, while they swapping the can (thinking they can trick me into attacking) my friends warp into my location and blow them up and loot them. Works almost every time.
What I have also noticed is that a lot of EU/US players can't tell the difference between Korean/Japanese/Chinese writing.
Btw, did you know that the nationality of the biggest gold farmer in MMORPGs is American. He outsources the game work to chinese as they are cheap.
How about, they live in the US but don't speak English well? I have seen a lot of abuse in WoW purely on the fact that a player doesn't speak English. I consider this racism. And what is the point of abusing, swearing and spitting on them? They won't understand most of it anyway and its not like its going to be enough to discourage them from it.
Only an alliance would bribe someone to wipe the raid. I'll split your skull.
I have ran into [...]
You fail it.
I can't be trying to do a quest and have people who can't understand "Ok, sap that guy." or "Please don't break that sheep"
:-)
Ok, I have yet to play WoW, but I have to say that if it involves any quests where "breaking the sheep" is actually a worry I think I lost all interest. Perhaps 'yall should just leave that poor sheep alone and find more species specific companionship instead.
Although perhaps that's what you were doing when you were instructing someone to "sap that guy"... Not that there's anything wrong with that!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, they're too busy comparing the GOP senators to plantation owners...
They need truck drivers really bad over there.
Really? Who does? It seems the situation is cleared up, there are a lot of people looking for those truck driving jobs..
Where are the ads?
Everyone hates the farmers as players because they're jerks in game. But they have a massively stabilizing influence on the economy of the world. They increase the size of the overall economy for the shard by maintaining a constant flow of gold and drops into the system, which is deflationary. The gold that other players buy from IGN and others gets dumped into the economy in lots for epic items, and trickles down to regular players selling hot drops; or is simply recirculated through the farmers, who are making more blue and purple drops available on auction than would otherwise be available (again, deflationary); or goes into a money sink like an epic mount which removes it from the game.
The problem isn't that the farmers exist, it's that they're assholes. If they were smart, they'd be good, co-operative players, exerting a net benefit on their chosen shard.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
MMORPGs favor people who have oodles of spare time. Time is money. Someone is paying for your rent, clothing, food, electricity, and broadband while you are online. And there's an opportunity cost -- every hour you spend online could have otherwise been spent doing something else, like working for money.
You're welcome to spend your time and money however you like. If you prefer to play WoW for 20 hours a week, and you take great pride in having done everything for yourself, that's fine. I'm glad that having this hobby makes you happy. But don't pretend that you're somehow morally superior to the guy who pays for Chinese-farmed gold. Both of you are spending money to advance in WoW. The difference is that you are spending more money, because an hour of your time is worth more than an hour of a gold-farmer's time. (If this is not true, you should consider becoming a gold farmer!)
If you find this disturbing, perhaps you need to switch to a game that places more emphasis on actual skill (obtained through hours of practice) and less emphasis on "skill points" (obtained through hours of work that could just as well be done by someone else). Try chess. Try poker. Try any of several hundred other online games.
OR, they might be like me , a 50 year old woman who was never a very good typist and finds it very difficult to type one handed. I play with my son and make him do most of the communicating other than "add" or "TY" or "NP" when things are actually happening. If I wanted to chat with people I'd do it here or on a message board or something, where I have more time to type.
Uh yeah, that's why they put the "need" and "greed" buttons into the game. At 60 it's not difficult to find out what you want before going into an instance. PUGs are slow enough without having to wait for everyone to pass, and then after finding out no one needs it, having to wait for everyone to
What is this 'greeting' you are talking about.
I learned my social skills form online games!
i am quite sad to see all these racist comments. especially on the day after Martin Luther King day. have you all so quickly forgotten?
Personally, i'm saving up real gold for when we return to the Gold Standard (tm).
You might be interested in e-gold (referral link; remove the last bit of the URL if you want). It's a digital currency (i.e. bits stored in a database), but it's 100% backed by actual gold stored in a vault. The idea is to combine the convenience and flexibility of Internet payment systems with the principles of the Gold Standard.
I might be paranoid but I wonder how many people out there that can speak English put on a facade as a chinese to act like a gold farmer.
I agree with you if it's a game like Diablo. But learning a language from WOW isn't practical. There are too many time constraints. Overall, books are much better until you're at a pretty high level. When I was learning Japanese, I must have read hundreds of comic books and chilren's stories before I was able to tackle DQVII in Japanese.
I'm a gnu world man.
Ninjitsu may have originated in China, but ninja-looting appears to have originated on MMORPGs, mostly.... though it has antecedents in more conventional gaming and real life.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And "Bad English" is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, including by Americans whose native tongue is ostensibly English as well as other people...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Now that the Chinese have this negative press, any old "ninja looter", no matter the actual country of origin can use the excuse: "im sorry i not good english i not know rules kthxbye" Or worse: this stereotype will be automatically considered when a less talkative player steals all the loot and leaves suddenly. "aw, no he didn't! it must have been a Chinese gold-farmer!"
It is clear that you sir have never played WoW. A ninja is someone wo "steals" somting from another player. i.e a ninja-looter, ninjas somthing. http://ninja.urbanup.com/1407729/
:-)
KatieMae - LVL 60 Druid, Arthas
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
In WoW, all cash money found is evenly divided amongst the party. There are a number of built-in looting rules that can be used for item though.
/roll, which randomly generates a number from 1-100. However, when everyone passes, the item can be looted by anyone. Or, again, if one person rolls after everyone passes, the item is theirs. This system, again, can be useful in a safe environment, like a guild run, because it gives time to discuss distribution of the item.
Round Robin: People take turns looting corpses until everyone has looted a corpse, and then the cycle starts again.
Group Loot: Same as Round Robin, except there is a loot "threshhold"; if an item is of a certain quality or higher (common, uncommon, rare, epic), then everyone is given a chance to roll on item. Blizzard recently introduced a new loot rolling system so that players can roll Need on an item, indicating they will use the item, or Greed, indicating they will sell it. If there are any Need rolls, the Greed rolls are ignored and only the Need rolls are compared.
Free-For-All: Anyone can loot any corpse.
Need before Greed: Essentially the same as Group Loot, except that people who cannot use an item cannot roll on it; if a piece of armor is dropped that is mail, only mail wearing classes can roll on it.
Master Looter: Only a designated person can loot the corpses, but they can give the loot to anyone. This is usually used by guilds on bosses, to prevent item theft and to provide time to discuss distribution of the item.
How, with these rules in place, can item theft pe so rampant? Under the old Group Loot rolling system, you could be branded a ninja if you rolled on and won an item not useful to your class - a warrior taking something clearly meant for a mage, for instance. It's somewhat easier under the new system to just wait until everyone has rolled Greed or passed and then to roll Need - the item is automatically yours.
And, for some unknown reason, it seems popular to have everyone pass and then type
And that is WoW's loot system in a nutshell, with some minor analysis and bias thrown in for good measure.
I just compared segregation to segregation. He's saying people should be, get this, segregated, based on their race and national origins to the respective servers for that origin. I didn't say having localized servers is a problem, and you obviously know as a fact that isn't what I was saying--- but are instead trying to stretch my argument well beyond its intended bounds. This tactic may have served you well in your high-school debate class, but it really doesn't do much for a reasoned conversation in the real world. What I'm really pointing out is, using his argument for another egregiously worse situation demonstrates very clearly the errors in his logic. And this isn't plainly obvious to you because it is rationally any more viable--- people in the fifties, for instance, would have found it about as difficult to undrestand as you're having trouble understanding why judging all of China for the actions of a few is a problem. I think a segregated Internet is a pretty bad thing. And, like I said, I think making a blanket judgement of the many by the deeds of the few, and assigning a test of nationality, is pretty damn racist.
If Chinese players need to join groups... is there anything preventhing them with working with other Chinese players? I imagine that would be more likely due to timezone-related factors.
There are exceptions, of course, but in these online games it is peculiar to watch the nationalies of those coming and going around you shift as the planet turns. In frequent 24-hour+ gaming sessions (on medical leave, very bored insomniac) it is quite noticable.
Incidentally, in my experience the Chinese tend to be the most pleasant to work with.
I understand why players may not want to group or even play with those that cannot atleast type "perfect" English. However I am from British Columbia, Canada and play WoW a few days a week. Passed Grade 12 English and can type/write/speak English fairly well, and I am accused of being a Gold Farmer as well as not being "White" a min. of 19 times daily while I am only playing for at most 4 hours a day.
I've played WoW for less than a year and for more than half of it the only ones that would group with me and wouldn't accuse me (to this very day) are those I know from work that play or THOSE THAT CAN'T TYPE ENGLISH PERFECTLY! I've had nothing but issues playing with other English players and have several times wanted to go to the over seas servers so I'm not being accused left, right and center that I'm Farming.
Unfortunatly people seem to forget that Canda is included so of couse not every one is white that play any game since we has such a large population base that is from other countries or have lived here for years. One player I regularly meet online to group with was hesitant to group with me when I asked her the first time, and I quote her message back to me after asking "You sure? I'm Chinese and sometimes can't type well...I'm not careful enough...". I've been lucky and have had quite a few exchange student in my life but I've never felt so sick as to hear anyone say that they feel I wouldn't group with them because they were "Chinese".
I'm sorry but everyone out there needs to get to know a player BEFORE they decide that just because they are of a different nationality or don't seem to be "White" that they deserve to be treated any differently than how you yourself want to be treated. Hell I'm white and get accused of not being "White enough" to group with others all the time. It seems as though the players on the Canadian/American servers will look for any excuse to not group with someone because they typed too fast and didn't type a word perfectly/that they tend to not listen to others in the group/they can't read English well or they think that person acts like a Farmer.
Fortunatly I've managed to find a Guild that has plenty of players from different nationalities which I prefer and I love hearing other languages over Team Speak but then again I'm open minded and will give plenty of time to those that need some time to learn how to interact when we group.
Thank you for your time and I hope others out there can be open minded about making groups work and not limit themselves by being narrow minded.
Sounds like a typical American teenage girl.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
From the summary: "the negative reactions Chinese players recieve on"
And further down: "If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected"
Recieve -> receive
QED
Maybe I'm missing the point, but I firmly believe that if farmers can prosper in MMORPG the problem lies in the game. If the way to walk up the ladder in a game is to repeat menial and boring tasks over and over again maybe there's something wrong with the gameplay (IMHO).
The fact that in a world willing to be about heroism, the way do make it is the virtual equivalent of assembly line work, sounds dangerously like a bug or a loophole (IMHO).
Thus I think the real issue isn't about whether online America hates chinese farmers or not, but rather if farmers make sense at all in an online RPG (IMHO).
What's really funny about this is that "gung ho" is not actually English -- it was in fact borrowed from the Chinese, "kung ho", which is an abbreviation for the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society, whose long name was abbreviated to those Mandarin Chinese words. Its meaning is work, peace and harmony.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
So you are saying China's population problems have stemmed into WOW servers?
Now maybe the people of the world will wake up and see the true horror of what we are doing to our planet.
As John Lennon once sang:
"Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag."
.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Chatting with some people there makes the part of my brain that learned English die a little bit every time.
;)
So you're reading Slashdot to finish it off then ?
Thomas-
You can learn a language playing MMORPG, the only thing you must remember is you can't learn a language only by playing a MMORPG. I'm French speaking and I have played different MMORPG and yes it helped me in my learning because you do have the opportunity to speak with people. Beside, some guilds/pledges etc do not accept people chatting with a bad grammar or typos. There is alos teamspeak and ventrilo usage that is quite good for your English. What are the exercices you're doing at school ? Reading, writing, listening and speaking. That's what you do when you play on a foreign language server, but you have to be smart enough to combine it with some more conventional learning. After all, if you try to learn English with music or movies, you'll have the same problem. One more thing, I have played Lineage 1 and 2 on US servers for years ... and I've never been a gold farmer ;)
I'm sorry but I find the fact you are coldy discussing how to loot corpses far more disturbing than your whinges that people occasionally beat you to it ! Do you realise how sick and warped you are ? You should seek help now.
The game was released earlier in America, then in Europe and at the end in Asia, so asian players who were not willng to wait months to play, opened accounts on american and EU servers.
I disagree. The problem with all of these is that they are passive -- you merely read/hear what others have produced. The huge advantage of chatting onlinem, having a penpal, or go visiting a country is that it's interactive. Many people, me included, learn like a gazillion times better when we *use* what we learn instantly, when we're active participants and not only passive receivers.
I don't think the slang and so on is such a problem. You recognize it as such, and it's not a minus knowing the slang of a language, aslong as it's in addition to the normal words.
My english is learnt trough a mixture of reading books, writing and receiving megabytes of email and irc-chat, and spending around a year talking englisch around the clock. It's not perfect, but all of it was a lot more effective than what we had in school.
Whew! I'm glad you tried 'pretty much every server' to see what the sentiments were like, because I thought that to be a pretty intesive duty and never undertook it myself.
No, but I read through all the server forums, and on posts whining about the Chinese there was usually a representative claiming they were ruining his game on a variety of different servers.
"What people seem to fail to realize is also that plat farmers don't want to group with non-plat farmers"
Oh, yeah? Thanks for that bit of irrelevant information. How the pricks make their money is an issue, but the issue at hand is the exchange of game currency for real-life currency.
Somebody forgot to RTFA. Both of them.
And I need to say this...
"What people seem to fail to realize is also that" This, folks, is a good example of someone who is emersed in WoWglish and tried to formulate a bonafide sentence.
emersed (adj) - Rising above the surface of water.
One good reason for dividing the game into regions is that it makes it possible to test new code without doing a world-wide rollout that could prove disastrous if there were any show-stopper bugs. For instance, WoW is now at version 1.9.2 in Europe, but I believe it's still at 1.8.x in the US. The new patches are being tested in Europe first - and the folks in the States will never have to suffer through 1.9.0 and 1.9.1, both of which had unpleasant little bugs! EVE may well have cottoned on to the same idea, using China as a test bed.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
The IP number isn't the problem, a detriment to the group is removed; whether this person is chinese or some american teenager matters not at all. I think this is utterly proper and it is merely coincidence that one of many nationalities that can fall into the "unresponsive player" catagory has gotten itself up in arms about it. We're not threatening your goddamned national sovereignty this time, okay? Also of note: not everyone practices this as a policy to invites, but we do if we notice that the player in question doesn't answer when asked if he needs a summon (for example) or if he can pick up some reagents or ammo on the way to the instance dungeon. I do play the game and this does happen with pickup groups. (pickups: random players to fill the group, not members of your guild / friends).
::jafomatic
Yes. Though more specifically, it means taking something impolitely, rather than stealing something someone has - for example taking the only remaining seat when there is someone else who has a bad back who has to stand is "ninjaing" the seat.
If "gung ho" is actually a bastardisation of "kung ho", it has been done in a quite sarcastic way, as both seem to mean allmost the opposite (act first, think later peace and harmony)
1 .jpg]
P.s.
A funny thing in the current context : [img=http://images.slashdot.org/hc/43/3dff35ab508
I had to look close to see what was there : an "m" in the middle ? Oh, no : it must be a welded-together and crossed by a vertical line at the most inapropriate position "pa" combination, and an allmost disappearing ending "r".
Why now does the above sound like its someones slurred speech (slang) ?
come on - it's just a bloody game! everyone is taking this far too seriously... also kind of funny how everyone's solution is keep the chinese on their own servers... isnt that the grand, master plan of the supposed 'great firewall' which most of you are against (i.e china having it's own version of the internet cut off from the outside world full of party propaganda)? segregation is a form of racism everybody!
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
It's true that people id'd as gold farmers will get worse treatment, but not true that people with poor language skills are treated like this. Honestly, have you seen the chat in any MMO lately? I call bullshit.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
These users have the same right to use the game to learn a language as I have to refuse their request to group with me and I do have that right. If neither right is taken away by our accepting the EULA, we can both accomplish our goals. See how easy that is?
I don't give a rat's ass what nationality you are; if you're not responding to queries on the raid channel, you don't get near the dead bossmobs I leave in my wake.
No player is preventing them from playing the game; that's up to Blizzard.
::jafomatic
The majority of slang used in online MMPORPGs is definately not useful if in any situation outside of one of these games. I mean sure you could talk about power leveling with a carpenter but he might get the wrong idea!
CCP has a Eve Online test server where they test all patches. There has been some word stating that the reason for the Chinese server is related to Chinese law. Some have stated that Chinese law requires MMO's to allow for sale of ingame items, but I don't know if that's true.. sounds kinda unlikely. It's more likely related to the curfew laws.
How about this one; MMORPG's as uncensored chat servers, a place to talk where there is less likelyhood of the Mind Police listening?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Garden variety farmers, what will they think up next? :)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
On Neriak, I know of one Chinese player and he plays the game for what it is. Hes rich (from what I guess) but he does it the right way, buy buying rares - he has "dont buy from bots" policy and crafting. He helped me get two Chinese harvesters banned and we have more on the horizon.
It's neither. Inappropriate categorisation. It's a behavioural issue. Some people are prats.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Its still a big problem. Easy to find, look for the high level unguilded players that youve never seen in a group. Look at the top 10 kill stats for Neriak - all bots.
Why, I improved my English noticeably while playing MUDs.
Seriously though, MUDs are much much better in this respect than graphical MMORPGs, due to copious amounts of descriptive text you HAVE to understand and be able to read quickly (just try keeping up with scrolling lines during a pitched battle).
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I thought they were Mexican? Wait, am I getting those two movies mixed up again?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
est way to learn them, imho, movies, tv and the written word (fiction works: novels, comic books). Of course, you might end up with an accent that's all over the place (say, a mix of Frasier and Walker Texas Ranger) but what the heck.
Did that make anyone else think of the Junkticons from the Transformers movie?
Mod point free since 2001
What has been described must surely exist in the US only. On the English language European servers there are a large quantity of people for whom English is a secondary or tertiary language, especeially from the Nordic countries and Benelux. I've not heard of any of them being challenged in such a way, we get our share of loot/gold farmers too alas.
I know I'd fail the test - I am truly terrible when it comes to in-game typoes, I'm just glad that as a sys admin and consultant in real life I do some what better.
Dapprxxx on the Dragonblight Euro server (and Test2 during the Final and Open betas).
Sadly that's the funniest thing I've read all day! Oh god, the image!
Yeah... I find the whole premise implausible. People who make grammatical errors can't find groups in WoW? Riiight... that's going to work out. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of guilds had that policy somewhere, but there's just no way that this is an epidemic. From my experience, it seems like people from other countries are more likely to be pushed away by cultural differences ("acting weird," from a sheltered North American perspective) rather than poor english skills. If you know enough english to follow basic instructions, most people aren't even going to notice if you can't spell.
Some of the farmers on AB have actually started forming guilds, hehe. I never understood why they didn't take the ten second effort to make their characters look legit. Half of them run around with names like Ababbhahshbhz.
I have actually run into farmers that were decent people, too. A couple let us join their named group in RoV and roll on loot, things like that. I honestly don't have a problem with farmers in general, it's the ones that are petty and horde content that annoy me.
How you can say something like this and get modded insightful is beyond me. There is no correlatation between your two statements, one is a goverment enforced racism, the other is a single person's decision to not group with people based on the quality of their speech.
Unless you are merely using his text out of context to make an argument with someone that might hold that opinion, YOU'RE the one with the lack of understanding, specifically how to argue. Look up straw man argument, logical fallacy, slippery slope.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
It is called "American English".
No, it's called lazy video game players who type like AOL kids.
If you think that is what American English is, then chances are you're not in the most scholarly of crowds. Don't believe me? Please go to your local library and check out some great American authors. They don't speak of obscenities in acronyms, get riled up over minor victories, or have machismic little contests.
Oh, and PWN3D!!!!1!!!1!11!!!!11!!!1!!
Just joshin' on that one.
Gold, although in demand, isn't the thing that is really valuable. It is time. To buy some valuable item requires a good chunk of in game time to accumulate gold. The problem often is that this amount of time is prohibitive if you do anything else in the real world (oh say...like have a profressional job).
:) ). The second option actually seems quite sane and reasonable. If you need 1000 gold and know it will take months to accumulate with your current play style how unreasonable is it to just spend $ to get it done with? Many people have no qualms about trading "months of play" for "$ today". I don't condone buying from gold farmers but I understand there are very logical reasons for doing so.
At this point one is faced with this if one wants to stay competitive:
- Spend as much time in game as you do as you spend at work to stay competitive (turning a game into a second job).
- Or pay someone else to keep you competitive
- Quit
If you pick the last one, all discussion becomes moot so ignore it. The first one is *hard*. Working two jobs was already hard if they weren't professional so doing it while one is extra tricky where other aspects your life suffers for it (as if playing the game already wasn't a detriment enough
As a note on the original topic of "Chinese Gold Farmers": Bleh, what a horrible racist term born of envy. For all we know a good chunk aren't Chinese at all but since they do a task deemed dirty its time to pull out the derogatory crap.
um.. why keep saying "Chinese" gold farmer?
Because countries with a lower cost of living and fewer high-paying career opportunities, such as Taiwan and China, are more likely to produce gold farmers (a job which doesn't pay nearly enough to be worth the hassle for most Americans and Europeans.)
It's not that they are ethnically Chinese, it's that they live in China.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Odd. Chambers says:
1940s, originally US: from Chinese gong work + he together.
Although I suppose that doesn't rule out your suggestion
What you are dealing with is not a non-english speaker but most likely a greedy american that wants you to think he's Asian.
To quote Peter Sellers: "Interesting theory, but one small problem. Is stupid!"
This whole thread is a discussion about how people have become reluctant to allow Chinese-sounding players into their groups. If somebody is a gold farmer, the LAST THING they want is for you to think they are Chinese, because their goal is to get invited to instances which they can then ninja loot.
You have it exactly backwards. Gold farmers are typically Asians who would prefer you think they are American or European, not Americans and Europeans who want you to think they are Asians.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm picturing something like: "Yo, so, like, than my half-orc like hack this guys hedd of, an like dude was serrusly killt! I gots majer bling of da b, to!" PLAYER REJECTED> GAME OVER. "Yo! Like waddup wid dat?!?" PLAYER REJECTED> PLEASE SUBMIT HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH GRADES TO CONTINUE.
Honestly, as a WOW player, this is a real issue. You do a quest with a group, and when a boss drops a good piece of gear, that player who only says two English words the whole time nabs it, and drops your group. You can't do anything about it, and your two or three hours getting there were wasted. This is more bad apples spoiling it for all the rest than an imagined issue.
[kup]And now the news, don't touch the dial![/kup]
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
Can the problem be solved using in-game mechanism?
For example, each act of handing out/dropping/selling an item for an unreasonably low price detracts from the player's "suspicion karma" value, which then slowly recuperates. When the karma drops below a certain threshold, the player becomes persona non grata, open for anyone to kill for an in-game reward and loot. This shouldn't be a problem for legitimate users, but a gold farmer would bust their karma very fast in order to make a profit.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
...because someone in your group can't understand the directions being given them by the group leader, you'll think twice about inviting someone that doesn't speak the same language as the rest of you. I'd bet cold hard cash that those screaming "discrimination!" have never had this happen. It reminds me of women that completely abandon their anti-gun stance after being the victim of rape. Once you've been rape-wiped in WoW due to a language barrier, your political correctness will be nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
No Comprehend Languages spells on Azeroth, eh?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I m not 2 sure wat ur talking about. I learened english playing Ultima Online and I am pretty good at talking english. Thanxxxx!!!
select Name from LocalLibrary where author = "American" and author = "great"
zero rows returned.
Maybe you want to cite some examples for us to mock...
never read kerouac...? maybe vonnegut???
Both wirters using their own forms of words and spelling to conjur up a feel for the meaning rather than a word. Sure this is mostly representative of "beat" authors, though (i have to move to the brits coz my knowledge of US fiction is poor) we could get into maybe irving welsh or even shakespeare. both of whom use experessions and word groups never touched by "serious" authors before..
Writing is a means of communication and every group of people like to use their own words, be they medics, or techies or lawyers or gamers. PWN3D!!!11!! is much easier to type than "Sir, it would appear that my score is superior to yours" and in the middle of gaming I go for speed not some outdated idea of correct english
bah!*@%!
Mark Twain. But remember, that one passage where he starts suggesting alterations to language and spelling is satire.
Granted, there are Chinese players who play the game just for the fun of it, and do so on English-speaking servers because they joined before the Chinese servers were started. If I had any sympathy to give, they'd have a small piece of it. But here's why most high-level players do as the article describes (Yes, it's true):
Gold Farmers, aka Chinese Gold Farmers, aka CGFs (Racist, perhaps, but it's the name everyone uses) are, for those of you not familiar with the game, people who play the game professionally (The stereotype used to be a sweat-shop environment), being paid to gather large amounts of in-game items and currency, to be sold on the Internet for real-life currency, violating Blizzard's terms of service.
The "Chinese" part of this at least began from facts, since originally (I don't know if it's changed since then), an overwhelming percentage of these farmers were doing so from China (I don't speak the language, so I can't say for sure).
So you might ask what the problem is, besides the TOS violations...
1) They have a large effect on the game economy, introducing more gold into the in-game market than would normally be there. In accordance with good old supply-and-demand, the market inflates and prices rise (Blizzard has put mechanisms in the game to prevent this, known as "gold sinks"). I'm a programmer, not an economist, so I can't really predict the full effect of their actions.
2) Since there are many items that can only be obtained in dungeons, with the assistance of a group, these CGFs often join dungeon groups/raids in order to get them. This leads to several problems:
3) Most of them don't speak English, or rather they speak JUST enough to carry out a business transaction ("WTS [Linked Item] 5g", where "WTS" = "Want to Sell"). This means the group can't properly communicate with them to plan battle tactics or organize. Without teamwork, well, bad things happen.
4) Assuming (2a) doesn't get everyone killed, they're often overly-greedy when it comes time to distribute the loot ("loot" = Items dropped from enemies). They'll often say they desperately need an item, when they only intend to sell it for some quick cash (Players who need an item as an upgrade to their current character are given priority over those who just want to sell it). This means less rewards for other players.
5) Sometimes, they are just joining a dungeon raid to get one particular item. In that case, they'll just abandon the group as soon as they get it, leaving the others shorthanded. If a dungeon is designed to be completed by a 5-player group, 4-players will have a harder time, and may not be able to complete it at all.
So these players really do disrupt gameplay, and can ruin it for those of us who play for fun instead of profit. I admit, I've done some of what the article says, booting players who are unable to communicate (I don't care if they're fluent or use proper grammar - Hell, even my grandparents have started saying the hated "lol" online, but communication is vital), and I will continue to do so.
An analogy for those of you who haven't fallen into MMORPG addictions... Take a football team, any team, and replace the quarterback with someone who doesn't speak the same language as the rest of the players. He can play just by watching his teammates and going along with them, but he can't follow the plays and is therefore ineffective. Same thing.
Ok, I'll stop ranting now.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
English speakers aren't always all that great. Sometimes the run off in the middle of pla"LEEEEEEROY JENKINS!!!"
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
The answer to this is to allow PvP by default... After they have to deal with the whole group a couple times... this would stop.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
In WoW, it's usually more efficient (if you're just going purely for gold, which incidentally is the highest monetary unit in WoW) to solo grind mobs by yourself in a generally unpopulated zone, and also absorb all the resources you find there, and list those in the AH, than to get a group together. The rewards from zones are bind on pickup and can't be traded, and the time investment vs. turnout for other items (cloth, cash, etc.) is generally not as good unless your entire group is skilled (and the gold farmers tend to be very unskilled, with only a rudimentary understanding of game mechanics).
There are quite a few instances of the gold farmers figuring out ways to get certain drops from dungeons, but this also usually involves being solo and using some trick to get by most of the mobs, then killing a boss through kiting or some other nonstandard means (or just finding a chest or other resource which is lootable after sneaking by mobs).
So no, in WoW it's almost never worth it for gold farmers to group up. Sometimes they will sneak their way into an instance group and attempt to steal all the boss loot, but I honestly don't understand why. It just doesn't seem like it'd be worth the time for them to come if they're just going to vendor the boss drops.
There are about 10 North Americans living on my floor (out of about 25 people). I'm in Quebec, so half of them have French as their first language. McGill, my school, is consistantly ranked #1 for race and class relations by the princeton review. That said, people self-segregate. I have friends from China, India, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Japan, Quebec and plenty of other places. My girlfriend is Polish. But Chinese people study with other chinese people, Arabic speakers study with other Arabic speakers and so on. Depending on how long people have lived in Canada/America the same often applies to social circles. My lab partner is from Quebec and went to McGill to brush up on his English. But he had to pass a fluency test to get in. So if he wasn't already passably fluent, he wouldn't be my lab partner. And that's a good thing because we can't do our labs without communicating. Getting the idea?
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.
Unlikely, since so many players can't speak english correctly as is.
Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem
The main problem I've found when grouping with gold farmers to low tier end game dungeons (UBRS and under) is they will ninja your loot. They have a quota to meet, they aren't there to gear up for MC, they are there for a job. While someone above posted a cutsie story about a chinese gold farmer not understanding what to roll on and what not to roll on, the majority of them will ninja you and know what they are doing, and will have no problem laughing at you afterwords.
Plus, they are all rogues, do you really need an extra rogue for your pve run?
I don't play WoW, but can't you just fucking kill them when they do this stuff? For the most part it keeps people honest on the NWN servers I play on.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Blizzard has made different administration for WOW europe and WOW america. So with my account created in america I cannot access the french server to play on my own language without buying the game a second time.
The problem is the conversion of real world gold to virtual gold.
Actually, that's not even the problem.
The real problem is that games are designed so that there is a grind; there is something to get for a lot of virtual gold. And worse, there's an infinite amount of virtual gold.
Trust me, MUD/MOO/MUSHes/etc don't have "gold farmers" selling the gold on ebay. (well, back in the day I worked on them they didn't) They still had inflation problems. It is a problem with the way the system is designed. Every starting character gets 100 gold. 90% quit. Do the math: For every starting character who stays, you've added an extra 900 gold to the system. Plus of course mobs dropping things, respawning and dropping more.
I've heard academics talk and claim that this problem can be solved, but I have yet to be convinced (without killing trade) that it can.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
But don't pretend that you're somehow morally superior to the guy who pays for Chinese-farmed gold.
He can do and he is, because he's not cheating (it's expressly forbidden by the rules of the game - note the emphasis on the word game and try not to lose the plot here).
You may have noticed most games tend to have rules, this helps to ensure people have fun playing, breaking them is cheating which is a Bad Thing (TM). This is something you should already grasped by now, unless your highly socially dysfunctional.
It's "wrong" to buy gold in WoW, in the same way that it's "wrong" to steal money from the bank in Monopoly, even if the other players have played it more than you that day and seem 'better'.
You're advocating behaving like a little kid who sees other people playing something and want's to join in, but then he decides doesn't like the rules the other players are happy with, so he just disrupts the game for everyone else by doing what he wants (and continues to do so and argue about why "his rules are better" even when asked to leave by the other players).
inept orthography
Didn't you mean 1n3P7 oR7h0gr@pHy?
More to the point, someone who can't communicate with the rest of the party is a serious liability in any dangerous situation. For many people, the fun of games like this lies in cooperation with a group to overcome dangerous situations.
Isn't multilingual cooperation in a group even more fun? The trick is to make sure you have a somewhat bilingual leader for each language group, and develop a restricted command vocabulary over time. In this case you need just one Chinese-English translator.
I have never been a member of a purely monolingual party, and it is not uncommon in Europe in my experience to have someone in the party responsible for some countrymen that don't understand the Lingua Franca of the group (well enough). It doesn't have to be a disadvantage: I have seen an Unreal Tournament team that didn't have a shared language win a team competition that lasted a year because they eventually became a better team than the others. The different languages force everyone to listen to their squad leader. No needless discussion or individual initiative.
I haven't played WoW-like games myself since UO, but I find it hard to believe that the demographic is so radically different that you can't get people to follow orders if you invest some time in them. Most people are willing to cooperate after some time if they see that the team works.
Think of artificial administration languages from the past like Osman in the Ottoman empire or Latin and later "fiscal German" in the Habsburg Empire. People don't need to speak the same language to conquer the world together.
Adding to this, Chinese gold farmers have this nasty habit of ninja looting the blue and purple items if you're not set to master loot. I can't tell you how many times I've grouped with someone who obviously didn't speak English, who hit need of the first blue item that pops up, then ungrouped and hearthed immediately.
Sorry, but my opinion of non-English-speakers is pretty well set in stone. They suck.
You can't kill someone of your own faction. You can refuse to heal them, but only if you're a healer class.
You can, however, make sure the opposing faction knows the names of the farmers, and get help from them when the farmers are making your life miserable.
I like to play WoW with foreignors. Trust me, my typing in the game is horrible. But it's fun to meet people from other places. I really like talking to people from Australia. Its just fun. And if someone doesn't speak a word of english but knows the usual 'emotes' /lol /laugh /taunt /chicken then thats enough. As for Chinese Gold Farmers (CGF), everyone always says how certain areas in China are poor and need our help. Well guess what, if someone buys gold from a CGF website, then they are helping put 5 cents into someone's pocket. So, I get to play my game and support a Chinese family. The only bad thing is the inflation of the price if items in the game. But guess what, try playing the game for once. You can get the exact same items as the CGF's do, just do high lvl raids. If you are too lazy to do those, then you lose out.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I played WoW and would ask people in pick up groups to answer questions, like, "Where might one find a penguin?". In fact, I may have started this trend, no one else was doing it when I started. A different issue is racism, of which there is plenty on WoW. It's one thing to demand that the people you are going to play with be able to communicate with you, but what you will find in WoW, in the main public areas, is many instances of racism.
William Faulkner and John Steinbeck for two.
In a nutshell, the prices are wrong in wow. This encourages gold farmers to engage in behavior that is socially detrimental - like those who steal in an economy in a depression. Or we create an economy that allows these people to have jobs that are considered useful. Suppose that you can create custom items instead so that the gods of wow runs the wow walmart while gold farmers run all the specialty shops. Provided that the prices are 'right'. And practical problems such as inflation and glut can be dealt with by changing the costs of production which ultimately affect prices. For example, increase the relative time cost of making a +5 sword to a +1 sword by two and you can expect a proportional change in their relative price At the right prices, gold farmers may find it more financially rewarding to create the NPC economy that is so elusive in many games. You can go to the local walmart or you can walk through the market area and haggle and bid. The gods of wow can make rules that there will always be some items that cannot be created. Otherwise, gold farmers are a boon that the rulers of wow have failed to recognize.
For the record, since people are asking about this, the pass-then-roll on items is so that if nobody needs it, an enchanted can disenchant the item for a shard that's worth twice as much as the item would be to a vendor. Then whoever wins the roll gets the shard.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Wow. I for one want to see an internet where everyone is equal, and they can play together if they want.
Immersive games make a GREAT way to learn a language.
With Free Software games, more foreign players = more developers improving the game.
There are probably many good reasons to allow interlingual gaming. But, most of all, it's just horribly backward to exclude someone from what is essentially a popular social event, based on their lesser command of English. If you're going to do that, you may as well go all out and embrace nationalism.
Oh it's more fun alright....when you die because your non English speaking party member can't understand the plan.
Loads of fun.
Like going to Disney World.
I'm guessing you can't kick them out of a "faction" or pickpocket them either can you? ...yet another reason I'll stick to the (relatively) free NWN.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
You can, however, make sure the opposing faction knows the names of the farmers, and get help from them when the farmers are making your life miserable.
;^)
Is that like loaning your mother-in-law a brown coat and a white stocking cap when you take her deer hunting?
select Name from LocalLibrary where author = "American" and author = "great"
Mark Twain
John Steinbeck
J.D. Salinger
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
William Faulkner
Herman Melville
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Jack Kerouac
Joseph Heller
William S. Burroughs
Tom Wolfe
[interrupted]
Need I go on?
I'll take the worst novel from any one of those writers over Tess of the Fucking d'Urbervilles any day, you prig.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
What a turd wrangler. Why do you feel it necessary to list this shit on your slashdot posts? Feeling a bit unimportant, educated way over your head and inadequate?
All that says to me is:
lame person who relishes these unimportant achievements and touts them as qualifications for his ability and talent.
I am the CEO of a corporation. Cost me about $100 to file the paperwork. Big fucking deal numb nuts.
There's a clear difference between racism and linguism:
If one has discovered a strong correlation from the kinds of grammatical errors that native speakers of Cantonese or Mandarin tend to make when speaking English to frequent ninja looting, what is the appropriate way to handle this discovery?
I'm sorry but I find the fact you are [coldly] discussing how to loot corpses far more disturbing than your whinges that people occasionally beat you to it ! Do you realise how sick and warped you are ?
In order to come up with working solutions, we must first start to understand how a ninja looter thinks in general so that we can predict how a ninja looter would react to a given proposed solution.
Depends on whether you've read this Tom Holt book.
Factions are Alliance vs. Horde. So no, you can't boot someone out of your faction.
I have no clue if you can pickpocket your own faction, but even if you could, you wouldn't get anything that they actually have on them. Most of the time you get lint, shiny dinglehoppers, and pet rocks. Though my highest level rogue was 6, there may be other stuff.
Heh. Quite.
"lint, shiny dinglehoppers, and pet rocks"
Wow. That's fairly well into lame territory.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
The point is, they 'self' segregate--- and I'm not convinced, and neither are many psychologists, that this is a good human tendency. For instance, I read recently an article about psychology professor David Bona, and "Understanding Evil." Where he was quoted as saying: "Every society has dealt with evil. Although it may sound like a huge phenomenon, evil can come in the form of racism and discrimination (between students)." Where another professor was quoted as adding: "What really concerns me is that students tend to separate into specific interest groups, prompting discrimination." I personally wouldn't go as far as to label these views with as black and white of a term as "Evil," but I think you can clearly see that even this practice is not entirely benign in nature as you seem to feel it is. You only offer a justifying factor that there exists a language barrier, so things must be done this way, insinuating that idealy they would be done differently.
I'm not arguing against somebody who's Chinese deciding that they want to play on their own servers--- I'm arguing about their being descriminated against by other players for the actions of a minority of their population. I don't think these people are saying "We don't want these people to join our parties because we can't communicate." If you read the article, they're excluding them if they simply have grammatical mistakes commonly associated with foreign language speakers, not because they can't understand what they're saying. They're instead saying, "A minority of the Chinese population engage in gold farming, therefor we are actively trying to blanket filter people of their race and national origin from participating on these servers."
I'm glad that your associations with people of various racial identities, and languages, exempts you in your own mind from participating in innately negative human behaviors.
How could my interactions with people of other racial identities possibly be beside the point? If people from different ethnic backgrounds can interact on an equal footing, where is the problem? Why the expectation that racial distinctions will disapear entirely? Some people are proud of their background and would rather hang onto it. They tend to identify with other people from the same background. As long as questions of superiority don't enter the picture and it doesn't stop them from identifying with other people, I can't see any reason why this is wrong. If equality is the obliteration of every person's identification with their own background, then let me be the first to say that equality is a very bad thing. And pardon me for not taking everything a professor says as gospel truth. Or even partial truth for that matter. We have a professor here at McGill who every year convinces a few hundred gullible freshmen that gender roles are entirely social constructions. There is always confusion in well meaning movements once the basic objectives have already been achieved. Once a movement's principles have been accepted as truth by the vast majority of people, reform becomes easy. But at a certain point, you run our of obvious reforms and it is unclear what to do next or when to stop. Thats where the racial equality movement in most of North America is now. Psychologocally unhealthy behavior? How far are we going to take this thing? There used to be real problems, you know.
Several reasons for this language test other than the one in the original article have come up in theis thread. One that has come up several times is communication. And the fact is that this language test will not filter out Chinese people with passable English. If they required people to speak a few sentences into a webcam, that would be another story entirely.
Why don't they do what Guild Wars does, and have a very large set of public alpha/beta testers? Not to mention that Guild Wars can update the game in a far more efficient manner, allowing for quick bug fixes to be rolled out without requiring massive downloads.
It's good to have lots of alpha and beta testers - and WoW does do this: there are test realms available. However, remember how paranoid the WoW staff must be about serious bugs that somehow slip through testing. They lost a lot of players during the "Corrupted Blood" incident: that was a serious bug that slipped through testing. If they can test it on a massive scale using one of their regions before deploying in the rest, then you bet they'll take it. We're all beta testers in Europe.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Then everyone, including farmers, will just level up to 5 and the situation will remain unchanged. How will that fix anything?
You'll probably never read this, but I'll post a rebuttle anyway:
This man said nothing about quality of speach in the part of his post that I quoted. He said he singles out Chinese people. That is racist. Also, if he meant "people who don't speak very good English" when he said simply "Chinese" people, then he is begging the question, saying that Chinese == poor command of English. That's not true of any of the Chinese kids I go to college with, and none of them farm either, even though many do play video games. Look up begging the question and generalization. And as to the straw man argument, the US government is run by the people of the government, and any decision made through the senate or house is indirectly tied to the citizens of the (and my) country. So I do consider a single person not playing video games with people from a certain country in the same vein as not letting people of a certain heritage use a plane. The same fallacy, begging the question, is behind each action.
"I got robbed by a guy who spoke bad English, thus I will avoid being robbed by not not associating with those who speak bad English" == generalization, begging the question.
"Chinese people speak English poorly" == generalization.
Also, I did not commit the slippery slope fallacy. If everyone were racist and nationalistic, then we would be in a situation far worse than pre-WWII Germany. Not everyone is racist/nationalistic, nor did I suggest that everyone will be, but that would be the outcome if it were so. I simply pointed out what a similar mentality has lead to in the past.
The logical fallacies commited in the original parent's post were far greater than anythign I committed (and I don't think I committed any).
I agree that he is being racist, but an individual has a right to hold an opinion about a person or group of people and act upon that opinion to a degree, we do it all the time. For a goverment to do something like that is not a good comparison.
However, both the racist and you make a giant leap to assume that these people are chinese in the first place. Many people cannot speak the language well, and it might very well be someone posing as a Chinese player, for whatever reason. I hardly think "Chinese == poor command of English", one might just as easily say that "lack of money == poor command of English", and choose not to group with them for that reason. Would you have the same level moral indignation if guy/girl were being snobby instead of racist?
Just something to consider.Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz