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Blizzard, Square/Enix Ban Yet More Farmers
Eurogamer has the news that both Blizzard and Square/Enix have banned another batch of players for farming. The number of accounts, and the amount of money removed from the economy, is astonishing. From the article: "According to the World of Warcraft website, some 30,000 accounts were banned last month - and, as a result, more than 30 million gold were removed from the economy across all realms ... Based on the results of this investigation, more than 250 [FFXI] accounts among those found to be involved in large-scale RMT operations have been terminated... Thanks to these measures, more than 250 billion gil has been removed from circulation."
The article isn't coming up for me at work, can anyone tell me what RMT is?
It beats subsidizing them. Maybe our government should be taking notes.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I just wish I would stop getting solicitations from gold farmers in my in-game inbox.
For a second, I thought they were discriminating against your American farmer. I suppose they're too busy doing real work to be online.
Wait, since when did Blizzard and Square/Enix merge? (Also, isn't it "Square-Enix"?)
Anyway...
I have to love the subtle order of magnitude in accounts banned. WoW bans 30,000 accounts out of 6 million, or about 0.5% of total accounts. Assuming Square-Enix banned the same percentage, they have a total of 50,000 accounts.
Now, I know that Square-Enix's MMORPG isn't quite as popular as World of Warcarft, but I'm going to guess that's more of an indication that Blizzard is being more proactive in their banning of cheaters than Square-Enix is.
Now, if only we could turn off the farmers at the Federal Reserve and stop inflation in the "real" world.
Visualize banned Greenspan.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Both FFXI and WoW are doing a good job at cleaning up farmers accounts right now, but that only fixes part of the problem. These farmers have introduced a ton of new gold into the economies that isn't easily removed. FFXI raised the % of money the Auction House takes from items, so they are slowly removing money that way. While WoW has a small cover for AH purchaes, and you have to deal with repair costs as well.
There is no fast fix at this point, but closing accounts is a good start. I hope they keep up the good work, and hope even more to stop seeing ads to buy gold and gil.
Its not what it is, its something else.
It's interesting to note that removing that vast amount of gold will actually help the economy in WoW (I can't testify to FFXI as I don't play it). It's directly analagous to decreasing the money supply in an over-inflated capitalist market - with the added twist that the money being removed is the money that belongs to the percentage of the population that has a vast amount of wealth in excess of the average.
In short, prices drop, and the "poverty line" is lowered drastically.
There were a large group of unguilded Rogues levelling up against Ogres in the Badlands just a few days ago. There was so many for a while that we couldn't do any quests involving killing those Ogres, it was totally camped. (Its empty now, they got enough levels and moved on.)
This type of action is largely pointless. They've slowed down the farmers for a little while, but they just level new accounts and go back to it. Meanwhile Blizzard is making more things that require Arcanite, which is probably the single most farmed resource on the entire server. That will just drive prices up and increase the pool of people who say "screw it" and go buy gold from some farming operation, spawning more farmers.
If they actually want to do something about this, they need to reduce the need to buy gold to get anything done in a reasonable timeframe, and/or start banning people who BUY gold. They're the problem anyway.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The sudden drop in China's stock prices, and the ripple on the world economy, is suddenly explained.
Nice Job, Bliz...
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
If people aren't buying and selling items for real cash, then in reality people don't want or need the items in game. When people don't want or need items in your game, there's nothing they're playing for and your game will go bust soon. Its a trend I've watched over several MMORPGS. Players complain about people that farm for gold, but I don't see the big deal.
God spoke to me.
Am I the only one who thinks of Ah-nold's opening line in "The Last Action Hero?"
"You want to be a fahmer? Here, I give you a couple of ache-ers!"
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This is a publicity stunt. They took more than 30 million gold out of the economy from every server? I have news for you, there's right around 170 servers worldwide. That means around 175,000 gold per server. That is a incredibly miniscule part of each server's economy, that is it laughable. Also, within one week almost all of those banned accounts will be back and max level.
The problem with too much gold (inflation) is a problem of design, not of gold farmers. The farmers don't create the problem. They do add to it, but minorly at best. The problem is every $critter you kill drops $phat_loot which came from... nowhere.
I suppose this would be okay if $critter could be made extinct by players killing them, leading to no more loot coming into the system. (since you should get the phiscal corpse of $critter if you wack it)
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Removing 30k farmers from WoW removed 30M gold. That is an average of 1000 gold each (and most would have been below the average). 1000 gold takes about 50 hours to farm, give or take 50% depending on the farmer. This breaks down to each banned account costing the farm[er/ing company]:
$ 30 for a WoW account key
$120 for the lost gold itself
$ 50 for 2 people * $1/hr * 25 hours to level up a character
$ 50 for 50 hours to farm the gold
----
$250 total
Obviously the $/hr rate is an overestimate, but the gold exchange rate and cost of a WoW key make up the majority of this estimate. At a minimum the total is $160.
So, this is a net hit to the farming companies of $250 * 30k = $7.5M.
All in all, a sizable blow. Unfortunately it will really only hurt the solo farmers, the guys doing it for a few extra bucks from their home. For a very large farming operation this is only a setback of about 2 weeks (100 man hours per banning) in terms of profit.
Speaking on behalf of FFXI, this sadly isn't going to help. Gilfarmers monopolize many of the NMs which are so desperaly sought after, that to beat the competition the often Bot. SE should focus on not ignoring botters, which they so frequently do. One of their smart moves was making items that were heavily monopolized rare/ex, meaning they can't be sold, traded, and only 1 of them can be held at a time. Banning accounts is all well and good, but they can just come back and start getting these items to sell again.
WoW bans 30,000 accounts which equals 30,000,000 gold. If we divide that out it is approximately 1,000 gold PER ACCOUNT banned. Hmmm, not taking into account discounts from being honored and seargent/? or greater rank then 1,000 gold is EXACTLY the amount of cash needed for your epic mount. Coincidence, eh?
;-). Not to mention that I've seen a rise in prices on items that my character can make which means I have more gold to spend elsewhere in the game - such as on patterns, armor, etc. including the items other players make. I consider that a good thing overall. Now if the price on traveler's backpacks would just come back down.... :-p
Now, before anyone says I'm all for gold farmers I am definitely NOT. They cause me nothing but grief when I'm farm, errr, trying to acquire certain patterns or items needed for my character(s)
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Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
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Since Blizzard could easily do this using transaction logs, we must conclude that they have no real interest in preventing gold farming. Clearly, they are only interested in giving the impression of tackling the problem. Perhaps the gold farmers are an important part of the game: certainly, many people think that you have to invest too much time in the game in order to get anywhere. Blizzard could change that - but then fewer people would get hooked.
I don't get the anti-Gold Farmer stance of many players and Blizzard. If I got seriously into any MMORPG, I would buy the local currency. The last thing I want to do after working all day doing borning work is to come home and end up playing a borning game where I have to spend a 100+ hours to get a half way decent character that can do somewhat fun quests.
MMORPG should just sell the gold directly to the players and set up in game to real world money exchanges and let the players decide if they want to play the game that way. They could set up realms where it is not allowed or is limited. If someone wants to spend all day farming items and selling them to rich Americans, then all the power to him. I would rather send the guy a couple of hundred dollars than piss away a 100 hours of play time building up a character.
Linux O Muerte!
All in a days work for [GM]Dave.
from WoW website -
Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to our Hacks Team by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.
--- i dont think the problem is farming.. the problem is using third party tools to automate the process.
if you want to be a farmer and sit around camping something its well within your rights to do so..
using 3rd party tools is violating the eula
They can auto generate this article every 2-3 months because square and blizzard will always ban farmers.
Hmmm... Pie...
Implement a trading system that allows players to set a price for or hold auctions on their items in-game. Keep players' identities hidden so that all deals between sellers and buyers are conducted on an anonymous basis. All interplayer item exchanges are to be conducted through this anonymous marketplace.
Downside: You won't be able to chuck old/unneeded items on the ground or at your friends, only delete them or liquidate them.
Upside: Harvesting gold loses its profitability in the real world, because virtual items can't be sold for real money. Thus harvesting is greatly reduced.
I don't know how other Blizzard players feel about this, but I'd gladly trade my ability to toss items at my friends for a virtual economy that might not fall apart immidiately.
P.S. Come to think of it, the game might be more enjoyable simply by merit of not ever recieving hand-me-down items. The sense of achievement and respect among kickass characters would be all the greater because it will be known that everyone arrived at virtual greatness through their own ingenuity and perseverance.
I think this is a dup - something about this was posted as part of yesterday's "Blizzard Pulls Plug on Own Con" screed.
I consider myself a casual player. I even dared to be one in Everquest.
I don't know if you ever noticed what happens when mass farming drives the economy in a game bonkers. In a nutshell, it means that you don't EVER get anything, unless you shell out real world money. You won't be able to put enough time into the game to actually buy something with the money you make. The money quite literally inflates faster than you can harvest it. Without farmers, you, the casual player, have a chance to actually some day buy something for the VR money you make. Yes, it will take you longer than the guy grinding 24/7, but you can afford it, provided the prices stay stable. Which they more or less do, if there is no farming.
With farming, the price runs away from you. Today the price is 1000, by the time you have 1000 the price is 3000 and so on. You will NEVER be able to afford the item.
Unless you pay cash.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
theres nothing to get, its simple racism. American college student farms, (oh im sorry grinds) all day to make cash and hes a hardcore player. A chinese person does it and hes a china farmer and gets narc'ed out, called oh so many racist things, banned and shunned by the community. Its funny because the people i know who are chinese in game dont say jack shit while this persecution is going on. I call that cowardace, but im not asian so what can i really say about it.
People caught hacking the game should be banned. Just because your good at making money and also coincidentally chinese, shouldnt be grounds for a ban.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
At worst, it would worsen it.
If a commodity is finite, it is by default more interesting for farmers. So if a species could be driven to extinction, it WILL be driven to extinction. Twice so if what they offer is valuable.
I kill them all, with my farmboys, hoarde the loot, then charge you if you plan to own one of those things. I know for a fact that I'm the ONLY, or at least almost only, one offering it. Let's see... does 500 bucks sound too much?
Yes?
Tough luck. Some idiot next to you is willing to pay it. Supply and demand. Everyone wants it, only I have it, and I only have a limited supply (since I took care that there is no more of it). So I set the price. Last 10 will go for 2000, so better hurry.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe even have the prices fluctuate slightly with supply/demand. If demand is high, there obviously aren't enought farmers, so the merchant will pay a little more. If demand is low, the prices will drop and the farmers won't find it worth their time if they're only doing it to earn money.
Then adjust the respawn rates and number of farmable resources to allow the supply to at least be able to satify demand (assuming resources are being continuously farmed.
This alone would probably have kept me from tiring of the game. Having spent time building up skill in mining, it was really frustrating that I had to do other things to earch gold and buy metals from the auction house because beating the farmers to the ores was just about impossible.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Or as the saying goes... "When all you've got is a banhammer, all problems look like gold farming!"
The truth of the matter is gold farming is going to continue (just like the drug trade and spam) until some fundemental problems with the core system is resolved.
When money is involved, people will go out of their way to get that money regardless of the law and the rules of the land. No matter how many farmers you ban, IPs you block, or drug dealers you throw into jail, people are going to be doing this.
So how are we going to resolve these problems? I haven't the slightest ideas on drug trafficking and spam, but gold farming can be resolved if you put more real life economics into play.
Make a real system of gold aquistion in the game and make gold a hard currency that isn't printed by simply killing things. Gold has to be a limited and set state in order for gold inflation to not happen. When you keep dumping all that gold into the market simply by killing things you end up with the European gold inflation in the 1550's after the Spanish looted the Aztecs.
There has to be limited supply and people will be upset that at any given time there can only be 1,000,000 gold peices on a server. Vendors will have to not let gold disapear into a black hole so when they buy things or sell things that gold remains with the world at all time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Oh, I know all (well, most of) the reasons why. It was just the first thing that popped in my head and I thought it was semfunny.
Pity someone wasted a mod point modding a joke as a troll.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Why do farmers exist? Because people are willing to pay cash for in game stuff. Why do people willingly spend money for something they could technically get themselves? Because they don't want to do it themselves.
"Hold a second. That's like saying I buy Castlevania and then hire someone to play it for me so I can do the end boss fight. That makes no sense."
Yup. We're getting closer to the problem. There are actually people who PAY money to NOT HAVE TO play the game. Now, when a game has parts that are so "boring" that it's no fun to do them, the problem starts with the game, not the farmer. The farmer is actually more or less an effect. Not the cause (he's the cause for other problems with the game, we're getting into a circle here).
In a good game, it should not even cross your mind that you want to bypass parts of it. It should be interesting to do just that what is bypassed.
It's not only a problem of WoW, that problem can be found in almost all MMORPGs. And a MMORPG that solves it will certainly sell well. But as long as there are tedious and boring parts in a MMORPG, farmers will exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That threat has long passed. World War III ran from 1947 to 1991. From the perspective of the United States, it was a mostly cold war except for some major police actions in Korea and Vietnam. Prof. Eliot A. Cohen and other analysts have described the Global War on Terrorism as "World War IV".
Cost of living in the US > cost of living in the 3rd world.
Cost of crops in the US without subsidies = cost of crops in 3rd world
And you need to keep the infrastructure in place. Sure, you can grow food anywhere, but to grow large quantities of food (say, enough to feed a country) you need irrigation, storage and distribution systems already in place. Otherwise they take years to build and your country has starved in the meantime. Nothing will lead people to revolt quite like hunger.
You're not getting it, and neither are the people who buy gold and maybe Blizzard itself. In WOW, leveling up is actually more fun than the boring, pointless endgame. That's why everybody has a million alts.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Who cares?!
On Gold and Gollums, an overview into the Gold Farming and Selling Industry
Sure, it's interesting that there are large, organized networks that employ legions of people willing to spend their days harvesting gold, but what really strikes me is the degree to which gold farmers manipulate a server's entire economy.
sig semper tyrannis!
Then why doesn't the government subsidise call centers? You know, in case we go to war with India and folks back home still need help downloading the internet...
I get that. But we should be paying farmers to farm, then send the food to homeless shelters and third world countries. We shouldn't be paying farmers to sit on their asses, and we should never pay them to farm food and then let it rot. It's shameful for us to do that while people in our own country, not to mention others, are starving.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Give players rewards for killing farmers.
It's very simple, allow guilds or single players to receive a % of the gold of each farmer they kill. Even in PvE servers.
Even better, make it a quest. "Hunt and kill 50 farmers to get [rare item]".
Blizzard should get a clue and sell thier own gold. Obviously there is market for it. What wrong with them selling it?
Also, who cares if someone farms and buys gold from someone else? SOMEONE had to still pay the money to be online during that time. It's not like free money is poofing out of nowhere. I mean, I even got my character powerleveled. Why should Blizzad care? I am still paying 15/month no matter who played the character.
subsidies are a good thing IMO, as you can't really make a profit off of basic food stuffs (at least on the raw materials level), so people have to be compelled to produce them rather than something more profitable as a cash crop.
I have never heard anything so monumentaly stupid. The reason that you "can't really make a profit from basic foodstuffs" is because the price is depressed by the overproduction that is caused by subsidies.
Here's how it works. People have to buy food. They can alter the quality and to a degree the amount that they buy, but they can't just "not buy food". Now imagine that there aren't any subsidies. If a farmer can't make a decent living growing food, he will indeed do something else with his land to make money. This reduces the total amount of food in existance, so the price goes up. The higher the price, the more famers can make money by producing food. Somewhere there's an equilibrium where farmers make enough profit to make it worth their while growing food, and people are able to buy food to eat.
Of course, there's nothing to guarantee that it's profitable to grow food in your country - it may well be more economical to import food from abroad. If you consider this a national security risk, then the correct way of dealing with it is not a subsidy, but a tax or quota on food imports, which will cause the price of food to rise to a level where it is economical to produce it domestically.
I have a life work, wife, kids, friends, etc . . .
I ahve never had a problem getting into a raid without 'top tiered stuff' In fact it is ecpected someone won't be in top tiered stuff. Most top tiered stuff is BoP, so it has zero auction value.
So being a 'leech' isn't an issue.
I ahve another character who does WSG. I routinly beet people(usually undead rogues) who ahve 1000+ GP worth of enchants.
I ahve some blues and greens, and some good enchants(not great) and all the money I got for my enchants and gear I made in game by selling copper ore, linen, and byuing low and selling high on the AH.
I think it would be better if Bliz put level restrintion on the enchants like they do everything else, but that's another discussion.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
am i seeing this right?
30,000 accounts on wow, removed 30 million gold, thats an average of about 1000 gold per account
on FF its 250 accounts and 250 billion gil?
thats an average of about 1billion gil per account?
holy crap
the issue is one of scarcity, hardship
if you had infinite skills/ resources the game would cease to be fun for you. there would be no challenge
by making resources scarce, the MMORPG initiates competition for these vital things. this sets in motion the mental effort required to achieve these scarce resources, and thereby enjoyment of playing a game
the issue is, first and foremost, the player who wants something for nothing
they are playing a different game, they are playing a game called "i want to do whatever the hell i want"
this game is also enjoyable. but the enjoyment of this sort of game comes at the expense of other people's enjoyment
the effect of people who want something for nothing on an MMORPG is to discourage and lessen the fun of those who work within the game's rules about scarcity
it ruins everyone else's fun, for the sake of another kind of person's a fun
another kind of person no one really wants in the game
you simply can't create a game that is enjoyable where there are infinite skills/ resources, and at the same time, you can't create a game that cannot also be cheated. therefore, you have to maintain the scarcity rules AND police the game. this is actually the formula for maximizing everyone's enjoyment. not policing the game is not an option, not have scarcity rules is not an option, and having rules about scarcity that cannot also be cheated is not an option. so this is the status quo you get
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wait, wouldn't that lead to people farming for ... farmers?
I'm so confused...
I'm a signature virus. Copy me to your signature so I can replicate, and introduce your own mutations so I can evolve.
Some 3rd world countries will not take our grain as it is GMO.
MORTAR COMBAT!
In a nutshell, inflation occurs in an economy when there is too much cash chasing too few goods. This phenomenon has an inverse called deflation, which occurs when there are too many goods/services chasing too little cash. On the macro level, we haven't seen deflation in America in quite a while, however there have been micro level instances of it. For example, a shitload of wealth was erased a few years ago when the markets crashed. The auto industry was one of several where the effects of deflation were clearly visible. Auto makers had been churning out cars like crazy during the boom. All of sudden a lot of Americans had to tighten there belts forcing car makers to slash prices to clear their inventory.
So why does this make me nervous about my WoW wealth? The answer has to do with my chosen professions - herbalism and alchemy. Assuming that WoW inflation was just a way of life I decided I needed to find a way to earn gold at a rate that equals or outpaces inflation. After all I want my epic mount, good armor and expensive potions. After watching the AH for a while I decided I needed to get into the Arcanite bar transmute business. I then waited for Arcane Crystal (the main ingredient) prices to bottom and sunk every gold I had into purchasing them. Over time I expect my profit margin to be 8-17 gold per Arcanite bar.
If Blizzard's removal of gold triggers inflation Arcane Crystals could hit a new pricing bottom well below their current historical lows. The same with Arcanite Bars. In this situation I would be forced to sell my stock a t a huge loss.
In reality I don't think this will happen. Chinese farmers will find another way to beat the system. Also the amount of gold they took out probably isn't large enough to make an significant impact. At the same time this scenario is still something WoW players should be aware of.
It seems to me a competitor could fraudulently buy up all the 10,000 gold parcels in WoW that IGE has to sell with bogus credit cards, and run them out of business. I don't see how IGE would have any recourse in-game to get their farmed money back. I wonder what that would do to the artificially inflated prices that farming causes. Seems like an opportunity for some black hats to fight fire with fire.
This sig is exempt from disclosure under the privacy Act of 1974.
In any multiplayer game that allows players to affect each other in any way (or compete in any way), the Achiever types will want to have the best gear so they can outdo everyone else, and the Killer types will want the best gear so they can gank everyone else.
Nothing you can do will fix this -- human nature dictates that a significant portion of your players will be willing to "cheat" to get to the top, or pay money to someone else to get them to the top.
You either design the game so that its *not possible* for other players to affect your progression in any way (which is extremely limiting from a design point of view), or you use an open-drain economy and do your best to track and contain farmers and manage the farming problem.
After all... its pretty hard to distinguish between farming and normal game activity (sometimes its easy, but other times you're in a gray area where you have to be really careful not to ban legit players who will run around cursing your game after).
Sega got it right. In Phantasy Star Online, there was no gold farming. In fact, veteran players would usually give away their old weapons, armor, and money to noobs. Why? Because money was too easy to obtain, and item storage was severely limited. Also, there was no way for players to hurt each other. That made people join forces and concentrate on what was actually fun: killing alien monsters!
Circumcision is child abuse.
w00t!!! That guy just pretends to be a GM!!
No. The last time the US didn't have inflation was 1912, before the Federal Reserve was established. As soon as the US Government went on a paper diet, inflation began and has never stopped.
The 1930's did have inflation, because the government put in place legal restrictions against people dropping prices to fit the changing market conditions. As a result, there were surpluses which the government then paid (with printed money) farmers to destroy.
If you want to decry the depression of the 1930's, you might notice that it happened after the establishment of the Federal Reserve, which was touted as a way to prevent the mild recessions that had occurred during the 19th century.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
No, Greenspan was a devotee of Ayn Rand. He wrote extensively on the benefits of a hard currency and fiscal restraint by government.
When in office, however, he threw it all out and printed money like it was going out of style just like every other Federal Reserve officer.
Von Mises, on the other hand, never changed his stance against the printing of fiat currency. They hardly ran in the "same circles" unless you're also going to admit that Greenspan abandoned his principles for political expedience.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
The problem is not gold farmers or eBay. The problem is the dumb design of the game's economy.
Continually generating new random monsters carrying gold is the direct equivalent of continually printing new money, period. Even if there were no farmers, regular players would be killing those monsters and reaping the gold, and the money supply would continually increase. Farmers just speed up the process.
It's a basic part of the game's underlying structure. Banning players for taking advantage of it will just lead to an arms race where folks develop farming tools with increasingly human apparent behavior, making them harder and harder to detect.
If there's something you don't want players to do, then design the game such that there is no advantage for them to do it. The first lesson of economics is that people will do whatever they have incentive to do. This particular game design/rules interaction is like putting a government-sponsored free ice cream cart on every street corner while making it illegal to eat ice cream and periodically shooting all the ice-cream eaters.
The right solution is to design the game with a smart and balanced economy from the get-go.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Farm subsidies are possibly the greatest barrier to third world agricultural development there is (that's as true for EU subsidies as anyone else's), but talk about a way to make things worse. So, no, you shouldn't be paying farmers to farm, then buying their excess food to send it, using your vessels, to the third world. You should be paying farmers to manage the countryside, and buying food aid as close to famine areas as possible. By all means use it US food to feed the hungry in the US, but please, for the sake of the famine-stricken, keep American food out of African mouths.
These must be mostly hackers and a few farmers:
30,000,000gold/30,000accounts= 1,000g/account average.
That sure doesn't seem like a farmers quantity of gold. Especially since they typically sell them in 500g and 1000g lots to people buying epic mounts/items. You might argue that they spread the gold around, but it doesn't seem very smart to be paying for 30,000 accounts when you only net ~$50/1000g. Unless they cycle through gold a lot faster than I can even begin to imagine.
It just doesn't seem like the order of magnitude is right for "farmers" so my guess is the majority of these banned accounts are hacking or botting.
It's too bad because I'd like to know how much gold a gold farmer could farm if a gold farmer could farm gold.
Ender
Bzzt Whir Click
If the United States were to decide to grow enough food for all the hungry in the entire world (and we could for at least staple foods, we've got plenty of empty farms due to subsidies, etc), then all of the food (not far) beyond what we already distribute would rot in a warehouse waiting to dispursed. It's a sad state of affairs yes, and it's unfortunate that fixing the problems isn't a higher priority for the government or the people, but that's just the way it is.
Also, it takes more than just water and sunshine to make a plant, and with every bit of produce sold off a little bit more of the needed nutrients go with it. By not growing food on a plot of land every year it allows the soil to be revitalized every few years, allowing more food to be grown in the long term.
><));>
Er, you need to do a bit of reading on this. Production-tied farm subsidies are incredibly harmful, more so than regular subsidies. When the market is inundated with food that's free or below the cost of production, it makes everyone not getting subsidies -- such as African farmers -- go out of business.
Asset forfeiture comes to the online gaming world... story at 11.
My sig is too lon
See and hear more at http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/index.html . This guy's is gonna de-wussify Texas, if he has to do it one wuss at a time.
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
Yeah, paying farmers to grow food and then burn it is just outrages. Last year in college (my freshman year) my peer advisor told us about stastistics that he had studied that show that if the world moved its food supply around in a faster, more efficiant way that there would be very few hungry people. We could feed Africa if we did it right, instead we burn thousands of tons of food each year after the government pays for it. Oh and btw, its no longer "PC" to call countries in places like Africa third world, we instead should call them "developing". Lol, even though I got to a liberal college, I find that a load of shit, most of them haven't been developing at any recordable rate for years, istead they have been at war, and not without a little help from the good old US of A.
Until receantly I was a member of a top horde PVP guild (most of the guild has now quit playing). I have no purple items at all. All those that did had only PvP items. None the less we were great at PvP. Had multiple peopel who'd been high warlord, etc. When facing a random group of people, even those with epics, we'd 4 or 5 cap. Against the good alliance PvP guilds it was all tactics. When it was like 10 of us and some random people, and nobody really took leadership, we generally lost. When it was 15 of us and our leader was there, we almost never lost.
Gear helps, but only so much. It really comes down to tactics more than anything. Besides, the best gear in the game is only dropped, not bought. The tier 1 and 2 sets are all high-end raid gear. Even though there are a couple BoE peices, you never see them for sale. The farmers can't farm them. Why? Well you need 40 good people, of diverse classes, working together, and you can only hit each dungeon once a week.
You show me some guy who's bought the best stuff he can with purchased gold, I'll introduce to someone wearing all blues (not me necessiarly) who will kick his ass. The more people you get together, the more true that is. Give me 5 good, trained PvPers against 5 guys who bought a service to level them to 60 and bought their gear, I bet we don't lose a man.
The idea is that the high end gear is to give those people that want to play insane amounts something to work for. It does confer an advantage, at a large cost of time. However unless you've got a real inferority complex, you don't need that. You can play casual and still have fun. Will you get your ass kicked sometimes? Sure, but we all do. No matter how good you are, you find someone better. There's no ultimate trump.
I remember a quite amusing time when 3 epic'd out alliance had killed and were camping our guild master. They were taunting, acting tough, etc. What did he do? Called in his troops of course. Like 10 of us ran in there and just waxed them, and waxed their friends that came to help. They couldn't muster a force to do anything to us, and basically just sat and skulked until we got bored. However that's not because we were ultimate, later that night an alliance guild mopped the floor with us in BGs, a guild that we had beaten in the past.
What it sounds like to me is that you just want to pay money to be better than anyone. You feel that you should be able to buy your way into being powerful. I fail to see the point. Winning in PvP is fun, but hard fights are more fun. If I want to win all the time I can fire up a single player game and just engage all the cheats. For that matter I don't need to do that, I'm better than the AIs. The point of playing against other people is that they can be better than me, much better than me. The can provide a challenge.
If you dont' like the rules, don't play the game.
Then why doesn't the government subsidise call centers? You know, in case we go to war with India and folks back home still need help downloading the internet...
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I think this sums it up
http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2004/07/24
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I might note that in RL we have long had farmers, who speak broken English, and make a tiny amount of money, and are discriminated against.
It's quite interesting that the management of WOW, corresponding quite nicely to the government of our country, is bowing to the discrimination, and attempting to remove the farmers (who in turn do provide a valuable service to the game, in making it more realistic).
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
If you're going to try and subsidize farming, it seems like it would make more sense to make it part of the welfare system: subsidize the purchase of local fresh produce by the poor. Not only would this keep demand for farmers' products higher, it would provide a "bubble-up" source of wealth distribution (versus the trickle-down model), and it would make getting healthier food a more attractive alternative for the poor.
Of course, the trickle-down proponents would probably just prefer giving large handouts to huge corporate farms.
In EQ peopel would take over whole areas and not let anyone else kill things there. Thus it prevented anyone from getting any quests done, or neat clang.
In WoW much of the stuff is in instances, and things outside instance spawn so fast, it is rare for anyone to have complete control of an area, and when it does happen it is only for a short time.
Personally, I ahve never seen it happn in WoW, only heard about it.
and yeas, I've been everywere in WoW
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Banning farmers won't solve the problem, because that is merely attacking the symptom.
The way to fix the problem is to remove the concept of farming. Farming is work. It's not fun, people are willing to pay to get it done by someone else, so why is it even there? There will always be a market for professional farmers as long as there is farming.
Personally I've quit WoW because the reward for playing skilfully is minimal compared to the reward for hours spent. This aspect of MMOGs hasn't changed much since MMOGs first became popular. Maybe it's time Game designers came up with a better reward system? That would help both the addiction and farming problems.
The most secure OS is one that has 0 usage.
Except here's the problem. You bought gold, and continued to play the game. and pay blizzard for the privilege. So you are effectively voting for the game that's not quite what you wanted with your dollars.
The problem is that a lot of people are doing that instead of just quitting and waiting for the game they really want to play to come out. It is a problem because it gives the game companies no incentive to produce such a game. So until MMORPGs are as common as pork belly futures, there's going to be something of a market failure.
modified wow player disclaimer:
I have played WoW. I never bought gold. I quit playing rather than do that. I don't see anything wrong with buying gold aside from the concern I've already mentioned. You are not cheating. In agregate however, your actions do hurt consumers with similar intrests as you.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I hope I won't get nuked for lack of a source (then again you didn't and you have no source for your claim either), but fact of the matter is that the US gives the least amount of foreign aid of all countries compared to its' economic size. The US has been criticized for this for as long as I can remember.
World hunger is substantially due to: o the spread of modern medicine without a decrease in the birth rate o mistaking animals for food o living where food can't be grown
.. Let me add to my own comment that 18 billion dollars spent on the war in Iraq does not qualify as foreign aid. Least not in my eyes.
"...don't play games that suck." Is what I'd like to say to the people who are complaining.
:3
To be honest, I sympathize with both sides. The people who say the game is a grind of bullshittery and if you want to have a 'life' (Whatever that is...), AND have fun playing, you need to buy gold etc. etc. etc...as well as the people who say these people are idiots, and casual play is just as rewarding. Well, more power to the latter. They're having fun as it is. Good for them. But really, if you don't like the grind, and want a game that's more rewarding for casual players...PLAY SOMETHING THAT FITS THAT DESCRIPTION.
Frankly, I stopped playing FFXI because it had finally gotten to be too much BS for me. I like crafting, that's primarily what I do in MMOs, but there was no real merit to it. For character advancement, you STILL had to go kill beasties. And sometimes you'd have to level your character just to start crafting better items, despite the fact that crafting has levels and experience, too.
I guess I'm still living the dream of a new Ultima Online, without the suck, where your character could live out their life as a baker or just about anything you damn well please, without actually having to go kill monsters... Can you tell I'm more of a roleplayer?
In EVE Online, your character level is actually the sum total of all your skill training (In fact, they never even mention 'levels' anywhere in regards to character advancement...there aren't any.) and skills are trained simply by choosing the skill, and clicking 'Train', and you can continue whatever you were doing while it trains in the background. Even while you're offline.
The MMO I'm playing right now, a free MMO called Mabinogi http://mabinogi.jp/, uses a hybrid system. There are actual character levels, but your experience is the total of all experience gained in skills, plus general experience gained from mobs and as quest/job rewards. It's a fun game, and it doesn't really feel like a grind at all.
My character gains overall character level experience no matter what I'm doing; fishing, cooking, crafting, tailoring, or even fighting. Heck, I can make deliveries for the shops in town and get experience. (As well as gold and items.)
And being FREE it really appeals to the more casual MMO player in me. (Though for 500yen, or about $5, a month you get some added benefits, like double the bank inventory, the ability to run a player shop, etc...) Unfortunately for uninitiated, it's entirely in moonspeak.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
What's the difference between gold farming and holding down the A-button in Rygar and letting it sit overnight?
You've bough into the rethoric. The subsidies came from the 1930s, and are kept purely on a lobby basis from the farmers.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
New Zealand's farmers stopped receiving subsidies in the 1980s but are highly internationally competitive.
Actually, my source for the main claims was the news article linked. I do seem to recall that in discussions of foreign aid, it is often observed that the US' foreign aid "as a percentage of budget" is actually very low.
Say what you will about the wisdom of any particular conflict, but understand that no other democratic nation is capable of mobilizing such an extremely large force when it is necessary.