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Gold Farmer Documentary Preview
There's a preview up on YouTube of an upcoming documentary on Chinese Gold Farmers. Terra Nova links to the video in a discussion on the hypermobility of labour in the 21st century. From the discussion: "In watching the video, I am most struck by the intertwined empowerment/disempowerment that is occurring simultaneously for these Chinese workers. Their lives in these virtual worlds are brighter, but yet their interactions with American players (and associated slurs) are a constant reminder of their inferior socio-economic status. The disembodied hypermobility granted by these virtual worlds is, to a certain extent, dispelled when they are labeled as 'Chinese gold farmers'. For them, it is a double-edged sword."
Who is going to watch a program about people who do something so boring that many players pay them to do it for them?
These people are doing something that disrupts the economy in online games and, in most cases, is wholesale against the rules. They have to buy account after account because they continually get banned. Their presence is detrimental to the game in numerous ways - from their inability to communicate with other players to the spam mail and tactics they use to 'sell' their virtual goods.
How is this empowering? Sounds more like selfish to me. Stop playing my game! You're breaking the rules and making it worse for everyone!
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.
If things get too tough, perhaps they could go to a virtual opium den or work on a virtual railroad, before getting fully assimilated into the virtual society.
Looking forward to a complete documentary.
Just like with "normal" players, there's a great variety in the behaviors. Some gold farms are friendly, even fun (and some are quite skilled in PvP), but some seem ignorant robots that do the same things non stop and repeat the same phrases in horribly broken English.
I've grouped with a few farmers before - even communicated to some degree with them (google for english to pinyin dictionary), but there are some universal behaviors they have. First and foremost, they will roll NEED on any item that drops, regardless of whether they can or would use it. As far as I can tell, they don't understand the difference between NEED and Greed.
In some respects they've done less damage than some of the other entrepreneurs - the ones who troll the auction house all day buying up every single item and repricing them higher. There's some guy on Eredar alliance side named Plate (and Platejr) who literally buys every single item within a range of levels and then reprices it roughly 4x higher than what it would normally sell at. That guy is far more despicable than people who churn away at Tyr's Hand all day.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Tsk, behind gold farming, there's a lot more than gold. Why do they do it ? Why do we buy gold if we hate that ? Why do we hate that ?
Its basically putting a human side on gold farming. Most of these chinese farmers folks live in the worst kind of situation and they do what they do for a living. You gotta do what you gotta do to put bread on the table right ?
Most situations in the world would be quickly solved if we'd at least try to get a good understanding. Personally, ever since I've started thinking about the why of gold farming, I've found myself struggling between grinding my ass (and keep my pride?) or just buy gold (and play more!) to do my part to help these guys.
So to answer your question, I will be watching it....
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
[Ironforge - Trade Channel] xengzi: u buy [Double-Edged Sword] 600g?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I just dont get this need to feel sympithetic to people who play for free, make money (even if it is dirt) to do it, and ruin something I pay to play myself. Some sellers are nice guys, I have helped out one group in FFXI more than once simply cause they help others, and share their loot if you work with them. BUT I cant stand the majority who disrupt the game killing players, stealing mobs, price fixing items, and break the game rules get caught get kicked then manage to get back in as someone else.
They are criminals, there is no sorta catagory. If a homeless man steals your money, they go to jail. Someone breaks into your computer system, they go to jail. Why is it someone is alowed to steal your money (which is what they are doing when they restrict you from doing something you paid for unfairly), and its ok cause its a game?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Plenty of people. IMHO, this outsourcing to gold farmers *is* the game for many people.
I think these guys aren't role-playing warriors&wizards but CEOs and CFOs - and all the fun is in the power they have over poor people in third world companies just like the aristocracy running US businesses.
It's all about the feeling of power you get when you realize that you too , and not just your boss, can outsource stuff to china.
I think it was very insightful of the documentary guys to catch on to this angle.
It amazes me that these people will actually whine about being treated differently than other players, when their actions do nothing to help the greater good of the game. In FFXI, the'yre called gilfarmers, and I've never once heard anybody attack them racially. Nationally, sometimes, since the common opinion is that they're probably from china. Their existance in game makes everybody else's in-game life more difficult and time-consuming, since they camp NMs all day and inflate prices on high-level gear. Gilfarmers are singled out as a nuisance, because the common opinion is that they are are a nuisance. it doesn't matter if they're from China, Russia, USA, england, or the moon. If you make everybody else's life a pain in the ass, you're gonna get treated badly by other players. Also singled out, at least on the server I play on, are the folks who admit to buying gil, accounts, or items from these purveyors. I've seen people get kicked out of my LS (FFXI speak for guild) for helping to sustain the business model.
How is this empowering? Sounds more like selfish to me. Stop playing my game!
If you live in China or some other nation where $.25 per hour for a job is a dream come true, this is very empowering. Its either this or work a slave wage job in an unsafe factory or mine. That or turn to crime...
Sure it ruins our games, but we are talking about people who don't have it good as us that have more money than we know what to do with so we spend it on "virtual" items.
These people aren't doing this for fun... They are doing it to feed their families or eek a living. (well maybe not all of them)
I don't blame them because they found a way to exploit a living.
I blame the game companies for making a game that is so tedious to play and level that people are willing to pay others to do it for them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
OK, before i get flamed into the seventh level of hell, my aplogies for not capitalizing England. Typos happen.
Manual gold farming is inefficient. We need to build better bots to compete with offshore low-wage countries.
If people weren't able to get tons of gold with no effort, all his rebuying would be for naught. The items would expire, unsold, and he'd simply lose money, eventually running out of captial to keep trying this. However players that buy gold don't see it as worth much, after all they can simply buy more, and thus are willing to spend inflated prices.
I blame the game companies for making a game that is so tedious to play and level that people are willing to pay others to do it for them. You're placing the blame on the wrong people. The blame is with the Me generation who want everything right now. Instead of working and EARNING things from their effort, they'd rather spend cash to get instant gratification. If you want to play that type of game, go buy a single player game with built in godmode.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Farming and selling the goods for real life money is "illegal" in most games (read: Against the terms of use). Selling, and in some games buying, in game content or services in exchange for real life goods, services or money can result in suspension or ban.
So I doubt many hardcore gamers who kinda "live" inside their games will have a lot of sympathy for them. They're breaking the rules, the "law" of the game. Now, would society have sympathy for outlaws in the real world?
Unless the laws are unjust and thus the majority of people supports breaking them, few people would feel sympathetic to people breaking those laws.
Now, I consider the law that selling in game stuff for real life money is fair.
Why should I feel sympathy for farmers? Why should I support them? Why should I wish them anything but NO luck at rolls, NO luck at drops and thus a very crappy paycheck?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Paying for someone to transfer you gold accumulated by him is no different than, let's say, paying someone to sit at your home computer using your own char to farm for items and gold while you work.
Granted, WoW's EULA forbids your from both purchasing gold from a 3rd party and allowing someone else to play your account, even your brother (the account is considered exclusive and non-transferable). Also, it's obvious that any online "gold" is Blizzard's possession, not the player's possesion. But other than that, I surely don't see why farming, leveling service and gold selling is bad.
By the way, the argument that gold farmers disrupt the server economy would be valid if they farmed only for gold, with the offer of goods remaining the same. This, by standard monetary inflation rules, would push prices up. But the actual fact is that they also obtain lots of items, many of which end up in the Auction House, what by the same logic makes prices go down. Actually, if those tons of itens did not go into the AH, the farmers wouldn't obtain lots of gold in the first place. So, things end up in a more or less balanced state, and the gold farmers interference in the economy isn't all that big.
The only thing that some gold farmers do that is very wrong is to cause social disruption (read: spam). Other than that, their presence is almost inocuous and hardly noticeable.
Blizzard and other MMORPG manufacturers would do well if they simply regulated this market so that it wouldn't be a black one anymore. If done right it might become a new profit source for them, a way to not discourage casual players who're unable to farm by themselves, and a means to make farmers behave in a more appropriate way.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I've not seen a single thing that leads me to believe this is going to be a revolutionary or even GOOD game. Frankly, any game claiming to provide an all-encompassing open-ended experience is a pure unadulterated lie. Please, someone explain why this is getting any attention at all. The press releases and marketing machine of EA is in full swing, but /.'rs are actually believing it???
In my years I've seen too many examples of how to poorly implement a scenario to believe a complete evolution of a civilization into morpg would be possible. Sim Earth to CIV? Ask yourself, how simple the game has to be to make that work. It would be TERRIBLE. One of many unlikely scenarios is Spore will be a puzzle game to level abilities of a single genetic line then onto a tradewars-like environment with your planet serving as base. Not that that's going to be much more fun. In any case, the initial development is all Single-player grind to get to abilities. Yay? Then onto a new playfield that has to keep 1 played from growing large enough to stomp anyone else and has to be able to run 24/7. Good luck with that.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
You're placing the blame on the wrong people. The blame is with the Me generation who want everything right now. Instead of working and EARNING things from their effort, they'd rather spend cash to get instant gratification. If you want to play that type of game, go buy a single player game with built in godmode.
Truth be told, I don't play MMOGs anymore, but I can tell you that it results from the following two reason (which are related to gold farming).
1. I'm tired of killing things over and over again to level.
2. I'm not willing to spend money on paying other people to do this for me.
I've been playing MUDs since Legend of the Red Dragon and I'm sick... so sick and tired of the same old formula. Kill 1,000 rats and get to level 10. Kill 10,000 Goblins and get to level 20. Kill 30,000 orcs and get to level 30.
After Muds, UO, EQ, Shadowbane, and WoW I am just sick and tired of killing things with not a simple damn end game or something like direct player interaction.
Truth be told, Ultima Online was the funnest MMOG I have ever played until they care beared and tried to copy EQ down to every last detail. I want to play a game for at the most 3 months and have my characters stats to what I want to be. The rest of the game should be a sandbox and player interaction (housing, crafting, player vs player, factions and basically player made content).
If I want to kill things over and over again to get a higher level so I can get a more powerful sword so I can kill more powerful things so I can level to get a more powerful sword yet again... You are right, I can play Diablo 2 or Baldur's Gate... Or maybe Fallout 2 which has more story and enjoyment than most of thes MMOGs today.
Ralph Koster is right... We need to shift focus away from mass genocide of rats and orcs and make the games more than just leveling. We need virtual worlds. Not single player hack and slash games with a chat interface with other players.
The games are broken and until they find a better system of advanment, neither the MMOG companies nor the gold farmers will see any of my money.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Was the "staring at your shoes" documentary too dynamic and risky?
Trying to stop people selling goods for their true worth is futile, counter-productive and illegal in most developed countries. Price fixing is typically associated with command economies - e.g. communism - which most folks here are hyper-quick to condem. So leave the goldfarmers alone - anything else would be hypocritical.
I agree
That 'Plate' scheme you describe doesn't sound like it can work.
You're saying that he buys X at an auction for 5g and then reauctions it for 20g. Why didn't the people who buy it for 20g outbid him in the first auction?? Why can he get people to pay 4 times as much at an auction than others can??
then get a fucking education and/or be a real farmer instead. I dont give a rat's ass how they are treated, they took the job, they dont like it.... quit! It is that simple. I know they are treated like hell, but it's their problem.
This wont gather any sympathy from me, in my opinion it's cheating the system of a way the game was intended to be played. They can quit and of course they are going to be treated like garbage by other players, those players are hip to their ways.
Documentary, geez, but to tell the truth I'd be interested in seeing it just to prove my point, it wont change the way I feel.
Which is exactly why I don't like RPG's. I work at the office 8-5, then I goto class 7-10, then I get home...I don't want to work another couple hours getting gold. However starting up UT2k4 and blasting the crap out of some people online isn't anything like work. Am I spending cash for instant gratification? Maybe, however I also work quite a bit during the day and don't really see a problem with not wanting to *have* to work at something I supposed to be having fun doing.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
"Don't loot that! There are starving people in China!"
Yeah, I see your point, I'm a wow player too. I've actually met farmers only a few times maybe that's why I don't share your PoV.
From the way I see it, they don't do anything that I can't do myself. Can we reprehend them from doing something the game allows them to do ?
Of course its annoying when you meet one because they literally camp the place. so you're confronted to either stay and compete for the grind and leave and find another place.
For the few times it happened to me, you know what we did ? we brought a few guildies and camped the place too. The place quickly became not profitable for the farmer so he went elsewhere, probably came back later but it did leave us some room too.
As long as they're not actually hacking the game to steal kills/items from me, its can only be called competition, as annoying as they get, its no different than we do (and tolerate) in real life.
Don't think I just approve what they do, I believe blizz could possibly tweak the game, the farmers farm a little less and the gamers tolerate a little more. This is not a simple problem and there's no simple solution.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Um, they have that. It's called the Sims Online.
http://www.ea.com/official/thesims/thesimsonline/u s/nai/index.jsp
Personally, I like killing stuff while chatting.
...but I'll say it again. You wanna stop goldfarming? Don't make it boring and tedious to get gold, or don't make massive amounts of gold helpful. How can this be done? Make better skills equal better gear, and get rid of non-player bound world drops. Get rid of massive goldsink things, such as 900g epic mounts. Get rid of gold entirely by having an economy based on bartering and exchanging crafted goods. People will always pay others to do things that they don't want to spend time to do themselves. If it seems like work, people will find a way to get paid for it. For example...I mow my own lawn. I enjoy mowing my lawn. I would not pay somebody to mow my lawn. I also make money mowing my neighbor's lawn, because my neighbor does not enjoy mowing his lawn. My neighbor enjoys playing football on his lawn however, and would therefore like a nicely mowed lawn. The money he spends for me to mow his lawn, is worth him avoiding the displeasure of mowing his lawn, so he can play football on his lawn. If he could play football on a lawn that wasn't mowed, I'm sure he'd rather do that however...
According to this news item from the PRC, the hourly wage for urban workers in 2000 was more like $0.42/hour.
Since income in general in China has been trending upwards since 2000, let's assume a modest 10% annual increase in income. Not too hard to imagine - the article showed a 13.1% increase from 1999 to 2000, and the Chinese economy has certainly been booming. If that assumption is correct, then your average urban worker in China is now earning around $0.75/hour. Pretty darn miserable, by western standards... not quite so bad if you're actually living in China, though. Having been there several times, it seems as if earning 50 yuan a day (or around 1200 yuan/month) would provide a much better standard of living than earning the same amount of money ($144/month) would in the US.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
So what's the alternative? You can go entirely skill-based (as in a system based entirely on the gamer's ability to manipulate controls and the system). However, that markedly decreases player "attachment" to his or her avatars and can encourage shallow play. Pure skill means that everyone's avatar is equal; the gaming experience needs to be competitive enough or deep enough that skill and understanding of the game are primary and sufficient motivators to continue playing. You could go half-way, requiring limited amounts of avatar development before being put out into a "sandbox" to explore the game, but at that point you run headlong into the content problem under a traditional model. As for player-made content, one significant issue seems to be scalability. MUD/MOOs halfway floated through by often having players highly skilled at programming and content design and (honestly) rather low expectations; Neverwinter Nights got by with less skilled designers and very low player counts. Will Wright's upcoming meta-game Spore will be interesting to look at in this regard, but IMO its player-designable elements lack the scope necessary to create an interesting RPG experience. If all the players can do is make cities full of critters, as appears to be the case in Spore, then the end game will simply consist of killing the latest seven-armed, seventeen-foot satyr someone designed. Now, the concept works in pen-and-paper RPGs quite nicely; a smart GM/content designer can create all sorts of outlandish demons for the players to confront through both combat and interaction. An excellent pen-and-paper GM may have a flow-chart for every significant interaction s/he expects to occur, but is also ready to toss those charts out the window, fudge a few blinded rolls, and play on instinct when someone comes at the problem in a novel fashion. Unfortunately, at the MMO level, humans can't be responsible for driving MOBs; a computer program has to drive the thing. Moreover, it needs to be rather simple for the sake of the server. You can't have an algorithm as complex as the one driving Malcolm in Unreal Tournament running on every monster in the game. Menu-based text added to critters simply forces players to learn the right sequence of answers to optimize results; the second person to encounter the critter will upload his/her findings to Allakhazam and that will be the end of the mystery.
Since the original topic was on these games' economy, let's look at options there, as well. You can make the monetary system superfluous, as it was in Diablo II, but without fail, a barter economy is likely to surface to replace it (e.g. Chipped gems and Stones of Jordan). Either way, it's farmable, either by bots or by wage, and barter systems add to the confusion new players experience in entering the game. You can make all items NODROP or level-dependent in some fashion, but many people tend to feel that this discriminates against more developed players who want to replay the early game with superior, "twink" gear. Decay can be added to items, but this only hastens the inevitable quality inflation that naturally occurs as yesterday's elite gear becomes commonplace. Items/avatars can require some sort of mandatory real-time investment to become useful, as in EVE Online, but sans server resets/splits, this means that the first players in will eternally have an advantage over any later entrants if they choose to maintain it. The economy can even be drivien by the acquisition of "player-made" goods, but as the quality of these goods is formulaic, it is rather trivial for a number of "grinders" to optimize the equation and mass-produce the best quality-for-cost good possible and tank the market.
Essentially, the problem is that the current MMO philosophy does not seem compatible with pen-and-paper or "sandbox" style gameplay. A minority of players engage in "role-playing" behavior, but such players could do the same thing over an IM program or a conference call; it's not specifically encouraged by the game software. Meanwh
If you live in China or some other nation where $.25 per hour for a job is a dream come true, this is very empowering. Its either this or work a slave wage job in an unsafe factory or mine. That or turn to crime...
In a way, they did resort to crime. They're breaking the laws of a virtual world to secure real-world cash. If EULAs and service agreements had any weight in courts, you could say that gold farmers were breaking real-world law as well.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
makes gold farming a waste of time, IMHO.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't blame them because they found a way to exploit a living.
I take it you also don't have any problem with those Nigerian 419 scams then? After all, they're just trying to make a living.
They should ban the accounts of every person who has received gold from an account that they ban as a gold farmer. But they'd never do that, because then they'd lose those players and their subscription fees.
This is the article that originally somewhat changed my mind about gold farming, the people behind, not the actual act.a ming.php
.25c an hour wiht 12hours shift, I wouldnt describe that as a good situation.
.. and it used to be $75!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/08/business/g
I had mentionned they live in difficult situation because, yes, they do have a roof but knowing that most of them are being paid
Apparently now they make $250 US per month, how many of us can make a living out of that?
and their offices ain't exactly penthouse either. Its more like a 4x4 desk, in a dark and humid place, with poor lighting.
Besides, with overpopulation in china, im sure a young person would take just about any job as long as it gets them money, its better than nothing.
I know that in the WoW world, farming isnt so good, but the complaining about the farmers ain't part of the solution, trying to reach somekind of agreement with gold farming companies would be more the way to go (for instance).
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
It's a shame that the film makers were not even able to make an interesting preview with such a rich topic. There is a lot of potential here to make a good film but I would have to say that it would work much better as a character profile rather than focusing on the acctivity as much itself, this being that all the activity is, is people sitting in front of computer screens which in and of itself is not very visually stimulating. Also, the fact that the preview is slow moving does not speak well for how well the full length version would be at holding someones attention.
Again, interesting topic but the documentary makers seem to have dropped the ball on this one (don't even get me started on the crappy picture in picture effect their trying to get to work)
My heart bleeds for them having to endure being called such harsh names and berated in a game all day long.
What, they don't like being called "Chinese gold farmers"?
Well, lets see...
Chinese? Check.
Farming? Check.
For gold? Check.
I guess an appropriate retort to me would be for them to call me "American game player" in the most derogatory typing style they can.
Waa?
You must not have played Shadowbane very much if you came away with you must batter mobs for a year and a day. Shadowbane was about pvp, politics, and control. IMO, a good game will have interesting graphics, pvp, a variety of things to do, a decent storyline, and the ability of the player to impact the landscape. I agree the grind can be bad in some games but most of it is player attitude. I enjoy challenges as many others do. As long as there are challenges as you progress then focusing on grinding rather than having fun is the problem. Burnout is the result of grinding. I've been in long leveling games and never thought of it as a grind since I never focused on leveling. As to the article, I don't have too much of an issue with gold farming as long as I can kill (as in game death lol) the offending parties. When I can't do anything about it, that's where frustration comes in and ruining the game economy, etc. Cheers
Unfortunately the public (both "regular" gamers and the hardcore) have pretty much proved that this is what they DON'T want. What was SWG but a game that took very little time to "max out" (excepting the Jedi grind, of course), and otherwise was a giant sandbox for (allegedly) good character interaction?
People like their grinds. As long as--at this point--they're slightly more CLEVER grinds.
Actually, Shadowbane was kind of fun for what it was. I participated in a few player city raids killing off their trees, but in general it was kind of the same constraints that made me want it to be Ultima Online. It was like EQ but with city building and unconstrained PvP. I played for a about a few months and they just felt it was the same old same old... Either we went out and killed mobs or we brutually destroyed somone's city or we got pk'd while hunting mobs and vice versa.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
What if Blizz sold gold -- they wouldn't need to hire farmers to create it since after all it is just 1's and 0's but then turned around and used the money that generated to hire these players to play the mobs.
Can you imagine how much more fun the game would be if you go to attack some mob healer character that instead of maybe trying to heal itself once at low health it actually thought about and reacted to what you were doing.
How much more challenging could the game become if when faced with a serious threat the gnoll encampment instead of letting you pick them off one by one screamed for help and all its buddies came around.
They could be randomly cycled through any mob in the world which when not occupied would follow its standard ai script. You would never know when "pulling a mob" whether you were facing a dumb AI mob or a smarter "farmer" controlled one.
Sure there would probably be lots of issues to iron out but imagine the fun!!!
Rang rang ! PVP! PVP!
These professional players (shall we call them) absolutely ruined the US version of Lineage 2. I played for 3 months after beta and quit. Anywhere you went there they were. And if you fought a couple monsters, then they'd bring a high level group in to kill you over and over until you left. (Cleaning the dungeon one guy told me they called it)
It's not the fact that they are there that bothers me, it's the tactics they employ and the way regard us US players. It's like we are in the way of them doing their job. And they threaten and bully you to leave.
That said there were a couple decent guys there that if you walked in room they'd share with you. One even kept me from getting ganked during one of the dungeon "cleaning" sessions by his bosses because he and I spoke a little bit (he knew some english).
Basically if they want to go to some underutilized area and kill everything for loot, if they want to buy up everything on the auctionhouse, and if they want to craft like mad.. fine. But don't monopolize content to the detriment of other players.
Let's take the following as givens:
1. I'm an alchemist in wow and gather herbs to make potions, making about 20 gold a day in wow at MOST. This takes me about 2 hours per day to gather and put on Auction.
2. It would take me about 25 days and 50 total man hours to make 500 gold
2. 500 gold on my server is ~$35 bucks
4. I make $50 bucks an hour at my real-life job.
So, either I can buy 500 gold for the cost of what I make in 45 minutes at work, or spend 50 hours over a month's time making potions. Really, it's an economic no-brainer.
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
If you need an example of why you can justify blocking Chinese Farming - you need only look to the game that all but endorses it - Lineage II.
You can get banned for reporting farmers or disrupting any activities they do (with them able to do whatever), with the rare mass ban to cycle the low revenue farmers out, coincidentally with a predicted rise in gold cost. Items, crafting, and quests all are engineered to be accomplished in only one way, botted farming. It is either risk being banned or being illequipped against those who buy adena and use third party programs.
These are the same kind of farmers that in countries that run legitimate adena sales(e.g. South Korea), will steal identities to "legitimately register" farming accounts as additional insurance to keeping their business.
To go through the game since beta testing, it clearly has shown itself the primary reason you must enforce the rules to the point where you have cut China out of a US / European game.
Very similar concepts can be applied to the other MMO's - There is no free market system, only the illegitimately run Chinese Farmer market that is sanctioned.
It turns out, not all Chinese WoW players are gold farmers. Maybe they're the exception rather than the rule, I don't know the numbers, but allow me to share an experience I had just a few days ago.
I'm killing gorillas in Un'goro crater, grinding my hunter up to level 54. I've been doing this for about 30 minutes now, and I find myself in front of U'cha, a gorilla boss who lives in this cave. There's a quest to kill him, and I've done it probably a dozen times on various other characters. Right now, on this character, I don't have the quest, and no real reason to kill U'cha. Except for the fact that I love killin'. So I am gonna kill him.
Just as I place my hunter's mark on U'cha's soon-to-be-departed ass, I get a group invite from a player named "Xiojuang", or some such Chinese sounding name. Now, I normally decline unsolicited group invites without a second thought. If you don't have the courtesy to ask me if I want to join you, I don't want to help you, it's just common courtesy to ask first. Also, the very Chinese sounding name reminds me of a gold farmer. Between trade channel spamming and spawn point camping, I generally hate gold farmers. I'm reasonably sure this guy is a gold farmer who needs my help (he's a warrior, several levels below me, and there's no way he's gonna take down this big ape on his own). But at this point I'm bored, so with a grin on my face, I accept the group invite to see what he wants.
We stand there in silence for minute, he and I. Then he says, "i am chinese friend". Fuck, I knew it, gold farmer. I respond, "umm... ok". More silence. Still standing just out of combat range of U'cha, my Chinese friend finally says, "i need kill him you help me plz". Well, you know, I was gonna kill him anyway. What's the harm in helpin this guy out? None, really, and I am bored, so I respond, "ok". "go go go", he says. Damn, he's impatient, as I'd have guessed. Fine, I'll kill. I send my pet after U'cha and, after giving him a few seconds to establish aggro, I open fire. Within 20 seconds U'cha is lifeless on the ground, and Xio is looting his corpse, picking up the quest item he needed.
Are ya happy, ya goddamn chinese gold farmer? See, this is where things change. Nearly as random as his unsolicited group invite, he opens a trade window with me, and without a word, places a pair of pants into it. They're mail pants, with +agility on them, pretty nice gear for a hunter of my level. It so happens that my gear is better, but I'm not going to turn them down, so I accept them, and, wondering why he did this, I message him with a simple "?". He responds, "i give you". Hmm, that's not what I expected at all.
Now, U'cha may be eating the floor, but my Chinese friend and I are still in the back of this cave, with at least a dozen gorillas between us and daylight. We're both going the same direction, so I figure, why not fight our way out of here together? In the battles which ensued during the course of our exit from the cave, several "green" (uncommon) items are dropped by various gorillas we kill. When grouped with strangers in WoW, it's generally accepted that any green or higher items are simply greed rolled by all members of the party, and the high roller gets the item. You can generally expect farmers to always roll "need", in order to get the items, whether or not they actually need them. They're going to put them up for sale in the Auction House. But this guy didn't roll, neither need, nor greed, he PASSED on both items. The first time, I messaged him, "hey, don't you want that? just roll greed...". He responded, "no you have". Whoa.
Finally we get to the exit of the cave. He messages me, "i go now". And then, "good bye friend". Then he mounts his horse and rides off.
Now, this guy was either NOT a gold farmer, or maybe just a really crappy one. Giving me items? Passing the roll on items? No, farmers would NOT do that, certainly not good ones. I think this was just a regular Chinese guy playing WoW, just lik
--Bradley
I agree. But that's why Second Life is so interesting. Need a cool sword? Make it! Need a motorcycle? Create one! Attach your homemade script to it!
Granted, it isn't quite there yet, which is why i'm stuck grinding in WoW. But the more people are aware of it, the faster it will progress into the metaverse that Stephenson predicted.
http://craphound.com/000187.html
The full text and a podcast version are there.
I don't blame them because they found a way to exploit a living.
So, I don't blame drug dealers because they found a way to exploit a living might sum up your views on some other group?
I blame the game companies for making a game that is so tedious to play and level that people are willing to pay others to do it for them.
I blame the people for exploiting others which is clearly outside of the agreement with the game manufacturer. There is a reason for the restriction on gold purchasing, character purchasing, etc. They are social norms and ethical constraints or 'laws'. They exist only so long as they can guide behavior (through enforcement or support by the group governed). This is no different than other forms of unacceptable behavior in social circles. If someone started selling the output of your daily work product on ebay, would they be exploiting the system? Would you be pissed if your employer figured they could purchase it more cheaply by outsourcing you? Or more appropriate to considering the real impact, should you be allowed to purchase your work product externally and deliver it to your employer as your own work?
probably a bit late too post as a separate news item... "The popular online game Lineage has led to the online theft of no fewer than 1 million identities, a police investigation has revealed. The police's Cyber Terror Response Center said Monday its analysis of Lineage accounts created between October 2005 and Feb.14 this year revealed that anywhere between 980,000 and 1.22 million of them were set up in the name of Internet users who never signed up to play the game. Most of them were created in China" from this article http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200603 /200603130026.html
Sounds like you should be playing Planetside. =)
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Man I am so out of touch "with the kids". I cannot imagine anything less entertaining than playing an online game where paying someone to accumulate items for me makes sense.
In my day, role playing was all about the journey. Mind you, then there was no such thing as "online" so like I say, I'm soooo out of touch.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
In the interactions I've had with some gold farmers (note the lack of the word 'Chinese' there) they have all basically been rude. As a mage, I've had several approach me and demand 20 stacks of water and food. Something like 'food20 water20 NOW!!!' When that happens I usually sit and watch for a while, just to see if they're a farmer, and they're usually pretty easy to spot. Some randomly invite me into a group and in the couple times I accepted (due to expecting a group invite from a guildmate around the same time) they spout some all caps dialog in party chat then disband. Always something I cannot understand. Probably 95% of these types of people I have encountered have Eastern-style names. I understand that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but there does seem to be a pattern. I just think that if they modified their social interactions just a bit, they'd not get as much flak from the rest of the WoW community.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Yeah, I'm sure there is some peasant in Columbia who would be very "empowered" by becoming a rich drug lord too. That doesn't make it right or good.
"Empowering" yourself by exploiting others isn't a noble act, even if you're poor.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As the video says, 1 YUAN is worth 8 dollars. Power levellers charge roughly $1 per an hour, during which they syphon off some of the gold they get from grinding for you (I know this from paying one to level my WoW character). The average wage in china according to the beeb is 17,000 Yuan per year for a production worker. So they are charging you $1 an hour to farm themselves gold and have fun in the game. It's not really exploitation in my view - as the guy in the video points out things cost more in the US, ergo wages are also higher.
That's why I don't wanna play WoW, there's something strange about it. Probably I don't wanna end up spending 12 hours a day playing it and even spending money on eBay for skills instead of spending my day geeking and looking at naked playmates.
Let's all rather make a good massively multiplayer clone of Super Maze Wars and play it all!
You just got troll'd!
People who feel like they're working probably shouldn't be playing the game since it can't be that enjoyable. Learning to play the guitar can feel like work to some people or fun to people with a genuine interest. I think it's only really an issue when someone expects to play like Hendrix without putting in the work. Buying gold is just plain cheating, just like enabling 'god mode' in a single-player game.
Casual players are at a disadvantage but there is still plenty to do in the game for people like myself who aren't chasing uber equipment or wanting to go on 40 man raids. A few hours of smart playing is enough to gather decent amounts of equipment or gold - you don't really have to spend days grinding unless you're after a particularly special item.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
More power to them. It is a complete MYTH that farmers cause inflation. Talk to any graduate economics student and let them run the numbers (I had my work's accounts crush numbers because they found the idea of virtual economies fascinating.) and they came back with a simple summary for us non-economics majors (my bg is in theology and history).
Ready?
"Because there is no real scaricity in a vitual economy the laws of supply and demand and basic inflation do not function as they do in the real world."
There are an unlimited number of item X given the amount of time Y. Gold and Item farmers do not sell items or gold in a virtual economy, they sell time. 99% of items sold for costs > 100gp are from instances (base on the logs I gave them). Farmers most likely would spend most, if not all, of their time in instances (don't ask how long it took to explain instances to non-gamers, it was bad) as the time\value ratio is higher then world-drop items you would sell. This assumes that the whole group is farmers (more likely then a mixed crowd and more efficent use of time) and used some rather relaxed pacing for time to clear an instance. There was one interesting fact that came from the logs (auctioneer's data was a big help along with a modded loot link,cosmo,thott cruncher) that the most profitable trade skill, via AH was in fact, skinning. I would have figured enchanting but seems skinning has best margin (99% profit) and best volume via the AH. Based on figures btw, skinning trails instance whoring by less then 20% for time\gold ratio. Not bad for grinding on furries. They gave me a shit load of weird Macro\Micro Encono gibberish but I couldn't make it out.
Their best guess is game-inflation has more to do with the bulk of a server's players hitting the END-GAME (or as we called it the PE (Player\Endgame ratio) and higher level players twinking out their lower level players (inflation as a result of convienence.) They were pretty confident that inflation was most likely tied into the level dynamics rather then any form of gold\item farming.
I firmly belive this is more a perception issue then a reality. Based on world drops in zones (using Thott's drop rate data) and excluding BOP (bind on pickup) compared to instance drops (again excluding BOP) no farmer would farm outside of an instance, it simply is not efficent use of time to farm outside of an instance. (Mathmatically that is.) For Solo farming your typical farmer is skinning, skinning, and skinning and probably disenchanting damn near everything else for parts.
I support gold farmers as they sell time, something many don't have a lot of. I used to be a hard core gamer but adult married life doesn't afford me 12 hours a day to farm MC or Blackwing. Main reason I left EQ was spending 6 hours as a warrior to kill 1 epic mob only to find out the loot got ninja'd by a toon named Warner. The reality and most people don't have that kind of time and Gold Farmers filled the void. I think what we need is Blizzard, Mythic, M$, and Sony, as an industry sit down with some economists and draft as standard model for virtual economies. Until I see hard evidence that gold farmers ipact the economy the complaints about them seem more like the echos of angy miners pissed at cheap asian laundry workers.
Throw people into Chaos, run around and yell "You Make Big Bread, You Sell Gold?!"
my 2 cents
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-