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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."
It wasn't defined the article. I had to use Google. RMT = "Real Money Trading."
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!
if you want to do strictly PvP, there are rewards for doing PvP as well.
With top end gear thats limited to 4-5 people per server, and is still vastly inferior to whats found in BWL. So you still won't be able to compete. Not that you could get to the top anyway, as you'd need the best gear to have a chance.
Through the standard progressive sequence, if you raid the proper dugneons sequentially, you will get acceptable gear simply from drops or quests. There is simply no need to buy the stuff.
If you don't want to have to do the same dungeon 50 times waiting for a 2% drop? If it gets ninja looted when it does drop? Or if you lose the roll legitamitely? If you want to play with friends who aren't still doing those lower level dungeons?
Gear certainly helps in certain areas, but you in no way need top end gear
Top end gear is absolutely necessary to do PvP. Its absolutely necessary to do high level dungeons (admittedly, you can do lower level ones without it). Get 40 people in greens in MC and have fun- you won't be able to beat more than 1-2 bosses, and that will be with heavy deaths.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Try to run AB without an epic mount. Speed in AB is more critical than anything else in AB since the winning strategy involves being able to reinforcing your positions before the other team can cap.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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
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.
25 hours? The record to 60 as best as I know is 6 days
Even the power leveling places will take 2wks or so 1-60.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
And guess what? As of today, the bot is still out there in the exact same location farming the same group of mobs. Bloody disappointing, let me tell you.
Don't be disappointed: Blizzard is actually being pretty smart about this. Once they catch a bot farming, they don't want to immediately shut it down. That's selecting for resistance.
Instead, they flag the account and monitor who it sends money/items to. Those items are flagged. It spreads like so.
Also, you can develop a profile of the bot, perhaps update Warden (the process that Blizzard uses to scan for bots in the background) to detect the software that's being run. Then, over the course of several weeks the software will spread to other users. Then you can start nailing hundreds of them at a time.
And you also hit them harder. You take more accounts out, you remove more stuff from people who are buying gold/items/etc.
So chances are you'll see that guy operating for a while. Feel good: he's helping Blizzard find the rest of his ilk. Oh, and thank you for reporting him!