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. "

Comments

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

[derdracle]

"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.