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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."
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.
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You do realize that most Foror's are sold to raiding guilds who pool the gold to buy them for thier tank? There are groups of people who will pay that much for a book, so selling for that much is justified.
We've bought, I think, four that way to outfit four different tanks. When you split 1000 gold over 60-70 players, that comes to about 16-20 gold for each player to outfit thier tank.