Boycott the Gold Farmers?

Next Generation is running an editorial penned by former PC Gamer Editor-In-Chief Gary Whitta, wherein he calls on gamers to shut down gold farmers. From the article: "PCG's refusal to accept their advertising is a bold first step toward suffocating these reprobates. But it won't do the job completely: there will always be less-scrupulous outlets who won't be so picky about where their ad dollars come from. The only way to really cut off gold farmers at the knees is not by refusing to take their money, but by refusing to give it to them. And that responsibility falls to you, the community of players they target."

Comments

I admit it.

[stlhawkeye]

I buy gold off them and I'd do it again. It's stupid to spend 4 weeks farming gold or whatever when I buy that same amount of gold for $100, an amount of money I make in about 2 hours of work. For 4 weeks of mindless drudgery I could at least be getting paid about eight grand. Boycott nothing. If the game producers don't like people circumventing the grind, stop adding stupid grinds to games.

There's A Blocklist Available from Tim Buckley

[Firewalker_Midnights]

Tim Buckley of the Ctrl-Alt-Del webcomic made a blocklist available to prevent gold farming sites showing up in google ads.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/news.php?i=1011

" A few days ago I talked a bunch about gold farming and its adverse effect on MMO's. This caused the google ads on our page to specifically display the gold selling ads in their inventory, so we could effectively block them.

We've now compiled the list we're using it and made it available to you. If you run a website that used google ads, feel free to use this list to help block these gold farmers. If you frequent a website that uses google ads, email them this list and ask them to use it to block gold farmers.

Like I said, I doubt gold farming will ever disappear, but every one less customer makes the business less profitable for them."

I found this rather helpful.

Re:Competitive feature of the game?

[The Snowman]

Nobody ever accumulates much wealth by selling to NPC's anyway. It is by selling on the players market that you make significant sums of coin.

If I sell an item to you on the auction house, we trade an item for gold. You have less gold, I have more gold. Gold is neither created nor destroyed (well there is a cut that's taken, but it's not much). However, I regularly pick up all the vendor trash (gray items) when I run level 60 instances. I can make 4 or 5 gold each run. Some of the high level gray items will sell to a vendor for 1.5 gold. THAT is creating gold. I have more gold, you have the same amount. There is now more gold in the economy.

The Auction houses in Wow for instance, represent a capitalist economy with all the dynamics of supply and demand. That hardly eliminates gold farmers.

Yes, it is fairly capitalist in the sense that the money is in the hands of the people, not the government. In other news, the Atlantic Ocean is very wet. The real issue goes like this. I farm an item and sell it to you. I make gold. You level up and find a better item, and sell the old one to a vendor since it is soulbound. You create more gold. The net result is that you have a better item and there is more gold in the economy. As time goes on this effect becomes larger and larger. This is also why even low level herbs and minerals may sell for a few silver per stack on a new server, and 1 gold or more on an old server. As more people join the economy this gold creation force picks up steam and more and more gold gets created. Gold farmers have the goal of making sure that gold winds up in their hands so they can sell it to you.