The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer

An anonymous reader writes "This weekend's New York Times Magazine puts a human face to the 'gold farming' profession. Virtual world economist Julian Dibbell travels to Nanjing, China, for a look at the working conditions and first-hand experience of farming gold from virtual monsters as a way to make a living. From the article: 'At the end of each shift, Li reports the night's haul to his supervisor, and at the end of the week, he, like his nine co-workers, will be paid in full. For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less. The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20. The small commercial space Li and his colleagues work in -- two rooms, one for the workers and another for the supervisor -- along with a rudimentary workers' dorm, a half-hour's bus ride away, are the entire physical plant of this modest $80,000-a-year business.'"

Comments

i look at it this way

[circletimessquare]

what is bad about gold farming? well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at. it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy. hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke

furthermore, what is good about gold farming? well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort. this matters a whole hell of a lot more than some stupid game and the feelings of the players of that game in my book. real life survival is a whole hell of a lot more important than the romance of a MMORPG

so i vote: gold farming is fine by me

Re:i look at it this way

[numbski]

I say the same here, but I'm curious...$1.25/100 gold pieces is fine and all, but how is it that they make so little money in a week? Is gold THAT hard to come by in-game? I could rack up 10,000 gil playing FF12 in an hour. Is gold harder to make playing online games?

Re:i look at it this way

[realmolo]

I completely agree. Seriously.

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? I mean, we're talking about a game, after all. And it's not even a game with PRIZES. It's not even a game you can WIN. What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Takes me about 10 minutes per gold

Re:i look at it this way

[Speare]

well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at. it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy. hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke

I think of it this way: a rich guy buys a top-of-the-line $5000 Digital SLR camera, and then he takes fifteen snapshots of his beagle, and doesn't really scream when his silver-spoon daughter drops it down the country club's marble terrace staircase a couple months later. The guy was a boor when he showed off this camera to his friend, who busted his ass to get through photojournalism school with a $500 camera. The guy was a boor when he recounted the complete "horror" story of how the insurance company denied his claim for full replacement. But you know he'll buy another $5000 camera when that beagle has her pups.

How has this honestly changed the profession of photography? His friend probably felt uncomfortable with the rich man's effortless and pointless consumerism, but his friend wasn't actually denied other opportunities when it came right down to it.

The MMORPG is a smaller economy but it works the same way. The real issue is the design of that game, and whether it can withstand such tilted gamesmanship. If the gold farmers or the insta-knighthood characters are really clogging up the playground by camping at all the spawn points and inflating the price of dragon eyeballs, then I would point to the playground designers, not the farmers and not the insta-knights.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

It really depends on the game. In World of Warcraft, the gold piece is the high end currency, after copper and silver. I've never played FF12 (or any of the final fantasies other than the first) so I have no idea comparitively how much a gil is. You're certainly not going to get 10,000 gold an hour in WoW, but that doesn't mean money is harder to come by in WoW than FF.

Re:i look at it this way

[Sebastopol]

"what is bad about gold farming? well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at. it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy. hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke"

That's completely wrong.

What can lots of gold buy you in WoW?

1) an epic mount
2) two professions, which yeild 3~4 epic gadgets

That's it. Nothing else. Nada.

You can't buy the badass items, you have to play the game to earn your tier 4/5/6 gear. No way around that.

Re:i look at it this way

[Bellum Aeternus]

You don't have to be rich to buy gold. I just hit Google up for WoW Gold and found about a hundred sites. A quick flip through them showed that about 100G is worth about US$50 - not bad. However, if the farmers themselves are getting short changed so bad ($1.25 / 100G) somebody is price gouging. Seems to me the farmers should make at least 25-50% of the cost.

Re:i look at it this way

[gad_zuki!]

Gold-farming itself creaets inflation. Thus casual, and even not-so casual players, cant afford items they should be able to afford considering the time they spent online playing because of this inlfation. Thse people then considering buying from farmers and leading to even worse inflation.

Also. Gold farmers dont just farm gold. They also sell items. That messes with groups (ninja looters) and with the game economy.

Re:i look at it this way

[ajs]

what is bad about gold farming? well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at. Wow... those are SOME assumptions in your lead-in. I was firmly middle-class, not rich at all, when I bought plat for EverQuest. Why? Because I was playing with a guild which had demands on my time, and at the same time helping several friends get established in the game. It was the best way to trade a commodity that I did have (modest amounts of money for a hobby) for one that I did not have (time to further invest in the game). I spent about what I would have spent on any other hobby, I imagine. My friends didn't complain, as it turns out, nor did anyone in-game consider me an "asshole" at the time.

it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy. Fact: I will never be able to afford buying enough gold to match what a dedicated player in these games nets. But it's not a meritocracy with respect to the money... no one assigns any authority to someone on the basis of their in-game money (at best, you get oohs and ahhs for the fancy things you buy). Typically that's only a result of activities that gold can't buy: guild / raid organization; class and situational awareness; etc.

furthermore, what is good about gold farming? well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort. this matters a whole hell of a lot more than some stupid game and the feelings of the players of that game in my book. real life survival is a whole hell of a lot more important than the romance of a MMORPG It can be argued that this is an important step in the development of a truly globalized economy, as well. You have an excellent point here.

Re:i look at it this way

[TheRaven64]

If the game is so badly designed that it's more fun to pay someone else to do 90% of the playing for you, then I can't help but wonder why people play it at all.

Re:i look at it this way

[ajs]

Just to clarify: I bought plat in EQ... so far I've never had to buy gold in WoW, and the prices are actually less reasonable anyway. The most expensive thing I'd want would be an epic flying mount, and I'm willing to wait and farm for that, as the process itself is fun, and I'm not over-committed like I was with EQ.

Re:i look at it this way

[Broken scope]

So the fact that gold farming ruins in game economies and can make it impossible for newer players who won't buy gold to keep up with in game inflation. I'm not going to waste my time with one of the hundreds of unequal comparisons, but I must ask you this, is someone else earning money by damaging the quality of a service paid for by others ever acceptable?

Re:i look at it this way

[NickCatal]

Mats for high-level enchants and blue/purp high level items on the AH

Re:i look at it this way

[aquasheep]

what is bad about gold farming?

Couple of points, specific to WoW:

First of all, for a long time, gold farmers were generally blamed for making the game less fun for "typical" users. They took up player spots on servers, which caused a lot of servers to have queues. This forced a lot of people to have to wait to get into the game during primetime hours (6-11pm). A lot of gold farmers tended to bother other players to give them buffs/conjured food/open locked boxes, usually pretty rudely. And, players that wanted to legitimately farm for their own gold had a harder time, because gold farmers would typically plant themselves in common, high-profit spots and camp spawns.

Secondly, visiting and buying from a lot of gold-selling sites puts you at risk to have your account stolen or hacked, either via key loggers or poor security on the buyer's part. Your account is stripped and liquidated, and that gold sold to others, creating a cycle that gives a very bad reputation to both gold farmers and gold sellers alike.

Third, for a while, gold seller sites would spam people in the game advertising their services, both through tells and through the in-game mail.

Now, recently, these aren't the problems that they used to be. I haven't seen a queue on my server in months, ever since the expansion it's been easier than ever to make money (less incentive for anyone buy gold), and with the most recent patch, Blizzard instituted controls to limit the amount of spam. That doesn't take away from the fact that gold farmers have accrued very bad reputations, and people who buy from gold sellers are generally seen as contributing to shady business practices.

Re:i look at it this way

[dc29A]

I completely agree. Seriously.

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? I mean, we're talking about a game, after all. And it's not even a game with PRIZES. It's not even a game you can WIN. What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.

There is much more than meets the eye about the negative effects of gold farming.

In MMO games there is a lot of space shared by players. If player X is killing mobs in the same area as me, we'll have to share or fight for spawns, that's fine if we both use ingame tools. Now enter gold farmer with bots, insane knowledge of spawn patterns and times, and you won't find mobs to kill. In WoW for example, you can go around in zones and mine ore for your weapon that you want to craft as a blacksmith. Good luck, gold farmers are on ore veins the moment they appear. Gold farmers make it nearly impossible in many cases for legitimate players to collect items/resources/gold for themselves because gold farmers can (and do) monopolize entire regions of the game. People who played WoW can surely remember zones like Tyr's Hand being perma camped 24h a day by gold farmers.

Also, every time an exploit or bug is found, gold farmers exploit it massively and force the game company to bring down servers and fix them causing downtime for players. Not to mention you can kiss the game economy good bye. How many games have had their economy ruined because of gold farmers. Gold farmers abusing bugs/exploits not just flood the economy, they have no problems in griefing players (Final Fantasy Online) and monopolizing game content (WoW). Even if they get banned, they are back operating within hours. To them a ban from game is the cost of doing business, just like Microsoft and lawsuits against it.

And finally, in game currency can be used to gain advantage in PvP (buying gear, potions, consumables). PvP is competitive, maybe you don't care because it's a "game" but some people care because they want a leveled playing field. You know, having a game that's fair and fun ...

Gold farmers are a cancer to MMO games. Some people might not care, but these people negatively impact everyone's enjoyment of the game, be it because they destroy economies or hack or monopolize content. It's not healthy for games.

Re:i look at it this way

[Graff]

In World of Warcraft you can make around 100 gold per hour of work at level 70. If you are decently geared and know some prime locations that can go up but 100 gold an hour is a good rule of thumb. Given the economy of some nations $1.25 US per hour is probably not that bad of a wage for the workers although it certainly is no get rich quick scheme.

Re:i look at it this way

[Hognoxious]

Being a level 23 million wizard is a status symbol, just like wearing a Rolex or driving a Hummer.

Or in two words: small cocks.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort. this matters a whole hell of a lot more than some stupid game and the feelings of the players of that game in my book.

People could feed themselves doing anything to generate money. If he were instead stealing his way to making enough to live, that's ok, too? Who cares about the people he would steal from? Maybe he could make a living selling diethelyne glycol is glycerin. Who cares what they wind up using the stuff for?

While I won't make a moral equivalence to mucking up a video game to killing people, when it "at least they can feed themselves" ever a justification? I mean, China is a communist nation, right? So, where is all this support of the community that's supposed to keep him from starving?

To think he could be working actually producing something of value instead.

Re:i look at it this way

[MysteriousPreacher]

When you listed the bad things about gold farming, you totally neglected to mention the gold selling companies.

What's bad about gold farming?

Gold farmers occupy areas, often en-masse, making it tricky for regular players to complete quests.

Gold farmers have to advertise and they do this by spamming in-game. That is arguably the most irritating aspect of their business. They take very intrusive approaches such as randomly inviting you to a group or filling your chat window with a wall of shite. With this in mind, would you support the poor guys in china if they were making a living by filling your email in-box with meds adverts? How about if they looked up your IM details and would randomly flood you with messages that you couldn't block because when you block one account, they'll just switch to another.

If spammers and gold farmers were to lose their jobs tonight, I'd be pretty happy. They shouldn't be feeding their families through gold farming any more than I should feed mine by setting up and autodialler in my house, asking thousands of people to each send me a dollar.

Re:i look at it this way

[Hognoxious]

$1.25 US per hour is probably not that bad of a wage for the workers although it certainly is no get rich quick scheme.

It is for the boss who makes 3 bucks for every one they get if I read TFA right. I'm surprised they don't revolt and go communist or something. Nah, that'll never happen.

Re:i look at it this way

[grev]

hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke/blockquote You are under the erroneous assumption that MMOs take skill.

Re:i look at it this way

[Fatal Darkness]

I haven't played too many other MMORPGs, but I can say there's no "real skill" to be concerned about in WoW,
WoW and other MMORPGs that follow it's style are all about time invested, not skill. There's no skill involved in farming/grinding.

So why shouldn't someone be able to buy gold? You're not really buying the gold, you're buying time. If you choose to spend all day farming in the game, that's you're choice. If someone else chooses to spend that day working a job and is willing to spend some of that money earned to catch up in the game, I say more power to them.

Re:i look at it this way

[CowTipperGore]

hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke Perhaps there is a game like that, but I've yet to find it. Consider, for example, the most popular MMORPG: WoW.

PvP is better than 50% gear and less than 50% skill. Twinking ruined the lower level brackets for anyone who can't afford 700 gold or so for gear and enchants - a twink who can't play can still take out three normally-geared players at once. A very skilled player can overcome the gear gap (although some classes are just screwed because they are so gear-dependent). This gear disparity continues until you hit the top-tier of arena teams, where everyone has essentially the same gear.

While PvE isn't as much of a problem since it isn't really competitive - don't tell some people that, though - the gold (and the gear it buys) lets you progress faster than others.

In the end, it just taints the game. It is a rot that the developer/publisher should eliminate. However, I don't have a problem with the gold farmers as long as they are legitimately playing (not using botting software, for example). IT is the people buying the gold that need removed from the equation. The rest will eventually fix itself.

Re:i look at it this way

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually, last month the account growth took a downtick for the first time.
Wow may have seen it's peak.

Re:i look at it this way

[C0rinthian]

You're forgetting a couple things: One, getting to 70 requires not only the purchase of the account, but also the expansion pack. Approx $90 investment plus monthly fees. Getting to 70 also takes a significant time commitment. Considering the high likelyhood that a farming account will get banned once reported, then it doesn't make much sense to buy two boxes, spend 2 weeks getting the character to 70, just to have it banned after a week or two of 100g/hour output. Most likely they farm with lower level characters that require less time/money investment and are less of a loss when banned.

Re:i look at it this way

[Cornflake917]

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? In WoW?

Pretty much nobody. Almost all of the top-notch elite weapons in WoW are bind on pick-up. Which means that once you pick up an item, only you can use it. BoP items are worthless to other players, and can't be traded. The only advantage that rich gold-buyers have over people who don't buy gold is they get access to more potions and buffs and can get an elite mount sooner. This really doesn't ruin the experience for other gamers. In some PVP servers, you are slightly more likely to get ganked a buy a potion-buffed level 70 with an elite flying mount, but at worse it becomes a nuisance. All high-level dungeons/raids are null of PVP.

In other games?

It could really screw over the gaming experience of other players. Macro-miners (the equivilant of chinese gold farmers in WoW) in Eve-Online suck up all the valuable resources in the system before any individual miner can make any in-game profit. The minerals mined from the asteroids is the main resource (along with the in-game currency) in creating other components. This means that minerals that are mined up the macro-miners are flooded into the market, making a large effect on the game's economy. There are no bind on pick-up items in Eve (there are some bind on equip though). So even the highest level gear is effected by the game's economy, which means that the richer-in-real-life gamers can achieve a huge advantage over other players. I can't really speak for to much more MMO's but I think there's a possibility that "gold-farming" can create a shitty experience for other players if the MMO's economy is designed a certain way.

Re:i look at it this way

[irix]

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming?

WoW has an enconomy. It is a form of free-market economy, where people sell things that they have made or things that they have looted off of mobs for gold. One problem is that the economy is naturally inflationary - there is effectively an unlimited amount of gold out there, and there are are not enough sinks (repair costs, etc.) to curb that inflation. However, this inflation should be somewhat kept in check by the fact that almost all "normal" players are only really going to "farm" so much gold in a given day.

Gold farmers break this. They introduce so much gold in to the system that it leads to rampant inflation, which has a negative impact on the economy. They also sometimes flood the market with items that they have farmed, leading to substantial downward price pressure on some items.

In other words, gold farmers mess with the economy of your server and thereby negatively effect the enjoyment of the game for people who do not buy gold.

The other negative effect gold farming has had is account cracking. Some of these gold farming operations are supplementing their gold intake by putting out keyloggers/trojans and then breaking in to people's accounts and transferring their gold and items out to be subsequently sold to other players. This isn't isolated - anyone who plays the game probably knows someone who has had an account craked and lost everything. In some cases Blizzard can restore everything, but only after several weeks of lost play while they investigate.

So, there are plenty of negative effects. Why else do you think players hate gold farmers and Blizzard bans their accounts by the thousands?

Re:i look at it this way

[mythar]

let's look at the different ways to get gold in world of warcraft without buying it from gold farmers:

1. kill the same types of monsters over and over, for hours and days and weeks, then pick up gold and sell loot for whatever the market will bear.
2. ride around in a zone for hours and days and weeks, looking for herbs to pick and ore to mine, then sell for whatever the market will bear.
3. sit in the auction house all day, looking for good deals which you can turn around and sell for more.
4. get lucky and find a rare and highly sought after item, which you can turn around and sell for whatever the market will bear.
5. scam or steal gold/items from other players.
6. utilize a combination of the above methods in order to learn how to make a highly sought after crafted-item, which you can sell for whatever the market will bear.
7. be a part of a guild that is far advanced in terms of pve raid progression, and thus is able to run easier raid content and sell the drops for whatever the market will bear.

hmmm... did i miss anything? so far, i don't see anything here that requires skill beyond that of a 12 year-old. that is what you meant by meritocracy, right? what i do see is that it requires you to have the temperament to do the same thing over and over for weeks and weeks. in the mmo world, this is what is called grinding.

but, wait.. there's another common thread among the methods above... i can't quite... what is it...? yes! it's greed.

(sure, hard work and greed may be virtues in a capitalistic society, but this is just a game, and when you're finished, you end up with no material rewards.)

Re:i look at it this way

[_Sprocket_]

How has this honestly changed the profession of photography? His friend probably felt uncomfortable with the rich man's effortless and pointless consumerism, but his friend wasn't actually denied other opportunities when it came right down to it.

The boor with the $5000 camera is in no way competing with the up-and-coming professional with his $500 camera. So sure - there's no impact to the profession. Moot point.

The MMORPG is a smaller economy but it works the same way. The real issue is the design of that game, and whether it can withstand such tilted gamesmanship. If the gold farmers or the insta-knighthood characters are really clogging up the playground by camping at all the spawn points and inflating the price of dragon eyeballs, then I would point to the playground designers, not the farmers and not the insta-knights.

I agree to a large extent. Good game design goes a long way. However, ultimately you have to deal with the very nature of the game. At some point you have to allow for rewarding luck and (to a larger extent) time with some sort of gains. If you want to maintain a social structure... you have to allow for trading of some form of token. As soon as you do these two things, you'll have individuals looking for a short-cut and a market willing to supply them with one. Once that shortcut involves influences outside the game, then are you really playing the game any more? Or are you simply cheating?

Re:i look at it this way

[Aladrin]

"And finally, in game currency can be used to gain advantage in PvP (buying gear, potions, consumables). PvP is competitive, maybe you don't care because it's a "game" but some people care because they want a leveled playing field. You know, having a game that's fair and fun ..."

This argument is invalid.

Even if the money input into a game is the same, the amount of time a person plays is not. The college kid who can spend 70 hours a week playing WoW is -not- equal to the guy with 3 kids and a wife, and 2 jobs. Oddly enough, the very same process that you say makes the game unfair would make the game more fair for him.

There are plenty of other people out there with no time other than this hypothetical guy, as well. Why should they be on the unfair side of things?

You can cry 'no fair' all you want, but the current situation is just as unfair.

It's interesting to note that the current fad in Korea is to make 'free' games that you buy gold or items with real money if you like, and that's how the server is supported. Since they pretty much run the trendy side of MMOs, I expect we'll see some quality English MMOs doing that pretty soon.

Re:i look at it this way

[irix]

If the game is so badly designed that it's more fun to pay someone else to do 90% of the playing for you, then I can't help but wonder why people play it at all.

This silly old argument. People don't use gold buying services because the game is fun or is not fun. For the most part, they use them to get something to show off their "e-peen". You can geta nice set of epic gear by:

1. Endgame raiding
2. Participating in battlegrounds or arena matches
3. Getting the materials together to have some epic gear crafted for you (or craft it yourself if you have the profession)
4. Buy some gold and then buy BoE epic crafted gear from the auction house at ridiculously inflated prices

Most people choose #1,2 or 3 or a combination thereof and have fun doing it. Others choose 4.

Yes, I know there are other reasons to buy gold, but I think most of it falls on people who want to look cool in epic gear idling in Ironforge, flying over Shat in their epic mount, twinking out their low-level alt, etc. but couldn't be bothered to play the game to get it.

Re:i look at it this way

[Monchanger]

Good point regarding the initial and continuing financial investment aspect of farming.

I'm no MMO expert, but my experience playing the 2-week WOW trial suggests that the action of farming directly leads to leveling.

I also figure any decently-run Chinese Gold Farm would reduce the investment time in character building by doing at these two things:
* Have one (English speaking) employee study which quests provide a good (experience+gold)/time ratio and document how to most efficiently complete them.
* Figure a good way to store and transfer items which assist budding characters to level at an increased rate (by fighting higher-level monsters etc.)

Re:i look at it this way

[sgilti]

So if someone in America can feed themselves on $5 a day for doing the same thing, that would be an acceptable situation?

Re:i look at it this way

[Andy_R]

What are the farmers taking away? Well in Runescape, they are hogging some limited resources to the extent that non-farmers don't get much of a look-in. Cutting yew trees on free-to play servers is a case of dodge the macroers, and it's very tough to kill a green dragon in the wildereness when there are hoards of gold farmers camping the respawn spots.

The company behind Runescape have recently started a high-profile campaign of banning anyone buying gold as well as anyone selling it, which seems to be helping.

Re:i look at it this way

[irix]

Even if the money input into a game is the same, the amount of time a person plays is not. The college kid who can spend 70 hours a week playing WoW is -not- equal to the guy with 3 kids and a wife, and 2 jobs. Oddly enough, the very same process that you say makes the game unfair would make the game more fair for him.

I'm the guy with the kids and the wife who plays WoW. I'm never going to be in a high-end raiding guild or a top-ranked arena team. I've accepted that and moved on, while still having fun playing the game and living vicariously through videos downloaded from warcraftmovies.com. The people who buy gold to get epic gear aren't going to be in a high-end raiding guild or a top-ranked arena team either. They are just kidding themselves and helping wreck the server economy in the process.

Re:i look at it this way

[TomTraynor]

I play Runescape along with my daughter. The real problem is that there are hundreds of these 'farmers' all over sucking up resources and leaving little to the real players. They make it difficult and some places impossible to play as you cannot get the item(s) you need for getting the level for finishing off a quest. It also annoys me that some idiot with a bit of cash can buy his way to the front of the line and get all of the stuff without lifting a finger to get it.

Re:i look at it this way

[Funkcikle]

Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming?

Blizzard.

Someone else is suckling at their cash cow, from a teat which they didn't think to suckle from themselves.

Not the Chinese farmers, not the players who don't buy gold.

Blizzard.

Re:i look at it this way

[FooAtWFU]

I'd note that the boss is probably also the guy who pays for the building / the electricity / the Internet / the game subscriptions; if he's not making at least as much from this venture as he would investing those expenditures elsewhere (a money market account, or CDs, or some good index funds... or whatever they have over there in China that's readily available), then he's effectively losing money by running the business. Since the details of the business's expenditures aren't provided, I don't think anyone here can really make informed commentary on the precise level of exploitation.

Re:i look at it this way

[Rayonic]

I always see this flamebait comment crop up whenever we have a story about goldfarming. The fact is, in any competitive game -- especially one that requires a long-term commitment -- there will always be people who will try to skip ahead via illegitimate means. Be it cheating, buying gold, or other exploitative behavior.

Some people just can't play and enjoy a good game on their own terms. They have to "keep up with the Joneses", so to speak.

Re:i look at it this way

[smaddox]

Gold farmers are a cancer to MMO games. YES! I'm glad we agree.

That is why I say GO GOLD FARMERS!

Honestly. MMOGs are a leach on society. The more time people waste playing video games, the less time they spend learning and producing - the lifeblood of our economy.

If you want to be entertained, go play a sport. You will enjoy it a lot more, and be a lot healthier.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go play some DOD:S.

Re:i look at it this way

[Dirtside]

Good luck, gold farmers are on ore veins the moment they appear.

In theory, yeah, but in practice, there just aren't that many farmers compared to the available space and the bulk of the population. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been inconvenienced by farmers, and it was always in the same place -- the demon camps in northern Azshara.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

These days the first 6/7 or so of WoW *isn't* much fun, especially if you're not in a leveling guild. Everyone has moved on to the level 60-70 areas, and many/most players are already 70. It can be hard finding a group for level 30 quests when most of the others in the zone are 70's there to gank you. So if you started playing later than most other people, or if you're leveling a new toon, it can be really lonely and boring.

Buying gold wouldn't help too much with this, but there were many days I considered paying someone to level me.

Re:i look at it this way

[Znork]

"well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort."

Not particularly well tho, and not in a particular long-term or humanity improving fashion. The dollars paid for 'producing' the 'gold' is money not spent buying some other item instead, so is it better spent this way?

To phrase it in another fashion; if you had a program that did a useful thing but had a bug that required you press every button on the keyboard five thousand times for the useful thing to occur, would you a) outsource the buttonpressing to China or b) demand that the supplier of the program actually fixed the bug? And which case, as a whole, would make humanity better off?

Paying for people to waste time in a particularly elaborate way of typing an sql statement to update a non-scarce database row misdirects economic resources in a insidously damaging fashion. The exact same 'wealth' could have been created by the millisecond of work it takes to simply update the database and spending actual money and resources to create real scarce wealth, such as food, clothing, etc instead. The economy as a whole thus loses wealth as compared to the optimum producing solution. With no more input of resources we could have _both_ instead of just one of the desired things.

Personally I think the MMORPGs should just get it over with and create graded scales of difficulty for separate servers. Range it from no-holds-barred duping-allowed, here's your item-creation-tool, through 'normal' to 'every-item-is-unique' servers.

Rather like sports. It's not like you can hire a Chinese guy to play a game for you and have them pause the game and let you step in and score the goal. If you want to play, you play in your division.

Re:i look at it this way

[TheMLX]

I think most players don't care as much about Gold Farming as the unsolicited spam they get selling said gold. Before the last batch of fixes Blizzard put in, I was getting a different private message spam trying to sell me gold every 10 minutes or so, and that was on a low population server.

Re:i look at it this way

[Bunderfeld]

Sounds like real life to me...God help us, "The Running Man" era is here!

Re:i look at it this way

[TheRaven64]

It seems like there are a few ways they could get around this:

• Make some fun quests that can be completed alone.
• Make some quests that require (or permit) players of a range of levels (e.g. introduce monsters that do percentage damage).
• Add some NPCs who can fill in the gaps.
• Add a quest or curse that causes some high-level players to de-level for a bit, and return to their old state after levelling up as their weakened character.

So, I stand by my original comment that the game seems badly designed.

Re:i look at it this way

[Imagix]

Aristocracy is a hereditary government. I presume you meant plutocracy, which is a government formed by the wealthy.

Re:i look at it this way

[MBGMorden]

$50 for 100G is insane. I can make 100G in 30-45 minutes. I spend probably 50G per raid on repairs & consumables. I can deal with an hour or two of farming on a Saturday (usually on Vent with guildmates so I'm having fun while I'm at it) to pay for my weekly raiding costs (about 3 raids per week). I certainly don't want to be spending $300/month to "afford" to play a game that's supposed to cost $15/month.

Re:i look at it this way

[readin]

I look at it this way, part of the fun of the game for myself and many others is seeing how we stack up against other players, and trying to see what we can do to improve over them. That's part of the fun of most games. Obviously it's not all the fun, because we can still have fun when we lose, or when we're not the best player on the team. But it is part of the fun.

What does gold farming do? Well, like the article said, what happens to your game of Monopoly when the other player pays someone real money for Boardwalk and Park Place. What happens to your game of neighborhood baseball when the other team hires a professional player to pitch? Or perhaps they hire professionals to run up the score for the first nine innings, then come in to 'win' the game?

I'm a casual player; I don't really expect to ever reach the top levels of the MMORPG I play. I would like to think that people who do reach those levels do so by playing - that they have had the experiences I'm having and have moved on.

This is a game. It's not about logic; it's about feelings. When someone is buying their way to the top, it no longer feels like a game. One reason to play a game is to escape the real world where some people get all the gold and all the advantages and go to a world where different criteria are important so different people have a chance to get the winnings. If the real world seeps in by letting people use real money to buy their way up, it stops being a game.

Some games should allow real world transactions if that's what people want. Just some games have PvP and non-PvP servers, perhaps they should have RMT and non-RMT servers. For now, most games have rules that all servers are non-RMT, and people who play should respect the rules they've agreed to.

Re:i look at it this way

[Creepy]

most MMORPGS have an economy system based on supply and demand. Gold farming tips the balance and gives the rich the supply by artificially driving up the demand (by buying stuff with gold they bought with real money). In some instances this can make it nearly impossible for a person that is not buying gold to be able to obtain certain items without a significant investment of time in the game (hundreds of hours). Although I don't play MMORPGS very much, I've seen this happen in every one I have played. I tried hardcore farming for a month in one and I still didn't have enough gold to buy one of the most expensive items in one game, but after some anti-farming code was added a shor time later (and the price of purchased gold skyrocketed - from something like $15 to $85 for the same amount) that particular item dropped in price to the point where I can buy 3-4 of them.

    I believe the door swings both ways.
    you asked, who is getting hurt?
    The publisher, because he loses the most common subscriber - the one that can't afford the ever-inflating price.
    The common consumer, because they either are paying too much for privilege or can't afford to pay for it, establishing the wealthy at the top of the hierarchy.
    The developer, because they will not be paid for enhancements or a sequel

    who isn't getting hurt?
    The gold farmer, because he can feed his family (if it isn't bot-farmed)
    The gold seller, because they make a bundle to feed their family
    The gold buyer, because they get status and privilege by buying it, not earning it.

    how do you know there is even a guy getting fed at the other end? Someone could just download or create a bot and have it repeat the same actions across a farm of machines. When caught and their account is banned, they just buy another license with proceeds and tweak the bot a bit so it isn't detected.

    Very few MMORPGS are based predominantly on skill - if you have wealth, you can almost always put yourself on top.

Re:i look at it this way

[Fulcrum of Evil]

For the most part, they use them to get something to show off their "e-peen".

If that's all it is, why not allow players to purchase a literal e-peen. For $20, your night elf has a conspicuous bulge in his/her pants.

Re:i look at it this way

[xenocide2]

it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, How much merit is there in having more free time than another person? Is playing a game, intended as entertainment, as though it were a full time job what we call "working hard" in America anymore?

Re:i look at it this way

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I think of it this way: a rich guy buys a top-of-the-line $5000 Digital SLR camera

I just started looking at DSLs, and there's no such thing as a $5000 DSLR - there's a $1k body and 20k worth of glass; give your kid the rebel with a $80 lens - the lens is cheap and the rebel will probably survive.

But yeah, your comparison is invalid - the guy with a $1k slr setup will take better photos because he knows what he's doing. Your rich slob will probably screw up the lighting and maybe the focus too. He's at best annoying - it's not like he's camping photo-op spawns

Re:i look at it this way

[vux984]

and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke

Only if you let them lead. As long as they aren't complete and utter newbies and can follow directions they can participate in a raid or other content and pass for any other average player.

Sad thing is that goes for most players, even the ones who 'earned' their way. A halfwit can be perfectly competent in a decent group where someone else calls the shots and they just need to attack the designated target, or keep the tank alive, or nuke periodically or fulfill whatever their 'role' is.

Very few players are able to lead, develop situational tactics, or step outside their role. Being high level in MMOGs doesn't mean squat. Any hamster willing to run the treadmill can do it.

Being *good* MMOGs on the other hand is much harder. Unfortunately, except for the very end of the game, you can get away with just being mediocre if your equipment is good enough. Only at endgame, where you CAN'T buy better equipment does real skill become a necessity. And at endgame, its a raidgame, and individual skill is really only required of the leaders -- the average WoW player can get away with being... well.. unabashedly average.

Re:i look at it this way

[Merk]

Paying for gold in WoW is essentially the same as using steroids in professional sports. It's against the rules, and against the spirit of fair competition. It's as simple as that.

Re:i look at it this way

[debrain]

I completely agree with you that gold farmers are a problem for MMO games. However, I suggest that is a problem with the economy of the game. As well, I feel that the poorly designed artificial scarcity inherent to these games should not impinge upon the ability for people who were otherwise destitute to be able to buy themselves some bread (so to speak).

That being said, companies considering the quality of the gaming experience should design the game in such a way that there is no artificial scarcity which would give rise to profitable gold farming.

In other words, I think poor people making money off gold farming isn't the worst thing in the world, and I think the blame for poor user experience falls on the company to whom you pay money to play. That company (I reiterate, to whom you pay money to play) has designed the game in such a way that farming in their artificial world and selling it in real economic terms is actually viable, and farming has a negative impact upon the experience of regular users.

I'm not suggesting that this is an easy problem for companies to solve. I am suggesting that the onus is on the company to solve that problem, that gold farmers have no personal obligation to other users in light of their real-world poverty, and that solving the problem is not stopping farming but rather designing the game in such a way that gold farming is uneconomical or at least the farming is not otherwise detrimental to the experience of paying users.

Re:i look at it this way

[tknd]

If the game is so badly designed that it's more fun to pay someone else to do 90% of the playing for you, then I can't help but wonder why people play it at all.

I don't play WoW, I actually play a different MMO. But I've been around and between MMOs and the farming issue always comes up and in almost any MMO there are always farmers. So you ask, if there are farmers there is obviously some tedious part of the game that isn't fun. And almost always that's true. MMOs are intentionally built with a grind in mind to keep players subscribed.

But why do some players keep playing the game? Probably because there are aspects of the game that they do enjoy but are not available in other games. I would have to say that one very big influence is the social aspect.

In many online games, you often just join a game and immediately start playing with a random group of people. This was the norm and it could be very fun. For example in most FPS games you just find a server, join it, and there you are in the middle of the battle. The problem is that the teams are random, the players are random, and there is very little communication. So while you are competing against other people in the game, you aren't necessarily communicating.

MMOs are quite different because they encourage the social aspect. To do things like take out a really tough monster, you need to form a group. If the group does not communicate or work together as a team, inevitably they will fail. This encourages the players to create social bonds even if they're only temporary.

Beyond that, players begin to see the advantages of having well defined groups and begin forming guilds or sets of players that commonly trust and work together. At the very peak, you begin to have stable and consistent players playing together. Just as the article said, as soon as you achieve cohesiveness, the communication dies out. But in MMOs there is always the next challenge, so the better a group of players get, the more challenges they seek. They can do this either by seeking additional harder game content, or by reducing their numbers and relying on fewer players.

So anyhow, not all players are aware of this but most of what keeps people playing MMOs is social. Once a player figures out that he can get the same social benefit outside of the game and he no longer feels that the game offers him anything beneficial outside of that, he will quit. Most players haven't reached that point or they aren't aware of it, so they keep logging in because they don't understand that there are alternatives.

I've been through this process more than once and I've seen many of my friends get sucked in as well as others that had been hardcore players quit the game. So everything I've said is first hand experience. There are also a lot of people who "say" they are quitting, but we all understand that they're quitting for the wrong reasons and they'll just get sucked back in a year later.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

MMOGs are not *just* games. We have whole generations of people that have now grown up in the computer era and have extended their existence to the virtual sphere. Rather than bleat on about how people should get out and see nature and build a raft and stuff like that and how it's not important, perhaps you just underestimate how things are going or perhaps you were hurt once in college for playing too much and thus as an extreme opposite you don't touch MMOGs?

Now as to why Gold farming is bad. It *does* hurt people. The game was created with a set of rules... millions of people play the game exactly because of those rules. Those people do not want to feed some poor person somewhere... it's his right to choose not to. Who cares why. So now these people pay money to play and work hard on a real-word intangible gain of virtual wealth and skill. Then comes the gold farmer (some using bots) which breaks the community of the game (as you encounter more and more people in the game who run in circles killing the same MOBs over and over and do not want to communicate at all and farm so many materials and items that the market gets flooded and there is no point in people taking up in-game professions. Prices gets skewed, the paying players get fed-up and leave, and the game developer loses profit.

But, sure it's just a game, it's not real... but I won't debate reality and perception here. Fact of the matter is that there is a AUP in the game to protect valid players and the company... they have the right to this and there is nothing wrong with it.

Gold Farmers are a blight and should be purged.

I really could care less about the fact that they get people to level up faster... that does not hurt me. Screwing with the economy is more the issue.

Re:i look at it this way

[tgd]

Its not the farmers who should be pissed, its the managers.

If you think 3x is excessive, you haven't spent much time working in the real world. In the US, it would be pretty atypical for a management level employee to be only making 3x what grunt workers are making, especially for menial sort of labor at minimum wages.

Even in high paying positions like software, its not unusual for a department lead to make 2x what individual engineers are making.

Re:i look at it this way

[radish]

The EOS-1D mkIII is almost exactly $5k, the EOS-1DS mkII is $7k. Nikon's top model is around $5k too. But you are quite right in that the cost of the body is usually (or at least certainly _should_ be) significantly less than the lenses.

Re:i look at it this way

[Millenniumman]

What I don't understand is why people pay for other people to play a game for them. First they pay Blizzard $15/month to play the game, then they pay someone even more money to play the game for them. What's the point?

Re:i look at it this way

[Fulcrum of Evil]

So they are. According to the amazon comments, the 1DS should survive some mild droppage. Of course, a pro with a rebel xti (at $750) beats some douche with a 1DS :).

Re:i look at it this way

[vertinox]

Gold farmers are a cancer to MMO games.

Which is why the leveling system itself is the carcinogen.

Gold farming is a sign of a broken game that allows too much disparities in levels and lack of skill being used for game play. When all game play on MMOs is time sinks, then the developers see all problems as "not enough time sinks".

The Diku mud style of play doesn't work well for server with more than 100 players and the model is completely broken when you scale to games like WoW.

The only MMO that got it right the first time was Ultima Online.

Re:i look at it this way

[Arterion]

His friend probably felt uncomfortable with the rich man's effortless and pointless consumerism, but his friend wasn't actually denied other opportunities when it came right down to it.

Naw... one man's wealth is another man's poverty. Also, in this scenario, if I were the rich man, and my friend was a budding photographer, I would buy my friend the camera and let him take some professional pictures of my dog. But I find that rich people usually have rich friends, and poor people usually have poor friends. Because I'm poor as dirt, and I'm not friends with a single rich person, nor do I really know any personally.

It's nothing for me to take a friend out to dinner when he's broke. I'll spend easily 5% of my income on that, because I care about my friends. 5% for me might be a couple meals. For someone wealthy, it might be a fancy SLR camera.

Re:i look at it this way

[grumpyman]

Don't blame the gold farmers - blame the people who purchase gold. It's sort of like you're blaming the prostitutes for the 'problem' of prostitution.

Re:i look at it this way

[Aereus]

What's bad is the people are worked 12 hours a day, so some asshole in America/Canada can make 90% of the profit out of the scheme. Also, the game was not designed to employ people inside the world. The gold farmers camp mobs that players need for quests, rare drops, leveling, or crafting, etc. They ruin the gameplay, inflate the economy, and require you to spend more time in the game. Or in the case of FF11 -- basically every single Notorious Monster spawn in the game was camped 24/7 by Chinese farmers. Your only sane way of ever getting one of these items was to pay the outrageous marked up prices on the AH that these farmers set for them. They controlled the economy.

Re:i look at it this way

[Planesdragon]

well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort.

No, some guy in china is scrambling up their class-ladder on this. China is a communist country: what happens to a chinaman who loses his "job" is a heck of a lot different than what happens to an American in the same situation.

Re:i look at it this way

[KyleTheDarkOne]

A similar experience happened to me. I was playing Warcraft 3 for most of my free time(use map settings games but still equally sucking up my time). I had started working in a theatre and gained a new group of friends; I stopped playing video games, and so replaced the social aspect of my life. I only wanted to play when my old gamer friends would talk about it, but with my previous commitment I did not play. I now am done with the theatre, and due to a computer corruption, was left without access to games, thus eliminating all social aspects. I know that while game-life is a viable substitute for social interaction, real-life interaction is best.

Re:i look at it this way

[KyleTheDarkOne]

There are games, such as Guild Wars that do this, yet people seem to flock to the grind games. People like the fantasize that working hard has rewards, that they cannot find that method working in real life. They don't want to actually accept that certain people will hve advantages over others. A true way they can fix this is by introducing a little creation luck to the mix. Much like DnD where the character stats are randomly rolled, have special modifiers, such as gains extra exp or gold, but every modifier is equal and different and is somehow unable to be changed. This will create the specialization found in the real world. Also, while this method could work, there are still people that want to equal and use the communist ideal of hard work and time will be the ultimate glory.

Re:i look at it this way

[amuro98]

I could personally care less about the idiots on either side here.

Just keep the "hey hey, we sell you gold, good prices!" spam off the internet.

Re:i look at it this way

[Lost Engineer]

From TFS (summary), they make $80,000 a year. I'm not sure if that's net revenue or what, and I'm sure they're accounting's not up to Sarbanes-Oxley standards, but it's not like there's some sort of exorbitantly compensated CEO, although I'm sure that does go a long way in China.

Re:i look at it this way

[DamnStupidElf]

Gold farmers are a cancer to MMO games. Some people might not care, but these people negatively impact everyone's enjoyment of the game, be it because they destroy economies or hack or monopolize content. It's not healthy for games.

Hold on a second. Everything you said about gold farmers could be applied just as accurately to some hardcore gamers. They grief, they camp, they make it less fun for normal players. What you're really upset about is that people who cheat or who have a lot more time and knowledge can beat you at a game. That's just a given for any game in existence. The solution is to eliminate cheating for everyone, and to either make stats in the game unavailable for purchase to limit the effectiveness of dupes and mules, or make it very difficult to create dupe accounts. Just enforce a minimum percentage (like 80%) of the store value that players must charge to sell items to other players. It still makes player trading more lucrative than buying items at stores, but drastically decreases the effectiveness of dupes, and is more realistic in a role playing environment anyway.

Re:i look at it this way

[robogun]

There's plenty of half-ass sports shooters with $4500 Mark III's ($6000 with lens) who couldn;t shoot their wayout of a paper bag.

But as long as they keep buying, Canon and Nikon will keep improving. Right now $4500 buys 10fps / 10 megapixels and massively fast autofocus, four years ago it only got you 8fps / 4 megapixels with horrible battery efficiency.

So if your photojournalism student has any kind of eye, he will be shooting better with that four year old camera (now $500) than the riche poseur ever could. And he can thank him for major and speedy advances in equipment quality.

Re:i look at it this way

[idesofmarch]

I think you just did not read. The shop sells the gold for $3 while paying the employee $1. So, in theory, the boss not only makes 3x of each employee, he makes as much as three times of ALL the employees' salaries put together. However, out of the $3 per 100 gold, he must deduct expenses. These expenses are at least $1 (which he pays to the worker). In addition, he must pay for overhead.

Re:i look at it this way

[ameoba]

The game can't be that horribly broken - I'd guess that far less than 1% of players actually feel the need to pay for gold or leveling. When you have 8 million subscribers, however, a significant market is created.

The problem is that these people fail to recognize that they're playing the wrong game.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

He used the word "cocks", he must be a troll!

Nice, mods. Nice.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

furthermore, what is good about gold farming? well, some guy in china is actually feeding himself on the effort. ... so i vote: gold farming is fine by me

Whether the middlemen are gold farming bosses or CEOs of Nike corporation, it's all about how to exploit wage disparity between countries in order to turn a profit.

If gold farming is okay by you, then so must be all other forms of outsourcing labor. Gold farming is not okay by me for the same reason that all other industries that outsource their manufacturing to places where they can pay entire buildings full of people living in plywood dorms a dollar a day is not okay by me.

That said, I confess that I don't have a solution to this problem. Neither does anyone else, which is why the world trade summits continue, along with the hundreds of thousands people that show up at them to protest.

Re:i look at it this way

[fractoid]

Best. Post. EVER.

God knows many WoW players need a RL peen leveling service, xp is hard to come by, although when you do the grind is fun. ;)

Re:i look at it this way

[JediLow]

Not really... politically China is a communist country but economically its capitalist.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is getting hurt? Everyone who doesn't buy gold. If I want some nice gear, I can't afford to buy it anymore, because the gold buyers have driven up the prices sky-high.

Re:i look at it this way

[fractoid]

???. Do repeatable daily quests that give 10-20g per handin, and take probably 10-15 minutes to complete when done in a group.
Profit! :)

To be honest, though, reselling is the real path to riches. We had a guy on my old server that had around 50k gold when he quit the game, and I don't know if he had a character over about 29.

Re:i look at it this way

[eharvill]

Not to mention you can kiss the game economy good bye. How many games have had their economy ruined because of gold farmers. Blizzard ruined the economy for me since I didn't get the expansion pack. I'd rather have the gold farmers and no expansion any day...

Re:i look at it this way

[Hognoxious]

He has a four digit id. Such niceties as reading TFA, understanding that "they" is a plural (hence doesn't refer to one worker) are beneath him.

Re:i look at it this way

[krunk7]

what is bad about gold farming? well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at. it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy. hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill. and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke

You make a few assumptions here that are completely erroneous.

The first assumption is that you should work hard at games. The vast majority of folks play games for fun and as such they should not have to work hard simply because developers wish to increase the game cycle and cannot produce a game whose worth lies solely in its content.

The second assumption you make is that you have to be "rich" to buy gold. Going price is about 10 dollars per 100g if bought in bulk. 100g per hour is a very decent grinding rate to say the least (pipe in uber farmings who make much more, whatever). Since just about any educated professional makes at least two to three times that....simple economics says, buying gold is much cheaper then actually working. And since you yourself admit that what we're talking about here is "working", it can only be seen as an inherent flaw in game design that some virtual sword required 3x as much or more "virtual work" then "real world work". Basically, anything but a minimum wage employee is working harder for virtual money then if he just bought the money online and that's just stupid.

The third fallacy is that grinding for gold somehow improves your skills as a player. AI controlled world mobs are stupid. Farming involves mashing the same buttons with no thought repeatedly for hours on end. I would argue that grinding for gold decreases your skills as a player. That time spent mindlessly grinding for gold could have been spent participating in activities that increase your skills dramatically such as participating in PvP or practicing challenging PvE encounters.

So in summary, the entire concept of "requiring work to have fun" as implemented in online gaming a) Is directly counter to why the majority of people play games, b) Requires significantly more effort then simply purchasing the gold, and c) creates a system where by the very best, most skilled players who excel the most at the game MUST buy gold to attain that level of skill.

I realize in the end you endorsed gold buying as ok, I just used your initial negative quote as a launching point since it expresses many a common opinion.

Re:i look at it this way

[rtbraun]

How has this honestly changed the profession of photography? His friend probably felt uncomfortable with the rich man's effortless and pointless consumerism, but his friend wasn't actually denied other opportunities when it came right down to it. I don't think this is the correct analogy here. Gold farming changes the economy, which affects those players who do not buy their gold. When people buy gold, prices become inflated, and other players will have to earn more money in order to buy the items they want. A more correct analogy would be the rich guy causes the price of "good" cameras to rise to $5000 and the friend cannot afford this and has to make do with a "less good" camera.

Re:i look at it this way

[mmalove]

The problem with gold farming is that it extends the available currency through the possible additional "real" currency, thus contributing to inflation. IE, if a player would only reasonably have 2000 virtual gold through normal game mechanics, one wouldn't ordinarily be able to market them a fancy sword of +1000 stuff for 5000 gold, however, if they can essentially buy the sword for 50 dollars of real currency, or 5000 gold of purchased currency, then the sword will be sold for more, and the in game currency thusly devalued.

Ultimately, I think it's going to happen in one form or another anyways. It's a joke and a shame, really, because people that buy their best epics, or worse their max level characters, miss out on a big chunk of the game, quickly become bored with it, and then all that time and their money is wasted.

Re:i look at it this way

[Sebastopol]

Too bad primal nether is BoP for all those fancy enchants, and BoE blue/purple aren't as good as tier'd BC gear.

Re:i look at it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.

what could the spammers possibly be taking away from other people, besides time ? err, no, wait

Netcraft confirms it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow is dying.

Office league slow pitch softball. Look into it.

Re:Netcraft confirms it

[Avatar8]

Until the next expansion occurs. Then we'll see another spike, plateau and slow decline. This chart mainly follows the numbers of "achiever" type players or power-players, those that want to consume the new content as fast as possible and then complain they are bored when there is nothing left to do.

However, if this cycle occurs too often, another type of player, the casual player, will give up and quit as well. I fall somewhere in between, sort of a power-casual player. I have played since beta in October 2004, and I play two to four hours on weekdays and about eight hours each weekend day (26-36 hrs/wk). I just started experiencing "end game" content last October. When Burning Crusade was launched, I still had only visited about 40% of the high level instances. My guild departed for the new content and eventually disbanded into different playing style groups. Knowing what the flood of people would be like in the new zones, I hung back and did my best to keep interest alive in the "old" content. I had no success.

In February I started playing the new content. It took me longer since I was soloing for the most part. Mostly I slow myself down because I enjoy playing a variety of classes at various levels as opposed to playing a single character non-stop. I have yet to get a character to 70 and I've only seen a single BC instance.

I do not resent that Blizzard develops content on a faster pace than I will ever be able to consume. I realize they have to stay ahead of the curve to keep the bulk of their customers satisfied. I think they may find, however, that at some point as more content is added, casual players will throw their hands in the air and give up stating "I wouldn't be able to reach that if I played for five years, so I might as well quit."

Cost of living?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the cost of living for that area? How much does that 10 Yuan a week compare to other salaries?

Re:Cost of living?

[User 956]

The average yearly income of a resident living in rural China is about $315 per year. (2004 numbers). Urban residents like those in Beijing make about 5 to 10 times that amount. Which, compared to America, is still not a lot.

Re:Cost of living?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, saying that they earn 30 cents an hour is completely meaningless unless you know how much it costs them to buy food and clothing, rent a room, pay for other essentials and luxuries. Might as well just give their earnings in Gil.

Re:Cost of living?

[User 956]

If the average rural worker in china is making $300 per year (read my other post), then earning 30 cents per hour ($600 per year) is double what they'd make farming, say, rice, or goats, or chickens. outside. in the sun and the dirt. Seems like a good tradeoff to me.

Re:Cost of living?

[Monkey]

I'd add that these guys also appear to be into what they do - they're not being taken advantage of. TFA suggests that when they end their 12 hour shifts, they actually log on to their personal accounts and play for several more hours of their free time!
To throw a car analogy out there, this like a mechanic who works on crappy consumer automobiles all day at his job at the garage and when he goes home at night, goes out back to continue wrenching on his personal project car.

Re:Cost of living?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I actually have friends who live in Shanghai and Nanjing, know a bit about the prices/wages earned there...

Li probably works the normal 10 hour shift, meaning he makes around 25 RMB (yuan) per day. Does this 6 days a week, about 49 weeks out of the year (maybe getting a week at Chinese New Year and 3-5 days during Golden Week).

His weekly income would be around 150 RMB. He'd earn around 600 RMB per month.

I have a friend, Alice, who is a cashier in a grocery store on the outskirts of Nanjing. She earns 600 RMB a month for 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, 2 weeks off per year. This does not include a dorm - she shares a 1 bedroom apartment with 5 other girls (apartment is 650 RMB per month).

So I'd say he's pulling down the equivalent of 710-750 RMB per month, once you factor in housing. Low wages, but about what a lot of unskilled laborers make in that city.

For comparison, last time I visited Nanjing (April 2007) a 5 nice meal with 15 dishes and 4 liters of beer ran 110 RMB, and fed 6 people. A taxi ride of less than 5 km is 8 RMB, bus ride anywhere around town was 2 RMB, and the 2.5 hour train ride from Nanjing to Shanghai was 84 RMB.

A sad state of affairs

[dr_dank]

At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him.

They've built a mom's basement in China where they can all do it better for half the price. Even geeks aren't immune from outsourcing.

If any of you have access to good prices for bulk tissue and lotion, I have a great idea for the next activity to outsource to China. Access to a tiled area with good drainage a must.

Re:A sad state of affairs

[Anonymous Coward]

If any of you have access to good prices for bulk tissue and lotion, I have a great idea for the next activity to outsource to China.

You have no idea. I live in China. In a decent neighborhood. 10 minutes walk in any direction will take me to a small storefront where I can pick out a young lady who will provide her own lotion and tissue for $7-13. I could get the Monica Lewinsky service for $13-$20. $20-$30 will get me to third base. And these places are literally, everywhere.

Re:A sad state of affairs

[mgblst]

Even geeks aren't immune from outsourcing.
 
I am sure you meant to say, even unemployed geeks aren't immune to outsourcing, since that after call centers, geeks work is the most outsourced job of all.

Military commissions

[goombah99]

For longer that the US has been around, persons of wealth used to buy military commissions which often involved them taking over some pre-established regiment, naval vessel crew, or outpost. Likewise placement in religious orders, bishops and so forth, did not involve working ones way up the hierarchy but buying a position. A seat at the House of lords did not come from merit.

Why does this bother you that rich folks can pay to play. Why should they not if they can? It's the way of the world and always has been.

Re:Military commissions

[Kadin2048]

Well in the case of something non-trivial, like the military, the reason why it's a Bad Thing is because then you end up with some rich incompetent running something that they have no business running. Which is not to say that the military is anything like a meritocracy in its current form, but it's a little better than cash-on-the-barrel-head.

That general point is true of more trivial activities, like games; if you destroy the meritocratic aspects in favor of pay-to-play (really, pay-to-advance; you already have to pay to play!) then you'll end up with a worse result, in most cases, overall. The difference due to putting people with either less skill, or less interest, in higher positions than they would otherwise occupy.

Re:Military commissions

[DerekLyons]

Why does this bother you that rich folks can pay to play. Why should they not if they can? It's the way of the world and always has been.

Always has been? You might learn a little bit about the history you misquote so freely.
 
Setting aside the use of influence and nepotism (which are fraternal - not identical, twins of outright purchase)...
 
Persons of wealth buying the positions (in the Church and in the Armed Services) isn't something that happened (or happens) in tribal societies - nor (in the Western) world does it happen today. (It was largely wiped out in the late 1800's to early 1900's.) It was rare in feudal Japan and virtually nonexistent in classical China. It was extremely rare in classical Greece and semi-common only in later period Rome. In fact in the Western world - the practice was only widespread from late medieval times to early modern times.
 
Or in short, no - it's not commonly the way of the world nor has it always been.

Re:Military commissions

[rlp]

Wrong analogy. During the US Civil War, often if a rich person was drafted into the army, they would pay someone to serve in their place. If you're buying gold from a gold farmer, you're paying someone else to play the MMORPG in your place.

I don't play MMORPG's, but I presume that this is because playing a low-level RPG character in these games is boring and that it gets more interesting as the character advances. Rather than try to restrict gold-farming, it seems to me that the problem could be solved with good game design. Make the game more interesting for beginning players. Perhaps partition (perhaps different servers / different 'worlds') beginner players and intermediate / advanced players.

Re:Military commissions

[stevenhebert]

Simply because the simple fact that you can get away with something doesn't give you the right to do.
We are all capable to kill, does that give us the right to do so?

Re:Military commissions

[manifoldronin]

Persons of wealth buying the positions (in the Church and in the Armed Services) isn't something that happened (or happens) in tribal societies - nor (in the Western) world does it happen today. (It was largely wiped out in the late 1800's to early 1900's.) It was rare in feudal Japan and virtually nonexistent in classical China.

Please define "classical". There are historical records going back to as far as the Han Dynasty of emperors or powerful ministers literally selling government positions. The same happened repeatedly in almost all the following dynasties as they drew to their respective end.

Re:Military commissions

[vux984]

It's the way of the world and always has been.

Thing is, see, this isn't the world. Its a game. Games have always been distorted to an extent by financial interests, but games always *resist* this distortion. In theory the fastest man wins the 100 yard dash, not the richest, the best chess player wins the tournament, not the richest, etc.

Sure these players use their wealth to their advantage. They don't have to work other jobs, they can hire coaches, and personal trainers etc... but on the PLAYING FIELD, its just them. That is part of the appeal of games.

Nobody wants to play a game that simply rolls over to rich folks paying for *in-game* advantages. Its one thing to buy books about the game, hire someone to learn to be a better player, buy a faster computer, or to have enough money not to need to work so you can spend more time playing the game. Its something else to just buy advantages INSIDE the game.

In chess for example, no matter how much wealth you've expended in honing your ability to play the game itself you still can't drop a thousand bucks in someones pocket and add another queen to your side. Its simply against the rules. And that's all a game is -- a set of arbitrary rules. If you disregard the rules there is no point to playing the game.

If you want to disregard some of the rules, that's a different game. And its ok to play different games under any rules you want, but if you are playing the game with someone else, you can't just decide to which rules you want to ignore mid-stream whether they want to or not.

In other words, if you want to play games that let you buy your in game items, fine, find or start a game that allows it and play it. But don't play games that don't allow it and then break the rules.

Re:Military commissions

[rolfwind]

Well in the case of something non-trivial, like the military, the reason why it's a Bad Thing is because then you end up with some rich incompetent running something that they have no business running.

Bush?

Re:Military commissions

[goombah99]

Most sensible rebuttal I received. Thanks.

Re:Military commissions

[feed_those_kitties]

Well in the case of something non-trivial, like the military, the reason why it's a Bad Thing is because then you end up with some rich incompetent running something that they have no business running.

*cough* George Bush */cough*

Re:Military commissions

[Lord Ender]

It's the way of the world and always has been.

That's no reason for anything!

Here's something else that humans have been trying to do for a long time: build better societies. We want to live in societies that have less suffering, more happiness, and have more freedom and fairness than societies of the past.

Meritocracy and fairness go hand-in-hand. The people who are building these online societies don't like gold-farming because, it is bad for meritocracy, therefore bad for fairness, therefore bad for their online society.

Unfortunately, freedom and fairness are directly opposing in some respects. If you give someone the freedom to bequeath his wealth and power to his offspring, you make society less fair to those who were not born with wealth and power.

This fundamental paradox will, if nothing else, keep the philosophers employed as we continue our quest to create and ideal society.

Wow, I can't believe I wrote that in a thread about WoW.

Re:Military commissions

[jd]

Certainly, after the disaster of the Charge of the Light Brigade (in which the survivors rightly deserved commendation, but should also have been placed in padded rooms for their own safety), the idea of people paying for their rank was massively condemned. Certainly, people can enter Sandhurst and become a low-ranking officer without having been an infantryman, but Sandhurst is no playground by all accounts and you can't walk out a Brigadier or Field Marshall, no matter how rich you are.

Virtually all of Western civilization - including the Greek and Roman forms - ultimately derive from the Sumerian civilization about which knowledge is fragmentary and translations of texts are of dubious reliability. Only the wealthy could afford to place their children in schools, but conditions were brutal and neither graduation nor survival were guaranteed for any student, no matter how wealthy. Wealth opened doors, as in modern American society, but you still had to step through and that was not a safe or easy proposition. Buying rank in the military appears to have been rare to non-existent. Buying power and influence seems to have been limited to bribing the church, but their separation between church and state was rather better than that in America and it had no more influence than bribing a Hollywood director to get in a movie.

That covers truly ancient times. How about medieval Europe? Medieval Europe practiced (for the most part) feudalism and fiefdoms. I would have to agree that a lot of people bought their positions of power and status. Not entirely, though. There were a few medieval orders (the Order of the Garter, for example) that had very strict entry requirements and were of strictly limited size. The Order of Merit awarded to Tim Berners-Lee is another of this type - only 24 living people may hold the award and it is given only to the most exceptional of intellectuals and artists. The abuse of these high Orders is virtually non-existent. If I remember history correctly, abuse is outed about once a century.

The "regular" titles and ranks have been abused much more often, in medieval times especially. People bought knighthoods, earldoms and baronies on a regular basis. True, they did in Margret Thatcher's time, and Tony Blair has been investigated for it as well, but modern abuses have been relatively rare. I think they could be reduced further if members of the British government could be sentenced by British courts to being tarred and feathered in true historic fashion. A little jail time and a small fine, and only for the bit players, is clearly not much of a deterrent. Hell, if Pamela Bordes and the other assorted mistresses/sex providers of British politicians are being paid to whip and beat the living daylights out of HMG, it's entirely possible that they might enjoy just about any medieval punishment that could be inflicted.

(That leaves one option left. It's terrible, it's evil, it's sadistic beyond all belief, but it might just work. Celebrity Big Brother...)

Re:Military commissions

[vertinox]

It was rare in feudal Japan and virtually nonexistent in classical China.

Actually it was not rare towards the end of the Tokugawa era for wealthy merchants to pay for Samurai to adopt them in order to gain that class status. (Actually to be fair, General Hideyoshi tried to get a descendant of the Shogun to adopt him even though he was older than the descendant so he could gain the official title for himself, but the descendant would not and he had to settle for a lesser title)

Although, by the end of the Tokugawa era, most Samurai had no true formal military training (and sometimes no swordship training either) and lived from hand outs from their feudal lord patron so were often more than happy to adopt anyone willing to foot the bill.

Re:Military commissions

[Xinef Jyinaer]

Buying gold in online games allows the buyer to bring a gun to a knife fight so to speak. I have friends who do buy money in online games (Guild wars specifically), however guild wars is a highly skill based game and even with the best equipment it is possible to lose to someone who knows how to play the game better. Also he does have a full time job - he earns his money (real life money) which enables him to buy money in game, it's much better for him to work 8 hours a day earn ~$100 then spend $10 on money that would have taken him much more time to farm. It's common sense for the people who are able to do this with reason.

Re:Military commissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC since I already moderated, but you're missing one fundamental difference between Chess and WoW -- namely that there is a winning state for the former, but not the latter. There is an "ahead" state, but that is not the same as winning, which is impossible in a game that never ends. Much like the real world, the only end is when you quit, or when the world ceases to exist. In the real world it's perfectly acceptable to pay for goods/services which you don't have the skill, time, or desire to create/do yourself, and as long as MMORPGs follow the same neverending story formula, I see nothing wrong with paying someone else for the same reasons "in-game."

Personally, I would never pay for any game-based virtual commodity or service, since I've already "been there, done that," and the endgame of MMORPGs is no less of a grind and no more rewarding. Sure, you get some slightly better equipment, but it's only a means to get ever-more slightly better equipment. Sometimes it's fun to crush opponents that once proved a challenge, but after about 5 minutes the entertainment value is no better than killing a field of level 1 rats. Hardly worth the hours (or dollars) spent.

Re:Military commissions

[sco08y]

Which is not to say that the military is anything like a meritocracy in its current form, but it's a little better than cash-on-the-barrel-head.

Either you're just spouting off about stuff you're entirely clueless about or you think promotion is based on time in service the way it was in the sixties. It doesn't work that way anymore. If I'm going to a promotion board they evaluate my personal integrity, physical fitness, marksmanship, military and civilian education, military bearing, competence, disciplinary record, how well I know my subordinates, what I've done to develop my subordinates, leadership, and more crap I can't remember. (An example of part of this is the promotion points worksheet, DA Form 3355.) It's different (and harder) for commissioned officers.

Is it strictly meritocratic? Probably not, but the promotion system has a concrete purpose, and it's not to be buzzword compliant.

Re:Military commissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Persons of wealth buying the positions (in the Church and in the Armed Services) isn't something that happened (or happens) in tribal societies - nor (in the Western) world does it happen today. (It was largely wiped out in the late 1800's to early 1900's.) It was rare in feudal Japan and virtually nonexistent in classical China. It was extremely rare in classical Greece and semi-common only in later period Rome. In fact in the Western world - the practice was only widespread from late medieval times to early modern times.

Not sure where you got your facts. Buying of government positions has been a Chinese tradition for as long as recorded history. Although it was not made an official route to said positions until the Qing dynasty, it has always been the norm.

Here is an official receipt for a purchased position.

and here is a little article about this practice... if you could read Chinese.

Re:Military commissions

[Anonymous Coward]

It only wasn't the case in ancient Greece because there was little difference between the very rich and the very poor in Greek city-states--income of the richest class in Athens was only 3 or 4 times that of the poorest class.

When a Spartan general happened to come across an abandoned Persian army camp, which brought *gold* eating vessels, silver utensils, fur carpets and richly dyed textiles *on campaign*, he pithy asked his comrades, "You see what fools these men are, who live like this, yet seek to rob us of our poverty?"

And, arguably, it was fairly common in these other civilizations. Indeed, frequency of the commitment of the various kings and emperors of China to exam-based meritocracy indicates that it was a policy honored more often in the breach than the observance.

Re:Military commissions

[Deliveranc3]

rare in feudal Japan

Um lords were commanders and their sons became the lords/commanders.

Samurai was an aspect of lineage. Basically the whole thing was nepotistic and aristocratic, if you know people higher up (Through friends or family) they'll talk to you at parties, instruct you in the craft and want you as their backup.

If you were starting a company right now with a good idea you'd probably look to your friends or online aquaintences for employees rather than hiring someone who you may not get along with or who may have a very diffrent attitude towards work, it has gone on a long time and it will continue.

I like the idea of gamers being able to do better because they have more money (in FPS (First person shooters)this equates to FPS (Frames per second)) and it's pretty rediculous that we should be trying to remove their motivation to contribute to real society when so many people admit they've been sucked into these games treating them like jobs.

Re:Military commissions

[Wolfkin]

I don't play MMORPG's, but I presume that this is because playing a low-level RPG character in these games is boring and that it gets more interesting as the character advances.

It's actually the other way 'round. It's easy and interesting to get a character up to 20-30, but after that, it becomes considerably longer between interesting moments. In my experience, at least. I have a lot of characters at 20- and 30-something, and only two or three above 40.

Re:Military commissions

[murdocj]

don't play MMORPG's, but I presume that this is because playing a low-level RPG character in these games is boring

Not really... the low levels can be just as much fun as the high levels. What seems to drive people to buy gear and high level chars is not that they aren't having fun, but that they think they have to "win" by getting to a high level quickly.

Re:Military commissions

[lessthan]

What branch are you in? The Marine Corp enlisted side still works on time in service. Yes, there is a metric which adds other factors like education and marksmanship, but a large part of promotion is how long you've been in. Now for officers, I cannot comment.

Re:Military commissions

[DerekLyons]

The same happened repeatedly in almost all the following dynasties as they drew to their respective end.

Which proves my point - it wasn't an ongoing thing, but an occasional thing.

Re:Military commissions

[DerekLyons]

The "regular" titles and ranks have been abused much more often, in medieval times especially. People bought knighthoods, earldoms and baronies on a regular basis. True, they did in Margret Thatcher's time, and Tony Blair has been investigated for it as well, but modern abuses have been relatively rare.

Modern purchases of titles and ranks are irrelevant really - as neither power nor authority conveys with such a purchase.

Re:Military commissions

[DerekLyons]

Try reading my message, where I specifically set aside nepotism and influence and explain the reasons why.

Re:Military commissions

[Lemmy Caution]

MMOs aren't classical games: they are too open. The "separateness" of a game, the sense that they occur in a little bubble, as it were, depended on them having straightforward beginnings and endings, a simple mechanic, players in the same space, an agreed-upon win state, and so forth.

The gap between a computer-based, networked, massively-multiplayer virtual world and the games of chess and rugby is unfathomably huge, and the difference in the relationship between time and leisure is one of the consequences of that difference. The "magic circle" idea just doesn't work... MMOs do not have a simple "win" state, the rules are not enforced socially, but by software, the "game" continues even when you aren't playing, etc. etc. I'm reluctant to really call it a game at all. As Raph Koster said, "It's a service. Not a game. It's a world. Not a game. It's a community. Not a game. Anyone who says, 'it's just a game' is missing the point."

Re:Military commissions

[GauteL]

"Well in the case of something non-trivial, like the military, the reason why it's a Bad Thing is because then you end up with some rich incompetent running something that they have no business running."

It isn't that simple. Most of the time these rich people turn out to be decently competent for a myriad of reasons, including pressure from family and a desire to do well.

It also means that there are rich people in the army, rather than just poor people, making the army more consistent with society as a whole. This usually makes the politicians (usually rich people) less willing to go to war over frivilous things, because some of their family and friends might be involved and might get killed.

Re:Military commissions

[manifoldronin]

It was NOT an occasional thing. Most of the Chinese dynasties literally took anywhere between half and one third of their entire life span to slowly "draw to their end". Taking the Qing Dynasty as an example, at its peak, under the reign of Qiang Long Emperor, selling government positions was a systematical phenomenon. The members of the emperor's privy council would take bribery to recommend a particular person to the emperor for a governor position (which would come with specific "price tags" depending on how economically developed a province was). The governor, once being in the office, would start collecting briberies for lower level positions, which also carried their respective "price tags".

Re:Military commissions

[kwieland in stl]

Here is an interesting link to back up this claim (for the US at least)

http://opensecrets.org/bigpicture/millionaires.asp ?cycle=2004

Re:Military commissions

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

There are plenty of pursuits such as auto racing where money is key to the competition. Does it make such competition less 'valid'? Should drivers be required to machine the entire vehicle themselves?

Re:Military commissions

[vux984]

Auto racing clearly delineates where money may NOT be spent. For example you cannot buy your qualifying time, starting position, finishing position, etc. If you wreck on lap four you are out of the race, even if you have a spare car.

You can hire better mechanics to work on the car, you can hire better drivers and pit crews. In some leagues you can purchase better parts, or even R&D your own, but there are some things you CAN'T spend money. You can't just sleep in on race day and maintain your standing by tossing some coin at someone.

Hell even Poker, which is a game played for and with real money has rules that can not be bent with currency. It is completely forbidden to try and manipulate the cards you are dealt -- you may not 'buy' 4 Aces ever.

Re:Military commissions

[vux984]

MMOs aren't classical games: they are too open. The "separateness" of a game, the sense that they occur in a little bubble, as it were, depended on them having straightforward beginnings and endings, a simple mechanic, players in the same space, an agreed-upon win state, and so forth.

Even chess has an equivalent: there is a massively multiplayer worldwide ranking and tournament scene, there is no straightforward beginning and ending to the scene itself, there is no win-state for the chess scene. Although a few players will be top ranked at any given point the scene itself never ends. It goes on even when you stop playing. And there is competition in this scene, and players join, advance as far as they can or will. And like MMOGs, it is forbidden to pay someone to play on your behalf, to falsify results, to bribe someone to adjust your ranking, even to manipulate who you'll be paired against in a tournament, etc. So, yes, there is a 'magic circle' around the entire world-spanning never-ending tournament scene. I woulndn't call it a game... its a service, its a community.

Its nothing to do with the individual game of chess. It is an entity all its own.
And it has rules on what is and is not allowed, and the people who break them are excluded. If the individual mob battles are the chess bouts, and your chess rank represents your level. Buying a chess rank if it were possible would allow you to have bouts with higher level, and even celebrity players instead of just low level trash. Surely that would be more fun ... if you've got money but not time or skill and you want to play at the end game with Kasparov and friends why not just buy up a few dozen tournament wins?

No, I'm sorry, you may be right that a MMOG is a different animal than a game of chess. But the 'chess community' has all the things you claimed were exclusive to a MMOG, and the chess community has practical enforcable rules and limitations on what you can spend money on too. Hire a coach - ok. Pay the coach to play for you - not ok, etc etc.

Re:Military commissions

[vux984]

Posting AC since I already moderated, but you're missing one fundamental difference between Chess and WoW -- namely that there is a winning state for the former, but not the latter.

See my post in this thread about the 'chess community' the larger 'tournament scene'. (As opposed to an individual game or tournament.) In the 'chess scene' it is forbidden to purchase your ranking.

In the real world it's perfectly acceptable to pay for goods/services which you don't have the skill, time, or desire to create/do yourself, and as long as MMORPGs follow the same neverending story formula, I see nothing wrong with paying someone else for the same reasons "in-game."

Its not the real world. You aren't allowed to purchase your chess ranking either, even if you don't have the skill, time, or desire to do it yourself. And indeed like mmogs, the higher ranking doesn't change the game of chess in any meaningful way, you simply get to player against better players.

Mmogs, as you pointed out don't really change as you advance. But for a lot of people how far they've advanced is a competitive measuring stick, and the RULES support that view, because your level, wealth, and equipment according to the rules are a measure of how much you've accomplished. In a sense they are the same as your chess rank.

Personally, and as I've said numerous times, the solution that needs to occur is that multiple servers are needed. One set to satisfy the players that just want to wander around and see everything. Perhaps there should just be a level up button and bottomless gold bucket, so that they can wander around and explore the game without resorting to paying asians to make it happen. And there should be servers that are held to the rules we have now, where only those that merit -within- the rules to advance do advance.

This lets the competitive crowd do their thing while keeping the people who just want to fart around in the world and see the endgame without actually playing to get there that option. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play like that -- its just a problem because your doing it in the same space as people who don't want that. So you need your own space. If you want to see what its like to be a level 900 warlock but don't want to actually put in the effort to get one, you can make one up on the no-limit server. As long as you can transfer to the rules enforced server you won't undermine the 'real' level 900 warlocks.

The only limit I'd maybe make on the no-limits server is that content has to be unlocked first on the 'real' one. This serves 2 purposes - one that the no-limits server can't discover content first, and two, the the 'real' players can't use the no-limit server to solve unsolved content.

Re:Military commissions

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

I don't want to beat the analogy to death, but to me someone farming gold = mechanic, basic grunt work.

Re:Military commissions

[vux984]

Some would argue that a good mechanic is more important than a good driver. And nearly everyone would agree that in pro-motorsports both are crucial parts of the team.

But that's beside the point. All that's relevant here is what is against the rules and what isn't. Hiring mechanics is ok by the rules, farming/selling gold isn't.

The rules of soccer forbid you from using your hands. How stupid is that! You use your hands in the real world! You can use your hands in volleyball! why can't you use your hands in soccer? Because its against the rules. That's it. The only reason. Its not complex or hard, and it doesn't need to be 'justified'.

If you want to play soccer and use your hands, fine go start a game informal soccer with your friends and do whatever you like. But you can't show up to a soccer game with strangers where the rules are understood to forbid using your hands, and then expect everyone to tolerate you running around with the ball in your hands arguing that you don't have the time/skill to learn to play by the rules and should be allowed to just do whatever you want. And that Volleyball players are allowed to use their hands so why is this any different?

Re:Military commissions

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that I always ask myself when I read these kind of responses to gold/character/item purchasing is: Yes, but how does that affect you or your character personally? How does Joe Bagofdonuts buying some gold in WoW to power level his enchanting skill or whatever, affect your gameplay? Does it keep you from grouping to complete a quest? Does it keep you from soloing a quest? Does it prevent you from going into an instance with a group of friends to clear Scarlet Monastery or Uldaman?

What they are doing is basically this: Buying gold that has already made its way into the economy, and removing it from the economy by buying bind on equip items or trade skill materials or say a mount or whatever. So their impact to the actual game is negligible and actually positive (in that it moves coin out of the economy), and their impact to your personal gameplay is non-existant from what I can see. So, how do these things break the "rules?" They break Blizzard's or SOE's or Turbine's rules, but not the rules that matter to the players. An EULA is not the rules that players agree to in regards to the game. An EULA is the rules that the players have to click past to be able to log in to the game, and that is about all they are worth.

Buying characters can have an impact if you end up grouping with some clueless noob with a level 70 (cause lord knows, there are no other clueless noobs at high levels except for the ebayed chars). Seems to me that is why they have ignore lists and friends lists and guilds and such. You group with the players you know and again it falls back to the case of "how does that really affect your gameplay?" If RMT is a crime, it really is a victimless crime. The only people who it hurts are the egos of the game designers who cant stand that guys like Yantis made a couple of million dollars off of their game. They should be the only ones making the millions off of their game... I never bought coin or characters, but I do have say hats off to IGE and their sort, because they turned playing a game into a billion dollar business. Me personally, I dont care enough about the carat at the end of the stick or keeping up with the joneses to spend money on in game items. But I certainly see their appeal, and see no harm in it.

Selling duped items, well thats a whole nother story. That does affect the game. When Vangaurd launched, it launched with a slew of gold duping exploits that threw all of the servers economies out of whack. Buying duped gold is bad. Buying farmed gold that has entered the game economy the way it was meant to enter, is harmless.

Re:Military commissions

[Lemmy Caution]

Even the chess "meta-game" is more of a game than an MMO is. There is a simple, agreed-upon metric for what counts as points and how they are earned. In MMOs, there is nothing of the sort. The incentives for playing, the rewards, and the metrics are various and undefined. There is no "top player" in WoW, nor is their a tournament system. The closest you can come to that is the level of the character.

In WoW, is it wrong to level your girlfriend's character? People do it all the time. In fact, people do things in-game for out-of-game motivations all the time, without batting an eye.

Re:Military commissions

[vux984]

Even the chess "meta-game" is more of a game than an MMO is. There is a simple, agreed-upon metric for what counts as points and how they are earned. In MMOs, there is nothing of the sort.

XP = points. Gold = points. Equipment stats = points. Pretty much everything in a mmog is points based, and its pretty well defined. Sure you have multiple scores that reflect your progress along multiple progression paths but that's hardly novel or special. We have it in baseball simulations too -- batting average, pitching records, etc... no one score defines a baseball player.

The closest you can come to that is the level of the character. times their wealth times their equipment stats times their crafting level times the number of keys they have ... clearly some max-level characters have a higher 'score' than others, level is just a piece of it.

In WoW, is it wrong to level your girlfriend's character?

What do the people you are playing with think? What is the 'social contract' on this? I'd say, most people don't much care, so its tolerated without issue even though its strictly speaking against the rules. That said, powerleveling 'businesses' are largely frowned upon...

The issue isn't so much that all rules need to be followed to the letter, its that we all have to agree to play by the same rules if we're playing together. Gold farming is divisive because its effects are fairly high profile, and the community is split on what to do. A big chunk of players want it (a subset of that even live off it). And a big chunk of players don't.

Clearly, as I've said countless times, the two groups should simply be allowed to play on separate servers, each to the ruleset of their preference. That's the natural and obvious solution when two groups want to play by different rules.

Re:Military commissions

[Chris Mattern]

For longer that the US has been around, persons of wealth used to buy military commissions which often involved them taking over some pre-established regiment, naval vessel crew, or outpost. Likewise placement in religious orders, bishops and so forth, did not involve working ones way up the hierarchy but buying a position. A seat at the House of lords did not come from merit.

And, if you look around, you will notice that *now*, it's illegal to do any of that. There's a reason why.

Chris Mattern

Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Palmyst]

I have no problem with some Chinese people making money off of selling "farmed gold" to rich gamers in the West, but the fact that more than 90% of what the customer pays goes to middlemen, rather than the "farmer", in a set of transactions conducted entirely on the internet is rather rankling.

BF2142

[deanoaz]

I wonder if I could hire these guys to make me Supreme Commander?

Ultimate simulation

[Organic Brain Damage]

"well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at."

In this respect, it's just like real life.

The thing I found most amazing was that after a 12-hour shift grinding, some of these guys played their own toons for fun.

Re:Ultimate simulation

[blueZhift]

The thing I found most amazing was that after a 12-hour shift grinding, some of these guys played their own toons for fun.


That proves it then, crack's got nothing on WoW!

Re:i look at it the other way

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, anybody who plays video games for 12 hours a day is: a joke.

This WASTES the talents of youth, chinese, unemployed, or otherwise.

This creates an artificial financial system that is prone to manipulation by baddies.

They can make more doing other menial tasks, though less addictive and debilitating.

Reminds me of the poor slobs who sit pumping quarters into the slot...

So I vote, gold farming is dumb.

Bliz should sell gold directly and cut this business out before it gets out of hand.

Putting things in perspective

[mrjb]

30 cents an hour amounts to about 48 dollars per month. Putting things in perspective, when I lived in Asia, that was more or less the normal wage of a janitor. Not a lot of money, and life conditions are poor with those wages- but the money goes a long way compared to the same kind of money in western 'civilization'. In those countries, 30 bucks pretty much buys you nutricious, delicious, high-quality all you can eat for 8 people. 20 cents amounts to a liter of petrol which goes a long way as well in those cranky noisy motorcycles of theirs.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[UbuntuDupe]

20 cents amounts to a liter of petrol which goes a long way as well in those cranky noisy motorcycles of theirs.

Hm...

Could they maybe send some of that to the US, where it definitely costs more than 80 cents/gallon?

Re:Putting things in perspective

[the_humeister]

They could, but then taxes would just bring the price to our current level. So what's the point?

Re:Putting things in perspective

[furball]

You know how there are US laws that mandates what you put in gasoline so that cars' emissions are at a certain level? None of that exists in the 20 cents per liter petrol they sell in Asia. So sure, you can get cheap gas if you want. Do you like breathing too?

Re:Putting things in perspective

[UbuntuDupe]

You know how there are US laws that mandates what you put in gasoline so that cars' emissions are at a certain level? None of that exists in the 20 cents per liter petrol they sell in Asia.

My understanding was that the required additives vary between regions (they're called "boutique blends", a name I hate with a passion), and that they mainly shift what kind of pollution the car emits, not the absolute level. That is, they're just using cities as guinea pigs. Most of the cost isn't from some additive necessary to keep the air clean.

So sure, you can get cheap gas if you want. Do you like breathing too?

To be honest, if they want to be consistent, how about banning woodburning, which is far worse than any car I've even known. Oh, right, that's a winter tradition, so it gets a free pass.

Also, breathing is over-rated. My brain works just as fine when it's oxygen-deprived. See if you can figure out which of my posts here are made while oxygen starved. You can't tell, can you?

Re:Putting things in perspective

[progprog]

30 cents an hour amounts to about 48 dollars per month. Putting things in perspective, when I lived in Asia, that was more or less the normal wage of a janitor.

Conditions are not uniform in Asia -- US$800 will get you a 30 sq meter room in prime area Tokyo, whereas it would get you a luxury apartment/condo in China.

Here's some numbers for those who want to see how well/badly you can live on gold farmer wages. Bear in mind these are for Beijing, which is probably the 3rd most expensive city in China to live in (after Shanghai and Hong Kong).

• 500g of chicken/pork/beef: 10 yuan
• Box lunch for office workers (meat, vegetable, rice): 5 yuan
• McDonald's happy meal: 20 yuan
• Can of coke: 2 yuan
• Haircut: 10 yuan and up
• Bottle of imported beer at expat bar: 30 yuan and up
• Rent of 50 sq meter studio 30 minutes from business district: 2000 yuan
• "Kung Pao" chicken and rice at average restaurant/take-away: 10-20 yuan
• Dinner for two at classy restaurant targeting expats (including wine): 200 yuan and up
• Salary for admin assistant: 2000 yuan and up
• Salary for entry-level game tester: 1000 yuan and up
• Salary for entry-level programmer: 3000 yuan and up
• Salary for senior developer: 8000 yuan and up

Even assuming the farmers work just 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, that's 1600 yuan, which is more than janitors, waitresses, or mall service staff. If their lodging is accounted for, that's a pretty good salary. Note the amount vs an entry-level game tester above.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[progprog]

Even assuming the farmers work just 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, that's 1600 yuan, which is more than janitors, waitresses, or mall service staff. If their lodging is accounted for, that's a pretty good salary. Note the amount vs an entry-level game tester above.

Reading comprehension FTW! Ok I read the salary part wrong -- at 30 cents / 2.5 yuan an hour, that's 400 yuan a month, which is not a good salary at all.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

What? McDonald's happy meal costs 4 times the price of real food?

Re:Putting things in perspective

[furball]

how about banning woodburning

You haven't been to Berkeley have you? Woodburning already banned there. Get with the times you environmental heathen.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[Fulcrum of Evil]

To be honest, if they want to be consistent, how about banning woodburning, which is far worse than any car I've even known. Oh, right, that's a winter tradition, so it gets a free pass.

How much wood is burnt compared to gasoline in a given year? Most people that burn it don't use it to heat their houses.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[UbuntuDupe]

Maybe so, but if *one* person burns wood, that negatively and noticeably impacts my air quality more than ALL of the gasoline-burning that goes on in cars in my area. (Which is a small town, but not a farming community.)

Re:Putting things in perspective

[stdarg]

Wood regrows every year so even though there's a lot of smoke there's not much net change. This is the argument used for biodiesel and ethanol too.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[umeshunni]

Yes - in many Asian countries, McDonalds is considered exotic foreign food :-)

Re:Putting things in perspective

[hackingbear]

Nope... in China, gasoline costs roughly the same level as in the US, except there is no gasoline tax still and price is set by the national government and adjusted based on the last 30 (?) days or so of the international market price.

Re:Putting things in perspective

[JediLow]

It actually still is good(depending on the area). When I was in Xining (capital of Qinghai Province) two years ago I worked out that to eat well every day (and out) it would take about 6 yuan. I'm not sure what it is today (I'll be heading there at the end of the month), but 400 yuan a month isn't anywhere near a slave wage.

30 cents an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

What TFA doesn't mention is that 30 cents an hour is about the average wage in China. That would be similar to making $16 an hour in the US. To play a video game.

Re:30 cents an hour

[PYRILAMPES]

Make it real then, Give them an Avatar for the Avatar that is sitting in a small room in China killing raccoons to earn gold to sell at a market. Then they could relive their own menial existence farming gold for people who spend their yearly salary on PS3 to buy the gold they produce.

it's only going to get worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mindark, the guys running Project Entropia, recently set up a deal with China to have a full universe of planets and things... along with the recent addition of banks (i.e. pawn shops, which aren't up yet, but should be soon) this whole thing is just going to get worse instead of better... in PE you actually can make money... pay won't be as good as the stuff mentioned in article though, but could be if the employers figure out the system the right way... I can just see real "sweat shops" collecting sweat off the mobs of Calypso all day... kinda makes me not want to be a Calypsan anymore...

Re:it's only going to get worse...

[BarneyL]

Except PE is rigged to make the player base loose money overall.
Every aspect of it is basically a slot machine - you pay money for ammo/prospecting charges/crafting equipment, you use it, you on average then get back goods worth less than what you put in. Once in a while someone hits the jackpot and it is broadcast to everyone on the server to keep them going at it.
Security is very tight on the economy too, using exploits to earn money are kind of tough when every object and coin has it's own unique ID in the game.

100 gold coins for $1.25...

[danbert8]

so that means that if he is earning 30c/hour then he is only collecting like 25 gold coins in an hour. Seems to me if he'd work harder he could make a bit more than that. I don't exactly know how common gold is in WoW, but it seems to me that after a month or so of work, his character would be of sufficient level to be making a lot more money than that.
 
What other job do you know of that putting extra work actually incurs better pay? How many of you wish you got payed on scale with how productive you were? (obviously joking since we are all at work wasting away on Slashdot)

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[k_187]

No, 25 gold in an hour is pretty damned good, even for a max level character. That's certainly better than I ever did.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[RichMan]

This is WoW related as WoW is the biggest game.

1g = 100silver = 10,000 copper

When you start. You start with copper coins.

Your mount at level 40 costs ~100g.
Your mount at level 60 costs ~600g.
Your mount at level 70 costs ~1000g.
Your fast mount at level 70 costs ~6000g.
6000g = 60,000,000 copper

The game is designed with a rudimentary economy that despite the unlimited gold from killing things is designed to eat up money for repairs and other equipment costs. It is easy to spend all your money on shiny objects.

Top end quests are worth 10-20g for completing.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[Anonymous Coward]

Online poker - if you win consistently, you make more money. If you multitable, you make more money. If you take the time to analyse the weaknesses in your game and improve, you make more money.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[ControversialMatt]

so that means that if he is earning 30c/hour then he is only collecting like 25 gold coins in an hour. Seems to me if he'd work harder he could make a bit more than that. I don't exactly know how common gold is in WoW, but it seems to me that after a month or so of work, his character would be of sufficient level to be making a lot more money than that. The thing is, the gold dropped by mobs at level 70 (the current max) is directly related to one's gear. As you level and get better items your repair costs increase, and since dying causes a 10% durability penalty , these costs can get fairly high later on, especially if the character is wearing plate armor.

I found this entire article humorous, the author is trying to romanticize gold farmers. The thing is, they don't do quests, they don't PvP unless absolutely necessary, they just farm one zone 24/7. I will continue feeling nothing but contempt toward anyone who buys gold, who needs to cheat because he or she cant cut it, and I'll feel sorry for these Chinese people, but in the end I'll still gank them in game whenever and wherever I find them.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[NickCatal]

Farming doesn't involve completing quests though... it is 100% grinding... then when you get a blue/purple item you auction it off, vendor the rest, and if you get a green you use your enchanter character to disenchant it into materials to sell at the auction house...

Right now the prices that are getting paid to suppliers are about $30-40(on a good day) for 1000g so it is more like $3. Sometimes it spikes higher. The real money comes from european gamers, where gold costs a lot more.

Of course, sales to gamers of 1000g would run about $84... so that shows you where the real money is going I guess.... (but the seller's expenses are HUGE)

Or you could just run a ton of bots. Level 60 characters sold wholesale go for $100 now and you can bot it up in the free month you get with the $20 ($17 at sams club) game

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[mypalmike]

the author is trying to romanticize gold farmers
Yeah, 80 hour weeks in small offices for 35 cents an hour. Romantic.

I'll feel sorry for these Chinese people, but in the end I'll still gank them in game whenever and wherever I find them.
How valiant of you.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[the_humeister]

I will continue feeling nothing but contempt toward anyone who buys gold, who needs to cheat because he or she cant cut it

Good for you. Meanwhile, unlike you, the rest of us who actually have real jobs, making real-world money, and who don't have the 40+ hours/week to spend playing video games in his mother's basement will still reap the benefits. As another poster has stated, I have the skill; I don't have the time for the grind.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[C0rinthian]

Having your farming characters get repeatedly banned and having to start over kind of caps your potential farming output.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[ControversialMatt]

Good for you. Meanwhile, unlike you, the rest of us who actually have real jobs, making real-world money, and who don't have the 40+ hours/week to spend playing video games in his mother's basement will still reap the benefits. As another poster has stated, I have the skill; I don't have the time for the grind.
I play World of Warcraft as a hobby, averaging about 4 hours a day, maybe more on the weekends if I have nothing better to do. I work a 40+ hour job as a software developer, and I certainly don't live in my parents basement. But you wouldn't know that, since theres a very good chance you've never met me. How unintelligent are you that you can only resort to flawed stereotypes rather than make a point? Honestly it's pretty sad.

You mentioned that you, "have the skill; I don't have the time for the grind." Well skippy, I hate to enlighten you to this but if you don't work for something, then you certainly don't deserve it. If you don't have the one or two hours (and two hours is a long shot) to run an instance, or to do quests, then you don't deserve to get gear or the gold. It doesn't take 40 hours a week worth of effort to afford an epic flying mount (the most expensive item in game), but it does help to get it sooner; if you want it now then you're gonna have to spend a bit more time at it. Once again my point: if you don't put in the time and effort, then you don't deserve the rewards. I can only pity you, you'll never know the fun of finally achieving something you spent a long time working for; instead taking short cuts for instant gratification, frankly it's the same result, but my joy is much sweeter.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[irix]

No, 25 gold in an hour is pretty damned good, even for a max level character.

25 gold an hour is quite frankly crap for a level 70 character in Outland. Go grind for primals with a class suited for farming (e.g. Hunter) and you are pulling in substantially more than that.

The reason it is lower is because by the time they have their toon to level 70 it is banned a short while later. Most of the time they are forced to grind on lower-level mobs in more out of the way locations (Thousand Needles, Hinterlands, Ashara, Felwood, etc.) while leveling a new character. This brings in somewhat less coin, but apparently is still profitable enough.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[the_humeister]

I play World of Warcraft as a hobby, averaging about 4 hours a day, maybe more on the weekends if I have nothing better to do. I work a 40+ hour job as a software developer, and I certainly don't live in my parents basement.

So you're still averaging 28+ hours a week. That's really not much better. It's unfortunate these games are weighted towards people who have inordinate amounts of time to grind their way through to get high-level items.

You mentioned that you, "have the skill; I don't have the time for the grind." Well skippy, I hate to enlighten you to this but if you don't work for something, then you certainly don't deserve it. If you don't have the one or two hours (and two hours is a long shot) to run an instance, or to do quests, then you don't deserve to get gear or the gold.

I work more than twice the hours you work in the hospital ever since starting this job. I no longer play WoW due to these factors but have switched to Guild Wars since paying monthly fees for an account that is barely used doesn't make sense and the fact the Guild Wars has significantly less emphasis on money and grind.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[Anonymous Coward]

...theres a very good chance you've never met me.

Maybe that's because you play WoW 28 hours a week.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[wilsonthecat]

You have never played WoW, but know that 25g is not much. I've never been to Italy but I know that 1000 lira isn't much.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[ewhenn]

I'll feel sorry for these Chinese people, but in the end I'll still gank them in game whenever and wherever I find them. How valiant of you.


Yeah, he kills people who break the rules of the game. Go have a fucking cry about it.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've never been to Italy but I know that 1000 lira isn't much."

If you had been to Italy recently you would know that the Italian currency isn't the lira.

Re:100 gold coins for $1.25...

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Good for you. Meanwhile, unlike you, the rest of us who actually have real jobs, making real-world money, and who don't have the 40+ hours/week to spend playing video games

It isn't necessary to play for 40 hours a week, or 20 hours or any more than you want. The game is enjoyable when played at any rate. Just because it isn't possible to hit level 70 after a few hours or get the best gear straight away doesn't mean you can't play the game.

Just because some people choose to play for huge amounts of time doesn't mean everyone has to. I play for a few hours a couple of days a week and don't imagine I will hit lvl 70 for a long time, but as I am enjoying playing why does it matter? The idea of buying a game and then paying to get to the end of it seems ridiculous to me. If you only have time to play for 2 hours a week then thats fine and the game will last you a lot longer.

It isn't like you are competing against all the other players, the fact that someone can play for 40 hours a week has no effect on anyone else unless you view the game as a leveling competition that is only about reaching the finish line. MMOs aren't like that, it is about the journey not the destination.

I wonder if people who buy gold also flick straight to the end of books and fast forward their way through movies to get to the end faster.

Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

[dada21]

100 gold coins takes this guy Li 4 hours to come across. He gets paid $0.30 for it. I pay the end seller $5 for the same 1 hour of coins (25 gold coins). So I'm basically saving myself 1 hour (or more, if Li is extra-efficient) for the low cost of $5. Sounds like a winning situation for me.

As for Li, it sounds like a good place to start also. It's a new market, and in all new markets people have to work for peas (or less) to until the market breaks open. We might see Li running his own show in 5 years (or we may not).

Until then, he gets to work indoors, on a computer, smoke as much as he wants (try that in the US!), and learn a skill that some may consider mundane, but shows a helluva lot of marketability with a longterm and bright future. Now it sounds like a win-win situation.

Re:Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

[Shakrai]

smoke as much as he wants (try that in the US!)

With the added advantage of now he doesn't have to worry too much about saving for retirement ;)

Re:Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

[east coast]

Until then, he gets to work indoors, on a computer, smoke as much as he wants (try that in the US!), and learn a skill that some may consider mundane, but shows a helluva lot of marketability with a longterm and bright future. Now it sounds like a win-win situation.

And don't forget he get's a free WoW account.

Re:Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

[_Sprocket_]

and learn a skill that some may consider mundane, but shows a helluva lot of marketability with a longterm and bright future.

Yeah. I'm sure "extensive knowledge of epic drops and mote grinding" will go real big on the resume.

Re:Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

[Anonymous Coward]

Though he says in the article that he can barely save any money on what he makes.

Re:Sounds like a great deal for us Westerners...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until then, he gets to work indoors, on a computer, smoke as much as he wants (try that in the US!), and learn a skill that some may consider mundane, but shows a helluva lot of marketability with a longterm and bright future. Now it sounds like a win-win situation.

Yeah, that's what it sounds like. However, it's no different from someone working 60 hours a week for $.30 an hour in a Nike sweatshop (another "longterm and bright future" job, eh?) so we can buy running shoes way, way cheaper than we could make them ourselves. We're going to go to hell for it of course, but until then, we might as well delude ourselves into thinking it's a win-win situation. Enjoy your +5 running shoes of lightness.

Very hard to imagine

[Shambly]

I really like the part where he was saying that he was making less money as a vehicle repairman. It really brings the discrepency of money accross the world to light. Although the shifts seems fairly excessive they seem to be able to live off of it decently. I really have a problem seing the downside to it. Besides the fear of taxation and policing by the providers of the game. They are providing a service for a fee. If people weren't willing to pay for it they wouldn't exist. Inflation works both ways. If people with more money buy the best gear its easy for the people not willing to pay up for their gold to make a lot of money selling the gear they get for profit. Really isn't it about finding what makes the game fun for you and doing that part of it?

No problems here

[OrangeTide]

If it were my game I would not mind that people were gold farming. But I don't own it, Blizzard does, so they get to define what the rules are. Although I think it's pointless to fight things like gold farming, it would seem more practical to embrace it and have some control over it. (like set up a currency exchange rate for it).

One thing gold farming does is exploit a weakness in a games economic system. Which can introduce imbalance through inflation. But this is countered somewhat because NPCs don't participate in the free market and have (generally) fixed pricing. But the price for things you can't buy from an NPC just sky rockets as the gold farming persists. the buying power of your gold will just keep going down as long as it is easy to get. just shell out the price of two months subscription and you are set for a good deal of time on gold, at least for normal in-game purchases.

Re:No problems here

[ControversialMatt]

One thing gold farming does is exploit a weakness in a games economic system. Which can introduce imbalance through inflation. But this is countered somewhat because NPCs don't participate in the free market and have (generally) fixed pricing. But the price for things you can't buy from an NPC just sky rockets as the gold farming persists. the buying power of your gold will just keep going down as long as it is easy to get. just shell out the price of two months subscription and you are set for a good deal of time on gold, at least for normal in-game purchases. Not really. The only thing that people would buy off of a vendor of any monetary consequence are mounts. The vast majority of the rest of the money is spent in the Auction Houses, things like Primals, Bind on Equip Epic level items, Rare quality gems, and the like. Now if you introduce more money into the system, through farmers and the like, these prices will also rise, making those of us who don't chose to be pathetic cheaters work a lot harder for these items, and causing some people, whether they like it or not, to purchase more gold to buy said items. Thus the vicious cycle continues.

Buy from certified free range, organic farmers.

[khasim]

Don't risk YOUR dollars going to a terrorist organization!

Buy gold from certified free range, organic gold farmers.

Look for the Union Label.

Okay, now someone else come up with the cute union name for gold farmers. Extra points if the acronym is equally amusing.

Re:Buy from certified free range, organic farmers.

[tourvil]

Buy gold from certified free range, organic gold farmers.

So would free range gold farmers get to play outside on laptops over wireless?

The lesson here is an obvious one

[Weaselmancer]

You need to hire your own Chinese guys to farm gold for you! There's a 1600% markup on Chinese gold, if you go through the retailer.

Re:The lesson here is an obvious one

[Anonymous Coward]

my wife and i actually do this ourselves (were american). We farm gold and sell it direct to other players, no middleman, and we're earring about $8/hour tax free each in our spare time.

Re:The lesson here is an obvious one

[Ezzaral]

Wonderful! So not only are you violating the game TOS, you're cheating on your taxes as well! Bravo!

Re:The lesson here is an obvious one

[RealGrouchy]

my wife and i actually do this ourselves (were american). We farm gold and sell it direct to other players, no middleman, and we're earring about $8/hour tax free each in our spare time.

I'm pretty sure that in most states you'd have to pay tax on that money.

- RG>

Living wage in China?

[RingDev]

I haven't found any really concrete numbers or sites, but it sounds like a living wage in china is $3/day. At $.30/hr these guys have a pretty easy job compared to a lot of the textile and merchandise manufactures where people are getting paid less per hour in much more dangerous environments.

-Rick

Re:Living wage in China?

[Anonymous Coward]

CIA world factbook had around 7700 a year

Re:Living wage in China?

[micahfk]

Average Wage in Shanghai: 1500 Yuan/Month (as of 2005) Gold Farmer Wage (on the low end): 10yuan/hr * 8hrs a day * 5 days a week * 4 weeks a month = 1600 Yuan/Month That's already above the average wage of Shanghai--the city with the highest wages within mainland China.

Re:Living wage in China?

[JediLow]

It depends on the area. Where I'm the most familiar with is closer to $1.50-$2/day for a city (Xining/Qinghai, the per capita GDP is $844).

"Manual" labor

[nlitement]

Why do you need people sitting around at in a ball-sweating cubicle, busting balls or getting their balls busted, when you can just use BOTS to harvest gold? Is there some kind of a barrier that stops you from using trainers or bots to farm gold? Plus, you don't have to hire people for work. This whole thing is really surreal, I mean, that guy probably barely gets his bread at a whopping $600 monthly salary by playing some GAMES!?!! If that's how you feed yourself, then fuck WoW. I mean, that game was meant for some you to relax on weekends and playing with friends, not to earn all of your living with it!

Re:"Manual" labor

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, that game was meant for some you to relax on weekends and playing with friends, not to earn all of your living with it!

hi,
your reality may differ more than slightly than his, mine, or anyone else anywhere in the world.
For example, some people don't really ever "relax on the weekend". Some people have more than
one job. People make money doing the strangest things. For example, people grow their hair out
just to have it cut off and sold to someone that is willing to pay for it. From what I understand,
you get in where you fit it. Some people would rather "gold farm" than steal I am guessing.
Your indignance that people have to earn a living from a game that is supposed to be fun is
admirable but misplaced. There are worse places for these people to be, for example the
brick making slaves that were recently rescued in..... you guessed it, China. Interestingly enough
here in the west, people make money from games too, they are called athletes, gamblers and gamers.

Re:"Manual" labor

[vertinox]

Is there some kind of a barrier that stops you from using trainers or bots to farm gold?

That would require understanding of how to program an AI and from understanding is difficult in itself.

You could probably make more money selling the Bot program than actually using it to farm.

Re:"Manual" labor

[KyleTheDarkOne]

I fully agree, while some people, such as people who have computers feel that these jobs are low paying and these people shouldn't exist or should be paid more, take into account that these people at least have a place to live, they have enough money to buy cigarette (if they really were desperate for money they could quit smoking and make money that way, they also are not slaving over a field with a man with a whip, nor in a stifling hot room in the middle of nowhere making shoes on a manual sewing machine.

Re:"Manual" labor

[KyleTheDarkOne]

The gold farming starts with this, but the game developers have created ways to prevent bots, such as calculating the time each action takes, in bots actions are precise, while humans vary slightly. Also, when those don't work GMs ingame will bot patrol and ask gamers a question, to which if they do not respond they are flagged as a potential bot.

Obligatory Hap Hap!

[Durrok]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/14 Need to get me one of those... imagine the savings! :p

Re:gold farming is all well and good...

[Shambly]

I'm willing to pay 30cents an hour for some "terrorist" to play 12 hours of WOW a day. Not much time life to pay for jihad after that anyways. Not that your income tax doesn't go toward funding oppressive regimes accross the world. And your paying much more then 30 cents an hour for that priviledge.

Made in China

[KarlH420]

Nothing new here. Who makes all the stuff they sell in Walmart? Look at your cloths, shoes, electronics.. "made in china"

not as bad as it sounds?

[Lord Ender]

$0.30/hour sounds like just enough to afford food while sleeping in a shed, but when you consider that housing is also provided, it's not so bad.

Seriously, for $0.30/hour, you only have to work 1 hour per day to afford three meals of delicious ramen noodles. So with 1 hour of work, you have food and housing, and the other $3.30 you earn per day is free to be spent on hookers and blow. A good life.

there are 2 forms of acceptance

[circletimessquare]

1. accepting that which is ugly but immutable. such as death

2. accepting that which is ugly but changeable. such as the aristocracy, or classism, or repugnant contrasts between the rich and the poor

yes, you are correct, aristocratic abuses are an ancient scourge. so is slavery. so is racism. accept these things as well?

a meritocracy is difficult, and in a world of human beings, never 100% possible. so what? we should stop trying to be fair to one another just because people can be ignorant?

you're not wise, you're just a cynic, with no heart. when i read words like these:

Why does this bother you that rich folks can pay to play. Why should they not if they can? It's the way of the world and always has been

i think, frankly, that you're just a loser and an asshole. you have no human conscience, you have no sense of morality, you don't believe in social progress, which does actually exist in this world

i don't believe in karma, but if it existed, i'd wish you would be reborn as a dalit

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Wog]

You do realize that he's talking about a *game* and not anything important, right? And that the minor unbalancing in-game is what feeds quite a few families that don't have the luxuries you have?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Red Flayer]

you're not wise, you're just a cynic, with no heart.

He's not a cynic, he's a defeatist (maybe even a nihilist). By the Greek roots of the word, he's the opposite of a cynic -- rather than wanting to draw attention to the faults of society, he wants to accept that they exist and move on.

A cynic may ascribe the worst motivations to the actions of others, and may decry those actions -- but acceptance of them is antithetical to the cynical mind.

Sorry to get off on a tangent there, but as a proud cynic, I sometimes take it personally when people use the term to refer to a defeatist.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Rakishi]

i think, frankly, that you're just a loser and an asshole. you have no human conscience, you have no sense of morality, you don't believe in social progress, which does actually exist in this world Or he believes in capitalism. A person is good at X, say banking. He works 12 hours a day doing X and make a good amount of money as a result. This person enjoys video games but like many finds the grind annoying. Now his time is worth a lot to society and he has money so he pays someone else to do the grind for him.

What is exactly wrong with him paying someone else to do this for him? To gain gold for him? To level a character for him?

I mean are maids immoral to have now as well? House cleaners that come in once a weak? Gas station attendants? Car mechanics? Computer repairman? Lawyers? Accountans? Cooks? All of them are paid to do a task which someone else could do but for various reasons chooses to "outsource".

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[superbus1929]

It's a game. GAME. What, you pissed off because someone spent money to get what you spent all your hard-earned (ha!) time acquiring? I'm guessing, due to your statements that you're a hardcore player. I'm also guessing you have little else going for you in life, outside of maybe a trivial job. You need some perspective. Or a different hobby.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[C0rinthian]

and if you went out bowling with your friends, and one of them slipped a twenty to the guy at the counter and had all his frames changed to strikes, what would you think of that friend? Or that bowling alley?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Maxo-Texas]

The game is only fun as long as it maintains its illusion as a game.

For example.

Paying 70 million in salary for a team that usually beats other teams is acceptable.
But going the next logical step and selling "successful bat swings" destroys the illusion.

The gross mockery of baseball that has 70 million dollar "aces" pretending to be equals of a 4 million dollar team of 3rd stringers (yet winning year after year) still has just enough illusion left of the original game.

Likewise-- buying gold is okay and buying an experienced but used character is okay. However, the day Sony or Blizzard puts a price of $10 per level and a formal price on all items and expansion/zone flags then they will destroy the illusion.

What is the point of just giving Sony $850 and then saying "I win". The rich people NEED hordes of poor people playing the hard way to get the good feeling that justifies paying that much money to "win" and play.

put another way
What family would play monopoly when you could buy a thousand dollars in the game for a dollar. The parents could win any game because they have more money.

It's not a fair game when you let people buy a winning position.

---

Another example... because of this money issue many real world games have limits. For example: in nascar, the track has a right to buy the winning car for a set price (so you better not spend more than that set price) and in drag car racing, there is a maximum speed you can run (890 class is 8.9 seconds). Only in the 'unlimited' class can you spend any amount of money.

What we "890" game players want is a level playing field.

Unfortunately... you still have the 80 hour a week players-- so what I want is a game where you can't buy a position or gold and where you can't play more than a certain number of hours per week. ("This is the 20 hour a week server-- all players on this server are limited to 20 hours a week" "This is the 30 hour a week server".. etc.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Rakishi]

Except thats NOT what is happening. The proper analogy is your friend spending $50 on a really nice bowling ball while you use the one from the bowling alley.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[cbreaker]

You've received a bunch of "It's only a game!" comments because some of these kids just don't get it. These games are more about the other players, whom are real living breathing people, then the game itself.

We'll never advance as a society, community, or race if we keep on believing and accepting the norms. There might not be much we can do about certain things, but we sure don't have to accept it completely.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[trolltalk.com]

What's the big deal - everything else is made in China - why not this "fool's gold"?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[ajgeek]

I think "maids" and "gas station attendants" are on a different skill level than "accountants" and "lawyers." By your definition they're all a service class with the same degree of difficulty as any other class.

This is simply not the case.

A good lawyer, accountant, IT or cook have spent years training and honing their skills to be a master at what they do. Each has their own literature, discipline and technique that few or no other field possesses. This is not the case with maids and gas station attendants. That's why they are by all definitions "low-end jobs."

Do not confuse specialists with servants. Your doctor or mechanic might get pissed.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Johnny5000]

This person enjoys video games but like many finds the grind annoying. Now his time is worth a lot to society and he has money so he pays someone else to do the grind for him.

I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with it necessarily, but if that's the case he should probably find a game that's better suited to his interests. Paying someone else to perform what is supposed to be a leisure activity, because one finds a large portion of the game to be tedious seems like the height of stupidity.

Find something to play that's actually fun, instead.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Johnny5000]

The proper analogy is your friend spending $50 on a really nice bowling ball while you use the one from the bowling alley.

Nah.

A better analogy would be for your friend to hire a pro bowler to bowl a bunch of frames for him, and then throw the last couple himself once his score is sufficiently high to win. Then telling everyone about how much he loves bowling, and how good he is at it.

This being slashdot, can anyone come up with a car-related analogy?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[nelsonal]

The point is that the services of a maid or cook (or restaurant) is essentially the purchase of time (that would have been spent cleaning/cooking). Sure, there will be specialization that allows the maid to clean faster than I (because they invests in tools that I don't and knows how to clean that stain off the wall the first time rather than try three different things (two that don't work too well). But mostly maids and gas station attendents save time of the people willing to pay for their services. Cooks are sort of different, I can make a sandwich pretty much as well as the one I had for lunch (so I was paying for time) but I can't cook as well as Wolfgang Puck.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[goombah99]

This being slashdot, can anyone come up with a car-related analogy? Some folks like to Restore classic cars, SOme folks like to buy restored classic cars, and some people make a business out of restoring classic cars.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Rakishi]

Do not confuse specialists with servants. Your doctor or mechanic might get pissed. They are fundamentally imho simply different sections of the same spectrum. They are differentiated by what percentage of the clients could theoretically do said activity, by how much training is required, etc. The costs of the services reflect all of this.

A good/high-end maid (or butler) could earn more than a bad doctor for example. Of course such a maid requires more training, experience and does more complex tasks. Likewise not everyone can be such a maid either as some inherent talent/personality/some such is required that can't be trained.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[firl]

Such a good point. I rebuild cars in my spare time for fun, but If I have to do it out of need it isn't cost effective for me to do the work myself.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Greyfox]

I find it utterly bizarre that you'd pay to play a game and then you'd pay someone else to play it for you. As long as that goes on the games won't improve. If people were leaving in droves because grinding the same crap all day long is boring as hell and they'd rather be doing more interesting stuff then perhaps there'd be some motivation for the game publisher to improve the situation. As it stands now a lot of people (including the game publisher) make a lot of money because the game is boring. If I was looking at a single player game and everyone said it was boring I wouldn't buy it. So why are the multiplayer ones any different?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Arthur B.]

How are contrasts between the rich and the poor "repugnant" ? I understand that poverty, famine, diseases and everything that creates human suffering is repugnant, but how is the contrast itself repugnant ? The only "suffering" contrasts creates by itself is envy.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Rakishi]

Many people, despite "complaining", don't mind the "grind" just look at all the Final Fantasy games (or RPGs period) that do so well.

It's also not that the game is boring but that say the first x hours (or some activity) is boring to that person so they pay to essentially skip those x hours. It may be that for example all his friends are at a higher level and he wishes to play with them. It may be that he enjoys playing in the manner that one does at a higher level but not in the manner one does at a lower level. Maybe he needs to do some specific activity to get some item which he doesn't like (say fishing). In single player games you'd simply use a cheap code although as I hear it some companies are trying to charge for that sort of thing as well.

It's only different from people who pay for expensive golf clubs, bikes, cars (that they actually race) and so on because those items can't be truly gotten by simply spending time. However in case of say a pre-made computer, racing bike or car the person is trading off spending time on an activity they do not like (buying parts, tuning, assembling) so that they can do one they do like (video games, racing, etc.).

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[stdarg]

The only reason that's a problem is because the pro bowler is playing at the same time as the your friend's friends. How about if your friend hires a pro bowler to teach him how to bowl better the week before you all play. That's not bad is it? (Although you'd probably get annoyed if he really did get a lot better and beat you all...)

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Maxo-Texas]

The problem is that these games have taken a leisure activity and then stretched out the time to play them artificially to where there is not much fun for some activities.

The 22 hours I put into getting my "jboots" was just a pointless and artificial limit to slow the rate jboots entered the game. People who could play 12 hours at a stretch got jboots in about 11 hours-- those of us who played shorter periods often took longer to get the same rewards.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[RobertLTux]

okay try this for an ingame thing

1 in in game world is divided into timezones (maps to actual time zones) and the world is always running (so even if you log off the in game clock still runs)
2 each Character Player or Bot is given a set of auto commands (this can be search for and harvest X in an area or craft item)
3 certain actions require certain guestures with a mouse (so if you buy an Epic Sword of Icestorm you would need to be able to draw the correct glyph to use it)
4 miscasting a spell causes a nontrival to massive drain on "mana"
5 rebuilding "mana" requires "scryion" that may also require you to have a party (so if you are a level 75 FireMage you would need to have a few dozen servants/thralls/serfs
just to maintain your mana supply) [this would also prevent folks from nuking newbies for jollies]
6 some folks have a hard limit as to how high they can push magic but those folks would also have a very high "scryion" tolerence (so that level 25 wood elf that hit limit could provide a 4X share of "scryion"
7 a set of "sleepers" that would appear to very high level players (you buy a level 95 mage hope you like battling Achient Wryms every half hour)

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll never advance as a society, community, or race

Period, full stop. Otherwise what was the greatest democracy in modern times wouldn't have slipped into a soviet-style dictatorship. Otherwise we wouldn't be racing down the waterfall to complete, total and yet preventable ecological devestation.

Because humans are inherently greedy, short-sighted, self serving and flat out evil, the "race" will not only not advance; but within 50 years it will end completely.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

rich folks can pay to play

This is a form of meritocracy. In western society, one of the greatest incentives to do better and get a good education and to bring value to society is financial riches. If you take away the incentive, society stagnates. Of course some people will work for free and that's great but most won't and all of these great things like, oh, I don't know, that keyboard your banging on and that computer you're sitting in front of wouldn't exist without financial incentive to produce it.

In short, let the rich enjoy their money as long as they're not hurting anyone and buying a character or some electronic trinkets in a video game is far from that.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

he should probably find a game that's better suited to his interests.

Perhaps you should start doing the following:

• growing your own food
• making your own clothes
• raising horses and ride them or start walking everywhere

We all use exchanges of time and skills, via money, to allow us to pursue the activities that we feel best reflect our values and interests. If you want to start telling people to find other activities when they've already found one they are interested in, and/or if you want to start telling people exactly how they should pursue and enjoy that interest, you'd best start taking a close look at the list above.

I expect you to post a photo of you wearing the new clothes you made. Of course, you'll have to post that photo on a network connection you construct using a computer fabricated from parts you built by hand, after scanning the photo in using a scanner you built, after taking the photo on a camera you constructed, developing it using chemicals you procured, printed it using paper you made, etc.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[PMBjornerud]

What family would play monopoly when you could buy a thousand dollars in the game for a dollar. The parents could win any game because they have more money. If monopoly was a MMO, the parents would be pwnz0rd because the kids have played 24/7 and are level 1000. To get even close to a fair game the parents would probably have to spend at least $500 each on gold and leveling services.

Or maybe the parents have accumulated XP for their whole lifetime, so they just push their "I win" buttons.
Sorry kids, but you'll probably need to powerlevel for another three months.

You can't compare a 1-evening board game with a subscription game designed to encourage months and months of leveling. Analogies just fall apart.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[PMBjornerud]

Paying someone else to perform what is supposed to be a leisure activity, because one finds a large portion of the game to be tedious seems like the height of stupidity. Or the height of bad game design.

No matter how you look at this, subscribers are paying money to avoid playing parts of the game. How much sense does that make?!?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Draek]

Unfortunately... you still have the 80 hour a week players-- so what I want is a game where you can't buy a position or gold and where you can't play more than a certain number of hours per week. ("This is the 20 hour a week server-- all players on this server are limited to 20 hours a week" "This is the 30 hour a week server".. etc. or you could just make leveling up slower and the rewards for it much smaller, so that a lv20 character that got lucky and found a nice sword back when he was lv14 could easily beat a lv56 that was unprepared for an attack. IMHO that'd make the game less Monopoly and more RPG in addition to making the game much less frustrating for newbies, since a party of 5 newbies would at least have a shot at killing that lv86 loser that's trying to kill them.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Skuld-Chan]

What is exactly wrong with him paying someone else to do this for him? To gain gold for him? To level a character for him?

One problem with this - and you run into this all the time in WoW is that people who pay for their accounts often don't have the experience to actually play the game in any meaningful way. You know the type - we invited you to do x in our instance run, but they didn't know they could do x - or they do it so poorly that you might have been better off without em.

Or lvl 70's that don't know how to get to places...

I mean are maids immoral to have now as well? House cleaners that come in once a weak? Gas station attendants? Car mechanics? Computer repairman? Lawyers? Accountans? Cooks? All of them are paid to do a task which someone else could do but for various reasons chooses to "outsource".

Bad comparison really - if I buy a lvl 70 character in WoW I'm making a false statement that "I did this", I know this character better than anyone and I can use this character to the best of my abilities - when its not true.

You don't hire a maid to clean your house, and then claim you know everything about cleaning your house? Or do you have a mechanic fix your car and claim to your friends that your an expert in cars?

If you hire a lawyer and he/she wins your case you're not going to claim your a legal expert are you?

Because you are doing all those things when you buy a character.

I know the grind sucks, and the game companies could obviously do stuff to make this better - but its there for a reason. To help teach you the mechanics of the game, and to help teach you how your character works. People who buy their accounts - unless they've been through the ranks several times usually really suck at the game itself.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Rakishi]

Bad comparison really - if I buy a lvl 70 character in WoW I'm making a false statement that "I did this", I know this character better than anyone and I can use this character to the best of my abilities - when its not true. Yet all they have is a character it's YOU who's making the assumption about how they acquired it. If someone has a maid then should they fire her because YOU assume they clean their ultra-clean house themselves?

You don't hire a maid to clean your house, and then claim you know everything about cleaning your house? Or do you have a mechanic fix your car and claim to your friends that your an expert in cars?

If you hire a lawyer and he/she wins your case you're not going to claim your a legal expert are you?

Because you are doing all those things when you buy a character. Not anymore than with a maid, all they have is a character. Also the buying of characters, gold and so on is a well known practice. As a result there is no reason that one should assume that just because someone has a lvl 70 character they gotten it themselves.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Johnny5000]

The only reason that's a problem is because the pro bowler is playing at the same time as the your friend's friends. How about if your friend hires a pro bowler to teach him how to bowl better the week before you all play. That's not bad is it? (Although you'd probably get annoyed if he really did get a lot better and beat you all...)

Well no, that's not a bad thing, but we're getting away from the original problem here.

If you took lessons on how to be a better game player, that's something different from paying someone else to actually play the game for you.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[murdocj]

What is exactly wrong with him paying someone else to do this for him? To gain gold for him? To level a character for him?

If the guy is playing solitaire and he wants to pay someone else to play it for him until it's clear that it's a win, and then he comes in and lays down the last few cards, well, that's his business. However, in MMOs gold farmers have a direct (and negative) impact on the other players. In particular, gold farmers who are running bots can monopolize resources by continually pounding on spawn points, making it impossible for other players to get those resources in game.

That's the direct impact. The indirect impact is that you end up with "ebay'ed" players who are high level but incompetent to play their class. They may know how to push the attack button, but they don't have 60 or 70 levels of experience in what to do when an odd situation pops up. Such people are a pain to play with.

What it comes down to is that if you really don't enjoy playing a game (or part of a game) don't play it. If you don't like grinding, don't grind. I've got a 70 priest and a 63 hunter in WoW and I have *never* sat in area grinding. And believe me, as an ex-Everquest player, I know grinding.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[fractoid]

If you do that, what's the point? You're replacing value=effort with value=luck. The level 56 will be pissed that he got beaten by someone who just got lucky, and the level 20 will crow about how awesome he is for about 10 minutes before realising that it means jack, then both will quit. :/

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[fractoid]

Except thats NOT what is happening. The proper analogy is your friend spending $50 on a really nice bowling ball while you use the one from the bowling alley. That'd be a proper analogy if the really nice bowling ball was radio controlled and twice the size of regular bowling balls. They're getting equipment that makes the game substantially easier for them.

A better analogy would be that you and a friend are running in a marathon. Your friend gets bored and takes a taxi to the finish line.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[lessthan]

It's like an NASCAR race where you hire a proffesional to drive it, but you're the one that stands in the winners circle.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

a meritocracy is difficult, and in a world of human beings, never 100% possible.

Yes, thankfully. A meritocracy is just an aristocracy with genetics substituted for wealth. If you make more than your waitress, it's likely not that you're working harder, but that you're smarter; once again, you win by accident of birth. Meanwhile, the genius has already strolled into a top university and cruised himself into a nice job in the City - this describes pretty much every one of the people who got a scholarship at the private school I went to(*).

At least aristocracy barely pretended to be fair, and its repugnance became evident. Meritocracy has the sinister veneer of justice, and would be far harder to replace.

(*) No sour grapes - I'm also describing my own history, until it came to getting a job, where I made a moral decision to dedicate myself to non-profit work.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[vux984]

If you took lessons on how to be a better game player, that's something different from paying someone else to actually play the game for you.

Because, at the most fundamental level, one is against the rules and one isn't.

When you agree to play a game, you essentially form a type of social contract about what the rules of that game are. If you violate that contract and start breaking the rules (aka 'cheating') it undermines the reason for playing the game itself. Its a terrible thing to do to your fellow players. Its thoughtless, rude, and literally ruins the game for many of them. Sure there are the people who don't care, who like the game enough to ignore it, or who play it like golf, where they are only concerned with their own progress measured against themselves... but for everyone who is competitive, or takes satisfaction in being recognized as a person who has done something of merit. -- for them the game is all but wrecked. What is the point of sportsmanlike competition in the face of cheating so blatant it has actually become someones job? How can one be recongized for acquiring a trophy when they are for sale on ebay to anyone with a couple bucks.

That's the key - your violating your implied agreement with the other players to play by the rules. If you were playing the game by yourself, whatever, go nuts. If you were playing the game with a few close friends who all agreed it was ok to hire gold farmers, again, whatever go nuts.

But in a mmog the other players don't agree with you and your horde of gold farmers and they're stuck. Their only recourse is to quit playing mmogs entirely because they have no ability to elect not to play with you, and no desire to play the game they way you are. And so they (rightfully) complain.

The best solution is to split the population up... there is nothing inherently wrong with gold farming, if you want to play a game that allows/incorporates it, that's fine, you should have a server where its perfectly legal. However, if you don't want to play a game that tolerates gold farming, there should be a server for you too, where its ACTIVELY policed, where players can have the security that their preferred ruleset is being actively allowed/enforced.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[eharvill]

That's the direct impact. The indirect impact is that you end up with "ebay'ed" players who are high level but incompetent to play their class. They may know how to push the attack button, but they don't have 60 or 70 levels of experience in what to do when an odd situation pops up. Such people are a pain to play with. I've played with *many* people that *do* have 60 levels of experience and still don't "know what to do." It's part of life. Think about people you work with. Just b/c someone has 30 years of experience in (insert industry here) doesn't mean they are *good* at their job or can do it better than someone with 5 years of experience. I guess that's why they have friends lists, guilds, etc so you can potentially minimize the "ebay'ed" players or less skillful players for you to group with...

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when the meritocracy turns out to be "racist" - which it would be on a level playing field?

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Firethorn]

I think that it's that some people assoiciate 'fun' with winning - so therefore they must win, even if they have to cheat and/or spend extra money for every advantage they can get.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[devnull17]

The difference is that WoW and EQ are games. Most people play for enjoyment--or at least, they should be.

I don't think that buying gold is necessarily immoral, but I don't understand why anyone would do it. As with many things in life, the fun in MMO's is in the journey, not in the destination. (Which in this case is a row in a database somewhere. Grats!) Likewise, while I may not think you're a criminal for taking the lazy rich guy's way out, I certainly won't think more of you for it.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

What family would play monopoly when you could buy a thousand dollars in the game for a dollar.

I can see that working -- if the real dollar goes to the kids. You might have to tweak the exchange rate, but I can see everyone walking away from that game happy if the winner gets the title "winner", and the loser gets money.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an asshole cynic too, you just put on a facade of caring about people. You don't. You care about humanity as an abstraction, which is to say not at all. You see people with more, you envy, so you want to destroy what they have. Fear drives you.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Draek]

not really, I'd be replacing value=time with value=sociability, since crowds would easily beat smaller groups or lone people, in my example the lv20 wouldn't beat the lv56 because his sword is uber-powerful, but rather because the difference between levels is small enough to be compensated by it, so theoretically the lv56 would only need to call a friend with his lv12 character to get his revenge on the lv20 =D

that'd alienate some people, of course, but mostly the ones that play only to maximize their characters' stats, which would be easily compensated by the amount of people looking to sociabilize, role-play, or the ones that don't have as much time to play as the "hardcore" ones, such as the GGP.

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Skuld-Chan]

Yet all they have is a character it's YOU who's making the assumption about how they acquired it. If someone has a maid then should they fire her because YOU assume they clean their ultra-clean house themselves?

When a lvl 70 holy paladin doesn't know that you need two people to summon from a meeting stone, and doesn't know that if they are holy they need to be healing the party - yeah they bought their character.

Thats the kind of player you have to be for me to make that assumption (and yes thats a real world example).

Re:there are 2 forms of acceptance

[Knightking]

Why even have levels if they're nearly meaningless?

The only way to win WoW

[Winckle]

is to not play.

Re:The only way to win WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

I Win!

Re:The only way to win WoW

[hack slash]

"I Win!"

Too late, I already did.

My two copper.

[Pojut]

I both love and loathe gold/item farmers. First, the reasons why I loathe them (most of these should be obvious to anyone that plays any MMO...I will stick to WoW since that is what most people play) For one, it helps to drive low-level blue prices to completely INSANE levels. Yes, I am aware that this is also because of twinks, but I am quite sure many people twink their toons out with gold that they have purchased. A general increase in the cost of everything (due to more players having gold in hand) also occurs...thus you have speed potions which sell for as high as 10 gold per stack of 5 on some servers, etc. Farmers also inevitably make it harder for a player to farm for him/herself; I like farming the same places they do for the same reasons that they do! Now, for why I love them. As previously stated, someone on the other end is indeed being fed and kept warm because of gold farming...Blizzard makes even more money due to the multiple account purchases meaning they have more money to invest back into the game. Gold farmers also help increase the supply of items on the AH (unfortunately, they are generally overpriced though...) All in all, the biggest issue I have with it are people standing in the cities with an incomprehensible name spamming of /say adverts for various gold-selling sites. If it weren't for the in-game economic impact (which isn't as drastic as people think it is) and the /say spam, I frankly wouldn't have a problem with WoW farmers at ALL. Besides. It makes it easy to tell if someone actually PLAYS the game or not (Hint: if they are decked out in BoE blues/purples, they don't play the game.)

Re:My two copper.

[Pojut]

ugh. sorry for the "one paragraph", I meant to hit plain text but completely forgot -_-;;

Re:My two copper.

[biscon]

you need to get out more often :)

Re:My two copper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard makes even more money due to the multiple account purchases [of gold farmers] meaning they have more money to invest back into the game.

This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that people who buy from farmers play the game less. Given that farmers are more efficient players per hour and play more hours per day, Blizzard could lose money as a result. So it also depends on how grey market customers manage their accounts. On the other hand, inflation forces other people to spend even more time playing... but grey market customers play less which takes fewer server resources. Who knows.

Re:My two copper.

[Lord Ender]

Wow. That was completely incomprehensible. You are saying people "twink" their "toons" out with gold at blue prices? What, is that some kind of new show on MTV or something?

Re:My two copper.

[Pojut]

You obviously don't play WoW (or apparently any MMO) so I will translate.

twink = to deck out a low level "toon" with overpriced "blues" that they would otherwise be unable to afford.

toon = player-created charector

blues = the colour of a certain class of items...commons are white, uncommons are green, rares are blue, epics are purple, legendarys are orange

If they wanted to make more

[maroberts]

They should try cornering sectors of the market in the AH. I make more money trading there with my lvl 20 char than I do questing, buying from people at low prices and selling at higher.

Re:If they wanted to make more

[ControversialMatt]

They do, check the prices on some servers of Super Healing and Super Mana potions.

mod parent up

[circletimessquare]

said what i said with 100x more wit and intelligence

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Sheltim]

I find it interesting that the article doesn't talk about the whole secondary industry that's popped up as a result of the popularity of gold sellers: spam and anti-spam measures. I couldn't care less about whether or not people sell gold. What I do care about is that I get a poorly worded or even gibberish whisper every two minutes from some character asking me to buy gold. Often the whisper doesn't even include the website or the name of the company! It's almost as bad as email now.

Who is really being hurt by steroids in baseball?

[FatSean]

No-fucking-body.

But our culture hates cheaters, so we hate gold farmers.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Red Flayer]

This is what happens when you have cronyism in the guise of capitalism, paired with vastly disparate wages between the workers and mangement/ownership.

The workers in this sistuation do not have the contacts or capital necessary to get the required permits to run a business like this, let alone the capital for equipment and workspace. This is compounded by high unemployment in areas of China, so that workers are easily replaced.

It amuses me to no end (until I think of the hardships endured) that a nation whose ideals are founded on collectivism has near-powerless workers in the employment market.

Re:i look at it the other way

[Rakishi]

Yes, working in a sweatshop making nike shoes is so much better.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[legojenn]

Maybe someone should create an fair-trade gold business where the farmers get paid a fair wage.

Trade Imbalance

[devnullkac]

Just another category of imbalanced trade for the current account weenies in the Treasury Department. The only thing I want to know is, if you look on the back of the gold coin after you buy it from the online retailer, does it say Made in China?

Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[metrometro]

Here's a challenge to all of Slashdot: Cut out the middlemen.

Gold-farming isn't going away, but at least it could be a positive social force, fighting global inequality while building IT capacity in the developing world. As it is, most of the money is going to middlemen. But the product is virtual, and we can bring farmers to markets at potentially no cost. If 100 gold (or whatever the unit) retails for $20 in the west, then let's transfer that money into technology cooperatives in developing countries, who use their non-gaming hours to provide email, web access and other vital resources to their communities. Wouldn't you rather buy 'gold' from a fair trade source? Given the enormous markup, it might even lower prices. And here's the kicker: A community center could have kids playing for free in exchange for donating "gold" to pay the bills. Along the way, maybe they take attend a class on HTML programming, and start thinking more like IT professionals than farmers. Suddenly buying "gold" starts feeling a lot less exploitive.

So have at it:
1) We need a web portal to connect buyers and sellers directly. Can ebay do it? If not, how?
2) We need to explore a certification model, such as TransFair USA's fair trade certified produce.
3) We need a start-up information kit with instruction on how to open a community technology center (such as Room to Read's), but financed by gold farming.
4) We need a micro-credit source to pay for hardware and software.
5) We need a marketing movement within the gaming community.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[shunnicutt]

Not a criticism, but an observation: somewhere in there you'll have to find a way to supply the farmer with a machine capable of running WoW, a connection to WoW, and a WoW account.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[shunnicutt]

Sorry, I misread your comment. I withdraw my observation.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[metrometro]

Not a criticism, but an observation: somewhere in there you'll have to find a way to supply the farmer with a machine capable of running WoW, a connection to WoW, and a WoW account.

This can be done - I work with locals in Sudan, Congo, Vietnam etc over the net. There is president for public library-style tech centers. Room to Read is an NGO that has been aggressively dropping public technology centers into Southeast Asia. If these were replicated or even piggybacked directly, and paired with a micro-finance system (many options here, such as Namaste Direct) to cover software and hardware start up costs.

This idea appeals to me because it could allow for home-grown, small scale entrepreneurship, which is generally the most powerful -- and most elusive -- economic development.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Rayonic]

And in the process you'd destroy the game economy and make all the players leave. But I guess that's par for the course for such harebrained "global inequality" schemes.

Tip: the poor people of the world need to create their own wealth, not leech off of other's.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Bucc5062]

This is an excellent idea. I am not a business oriented mind, but I can see the good potentials in the basic plan. Certainly there is the potential for exploitation, but with some oversite those negatives could be minimal against the gains for developing communities.

I was amazed that in a world where I can talk to anyone with a few clicks of a mouse I cannot talk to those "farmers" and offer 50 cents or 1 dollar for the same number of golds. I save big time, he/she gets a better cut. I see it as a big "farmer's market" where the laborer is allowed to go direct to market without the huge overhead of mid-level distributors.

I am tired of the exploitation of the worker in this world. I beleive in making money, I feel capitalism is a good thing for growth and innovation. Sadly today we see mainly greedism. In the movie Wall Street the main character says "Geed is Good". No, Greed is the worst thing for a capitalistic society. Greed stifles, exploits, and diminishes the human spirit in the labor force. Capitalism at its best provides people from laborer to innovator a chance to improve life, find the level of work life that makes them comfortable. the Business World has reduced humans back to chattel at worst, indentured servants if lucky, while the very top remain detached from the general sufferings of the world.

The Internet levels the playing field in theory and it just takes decent honest folks to help make the first bridges connecting worker more directly to consumer. I hope someone with good values and business savy takes up the challenge. That I had the knowledge, connections, and money I would try that model out.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Anonymous Coward]

Providing a service to someone is leeching?

So what about haircutters, or the guy behind the Burger King counter who sells you the burger another made?

Does everybody in a developing country need to build stuff? I don't think so. This is global free trade with all its advantages.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Aladrin]

Just the other day, someone started a no-middlemen gold trading service website. I forget the name, and don't even want to know it, and certainly don't want to advertise it.

But it's interesting that 1) has already been done on your list.

As for 'kids play free', the Koreans have been doing this for a while. The game is free for everyone, but if you want the better armors and stuff, you'll -never- earn enough gold to get them. You basically have to buy them with real money.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[metrometro]

The game managers have a huge incentive (and plenty of tools) to maintain the 'game economy' and keep players happy. They tacitly approve of farming (which encourages play for a certain population) by not aggressively restricting high volume item transfers. I'm not an expert on this, so perhaps some games have gone this route. So don't worry - those pesky poor people won't interrupt your gaming.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Rayonic]

> "The game managers have a huge incentive (and plenty of tools) to maintain the 'game economy' and keep players happy."

Government micromanaged economies always end in disaster, though I shouldn't be surprised that you suggested it.

> "They tacitly approve of farming (which encourages play for a certain population) by not aggressively restricting high volume item transfers."

Blizzard has all sorts of monitoring utilities and filtering set up to catch illicit behavior. But it's not like they can outright ban large transfers, because a lot of it is legitimate (guild related).

And they have a good financial incentive to ban as many farmers as possible. Besides maintaining the community (the value of which is incalculable), every banned account is another retail sale.

> "So don't worry - those pesky poor people won't interrupt your gaming."

You're the one that wants to give in-game advantages to the wealthy.

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[metrometro]

>> "The game managers have a huge incentive (and plenty of tools) to maintain the 'game economy' and keep players happy."

> Government micromanaged economies always end in disaster, though I shouldn't be surprised that you suggested it.

We just went through the looking glass, my friend: you started suggesting that gold farming (ie real world commerce) is bad bad bad for the online economy, implying pretty strongly that someone, somewhere should DO something about it. I'm saying you can't tame a market that way. Gold farming ain't going away. Low wage click-shops (which, again, already exist) kind of suck, and it'd be cool if there were ways to empower people to own their own gold farms, if they wanted to, instead of working for someone else.

Who exactly is the socialist here?

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the one that wants to give in-game advantages to the wealthy.

And you're the one that wants to keep said wealthy people from giving some of their money to the relative poor.

Can you please stop spouting your crap and instead perhaps focus on the one part of this situation that can be improved, that being the reduction in middle man overhead? Please?

Re:Oppertunity for pro-poor development

[Pallando-zi]

metrometro wrote:
>
> Here's a challenge to all of Slashdot: Cut out the middlemen.
>
> Gold-farming isn't going away, but at least it could be a
> positive social force, fighting global inequality while
> building IT capacity in the developing world. As it is,
> most of the money is going to middlemen.

Challenge accepted.

I've created a list for anyone who would like to come discuss the next step:
    http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/eve_revolution /

I've called the list: Ethical Virtual Economics

Re:i look at it the other way

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you learn how to sew and PRODUCE SOMETHING REAL.

What good can come of learning how to kill virtual deer?

Check and mate.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

an interesting parallel with the whole ip thingy

[Anonymous Coward]

am i the only one who registered this as an allusion to the whole "intellectual property" theme?

There are prices in wow

[Xentan]

Just as a side note. There world wide PvP tournament hosted by blizzard with real prices. Wether gold farming has an impact on it, i leave unanswered.

he's not talking about a game

[circletimessquare]

he's talking about real life

in my parent post, i say as much: who cares if a rich guy buys into a game

but now read his comment again. he's not limiting is comments to a game, you're wrong. he's talking about accepting aristocracy in real life

Re:he's not talking about a game

[ak3ldama]

At this point the idiotic posts replying to what you said aren't going to change. Just ignore them, occasionally slashdot is inundated by the unwashed masses. Only a spaz on meth would not have been able to follow the thread of conversation.

Re:he's not talking about a game

[superbus1929]

I'll admit I fucked up the context of the post on this one.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[TheRaven64]

I'm slightly surprised Blizzard doesn't just sell gold directly. They can always undercut sellers who actually have to play the game, since 'farming' gold for them is just updating a number in a database somewhere. If a market rate for gold exists, why aren't they selling it themselves?

Re:i look at it the other way

[Rakishi]

At least you learn how to sew If its an assembly line system then they don't really learn how to sue. They learn how to repeat a single task for 12 hours a day.

and PRODUCE SOMETHING REAL. *looks at google* God dammit, someone better tell them to close up shop since only making "REAL" items can ever make you successful.

What good can come of learning how to kill virtual deer? You learn how to use a computer which is more useful in modern urban society. You likely learn about as much about sewing in a nike factory as you do about computers as a gold farmer. Possibly you also learn some things about social behavior and business.

Inaccurate

[WapoStyle]

I stopped reading at "Night-Elf Wizards" Anyone who plays knows that Night Elves cannot be wizards. I don't care of the focus of the article is somewhere else, if they over looked that detail, how many other details did the reporter overlook? I despise inaccurate information.

Re:Inaccurate

[metrometro]

I play, and did not know that Night Elves could not be wizards.

Re:Inaccurate

[k_187]

Technically, no race in the game can be "wizards". Mages and Warlocks, yes. Wizards, no.

Re:Inaccurate

[An ominous Cow art]

Are you at least aware that there is no class in WoW called "wizard"?

Re:Inaccurate

[metrometro]

Sure, but the term 'wizard' can be used to describe all sort of fantasy characters. The phrase "Night Elf wizard" may have been bumped to "Night Elf Wizard" by a copyeditor. Not exactly a damning error in my book.

Re:Inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care of the focus of the

Pity your loathing of inaccuracy doesn't extend far enough to cause you to proofread your own posts.

Re:Inaccurate

[abhorsen666]

The fact you know this makes me afraid for you

Re:Inaccurate

[ControversialMatt]

Good point, I just re-read it and wondered to myself who the hell these warrior monks are, and why haven't I heard of them before. Sure it's probably their best approximation, or a way to connect to the readers, still it irks me.
And more to the point, who the hell would use a cloth wearer to farm? Hunters are the typical choice of the farmer, seeing as they have a very powerful pet, high ranged damage, and an ability to drop all aggro if the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Re:Inaccurate

[mdahl]

There's no wizards in the game, however shadow priest come as close as warlocks or mages in my oppinion, and yes - Night Elves do get to play priests.

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/9035/mourneql7.jp g

Re:Inaccurate

[tbonius]

Nevermind that the reporter for the Times Magazine was translating from a Gold Farmer who barely speaks english. Despite the inaccuracy of a detail such as an "elf wizard", the underlying principles of how these actions affect the game do not change.

Re:Time is Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I played the highest level character on the server. It was exhilarating; people wrote fan-fiction about my character, people I didn't even know. They would travel across the world to buy my wares--always the finest available on the server.

I don't think I'll ever get the stink of geekiness off of me after reading that.

yes

[circletimessquare]

when it's hurting a game played by a bunch of rich kids (and if you playing MMORPG for leisure, you are rich by any world standard), and some poor guy is feeding himself on the proceeds, then by all means, damage the quality of a service paid for by others, 100% acceptable

i really don't care that some rich kid thinks their expensive distraction is being hurt. as far as i am concerned, they are wasting their lives away in a fantasy game. really, i am completely uncompelled to care about how a fantasy game's gameplay is damaged. 100% do not fucking care

seems like a small example of social justice to me: poor kid makes some cash off of a rich kids useless distraction. i consider it an idiot tax, i love it

Re:yes

[Broken scope]

Ahh yes, so as long as it fits your definition of social justice it okay.

Its fine to take from people, even if they have no ability to change the current situation, as long as there is some social disparity.

Thats going to take society really fucking far.

Fake Degrees given away to famous people

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different than those fake degrees that Universities given away to famous people. It cheapens the whole education experience.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[spun]

I don't think you can say that China is really founded on ideals of collectivism. More like Confucianism, which teaches subservience to authority. Collectivism is a new thing in China, and the rulers there have never done more than pay lip service to it's ideals.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[magarity]

but the fact that more than 90% of what the customer pays goes to middlemen
 
90% is a heck of a good deal for the originator compared to real physical goods examples in the world. Look at how much diamond miners in the Congo and Sudan are paid: they get not shot for digging up diamonds. Comparatively these Chinese guys, who work in an office and get company housing, are living like kings. I spent over a month in China last year and 30 RMB goes a long way; you can eat out on the local equivalent of cheap fast food all 3 meals and have plenty of change. And the Chinese are seriously frugal; I get they put 28 of those 30 in savings. They're not getting rich in a hurry but there are MANY more people in the world who need our concern, like the aforementioned diamond miners in the real world.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[fliptout]

China is a country full of middle men. It's part of their culture. Instead of streamlining processes to make them more efficient, they intentionallty make processes inefficient, due to abundant labor. This is certainly one aspect of Chinese culture that grates on my nerves as well, and it took some adjustment for me.

why are we making gameplay so laborious

[traycerb]

...that people pay to avoid it? It's interesting; skill in other games in non-transferable. You can't sell people your muscle memory from playing an FPS or fighting game. I don't see anything wrong w/ gold farming, and I don't see it subverting a 'meritocracy.' It's just circumventing time spent, to which we should be asking: why are we making/playing such laborious games?

Re:why are we making gameplay so laborious

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't hard to make money. I think I made 400g last night without even trying.

Re:why are we making gameplay so laborious

[Red Flayer]

Some people enjoy the grind. They get to shut everything off and enter a zen-like state of click pattern repeats. They get to toil endlessly for a minor incremental reward, just like a bad job.

I'm not kidding.

On the other hand, some people want the vicarious thrills of the less mundane aspects of the game -- and whether they want to grind it out or just pay for the gold necessary, that's their choice.

Re:why are we making gameplay so laborious

[Anonymous Coward]

why are we making/playing such laborious games?

The answer is simple economics. It is far cheaper to develop a game that holds players to a subscription model for long periods by requiring an endless grind to progress in the game instead of actually creating regularly updated engaging and creative gameplay. Compared to quality creative content, the mechanics of a 'grind' is orders of magnitude cheaper to develop and test, and has proven to be a successful model for subscription games.

Lazy developers and pushy publishers are the reason. (Not individiual coders, they just do what they are told, but rather the managers, bean counters and publisher pressure on development houses.)

As long as people keep paying for such crap, someone will be selling it.

Re:why are we making gameplay so laborious

[ameoba]

The better question is why are people who don't want to play the game involved in it in the first place?

Re:why are we making gameplay so laborious

[SnowNinja]

This is why the focus in newer games is on player skill (Age of Conan) rather than items and armour.
Sure, they may help a bit, but not nearly as much as in WoW. This also serves to improve in game economies, as the player crafted gear is in high demand and is as good as the end game raid gear, increasing transfer of gold between players while still not making them gear dependent.

Cost of living

[Akaihiryuu]

Take cost of living into account also. $1.25 US/hr is a LOT more money in China than it would be in the US, due to the cost of living being a lot lower. It's not going to make anyone rich, but it's enough to live on...probably more relative to the cost of living than you'd make working at McDonald's in the US.

Re:Cost of living

[Firethorn]

Don't forget, according to the article, the business provides housing as well(apparently not an unusual thing in China).

Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

Why don't broke-ass Americans steal these Chinese gold farmers' jobs? Does the Chinese government subsidize their life any more than US welfare and unemployment subsidize Americans'? And what about Mexicans? I see plenty of Mexicans working in Chinese restaurants instead of Chinese immigrant labor. Why don't they farm gold cheaper than Chinese labor does?

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Jerry Rivers]

What American could possibly live on less than thirty cents an hour?

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the cost of doing business is cheaper in China.

Those migrants you see in the US do service jobs that they couldn't do remotely, and the business has to pay for the location of employment to be up to U.S. code (sanitation, property taxes, etc.). Those gil farmers in China can do their job remotely, where those expenses are substantially lower, and therefore more profit.

Sometime ago I read about some mexican outfit for gold farming, but it closed because they could not compete with chinese labor.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

$0.30:h is $4.20 a 14h day, which is a meal. There are lots of Americans without any other income.

Including people who spend at least 14h a day picking up $0.05 cans in the streets to recycle. The rate I see many of them making that living even here in expensive, dangerous NYC could be something like 5-10 cans an hour, which is something like $0.25-0.50:h, probably a worse job than gold farming, with no guarantees of revenue.

Besides, the article says the farmer makes $1.25 an hour on $20 worth of gold, with a middleman. Since Americans can speak English, they should be able to better cut out the middleman, and compete for the $3. Maybe if Americans get $2 for each $20 hour, they can beat the Chinese, and the can recycling bottom of the ladder here.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to believe that you are kidding and don't seriously consider what you are saying to have any basis in reality.

But then I've known too many people like you.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

Blah blah Anonymous content-free Coward blah blah blah.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[stix213]

"Why don't broke-ass Americans steal these Chinese gold farmers' jobs? Does the Chinese government subsidize their life any more than US welfare and unemployment subsidize Americans'? And what about Mexicans? I see plenty of Mexicans working in Chinese restaurants instead of Chinese immigrant labor. Why don't they farm gold cheaper than Chinese labor does?"

Because in America if you don't want to work, the government just GIVES you money in the form of welfare (especially if you are from a race that the leftists think are born victims, such as anyone with dark skin), or if you have any skill at manipulating the system you will get Disability and never have your welfare questioned (I know plenty of these types, with no REAL problems, that just get their checks every month and own more and more cats every day).

Why give up the government dole for .30 an hour? Welfare folks won't even take jobs paying $10 an hour at a local burger place!

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

I'm fascinated by how racist right-wingers denigrate the very word "folks" by using it to describe peoples they don't like (ie not their own). And how it's "leftists" who make the welfare state, not rightwingers who keep people down by offering them addictive welfare instead of funding education, healthcare, childcare, proper credit, crime prevention... Do you have as much to say about rightwingers pumping $billions into corporate welfare (greater than individual welfare) and other wealth redistribution primarily to Republican states and their crony corporations?

And how they know welfare recipients won't work for extra money if they can get away with it, like by recycling cans, hauling trash, babysitting, and maybe gold farming.

Do you actually know the finances of these "cat people" you claim you know?

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[shystershep]

In the US there is a federally-mandated minimum wage. There are probably people that would be willing to get even the tiny wage you are talking about, but that would be illegal.

And that's before you figure in income taxes, worker's compensation insurance, etc.

(I am assuming there is an employer in the picture, because how else is someone willing to work for such a pittance going to afford the computer, game and subscription fee?)

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Troll

What kind of a fool mods as "Troll" a post to which I had no idea what anyone would reply? TrollMods think they have all the answers, but they're all wrong.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking arrogant asshole. Exploitative cunts like you are what produced minimum wages in the first place you fucking scumbag.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

Competition creates minimum wages. The people create mandatory minimum wages to protect labor from exploitation. But all I did was ask why Americans couldn't compete with the Chinese, who are not governed by American minimum wages. Which has some real answers, not your confused shitstorm.

But you're such a stupid fucking shit that your terror of competition bleeds from your ragged brain. You can't see any question as anything but rhetorical, because you think you've got all the answers. Anonymous toilet Coward.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[stix213]

Where did racism come into this? Also, right wingers don't "keep people down by offering addictive welfare" as right wingers are fundamentally opposed to offering all but the most needed welfare programs (such as programs for the elderly and truely sick), it is the leftests who expand these necessary programs to include normal but lazy people.

There is bad on both sides, but "corporate welfare" is at least designed to create jobs, while individual welfare is designed to keep you a ward of the state for life.

Yes I actually do know the finances of these "cat people" I know. The main person I speak of was given a trailer by her family for a place to live, because she would not keep a job. She had a number of jobs that she couldn't handle because she is so imature. She doesn't like being told what to do for a living. She got the idea to pretend she is insane to a doctor from her mother, who is also on disability. So, after her live in boyfriend left her (long story here) last time I checked she spends all day at home watching TV, taking care of her 9 cats she is up to now, and living entirly off everyone else's tax dollars. This has been going on for at least 5 years, and no one questions her. 0She isn't crazy at all, but sitting at home doing nothing is preferable to actually working. She calls my wife non-stop, because they are old high school friends and because she has nothing better to do. Disability doesn't give her enough money to buy a car, so WE are always her taxi - until I had enough and had to cut the free loader off.

Her mother (the start of this for her welfare family) is an apartment manager, but doesn't tell the government because they would cut off her checks. One time when I was over fixing her government purchased computer, she told me if the government found out then she would have to actually get a real job because the apartment manager job only pays $200 month plus free rent, and she needs the disability money to pay for a new TV and other stuff for around the house.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

OK, so you know a welfare cheat - unless you're wrong about her being crazy, and she really is unable to keep a job. You're wrong about corporate welfare: it's not designed to create jobs, it's designed to line executive pockets and perpetuate incumbent politicians, in a circular bribery racket.

You say

especially if you are from a race that the leftists think are born victims, such as anyone with dark skin

and then, when I call you on it with

I'm fascinated by how racist right-wingers denigrate the very word "folks" by using it to describe peoples they don't like (ie not their own).

you reply with

Where did racism come into this?

And when I ask

Do you have as much to say about rightwingers pumping $billions into corporate welfare (greater than individual welfare) and other wealth redistribution primarily to Republican states and their crony corporations?

You say

"corporate welfare" is at least designed to create jobs, while individual welfare is designed to keep you a ward of the state for life.

which not only promotes corporate welfare, but also ignores that America's welfare system was produced first by Clinton and 6 years of a Republican Congress, then revised and accepted by Bush and 6 more years of the Republican Congress in a party monopoly.

So I don't want to argue with you. Because it turns out that you're not that fascinating, after the initial marvel of an unsolicited racist not noticing their racism when called on it. I have nothing to learn from you, because your kind of willfully ignorant "Conservative" is a dime a dozen, even as you start to become scarce. We've got people with your hangups easier to study right here in NYC, though they're more funny than scary because they've already been appropriately scarce.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Jerry Rivers]

Overrated for asking a legitimate question? Nice going.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha what a sucker.

"Doc", what a pretentious bullshit name. You haven't got a fucking clue why you were even flamed. And nice job of modding down the original poster because he asked a question that got you flamed being such a prick.

Re:Insourcing Gold Farming?

[Doc Ruby]

Who cares why you flamed me? You're a stupid fucking shit. And you don't even know that I can't mod down a post in a thread in which I'm posting.

What a disgusting joke you are.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Hoi Polloi]

Then they could sell game gold at Starbucks!

and...

[circletimessquare]

some guy is putting food on his plate for all of that

increase the spam 100%, decrease the game experience 100% for regular players, etc.

i am completely unmoved

why?

just one, just ONE guy who is FEEDING himself on a gold farming effort is a whole HELL of a lot more important to me than 100,000 rich kids leading idle pointless lives playing a stupid computer game

and you ARE rich, by ANY world standard if you have ANY time to play WoW for leisure

so frankly, i couldn't care one fucking tiny bit out of any of the concerns outlined above, if the cost of in-game frustration and lack of a quality experience is framed against a poor guy feeding himself

in. the. REAL. WORLD

you realize the real world is way more important than any MMORPG according to ANY measure, right?

Re:and...

[C0rinthian]

Yes you're right, an industry that supports slave labor-type conditions is totally cool.

This is not a healthy industry. This isn't a guy making an honest living. These are people who work in a sweatshop for almost no pay at all. I don't blame the employees, and sympathize with them. But the companies and the industry itself is NOT something to be supporting as it simply perpetuates their offensive working conditions.

Yes, it's just a game, but FFS get your priorities straight.

Re:and...

[ErikZ]

And you don't see any connection between the two?

If you're so concerned about the gold farmers feeding themselves, then you should be REALLY concerned about those rich kids. Because if those "rich kids" get sick of dealing with annoying, intrusive, and sometimes criminal gold farmers, they will leave the game.

So, now are you willing to take the complaints seriously? For the sake of the gold farmers?

Re:and...

[crabpeople]

Spare us your self righteous appeal to emotion. Things are only as important as people make them. There is no difference between lusting after a bmw IRL and wanting to be a titan pilot in eve. The real world is just as pointless and intangible as any online game.

you realize the real world is way more important than any MMORPG according to ANY measure, right?

Why? Because more people play RL?
I guarantee me leading a fleet of ships into battle is way more important than the bitter old seamstress doing needlepoint thats burned as garbage when childless and alone, she passes on.

its about what you DO with whatever world your in, not the characteristics of the world that makes it important.

Re:and...

[Puff Daddy]

and you ARE rich, by ANY world standard if you have ANY time to play WoW for leisure

You haven't spent much time in the western world, have you? It's either that or you haven't learned that hyperbole is an annoying tactic in any debate. I do see your point, I really do, or at least I did, until you ignored that the fact that anyone is debating this made that particular argument completely asinine. Seriously, I agree with the rest of your post, I just hate it when my side makes stupid arguments. Yup, not making any friends with this one. Karma's stupid anyway. You know what, I just went back up and read your post, forget I ever said I agree with you. I agree with someone who has some of your ideas and isn't on such a high horse. Come down here with the rest of us next time you want to have a discussion. You aren't perfect. I'm starting to see why I'm wrong because I once thought you were right.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[MysteriousPreacher]

Yeah, I think that spam is one of the main reasons why gold farmers are hated so much. The situation has improved since the recent patch but prior to that I was reporting around 2-7 spammers a day. As you said, many of the messages were pure gibberish - most likely to try and beat the spam prevention mods.

I can't help shake the feeling that the people buying gold are the same ones who receive an email advertising "CH33P C1ALI5, BUY CHE3P MED5 NOW!!" and get their credit cards out.

Sad part is he doesn't need the 9 co-workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Woot for manual labor!!!

He could write an outside script using a macro language or higher(language omitted intentionally) and the farm the same gold, fire his 9 co-workers, and be a true capitalist.

But hey what do I know, the Chinese Rulz the World cuz everything I buy if from there.

Re:Sad part is he doesn't need the 9 co-workers

[MeanderingMind]

Except that bots are A) about 20 times more obvious and B) about 20 times less efficient.

Because everyone is, to an extent, doing the grind it can be potentially hard to tell a regular player from chinese gold farmer. Barring a strange name (not always a guarantee), a "ni hao", or a 24/7 presence in a particular spot for weeks on end a farmer is indistinguishable from someone else who just needs to grind.

They can also, as much as it can be applied to WoW, be highly skilled. Unlike a bot, they can easily figure out the most efficient methods of play given shifting circumstances. A bot is not going to be able to stand up against a real player ganking them barring a huge discrepancy in gear (and perhaps a complete moron of a player). A bot is not able to adapt to other players fighting in the same territory. A bot is also unable to respond well to a GM.

To reiterate: Bots produce less gold per hour, are highly susceptible to reduced production in changing circumstances, and are much more likely to get your accounts banned. The only benefit gained is not paying the pitiable wages of your workers, which are tied to how much gold they produce anyway. Bots simply aren't a good option.

Re:Sad part is he doesn't need the 9 co-workers

[Anonymous Coward]

They work me !!!

And I don't need 9 co-workers. (BTW 20% less productive is ain't so either.)

Re:Sad part is he doesn't need the 9 co-workers

[dbIII]

Barring a strange name (not always a guarantee), a "ni hao"

There are ordinary players from China as well that may have odd "engrish" names that sort of resemble names out of fantasy fiction. I'm on an Australian server and have played with a few of them even though we didn't have a language in common - emotes can work reasonably well.

Re:i look at it the other way

[MeanderingMind]

Check, not mate.

I am not a sweatshop owner, but in a Nike shoe shop you're at best completing one portion of a shoe. You are not making an entire shoe, or even a large part of the shoe. You are step 12 of 56, which doesn't necessarily require skilled labor. Some steps might require sowing, but even then most of the work is likely done by a machine no worker can afford.

The end result is that the workers in said factory are probably in a more hazardous environment while gaining exactly as much applicable knowledge as the gold farmers.

dude: he's poor

[circletimessquare]

if you are playing WoW for leisure, you are rich by any world standard

it's a fucking GAME

he's putting REAL FOOD on his plate

therefore, all of your concerns mean shit, and are trumped about 100,000x over by the fact the guy is fucking feeding himself

you do realize a poor guy feeding himself is a whole hell of a lot more important than the pointless colorful distractions of the idle rich, right?

Re:dude: he's poor

[MysteriousPreacher]

If you're so concerned with poverty, why are you wasting your time on Slashdot. You could be selling that computer or using your spare time to take a second job and send your wages to China. If you don't believe in charity then just use the money to pay someone in China to do a job for you.

Like you said it's a fucking GAME. It's not a place for people to make a living any more than it would be acceptable for you to stroll on to a football pitch during a game so you could set-up a fair-trade stall. Most people try to do their bit to help-out their fellow man but ultimately, we care about what is closest to us.

Regarding WoW, my colourful distraction is more important than a 'poor guy' feeding himself. That poor guy is disrupting a game I pay money to play.

Re:dude: he's poor

[operagost]

you do realize a poor guy feeding himself is a whole hell of a lot more important than the pointless colorful distractions of the idle rich, right?

Yes. Now please log off of Slashdot and let some homeless person use your internet connection.

Re:dude: he's poor

[Johnny5000]

Regarding WoW, my colourful distraction is more important than a 'poor guy' feeding himself. That poor guy is disrupting a game I pay money to play.

Holy shit, did you actually just say this?
Regarding WoW, my colourful distraction is more important than a 'poor guy' feeding himself

Seriously?
Your right to play WoW trumps the right of some guy to eat?
Your game is marginally less fun now. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Please re-read what you typed a few times until you realize what a colossal fucking asshole you are.

Re:dude: he's poor

[MysteriousPreacher]

Oh come one! Put aside the knee-jerk tabloid reaction and think about your daily life. if you sold your computer or took an evening job, you could afford to send money to countries where people are starving and dying of curable diseases. According to sight-savers, it costs £17 to save the eyesight of someone in the developing world. Have you ever spent that much on a luxury item?

I believe everyone has the right to survival, that includes food. What on earth does that have to do with earning a living by playing WoW which is most definitely not a right. WoW is not some kind of business enterprise for the poor, it's a game.

I'll be honest and say that my personal well-being and that of people I know is more important than a stranger. Did you know that £17 would save the sight of someone in the world? Every time you spend that much money on luxury items, you're denying someone the right to sight, and therefore the right to feed themselves.

I just re-read what I wrote may seem harsh but it's honest. What you wrote is a simplistic and angry response in which the most compelling argument is an ad hominem - not very convincing.

Re:dude: he's poor

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a good number of your posts, not because I'm a fan of your writing (quite the opposite actually), but because your erratic use of caps to emphasize random words is very irritating & makes your posts stand out. Anyway, you're an idiot.

You keep reusing the same tired-ass line ("if you have ANY time to play WoW, you're RICH"...of all the stupid, shit-for-brains, clichéd, sweeping generalizations out there, this one takes the cake), pointing accusing fingers at these so-called "RICH KIDS" that you seem to abhor so much, etc., etc..

Funny thing is, all signs point to you being a "rich kid"...harboring tons of upper-middle-class guilt, all while living like a rich kid (according to your /. profile, you live in Manhattan, by Times Square, right? That can't be cheap...how do you justify that? How can you sleep at night knowing that your rent for this month is more than the annual salary of one of the average Chinese gold farmer?) & pissing away time/money on rich kids' hobbies (you're filming a Filipino horror movie in NYC? Talk about misplaced priorities...how does your little "indie film" help assuage any of the real suffering & poverty in the world? Wouldn't the time you waste making your little vanity project be better spent helping others less fortunate than you? Rather than wasting your, or more likely your parents' money on HD cameras and digital editing, shouldn't you spend that money to help fund a homeless shelter, or to buy food for a soup kitchen, or to provide medical care for victims of oppression, genocide, etc.?).

Here's what I think the truth behind all your rantings & ravings is: you're a spoiled, privileged brat, and this is your "cause of the week" that helps you sleep at night. You remind me of A.J. in the last season of The Sopranos: the plight of those less fortunate to you makes your blood boil, and brings you to tears...so you scream and shout, and berate and shake your fists at anyone who you perceive as "part of the problem". But in the end, you're just another rich kid, living in your pricey apartment, with the time & money to pursue your rich kid hobbies.

"if you are playing WoW for leisure, you are rich by any world standard"...I wonder what a dirt-poor Chinese person struggling to feed his family would have to say about someone who has the time to make an indie horror film. Hypocrite.

Blame the game!

[badboy_tw2002]

The problem with these types of games is that in their effort to be "massive" they link everyone together in the same type of game with the same type of players. Associating "worth" with your character's stats and fake digital possesions has been the bane of these types of games (and even going back to some MUDs, Telearena, BBS, etc). You will get a good crop of obsessive "gotta have it all" type players, but it really alienates the casual type of player who might like to have access to the high-level content but doesn't have the same amount of time as everyone else. Now, you're saying, "well, that's fine, he'll just take longer to get there", but in a PvP world, you're behind the curve if you're not on all the time raiding with your guild. Really what they need to do is set up "weight classes" for players. Let some servers have time limits on the amount of stuff you can do per day - BBSs used to have thsi stuff out of necessity, but I think actually only allowing an hour or two online on a server would keep things fair and more interesting to casual players. People who want a more "immersive" experience can play on the "heavyweight" servers and spend as much time online as they want. Other things that could help would be adopting a more Eve like approach to skills where you earn them per day, but maybe tweaking it a bit so the power players can still level up by doing tasks, etc. I just think MMORPG makers need to think a bit more about the casual gamer who really doesn't want to spend all day online - 5-10 hours a week for busy people with jobs, families, other hobbies, etc. There's a lot of money to be made from subscriptions outside of the hardcore, powergamer scene.

Re:Blame the game!

[Retric]

The problem with MMO's is they are designed to limit the amount of skill required to play them. A level 60 cleric played by a 12 year old is vastly more useful than a level 30 cleric played by the most skilled player in the world. But as they try and avoid the need for "skills" the only way to win is Time.

Let's face it grinding, grouping, and raiding are BORING. So when you can spend money to skip Time there is nothing left in the game. Or think of it like this...

Let's drop the concept of time from the game. Make an MMO where you can only level for 5 hours a week and there are no items. AKA at 10 weeks you can level a toon for a total of 50 hours. Now a new player can play 20 hours a week for a few months to catch up to the oldest player on the server at which point they get capped at 5 hours a week. Well what's the point? Basically you just built Guild Wars vs. a MMO.

Re:Blame the game!

[badboy_tw2002]

I think my point is you want some other dynamic in the game besides "leveling" and "obtain shiny objects". This might be "hold territory" or "role play", something that new players could do upon entering the game. Basically, if you want a huge game with partying and adventuring, you get get something like NWN or Oblivion and do a small party with friends or something. Those have good stories, character dev. and even an ending. The attraction of MMO's is the amount of people that are playing, which I feel means PvP (otherwise its just a single player game with some socialization and bragging about who has the highest level and shiniest object).

Not that I have any really good solutions, except maybe that I'd like to see the "BBS" model of games where you play "a game" with a massive amount of people (yes, I selected my username back when I was playing Tradewars 2002 again via telnet :). The game may take weeks or months, but it has an ending and once its over you start again. If you did that, people would have a "meta-identity" outside of their particular character and instance. They can grow that identity through playing games and interacting with people, but its not something you could (or would want to) sell and it may not be something you have to spend a good part of your waking life on. I feel like there's a lot of "massively multiplayer" modes out there that haven't been explored because people are too tied to the idea of building up a character and obtaining digital wealth as being the only way to have fun in a MMO.

Re:Blame the game!

[vertinox]

Really what they need to do is set up "weight classes" for players. Let some servers have time limits on the amount of stuff you can do per day

Actually, Ultima Online did this on a certain server (Seige Perilous maybe) in which you could only increase your skills and stats only so much per day. They did this I believe to combat Macroing programs. I'm not sure if they still do this.

Personally, I think leveling is the root core of the problem. A skill based system like UO worked better in that regard in that even the lowliest newbie is still pretty close to a 6 month old player so much that 5 newbies could kill a 7xGM skilled single player if the newbies put their effort into it.

Re:Blame the game!

[murdocj]

Ok, if you really think that MMOs don't require skill and that the stuff you do in MMOs is boring, then clearly you aren't an MMO player, so it doesn't seem like you are the right one to be deciding how to design an MMO.

Re:Blame the game!

[Retric]

Sorry, but as a former Max level(65 at the time+tuns of AA)/raiding EQ Enchanter I feel confidant that MMO's take vary minimal skills. Granted old school EQ had some "hard content" but, as a software developer I would suggest that scripting a character to grind though most content is easy. Go is a challenging game; CC in lower Guk was mostly about not fucking up.

Basically MMO boil down to long chains:

Try pulling this way... everyone dies.
Try pulling that way and start nuking now... everyone dies.
Try pulling that way, wait for tank Argo, start nuking mob dies repeat.

Granted their might be 200 steps but there is no real AI in MMO's so basically it's minimal skill vs RNG.

PS: OK playing the markets in EVE is fun but there is little real skill to it.

Re:Blame the game!

[fractoid]

Let's face it grinding, grouping, and raiding are BORING. So when you can spend money to skip Time there is nothing left in the game. Or think of it like this... Contemporary MMORPGs are questing, grouping and raiding. (Grinding is optional with the number of quests available these days.) If you find questing, grouping and raiding boring, you are playing the wrong game. Go play a game that you enjoy. It sounds like you might find Guild Wars fun?

You can't drop the concept of time from an MMO because time is the only universal currency. The only reason you'll be proud of your warrior's Mortal Strike critting for 2000 instead of 700 is that it took you three months of leveling and gearing up and a lucky weapon drop (or a lot of effort leveling crafting) to attain. The time invested in a character is, itself, what makes that character mean something to you. If your character doesn't mean anything to you then there's no point playing.

Re:Blame the game!

[murdocj]

I was a level 67 + a lot of AAs enchanter in EQ. Somehow I felt like I was using some skill when we overpulled and the only way we survived was my skill and speed at mezzing, tashing the mezzed mobs, and keeping them mezzed. And the stuff I did in EQ was easy compared to the endgame in WoW. WoW instances and endgame requires a LOT of smarts and skills. Idiots who just run in and aggro wipe w/o taking down any mobs.

Yes, MMOs can be easy, repetitive, boring grinds that can be automated. Some people play them that way. The boredom can actually be vaguely relaxing. But they don't *have* to be that way. If *you* think they have to be that way, then I don't think I want to play an MMO that you design.

Go vs. video games: yes, Go is the more difficult, more strategic game. Although I don't play Go, my understanding is that Go vs. just about anything, Go is the deeper, more strategic game.

Re:Blame the game!

[Firethorn]

First, I'll say that I'm NOT normally a online player. I've played Eve, WoW, and a few others.

Personally, I'd love to see a MMORPG that allowed property ownership and customization. I used to play MUDs, and had one where I was building a castle*. Other people could visit said castle. I'd also like to see one where player's actions have long term effects in the game itself, less of this I do quest X, clearing out an area, then 10 minutes later they've re-popped.

Make the PC's conquer new areas, and when I say conquer, I mean it. Epic battles against hordes of enemies, and if they don't do well enough, they could loose territory.

Have auto-repoping stuff for the low levels, or some areas, sure, but allow characters to make a difference.

*That had non-eulicidian geography, but what the hey, I was a mage...

Re:Blame the game!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The game may take weeks or months, but it has an ending and once its over you start again."

This is an idea I've wanted to see implemented for a long time, preferably as a co-operative style FPS (imagine conquering a city, scouring it for hidden enemies, holding it against a counterattack etc). I suspect that developers don't want to do it because the server reset gives people too much of an opportunity to quit, that and the fact that I'd want every replay to have something new going on and it's hard to keep coming up with new, non-game-breaking ideas.

Re:Blame the game!

[devnull17]

There's a bit more to it than that. I agree that a lot of most MMO's is grinding, and that they often reward time investment instead of skill. But at the high end, you need both. I raid with a decent WoW guild, and we turn away more than half of our applicants, because they just can't cut it. So skill plays some role. Sure, it's learning the game mechanics and then doing the same few things over and over again. It sounds easy, but there apparently are a lot of people who can't do it. And doing it optimally takes a good deal of research and forethought, and flawless execution.

WoW, in particular, not only uses tiered dungeons, but rotates the difficulty level of each one. When content is first released, it's overtuned and often impossible. A few guilds worldwide will put insane amounts of time into beating this content as soon as possible (Nihilum, the most prolific WoW guild at the moment, had 25 warlocks outside their raid putting soulstones on their raiding members when they killed Lady Vashj a month or two ago), and the rest of us will wait for the next patch. At patch time, they nerf everything a bit, and everyone moves up. This even occurs on the lower end: most 5-man dungeons will have about half of their mobs removed, their trash respawn times doubled, and their mobs' attacks nerfed. It lets little Timmy feel like he's progressing even if he's still tanking with a two-handed axe in Berserker Stance and allows lots of people to see content they couldn't before.

But yes, in larger raids, it's mostly about not fucking up. But how could it not be? Either the content is laughably easy and anyone can beat it in an hour, or it demands precision and coordination. You're still doing the same things you do in smaller dungeons; it's just that there's less margin for error, more demand for coordination, and greater consequences when you wipe your raid.

Re:Blame the game!

[-brazil-]

I think the main problem of most MMORPGs, which manifests in gold farming, is that in those games, how good you are is determined by stats and equipment, and both can be acquired only by spending a lot of time in game (or having other people do it for you), and that it takes high stats and good equipment to be able to play the more advanced parts of the game, which to most people is highly desirable. You might be able to get there just playing regularly and casually, but if you want to get there quickly, you have to grind.

For an example of an MMORPG that has mostly eliminated these problems and level grind, see http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
Basically, skills are based on Tetris-like puzzle games, and your stats represent not how often you have played the puzzles, but how WELL you have played them. Having someone else level up your character is completely pointless because if you can't play the puzzles as well, your stat will drop quite quickly. And stats gain you little except bragging rights, they don't make you more powerful. So grinding for stats is not possible. Grinding for money is possible but not required if you have top skills instead. Also, almost everything you can buy for money does not make you more powerfuly either, it's just shiny stuff i.e. again bragging rights.

Also, the game has completely eliminated RTM trading by introducing a second currency (Doubloons) that is used as micro-payment to unlock certain aspects of the game. This replaces the monthly fee, but at the same time, Doubloons can be traded in an open in-game market for the regular in-game currency, with prices adjusting to supply and demand. If you don't have the skills and don't want to grind for money, you can buy lots of Doubloons directly from the game company and exchange them for in-game money on the market. Voila, an official alternative for RTM that does not introduce inflation (due to the unfixed market price for Doubloons)

he's not talking about a game

[circletimessquare]

read it again. in the parent post he was responding to i said as much who fucking cares about a stupid game. now read what he is ACTUALLY SAYING again. he's not limiting himself to a game in his words

try reading comprehension next time, then post

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Red Flayer]

I took out my qualification of (supposedly), should've left it in. The irony still strikes me, hwoever.

IRS is the real problem

[Syncerus]

Blizzard et al have vilified gold farmers for one simple reason: they don't want to report virtual gold transactions to the IRS. The record keeping is expensive and fraught with legal peril. It's easier for them to ban gold trading albeit nominally, than it is to keep transaction records for the IRS.

The real problem is the intrusive nature of the Income Tax, not Blizzard or the gold farmers.

Just a thought.

Re:IRS is the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and they're making zilch from the transactions themselves.

Re:IRS is the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's part of the problem but there are two more. Let's examine this by seeing what happens if Blizzard were to sell gold or endorse gold farmers.

The first is the legal system: A player now has a reasonable expectation to the gold on their account. This has two meanings. The first is that if the server were to ever go down or be banned then Blizzard is denying you your property and access to it. In other words, Blizzard has just "stolen" from the player. The other is Blizzard would have to start protecting that gold as an asset against theft and fraud and all that entails. Recently in EVE, a player ran a scam to take money from other players. If that money was tied to 'real' money then that player could be charged with fraud and theft.

The second is the banking system: Banks have to go through a lot of hoops because they hold people's assets. By tying real money to their money, Blizzard could be expected to start acting like a bank. This can include everything from data retention, transaction monitoring, international banking laws, fraud protection, personal security screening, redundant servers, near 100% access, etc.

Ultimately there is one major reason why Blizzard will not sell or support selling of virtual gold: Control. Currently, Blizzard can do anything they want, including banning players for little to no reason, and the player truly has no recourse. Especially if the account is worth nothing (After all it's a service and NOT an asset). Transversely, if it was worth USD 1,000 then a person can take Blizzard to small claims court and expect a judgment. Current court argument, "We can stop, suspend, alter or modify service at anytime since it is a pay per play services. The account is not an object of value and is the property of Blizzard." If money was tied to the account, "The account is an object of value owned by the player who cannot be denied access to it without due process. Blizzard is expected due diligence in maintaining and protecting the object and ensuring all applicable laws are adhered to."

Re:IRS is the real problem

[Syncerus]

Why on Earth did someone mod you down to 0? I don't agree with everything that you said (as I would expect you to disagree with me in turn), but I found your comments very thoughtful and relevant.

FWIW, at least someone read your response and thought well of it.

Re:IRS is the real problem

[Old Wolf]

Liberalism is repackaged Fabian Socialism. Just say "No" to Socialism.

IMHO they are entirely different. The only association is that people like to divide politics into two wings. Conservatism is on the right. Liberalism and Socialism are both different, so we tend to lump them in the same boat.

For me, socialism is an antithesis of liberalism. Socialism is where the government controls everything that happens, right down to the last detail; liberalism is where people are free to run their own life.

Re:IRS is the real problem

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Current court argument, "We can stop, suspend, alter or modify service at anytime since it is a pay per play services. The account is not an object of value and is the property of Blizzard." If money was tied to the account, "The account is an object of value owned by the player who cannot be denied access to it without due process. Blizzard is expected due diligence in maintaining and protecting the object and ensuring all applicable laws are adhered to."

Whether the account has real-world value or not it is still entirely owned by Blizzard who allow the player to access it, according to their terms and conditions, and in exchange for a monthly fee. The account suddenly being worth something doesn't change the fact that all virtual money, items and characters are the property of Blizzard and not the players. The reason Blizzard and other companies running MMOs don't allow the buying and selling of virtual property is because it is not the player's property to buy and sell.

This isn't going to change, it is certainly not in Blizzard's interest to give any kind of ownership to the players partly because of the reasons you mention. Namely that if a character or in-game item is deemed to be owned by the player then they have legal rights to their property. As it stands Blizzard could shut the whole game down tomorrow and no player would have any recourse other than possibly a refund on their monthly subscription.

Wages misrepresented?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish more articles, when they state wages in dollars but of foreign countries .. state it instead as a percentage of living wages. Saying someone earns 30 cents an hour is useless to me because I have no idea what it buys over there or what it means in terms of ability to get 3 square meals and shelter.

Re:Wages misrepresented?

[Lord Ender]

More importantly, economists need to start providing HBI (Hooker and Blow Index) numbers in these articles, so that we can adequately compare wages in different countries.

please try reading comprehension

[circletimessquare]

it's just a stupid game. a rich guy, buy all gold the wants, i don't care, and I SAID THAT ALREADY: i said as much in the granpdarent post he is responding too. and there's nothing wrong with maids, duh. but that's not what he is talking about. read again, notice what HE IS REALLY SAYING

k thx

Re:please try reading comprehension

[cbreaker]

It might be a game, but you don't think that attitude doesn't also spill over into real life too?

Plus, these are very social games. It's sometimes, and often, about the other people in the game and not so much about the actual game itself. While it's a game, you're dealing with real people, that come from the real world.

Why gold farming is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold farming is bad, because it destroys the level playing field that is supposed to exist. Goldfarming has the same result as removing tax-funded schooling would, only the rich would be able to go to school, to get the good jobs, with which you can pay for more education.

Every new player in an MMORPG starts with no money, and only the most basic equipment. He or she can then go out and quest and gain money with wich to buy better equipment. Usually other players will sell equipment that they either looted or made with a certain understanding of what a player of that level can afford.

Translated into the real world, you wouldn't try to sell kids a candy bar (level 1-12) for a hundred dollars, you might however sell a good wine for that amount to an adult (level 24-30) or a rare wine for several thousand (level 40-90)

Does that make sense? Low levels do not have much to spend, so prices for items aimed at them have to be low.

But enter a player who has bought his money with real money and all of a sudden that low level can afford to pay extremely high fees. He can outbid all the others, he can meet any price.

This is already a problem since most MMORPGs allow players to have multiple characters so when a new avatar enters the game it may have the financial and loot resources of several high level avatars.

Gold buyers screw up the virtual economy.

Then there is the gold farmers themselves, how does it harm players when there are lots of players just grinding for an endless supply of gold. Well, it doesn't. Right up to the point YOU need to be in that area the gold farmer is in. MMORPG's typically have huge maps that are subdivided into areas each with their own cluster of critters to kill for a specific quest/level. It is however usually fairly easy to kill them all off with small group. To bad if you arive after them and find nothing there. With regular players at least you can wait till they leave and then wait for the respawn. Gold farmers will stick around. LOTRO introduced this effect with its deeds, stat rewards for killing lots of a specific critter. For instance the wolf den in the shire is often farmed by high level hunters who can with one attack empty the area of wolves. A normal player of low level just trying to quest in that area, sorry mate, just wait till the asshole is done. At least assholes will be done, the gold farmer will be there 24/7

The real world example of this is, video game displays were the prospective customer can play the game. Except he can't because ANY active display will be hoarded by kids who can't afford it but do have the time to be constantly there.

Gold farmers get in the way of regular players.

That is just the two things that hurt MMORPG's the most. It ain't about cheating, it is about how it wrecks the delicate balance that makes up MMORPG's. If ONLY the economies were designed to be more robuust. If only quest areas were a bit larger and you weren't so often forced to wait in line to kill critter X.

Sadly this isn't the case. Everquest clones, and we barely get anything else at once encourage gold buying because of their grinding nature, make gold farming possible because of their simplistic nature and finally are hurt by it because of their limited scope.

But frankly this is like preaching to the devil, you obviously never played an MMORPG or the answer would be clear to you.

Re:Why gold farming is bad

[ab0mb88]

Gold farming is bad, because it destroys the level playing field that is supposed to exist.

So does having a job or social life. Game designers need to do something to make sure you get out of the house more often.

Re:Why gold farming is bad

[edittard]

Game designers need to do something to make sure you get out of the house more often.

The Duke Nukem Forever team made a commendable attempt at that.

alright, point taken ;-)

[circletimessquare]

but i think you'll find that there is some logical tension between the philosphically valid concept of what a cynic is, and the usage of the word in the common vernacular... for better or worse, the meaning of cynic has strayed somewhat in common speech and has acquired a negative tone, even though you are 100% right in pointing out that being a cynic has positive aspects

well yeah

[circletimessquare]

it is going to take society far. it's called robinhood: steal from the rich, give to the poor. works for me, i don't see the problem

i have no problem with that concept at all. social justice isn't always pretty. fuck the rich. if the rich are whining about the quality of gameplay in their utterly useless colorful distraction, how in any way am i supposed to be sympathetic with that over some guy putting food in his stomach?

Re:well yeah

[_Sprocket_]

it is going to take society far. it's called robinhood: steal from the rich, give to the poor. works for me, i don't see the problem

Because under that ideal, stealing from the poor isn't all that bad either. Neither is stealing from the guy who worked hard and happens to be just a little less poor than the robber. What you're describing here isn't social justice. It's naked aggression with some sort of tacked-on moral justification.

Robin Hood is a nice story. But this isn't it. Especially when we come to find out our Asian "Robin Hood" avatars are actually common thugs being paid by the Sheriff to steal from the middle class merchants and make life easy for royalty. Yeah - I know. A thug has to eat too. That doesn't mean robbery is justified.

Re:well yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

it is going to take society far. it's called robinhood: steal from the rich, give to the poor. works for me, i don't see the problem I do - theft is theft no matter how you spin it. Stealing from the rich, no matter how poor you are, does not make it any better, though it does make it more understandable. Furthermore, not all rich folk were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. A lot of them worked really hard to get to where they are. A lot of them did bust their ass 16+ hours a day, worked their way up to the top, caught a lucky break, and are now living comfortably. Your first quote did not mention ANYTHING about the game. As far as I can tell, you support taking away from those who worked hard in real life as much as you do in a game.

i have no problem with that concept at all. social justice isn't always pretty. fuck the rich. if the rich are whining about the quality of gameplay in their utterly useless colorful distraction, how in any way am i supposed to be sympathetic with that over some guy putting food in his stomach? Excuse me? I don't need your sympathy. While I would like to see every human prosper, this is not what WoW and other MMORPGs were intended for. It's called a hobby. It was meant to create a community for people who want to pay for leisure. And thankfully gold farming goes against the EULA of many of these games. Those very same people who pay company xyz $50-$100 (who, in turn, pays the Chinese gold farmer ~$0.30 per hour, talk about social justice not being pretty...) gets their account hacked / stolen unless it first gets suspended by the company for logging in Topeka, Kansas one day and then from Beijing, China in the next few hours.

Yes, I know, $0.30 goes a long way in most countries. But that does not excuse the middleman from taking +90% of the profits and leaving the gold farmer with just enough to survive day by day.

Another poster mentioned creating something akin to a portal for the gold farmers to directly sell their services to players and to cut the middle-man out. I'd rather see the Chinese gold farmer see more of the $50-$100 instead of most of it going to some middleman and only pennies going to the farmer. Unfortunately, you'd still have to find away around the EULA, which forbids farming and paying for such services. I would much rather see this though than some greedy bastard placing workers in ridiculous conditions and only paying them $0.30 per hour.

Re:well yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, I made the parent post as anonymous because I spent a mod point in this thread. Not that anyone cares, but my user name is Clandestine_Blaze. I like to have a face on my posts. :)

Thus the vicious cycle continues...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus the vicious cycle continues.

Except that it doesn't, and it won't.

All gold farming does, perceived inflation and all, is put a real-world (and surprising to some) value on items within the game.

Why is this? Because even if the prices jump in game, as everyone is quick to point out this is due to inflation. Inflation doesn't come to be because the value of something goes up, it comes from the value of the currency going down. As long as NPC vendors exist to provide a baseline value for items that either only sell or that they also sell, inflation can only go so far. The problem that people seem to have with gold farming is less about the farming, and really has nothing to do with the in-game inflation. The problem that people are really having is in coming to terms with the real-world currency value that people are placing on in-game items. It really is as simple as that.

As for the other common complaints about farming, those being around treatment of workers (sorry, people, but a gold farming job is a dream gig for the vast majority of these people) and around those workers perma-camping areas, exploiting holes, etc. (which is really just a complaint about skilled players with lots of free time - they don't have to be farmers to have the same effect), both of these complaints are non-issues, for precisely the reasons that I put in parentheses after each.

At the end of the day you are left with three primary complaints about gold farming, and the fact of the matter is this: none of those complaints are valid.

Don't like that there are people playing who put more real-world currency value on in-game items than you? Too bad. Don't like that there are people who can get paid to play a game? Too bad. Don't like that there are people with more free time than you? Too bad. Don't like that there are people with less free time but more money than you, and can use that money to offset for their lack of free time? Too bad. Sensing a pattern here? Too bad. ;)

The WOW economy simulates the real one.

[Colin Smith]

Now if you introduce more money into the system, through farmers and the like, these prices will also rise, making those of us who don't chose to be pathetic cheaters work a lot harder for these items, and causing some people, whether they like it or not, to purchase more gold to buy said items. Thus the vicious cycle continues. And you just described the mechanism by which the rich inevitably become richer and the poor poorer in the real world. Interesting that it's prevalent in online games as well.

Re:The WOW economy simulates the real one.

[OrangeTide]

If only we had credit on WoW, then we could have a middle class. Where the poor borrow a lifetime's worth of money to purchase a house and then pretend it's an investment, even though they live in it and never plan on selling it, except to help pay for an even more expensive house.

Most people treat WoW as a socialist state, because they keep demanding I make them water without compensating me. I don't see how that is an improvement over cold harsh capitalism.

Re:The WOW economy simulates the real one.

[ControversialMatt]

Most people treat WoW as a socialist state, because they keep demanding I make them water without compensating me. I don't see how that is an improvement over cold harsh capitalism. Mage Perspective: Give them the lowest level water you have, see if they notice for a while. It's good for a cheap laugh if they message you from some instance with a swath of four letter words fraught with misspellings.

Re:Who is really being hurt by steroids in basebal

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is really being hurt by steroids in baseball?

Kids who look up to steroid freaks as role models and destroy their bodies with illegal substances (the "think of the children" issue). That and team owners who stand to lose revenue when people realize that the game is about juicing up instead of skill (the real reason the owners have suddenly taken an interest). And of course the athletes themselves who get stuck in an environment where they need to risk serious damage to their bodies to keep up with everyone else (their excuse for using steroids). I would imagine that the money flowing into the development and distribution of illegal drugs would also be a problem (the "war on drugs" angle). That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but thanks for trying to trivialize a serious problem.

Are you an idiot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being paid on scale as you put it NEVER works out for the worker. It will ALWAYS be designed that an "average" level of work will get you a below average level of pay so you have no choice but to work faster then someone paid by the hour for the same pay.

There is a reason real unions (hint the us ain't got them) are so against them and why management NEVER EVER suggests it to be introduced for themselves.

It also rarely works out for the boss. Quantity over quality. Oh sure, in simple jobs it works out, farming gold or sorting vegetables but even here it has drastic effects. Hint, a gold farmer paid per gold piece might just not care all that much if the account he uses is banned for suspicious behaviour, he will have gotten his pay by then. A sorter might not actually warn about that piece of glass on the production line, might hurt his hourly rate. By the time the farmer gets the damage claim, he will have gotten paid.

No, being paid based on productivity rarely works out, even for the customer, just try to get good customer support when the support guy is being paid on calls handled per hour. Go ahead, call Dell.

uh... what?

[circletimessquare]

me: "a guy feeding himself is more important than a rich guy's game"

you: "so you're saying it's ok to poison people?"

come again? how the hell did you get from what i said to the examples you trotted out above?

i made a SPECIFIC comparison, and you go off saying that i am condoning posioning people with antifreeze and robbing little old ladies

wtf?

can you answer a quesiton please?

how the hell in your mind did you get from what i said to what you said?

what kind of weird hysterical twit are you?

Re:uh... what?

[ewhenn]

me: "a guy feeding himself is more important than a rich guy's game"

=======================

Sure it's more important that someone's game. However, it does NOT justify joining in on the "rich guy's game" and NOT following the game rules and ruining it. Can't the guy that needs to feed himself find soemthing else to do besides fuck with other people's fun so he can eat?

Hypothetically, and according to your logic my example here would follow: Say you had a really nice motorcycle that you like to ride around for fun. Something you spent a lot of time on maintaining and take pride in.. you know, you shine the chrome on the bike etc. You wake up one morning and the nice decorated chrome handlebars and wheels are gone. Later you find out they were pawned by a local bum so he could buy food. Would you be cool with that? I mean after all, your bike is just for fun and the guy needed to eat.

yeah...

[biscon]

as long as you're not Li

The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Kadin2048]

I understand your point, but I think that your problem really ought to be less with the prohibitions on gold-purchase or other pay-to-advance schemes, but more with the fundamental design of the game itself. Most MMORPGs are designed to be time-intensive, such that your advancement is tied directly into how much time you can afford out of your day to sit in front of your PC and play them.

That may not be everyone's idea of a good time. It certainly is for some people, as the success of Everquest and WoW has demonstrated. But it's probably not yours, and it's not really mine, either. (I had fun playing WoW for a while, but it's just too damn slow to keep me interested.) But that's the game. That's how it's designed. And that's what a great many of the people who are playing it, are playing it for.

People play MMORPGs because they want to escape reality; they want a world that's disconnected from how much money they make in their day job (and, thus, how valuable their time might be). They want a place where the $12/hr UPS package handler can beat the shit out of the $650/hr attorney, if he can play the game enough, gather enough widgets, go on more quests, whatever. That's the whole point of the game. If you reintroduce a way to capitalize on real-life success within the context of the game, it stops being a game anymore, and instead just becomes a pastel-colored extension of real life.

There is room -- and probably, demand -- for 'games' that take different approaches on the amount of disconnection that they demand from the physical world. I think fantasy worlds like WoW are on the more disconnected end of the spectrum, and I'm not sure that there's any inherent unfairness in making it entirely meritocratic and letting people decide how much of their real-life time they're going to invest in advancement. On the other end, or more towards the other end anyway, you have Second Life type places, which have currency that's exchangable to real-life currencies on the open market. If you're rich in real life, you can be rich in Second Life, too -- from a certain point of view, you already are, in the same way that you'd be rich in any other country, subject to cost-of-living and exchange rates. There's no inherent unfairness in this, either, because it allows people to "play" SL more casually than WoW: if you have a successful RL occupation, you can spend your time doing that, and use the money you make there to buy nice stuff in SL, you don't have to spend 20-hour days questing to get mods.

Neither of these approaches is objectively better than either, at least in any way that I can really see or argue. (I suppose you could argue, depending on your feelings of the inherent fairness of our capitalist real-life economy and labor market, that the WoW one is a purer meritocracy, though.) They each have their strengths and weaknesses, and if you don't like the design of one, rather than trying to subvert the rules and "break the fourth wall" that's so carefully constructed (and desired, desperately, by many people who play them) in some online worlds, it's probably best to find an online world that's designed to be less disconnected from that giant MMORPG called Real Life.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Analogy Man]

The well designed MMORPGs are sufficiently open ended so that game play is rewarding at lower levels as well as at high levels. Sure, much as in life, there may be shortcuts to success. The true reward is the personal enjoyment in the game.

The good thing is that within a game, there is less at stake for someone spending real world cash to wield a virtual staff of power, then real world dysfunction where a complete moron can become CEO of a corporation because of the fraternity he went to.

A good MMORPG will elevate the technological arms race to identify and ban bots before the economy and game play is too diminished.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Anonymous Coward]

(I had fun playing WoW for a while, but it's just too damn slow to keep me interested.) But that's the game. That's how it's designed.

Too bad, I am blown away by the trailers for, say, EVE Online. DOn't have the time nor inclination to play a MMORPG, though. But enough trailers already; are there any quake-done-quick-style movies from these MMORPGs that one can watch? Where one doesn't necessarily have to buy the game, if it's just for viewing?

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Pojut]

Not really, although there are HUGE numbers of recorded raid encounters and PvP Battleground fights on the net...a quick google will give you a myriad of options.

Youtube has a large number of them up as well...natrually, on Youtube the quality of the video itself is degraded due to the size/resolution/whatever, but it still works.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Kadin2048]

Somewhere around there was a story about a guy who made it his personal obsession to get to L60 in WoW as quickly as possible. He got it down to somewhere around 24-48 hours, IIRC. Maybe even shorter than that. (I don't want to know how he spent that much time playing absolutely nonstop...)

Anyway, it was longer than you'd really want to watch a movie of, and if you time-lapsed it, it just wouldn't make any sense, but I've always wondered if there would be any way to see that done, without actually watching the whole thing.

Apparently the fastest way to level is by questing, not grinding, which I found interesting.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[PMBjornerud]

They want a place where the $12/hr UPS package handler can beat the shit out of the $650/hr attorney, if he can play the game enough, gather enough widgets, go on more quests, whatever. That's the whole point of the game. If you reintroduce a way to capitalize on real-life success within the context of the game, it stops being a game anymore, and instead just becomes a pastel-colored extension of real life. I want a place where a $12/hr UPS package handler beat the shit out of the $650/hr attorney, beacause he is a better player.

The "play enough" is backwards, turning games into work and causing the whole mess in the first place. Repetitive and time-intensive by design, indeed, this is one of the elements that makes MMOs so lucrative.

I quit WoW. Too much grind. Timesinks that's not about improving your skills as a player, just increasing character stats.

I'm waiting for a MMO where all time is spent on increasing your skills as a player, instead of pumping character stats.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is, it is called Guild Wars.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Eskarel]

The problem with Guild Wars, or at least the problem when I played it, is that there's no random interaction at all. Far too much content is instanced.

I'm even reluctant to call Guild Wars an MMO. It's more like a traditional RPG with a graphical lobby(the cities).

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[thesandtiger]

I don't disagree with you on this at all - the design of the game is one in which time investment is rewarded. The reason behind this is, of course, money. More time investment required to "win" = longer subscribed time and more return on the investment of developing and offering the game. To a point, of course. An mmo designed to be simple and allow instant success would have players run through the content almost immediately and would have low retention. An mmo that was mind-numbingly tedious and impossible to advance in would have players throw up their hands and walk off after realizing that their only hope of progress is if they give up their lives for the game.

WoW, for all its faults, seems to have hit a fairly sweet spot between ease and tedium. For the most part, players *can* avoid repetitive grindathons - they just have to give up the idea of having some of the "best" stuff in the game. Or, if they want to have the best stuff, they can do that, too.

Ditto about there being a sweet-spot for the number of farmers and the level of gold-selling that goes on. At some lower bound, the number of customers who are lost because they can't just buy gold exceeds the number of customers lost because they get pissed that people are buying gold. At some higher bound, the number of customers who quit because the game has been compromised by rampant gold-selling exceeds the number of customers retained as buyers of gold or accounts bought to farm for gold.

Now, getting back to your point - the design of the game - it's the nature of MMO's and capitalism. For single-player or console games or other games where there's no on-going revenue stream to be had, no time-throttles are necessary, and in fact will tend to turn people off. I remember playing Bard's Tale 3 and finding the game impossibly difficult because I was expected - in a single player game! - to keep grinding out xp in areas I had already played and quested through - before I would be capable of surviving the next area. I suspect this was put in so that they could boast on the box about the "hundreds of hours of game play" or something. Contrast BT3 with Fallout - where you didn't have to grind, and character progression was pretty much synched with the storyline.

I'd love to see an MMO that was so innovative and interesting and addictive and fun that it could retain people long enough to be profitable but without requiring timesinks, but I'm going to suspect that it'll be a loooooong time coming. If WoW has shown one thing, it's that getting the balance between grind and fun right will make a game profitable despite it not being particularly innovative in any way.

Re:The disconnect is there because people want it.

[Knightking]

Four days played is the current legit non-powerleveled 1-60 record. For only $20 you can buy a very exciting 20 hour sped-up video of it.

The whole questing > grinding thing is a bit misleading -- the "optimal" leveling paths involve doing a lot of quests, but not in the way that any new player would do them. For some zones, it's literally "Go to hub, get pile of quests, then go in a big circle around the zone killing every mob you see until you get back to the quest hub, and turn in the pile of quests you happened to complete while grinding". There's very few quests pre-outland that are actually worth going significantly out of your way to do.

a clarification

[circletimessquare]

if you are middle class in a rich western nation, you are rich by world standards

if you can afford to have the leisure time to play a MMORPG, you are a rich person

Re:a clarification

[ajs]

if you are middle class in a rich western nation, you are rich by world standards

if you can afford to have the leisure time to play a MMORPG, you are a rich person And, of course, Chinese Gold Farmers are rich by comparison to the average peasant in rural China who are rich by comparison to displaced refugees in Sudan.... what's your point, exactly? Or are you just trying to muddy the waters for troll value?

I actually place the blame on the game companies.

[Shivetya]

Lets take World of Warcraft as an example.

the have created 3 items that all players want, they don't necessarily need them, but they want them. they are epic land mounts, flying mounts, and epic flying mounts. All are obtainable through gold purchases. Now normally this would not be a problem except that they are not low gold amounts. Whereas the current expansion did make gold much more available to the average player the cost of an epic flying mount is very high. It would require a load of farming just for gold to obtain. Yes there are other epic flying mounts you can gain from reputation, a grind of its own, but you still must buy the epic riding skill which is where the boatload of money comes in.

This money issue compounds itself when players have multiple characters all at the level required to obtain an epic flying mount. Simply put, if the cost was not so extreme there would be less need of an outside collector. Blizzard could do away with the bulk of the gold farming revenue by either replacing the costs with quests to get the skill or reducing the cost to something someone can obtain fairly quickly.

I know, I know, some will chime in, "There needs to be reward for work". ITS A GAME. There are many other ways to represent accomplishment in this game, either through battlegrounds or raids of very high content. I have more respect for someone's game skill who can successfully work with others to conquer 10,20, and 40-character instances than who has epic flying mounts.

It was this way in other games I played before. There were suppliers who augmented the average players ability to obtain what was all so desirable without wasting their life farming.

Look, these are games meant to be played for enjoyment. Me, I don't considering farming gold for something that is practically expected of me to have just to group with others. Its a game, I want to play it, not make a job of it. Yeah I spend too much time in it but please make it so I don't have go even beyond that. Its a lot cheaper for me and others to buy our gold if you look on it as a job. the hourly rate to what a 100 gold cost is substaintially lower than what I make, hell its probably close to minimum wage at that.

So, if the game companies have a problem with farmers instead of going after the farmers directly they need to correct the game mechanisms that spawn them.

um

[circletimessquare]

if a rich guy buys a +5 sword of icefarting in WoW, or whatever, who fucking cares

meanwhile, if a rich guy buys himself out of a murder conviction in the real world, we should fucking care

big fuckign difference

aristocratic activity on an MMORPG is inconsequential, while aristocratic activity in the real world amounts to corruption and social evil

people can tell the difference between the real world and a game, really

Re:um

[cbreaker]

I'm sorry that you don't understand.

Re:um

[Fulcrum of Evil]

if a rich guy buys a +5 sword of icefarting in WoW, or whatever, who fucking cares

"Are there any Orcs around? Because my dagger is +10 against Orcs."

Re:um

[kefler]

dugg for use of 'icefarting'.. wait which site is this

Re:um

[Anonymous Coward]

it is +9 and it is against ogres I think it is more along the lines of "Oh man, I've got an ogre slaying knife--its got a +9 against ogres"

Here they come...

[gwoodrow]

Bring on the heartless, self-absorbed, unfeeling they-still-make-more-money-than-some-other-parts-o f-the-world-and-they-choose-to-do-this-so-why-shou ld-we-feel-sorry-for-them posts.

Re:Here they come...

[JesseMcDonald]

Bring on the heartless, self-absorbed, unfeeling they-still-make-more-money-than-some-other-parts- of-the-world-and-they-choose-to-do-this-so-why- should-we-feel-sorry-for-them posts.

As opposed to the heartless, self-absorbed, unfeeling they-don't-make-as-much-as-we-think-they-should- and-thus-shouldn't-be-allowed-to-accept-such-jobs- even-though-their-alternatives-are-all-worse posts?

The solution to "exploitation" is simple: offer them something better. Complaining about the organizations offering them the best jobs available to them in their situation is perhaps the single worse way imaginable to go about improving said situation. Great way to hold them back, though.

Re:Here they come...

[gwoodrow]

Dude. I'm on your side. Pay attention. It's a mix of sarcasm and cynicism. It's this little thing people do around here. You must be new. Welcome to slashdot.

I learned a long time ago not to try to argue compassion with people on here and other internet forums, because the people who agree with you don't need convincing and the people who don't agree with you will just yell at you for being a liberal/hippie/commie. And yet occasionally I still try it because I'm a stubborn bastard. Observe: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&mode= nested&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=235499&cid=1920 5901&pid=19205901

One thing you can always count on whenever there's an article about how bad someone else has it: and that's those heartless "I wash my hands of this and feel no sadness/guilt over it whatsoever" kind of posts I mentioned originally.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[UbuntuDupe]

Yeah, and sell them at Whole Foods with a big poster showing one of the gold farmers and the story behind his life and his gold farming. It shows him staring passionately at a computer screen in some smoky room with a bunch of post-it notes on the monitor.

"This is Chang Lee. He helped bring this WoW gold to your local store. He works over 12 hours a day, part of which pays back the microloan he used to purchase the lvl 20 paladin he uses to harvest gold..."

heh ;-)

[circletimessquare]

"since you post on slashdot, you have no right to to tell me my game experience is more important than whether or not a poor guy eats"

uh, ok, for the record: if i have a complaint about an activity on slashdot that actually results in putting food on a poor guy's plate, i hereby relinquish my right to complain about that activity, and will accept it, even if it makes the slashdot experience less worthy

your turn, dimwit

Re:heh ;-)

[MysteriousPreacher]

uh, ok, for the record: if i have a complaint about an activity on slashdot that actually results in putting food on a poor guy's plate, i hereby relinquish my right to complain about that activity, and will accept it, even if it makes the slashdot experience less worthy

your turn, dimwit

For someone who has a web site that preaches tolerance, respect and the word of God, that's a pretty piss-poor way to end a post.

I really don't have much of a response to what you wrote here because it's just a cheap dig. I assume you won't be giving over the spare rooms in your house to the homeless or selling your computer any time soon.

Re:heh ;-)

[ewhenn]

Don't worry, the parent poster you replied to seems to be rather light upstairs. He preaches the word of god in one place... then justifies stealing in another. He's as fucking hypocritical as they come.

Re:heh ;-)

[MysteriousPreacher]

Yeah. I wonder how charitable he would be if a group of gold farmers decided to make money by singing outside his house every night. I think his wanting peace and quiet would eventually trump their right to eat.

Chinese (sic) walls

[maroberts]

You can farm with your lvl 70 character and hand off dealing and trading to lower level chars on a possibly separate account. Little to no likelihood of being reported.

Re:Chinese (sic) walls

[C0rinthian]

If your level 70 character is seen grinding in the same place for 24 hours straight, it'll most likely get reported and banned. It doesn't matter where he sends off the gains.

Re:Chinese (sic) walls

[Fulcrum of Evil]

unless blizzard notes that all the items being sold were obtained through a particular L70 and handed off. Traffic analysis wins again.

Re:Chinese (sic) walls

[fractoid]

Source? There's nothing in the ToS about grinding, or even grinding and sending your money to someone else. Of course, if you're botting that's against the ToS and you'll get banninated.

dude

[circletimessquare]

are you really comparing gold farming and its effect on gameplay in a stupid distraction, a GAME, with robbing someone only a little richer than you?

wtf?!

SLIGHTLY (as in a FUCKING LOT) different maybe?

(smacks forehead)

Re:dude

[shystershep]

Try reading the post he was responding to -- your post.

And maybe cut back on the caffeine a bit or something . . .

Re:dude

[_Sprocket_]

are you really comparing gold farming and its effect on gameplay in a stupid distraction, a GAME, with robbing someone only a little richer than you?

You were the one to bring up "steal from the rich, give to the poor". I'm just sticking with your analogy.

It seems you have a real strong empathy for the poor worker and little regard for the gamer. Perhaps you need a different perspective. Let's say we feed one of those "farmers" with the money you're spending on resources to make your film you advertise in your sig. We'll impact your hobby. I'm sure you won't mind because anyone with the access to even meager film making equipment is "rich" by comparison and therefore it's only just. Right?

I'm all for these "farmers" making money and bettering their lives (finding better working conditions is a huge plus too). But because they're poor doesn't give them carte blanche to do whatever they can to bring this about.

"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Loundry]

I haven't found any really concrete numbers or sites, but it sounds like a living wage in china is $3/day.

The notion of a "living wage" is completely bogus and here is way.

Living according to what kind of lifestyle?

That question is left out. Instead, it is merely assumed that a certain "comfortable" lifestyle will be attained. But what, exactly is "comfortable"?

There is an interesting series in the travel section of my local newspaper about an American female expat living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She makes a "living wage" working there. This week, she detailed the things that she dislikes about the city (next week she will list the things that she likes about living there). One of the things that she dislikes is that ATM machines don't always have money, don't always give you all the money you asked for (even if there is money in your account), and Buenos Aires is still almost a completely cash-based city. What this meant for her is that she had to visit a series of ATM machines at odd hours every single day, gathering up only small amounts of money at a time, in order to gether up enough money to pay her rent. The task of "gathering up rent money" from scattered ATMs all across town became part of her daily routine. Do you think this would hamper your lifestyle if you're used to living the the USA or in Europe where cash-on-demand is a no-brainer?

That is but one example among countless other ways to measure the value of one's own lifestyle. The fact that Americans are so fat is merely evidence that they have buttloads of free time (due to not having to spend their time on frustrating, mundane tasks) combined with an abundance of food (not to mention little knowledge of good eating). Keep in mind that the majority of overweight and obese persons in the United States are described as "living in poverty". The more wealthy you get in the USA, the thinner you get, statistically speaking. Is that weird? Not at all. It's just that our notions of "poverty" and "abundance" need to be reexamined, particularly in light of the notion of wealth envy. I.e., "I'm poor because I don't have as much stuff as my next-door neighbor!"

An interesting exit question: what are the demographics of the anarchist movement in the USA?

Demographics fascinate me ... hardly any chubby dark-skinned people to be found at Trader Joe's. Lots of skinny light-skinned folks, though ... in their pretty, hippie dresses and John Kerry bumper stickers on their SUVs. I like Trader Joe's. Ramble ramble ramble ...

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Pojut]

The more wealthy you get in the USA, the thinner you get, statistically speaking. Is that weird? Not at all. It's just that our notions of "poverty" and "abundance" need to be reexamined, particularly in light of the notion of wealth envy. I.e., "I'm poor because I don't have as much stuff as my next-door neighbor!"

Actually, if you kept yourself on a strict diet and exercise scheduel you would realize the incompitance in this line of thinking.

Healthy food is MUCH MUCH MUCH more expensive than junk food. Don't believe me? Work up a budget living off of junk food/ramen compared to eating healthy (a lot of fruit, lean protein, low-no fat, etc.) You come back here and try to tell me that eating healthy is cheaper than eating like crap. Do it, and I will call you a dirty fucking liar, because that is exactly what you would be.

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[RingDev]

What the hell are you talking about? So some lady has to walk all over town to /get/ her money? What does that have to do with a living wage? Is she is earning enough money to pay her rent, groceries, and keep herself healthy? If so, then she is earning a living wage. No one ever said making a living wage was enjoyable, it is merely enough to keep a person stable in society. No more, no less.

I not sure why you brought demographics, John Kerry, or http://www.traderjoes.com/ into this conversation either.

-Rick

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Hoi Polloi]

For the price of a good salad at my company's salad bar I could get two cheeseburgers (or 6-8 Twinkies at a convenience store). Eating healthy has become a sign of wealth in this country.

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Loundry]

Healthy food is MUCH MUCH MUCH more expensive than junk food.

Where did I write anything about "healthy food"?

You come back here and try to tell me that eating healthy is cheaper than eating like crap. Do it, and I will call you a dirty fucking liar, because that is exactly what you would be.

Which is more expensive by-the-pound: rice or twinkies?

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Anonymous Coward]

>Which is more expensive by-the-pound: rice or twinkies?

The "value" of food isn't measured in pounds (if it were, dirt wins). It's measured in calories. Besides that, rice isn't usually considered a health food. It's not a bad food, but it's health benefits are average at best.

Generic ramen noodle bricks usually give you about 500 calories, and cost about $0.20 per package. That means each calorie costs 0.04 cents.

Rice has about 1600 calories per pound. I haven't a clue what rice sells for nowadays (I'd have to go to a grocery store, I suppose), but $0.99 cents per pound sounds about right. That means rice offers calories for about 0.06 cents each.

So, ramen noodles win again.

BTW: Rice was a toughie. It's actually about the next cheapest food up the chain. Generic branded chips on sale usually rank pretty well too.

Twinkies, I didn't bother with, since they're much, much lower in calories than the above foods (about 150 calories per) but higher in price.

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Loundry]

So some lady has to walk all over town to /get/ her money?

That's literally incredible, right? I thoguht so, too. Here's your link to the story.

What does that have to do with a living wage?

"Living wage" assumes a lifestyle, and a lifestyle is affected by more things than just wage. Hence, it's bogus and needs to die.

Is she is earning enough money to pay her rent, groceries, and keep herself healthy?

Rent in what kind of apartment? 2 bedrooms? 3 bedrooms? Running water yes or no? Automatic dishwasher or not? Dirty city with dirty air or clean city with clean air?

Groceries? What kind of groceries? Rice and beans every day? Maybe just rice every day? Maybe rice just once per day? Maybe just millet once per day?

Healthy? What level of health care? Does she see a doctor on demand or is she added to a waiting list? How long is the waiting list? A year? Five years? Ten years?

Your quesiton is simplistic because the notion of lifestyle is complex. Lifestyle is more than just wage. You assume much because of your very, very privileged background.

No one ever said making a living wage was enjoyable, it is merely enough to keep a person stable in society. No more, no less.

What does "stable" mean? Merely emotionally stable? (People survived the holocaust, after all.) Making enough money to go to one concert every month? Guaranteed foie gras rations? Permanent tenure for everyone regardless of profession or job performance? Don't casually throw around nebulous terms and expect me to mindlessly agree with you.

I not sure why you brought demographics, John Kerry, or http://www.traderjoes.com/ into this conversation either.

I thought the "Ramble, ramble, ramble" comment made that clear, but I'll be explicit for your benefit: I was rambling. I'm guessing you agree with me that Trader Joe's clientele is NOT very diverse. I like Trader Joe's anyway. Do you?

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Loundry]

The "value" of food isn't measured in pounds (if it were, dirt wins).

You're right, but that's beside the point. The angry young man with something to prove was bitching about "expensive", not "valuable".

Besides that, rice isn't usually considered a health food. It's not a bad food, but it's health benefits are average at best.

Again, you're right, but rice is still better for you than twinkies are.

And there we have it: the AYMwStP claimed that "eating healthy is more expensive than eating cheap" and rice v. twinkies is the obvious exception to that "rule" since rice is healthier and cheaper than twinkies by-the-pound.

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[RingDev]

Boy, you need to set Emerson down and step back from the existential pipe you've been smoking.

Living wage doesn't care if you have a 1 room studio, or a 4 bedroom town house. Living wage doesn't care if you wash your close in a GE front loading washer in your house, or on a rock in the creek. Living wage doesn't care what type of food you are eating so long as it is healthy and substantial enough. All a living wage is, is the amount of money a person would have to earn to make ends meet in your local society. Regardless of what type of person you are, you need a bare minimum amount of money to ensure that you are decently feed, clean, and able to maintain a job and to be a productive member of society. That's why living wage is regional. Sure, you can survive on $3/day in parts of China, but $3/day wouldn't keep you alive for long in the US, let alone a productive member of society. Heck, the living wage in the mid west is significantly different then the living wage on the coasts.

If you ever get a chance to live at or below the 'living wage', I'm sure you'll quickly find that all the minds-eye dreams in the world won't put food on your child's plate.

-Rick

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Dobeln]

Health food is not necessarily the same as healthy food. Basic vegetables, eggs, basic meats etc. aren't really that expensive in any western country - certainly not if the competition is fatty fast food.

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Loundry]

Living wage doesn't care if you have a 1 room studio, or a 4 bedroom town house. Living wage doesn't care if you wash your close in a GE front loading washer in your hou--

Are you saying that those things don't contribute to "stability"? Being "stable" was part of having a "living wage", right? I notice you didn't define "stable". I notice you don't want to define anything. You just argue and assume that I'm along for the ride.

All a living wage is, is the amount of money a person would have to earn to make ends meet in your local society.

Make ends meet with what kind of lifestyle?

Sure, you can survive on $3/day in parts of China

Survive for how long? With what kind of lifestyle?

I'm guessing you've never been to China, even the "rich" parts. I haven't been, either. That's why I rely on the witness of those who have. Read this. Then you can look at this.

You're so privileged that you don't realize how good you have it. That's why you can casually throw around terms like "making ends meet" and "stable" which only have meaning when you make grand assumptions.

Did you read the story about gathering cash in Buenos Aires? Something tells me you would rather fight than read. Maybe it was a waste of my time to ask you to read about a cultured and nuanced "progressive" journalist's experiences in China and how you can "make ends meet" there. But here is the money quote, for what it's worth, from the first article I linked in this post:

"You don't see many weak or infirm people on the streets, in Beijing, Shanghai, or Nanjing. You get the feeling that the unfit do not survive long past birth, and that the Greek system is in effect here - an early burial, or a hillside crib, for newly born weaklings. I don't know precisely, but I have seen only a few beggars, and they look like the ethnic minorities."

Survival, indeed!

That's why living wage is regional.

That's why "living wage" is an expression of wealth envy. I suppose it's actually an expression of lifestyle envy, but I don't think you're willing to think that abstractly. It's just too Emerson-y and existentialish. You're still stuck in the land where you think in terms of "getting by" and "making ends meet" and you can't understand why we don't have enough stuff to ensure that Everyone Gets What They Need To Have A Good Life(TM).

Enjoy your trips to Trader Joe's, rich boy! I like their coffee.

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[RingDev]

Are you saying that those things don't contribute to "stability"?

Correct. I don't need a 3 bedroom house to be stable. I could be perfectly stable in a 1 room apartment, albeit uncomfortable, I would be stable.

Being "stable" was part of having a "living wage", right? I notice you didn't define "stable".

Uh, yeah I did. My definition of stable is that you are making a positive contribution to society. And that doesn't take much. You can hold down your job, and you can provide your family with food and shelter with out assistance. That's about it.

Make ends meet with what kind of lifestyle?

With a very crappy one. If being poor and down trodden was comfortable, why would anyone work to improve their position in life?

Survive for how long? With what kind of lifestyle?

As other people in this thread have stated, $3/day is more than the living wage in parts of China. I have not been there personally, but the descriptions used seemed to indicate people in that pay range were poor, but in over all good condition.

You're so privileged that you don't realize how good you have it.

Wooooh nellie. Don't go sticking your foot in the fox hole, you don't know who you are talking about. I assure you, I have seen destitution first hand, I have spent time out of this country, I have gone hungry, and I have worried about getting food for my new born child. Don't lecture me on being 'privileged'. I went through my own rough times and I worked my ass off to get where I am today.

Did you read the story about gathering cash in Buenos Aires?

Yes, I did. And I still fail to see what the lady having to walk around for cash has to do with living wage. Yes, it is a pain in the ass, but she still has enough money to pay for her necessities. She isn't starving, she hasn't been evicted, she has potable water, and she is maintaining a stable income.

You get the feeling that the unfit do not survive long past birth

Wow, now that's just humorous. Because we all just toss our newborn children out on the street and see how long they can survive as homeless people. This may come as a suprise to you, but many cultures outside the US abhore homelessness. Families will always take in relatives who have lost their residence. The author wasn't seeing much for homeless people because their society has determined that people should not be homeless. I'm not saying it's all peaches and roses, but it sure as hell isn't some street disease that kills homeless people in the night and runs off with their corpses.

You're still stuck in the land where you think in terms of "getting by" and "making ends meet" and you can't understand why we don't have enough stuff to ensure that Everyone Gets What They Need To Have A Good Life(TM). /shrug. There is a limited pool of resources in the world. Some people will get more of that pool, some will get less. That's just the way of life, and it always will be. How ever abstract you are feeling is irrelevant. Living wage is a practical and very real way of measuring the minimum amount of money needed to be a functioning and contributing member of society.

-Rick

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Loundry]

Correct. I don't need a 3 bedroom house to be stable. I could be perfectly stable in a 1 room apartment, albeit uncomfortable, I would be stable.

What if someone else disagrees? Is your stability the baseline for all humanity?

Uh, yeah I did. My definition of stable is that you are making a positive contribution to society. And that doesn't take much. You can hold down your job, and you can provide your family with food and shelter with out assistance.

My bad, and thank you for elaborating though it's still pretty nebulous. When you mention "without assistance" are you only talking about coerced "assistance" ("welfare"), or does "assistance" from friends and family members also disqualify you from "making a positive contribution to society"?

Also, what quality of food and shelter are assumed? 1-bedroom apartments for everybody? Is the toilet in the same room as your bed?

With a very crappy one. If being poor and down trodden was comfortable, why would anyone work to improve their position in life?

FINALLY! I wondered when you'd start talking about lifestyle. Unfortunately, you got into uncomfortable territory and decided to rebound with a non-sequitur question. Your original statement was this: "All a living wage is, is the amount of money a person would have to earn to make ends meet in your local society." When I asked, "What kind of lifestyle?" You answered, "a very crappy one". Are you saying that a "living wage" is the amount of money you need to make to have a "very crappy" lifestyle and that everyone should have that? And how crappy can a "very crappy" lifestyle get in order for the minimum requirements for a "living wage" to continue to be met? For example, only half of the population of Cambodia died in forced labor camps during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. This means that the others survived and had a "very crappy" lifestyle. Did they thus have a "living wage"? They had enough to have food, shelter, and medicine, albeit with a "very crappy" lifestyle which, according to you, is acceptable. Then again, they did have some "assistance" from the government, so perhaps it's not acceptable according to you. Pinning you down on what you think is like nailing Jell-O to a wall.

Wooooh nellie. Don't go sticking your foot in the fox hole, you don't know who you are talking about. I assure you, I have seen destitution first hand, I have spent time out of this country, I have gone hungry, and I have worried about getting food for my new born child. Don't lecture me on being 'privileged'. I went through my own rough times and I worked my ass off to get where I am today.

Not only will I put my foot in that fox hole, but I will also do some riverdancing while it's there. Good for you to be privileged enough to shop at Trader Joe's. Thousands of other children starve to death while you shop there. Now you're wealthy enough to spend time fighting with some asshole on slashdot while millions of other people worry about where their next meal is coming from, or worry if their government will come kill them. And you're not privileged? Spare me, rich boy. You're richer than 99% of the world's population, so don't tell me that you "know destitution". You know abundance because you presently wallow in it, and your posting here is evidence of that fact. Otherwise, you'd be busy worrying about your child, right? Be honest!

I think I'm understanding why you're so big on "living wage": you feel guilty because you got out of a "very crappy" lifestyle and other people don't. For you, this "living wage" thing is an emotional issue, not an intellectual one. It makes sense that you'd mock me for being too into books and "existentialist". If I've pegged you wrong in this regard then please tell me how. There's nothing wrong with making emotional decisions. I make emotional decisions all the time. Everyone does. Tell me your true feelings if guilt is the incorrect one.

Yes

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[RingDev]

Wow, and you're calling /me/ the emotional one?

One last time, this is very simple. Living Wage has nothing to do with your happiness, life style, or any of the other crap you are babbling about. It is a mathematically calculated value that determines the entry point of income in society. If your income drops below that point, you will not be able to continue being a contributing member of society with out assistance.

That's it. The rest of your post is so inane I just can't justify a line by line response. So here are a few summaries:

-Until you posted "Trader Joe's", I had no idea what it was. I had to google it. It still has no bearing on this discussion.

-In order to comment on your (initially) excessive Emerson attitude, I must first be familiar with Emerson's work. Seeing as how I am familiar with his work, it would be rather silly to make fun of you for reading them. I'll ridicule your abuse of his works, but I applaud your tenacity for literature.

-I do NOT believe that EVERYONE should get a Living Wage. I believe that everyone willing and able to put forth a minimum effort to contributing to society deserves a Living Wage. Any one who works harder/smarter is more than welcome to fight for more of the pie. Anyone who is unwilling too is welcome to starve. And anyone who is unable should have access to assistance programs to help them rise to the point that they can make that effort.

-I feel no guilt for having the privileges I have. I was born with more than many, and I have worked hard to keep more than some. I feel sorry for those in worse conditions than my own, but my family and my future is of far more concern to me.

-Living Wage should obviously only be applied in situations where there is A) a wage, and B) the consumer is responsible for using that wage to procure items necessities for their continuing function in society. Obviously in a true communism, there can be no Living Wage because there is no wage, or in a military like situation because your food, housing, water, and clothing is all provided for you.

-Your argument may have a sliver of truth in cases where paid labor is forced. Although, so long as the two mentioned requirements are there, I would still argue that there is a living wage. I would also argue that their Quality of Life sucks donkey balls (to put it technically). Not all societies are pleasant.

-Living wage must be viewed in respect to the local society. Even if that means that you make enough money to go to the market and buy food, but you've got a 50/50 chance of getting hit by an IED or sniper fire. You're still earning a living wage, you just happen to live in a really crappy society.

-Rick

Re:"Living Wage" is bogus and must die

[Lost Engineer]

Banquet frozen meals. 500 cals at least. One single, solitary, George-Washington-spamming dollar. .02/cal. They're not too bad for you either, although no one would call them health food. The only really bad thing is they contain a lot of sodium.

Farm the Farmers

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if any attempt has been made to "farm the farmers". Has any game company identified the gold farmers and then tried to make their efforts less "profitable"? i.e. If Blizzard had, instead of cancelling accounts, made these accounts accumulate gold (or whatever) at 1/4 the normal rate, would this have had more effect on the gold farmers? Or choose a random % of normal every hour, not to exceed 101%. I'm sure this would be noticed pretty quickly by the gold farmers, but it might be somewhat amusing. Or, cruel, depending on your perspective.
As I don't play any MMOs, I'm kind of ambivalent about the gold farming "issue" but I do find this topic/TFA interesting. Makes me think again that we should not have given China most favored nation status without some human rights agreements.

The 'web portals' exist already

[1sockchuck]

eBay no longer handles gold game trading (see earlier discussion on this topic). But there are several peer-to-peer exchanges for games, including the venture-backed Sparter and a more modest effort called Iron Prairie. These services allow buyers and sellers to trade directly with one another, providing the opportunity to cut out middlemen like IGE. In the early going, it looks like a lot of the inventory in these exchanges is supplied by IGE resellers and other aggregators, but there's some individual sellers as well.

So it would seem

[the_tsi]

...that I'm getting ripped off in my purchases, mostly by the various middle-men. Even accounting for the cost of a computer, the WOW account, the electricity to power the computer, and the space in which the computer and the farmer sit... it seems like a lot of people are making money for just connecting two people.

This article makes me want to, more than any other solution, reach an open-ended agreement with a single farmer to provide me with full-time farming services in exchange for a much-closer-to-retail rate. Figure a target of eight-hour workdays, flextime (since I don't care when they farm up cloth, leather, ores, gold, signets, etc. for me), for 2-3 times what they're making. I'll even pay for the account. Just a steady stream of all the treadmill shit that is in the way of the actual fun part of the game. They get a closer-to-living-wage, IGE goes out of business, I get pretty purples. Everyone wins.

So... anyone speak cantonese or mandarin? Or failing that, any off-duty farmers (of any nationality) speak english and read slashdot comments?

Re:So it would seem

[stix213]

Lots of the money is lost to Google advertising and such, not just to IGE or other genuine middlemen. Google charges at least $5 per click for most ads these days, and anyone who has done any google advertising knows that a very good click to pay ratio is 10%, but often lower. So at a 10% pay ratio, every time they make a sale IGE is already in the hole for $50. Plenty of people will be actually buying for much less than a $50 amount, so IGE is very dependent on return business as well.

Basically what I am saying is that advertising websites are probably getting most of the gold money, not the chinese, not the boss in china, not IGE.

This was not always the case.... Back in the day you could get an ad on Overture (now owned by Yahoo) for .10 a click.... But Google likes to limit the ads to raise the prices. Thanks google

Re:So it would seem

[Fritz T. Coyote]

The markup reflects the risk premium that is needed anytime you are producing and distributing Illegal Goods. Whenever a farming account is detected and shut down, they don't get the 'gold' back. If it ever becomes a big enough problem Blizzard could put an end to it in a forceful and hard-coded fashion. ----

How many people have Written bots to Farm?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have. It ain't hard.

A Few Facts:

1.GM's don't bother me.
2.I do error checking, if one fails I start another not necessarily the someone.
3.I use bots in botz teams (if you writes botz - you know what I mean)
4.They are not obvious to the casual observer.
5.Anyone who does this manually is ignorant and can't compete I don't care if they have 9 man teams or not.
6. WoW, EQ, or which ever software don't even know what going on cuz I compile my own names. Let them scan all they want.
7. Microsoft Windows use to install a program call "Recorder" in Win 3.2 that made botz but decide not to include it in there later OS's. So Microsoft must approve as some level.
8. Someone who writes a script to automate a task (there by eliminating Carpaltunnel Syndrome) is a hero in my book.

Re:gold farming is all well and good...

[ptbarnett]

This guy didn't realize it was a joke:

http://omgrawr.net/quote/4387

How is that any different than Real Life?

[macraig]

what is bad about gold farming? well, it allows some rich asshole to buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at

Ummm... how exactly is that different from real life in the physical world, where we constantly have to worry about money buying elections much less pretty much anything and everything else?

I'd argue that is exactly what money is intended to do and represent, whether real or virtual. The real problem in both paradigms, and I suspect your real complaint, is that such games are all about capitalism and concentration of wealth and resources and the inescapable undercurrent toward monopolies. If you don't like that sort of game, you might just have to create a socialist one that encourages social ethics and the greater/common good, because THAT is not what any of the existing games are about.

Re:How is that any different than Real Life?

[dbIII]

Ummm... how exactly is that different from real life in the physical world, where we constantly have to worry about money buying elections

We don't all live in the third world or the USA here. In the USA you have a judical branch that is supposed to be able to deal with corruption in the other two branches anyway.

Re:Time is Money

[Anonymous Coward]

For as long as I played EQ (till about Gates of Discord) the best gear that could be traded (and sold in the marketplace) was one or two expansions behind the best non-transferable items at the time. That way somebody who played five hours a week could equip themselves very well for a lot of money, but they would have to join a premiere guild and put in 30+ hours a week to get the best stuff available.

It seemed like a good system to me. The people who were decked out in bazaar gear and asking newb questions were easy to spot and really didn't cause me any problems. And as somebody who farmed gear and platinum as a summer job, I was glad to equip them.

How's that chip on your shoulder?

[raehl]

it allows some rich asshole

Why do you assume he's a rich asshole? Maybe he's just a nice, average, guy with a JOB.

buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at

Why should he have 'worked hard at it'?

This whole thing seems to assume that somehow grinding out levels is more 'impressive' than working in the real world.

it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy.

And what is 'meritorious' about playing a computer game 20 hours a day? I'd say having a real job and then playing a computer game a couple hours a day tops is more meritorious. Just because the most productive thing YOU can do with your life might be working at McDonalds doesn't mean someone who has a job that lets them buy some gold pieces is an aristocrat.

Or maybe that's the real problem here - if you can't win at something by virtue of being the only person willing to play on your computer 20 hours a day, you've lost the only thing you can be good at!

hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill.

Real skill? Are you kidding me? In an MMORPG? Name me ONE MMORPG where the top players are determined by 'skill' in anywhere close to where they are determined by amount of time the play a day.

Re:How's that chip on your shoulder?

[_Sprocket_]

And what is 'meritorious' about playing a computer game 20 hours a day? I'd say having a real job and then playing a computer game a couple hours a day tops is more meritorious. Just because the most productive thing YOU can do with your life might be working at McDonalds doesn't mean someone who has a job that lets them buy some gold pieces is an aristocrat.

Are you playing the game, or looking for an online status symbol to reflect your career? The merit in the game is achievement from having played it. Such achievements really shouldn't have much weight out here in the Big Blue Room. And by the same regard, your achievements in your career should have little to do with whats going on in the game.

We don't immediately put marks down on your golf card because you have a "real job". Nor do you get a head start during your softball league game. Why should an online game be different?

Re:Time is Money

[miller60]

Demographics is a major factor in the demand for gold exchanges and growth of power-leveling services. As the player base has expanded beyond hard-core young adults, many new players are older and have careers and families - leaving less time available for grinding through levels. A C/Net story last fall noted that in some cases, parents wanted to play Warcraft with their kids, and paid to have their character leveled up.

Sony did a white paper on the Station Exchange economy which noted that the largest sellers were 22-year-olds (who have plenty of time but not a lot of money) and the largest buyers were age 34. These older players have more money than time, and that fact drives the demand side of the virtual economy, creating a sustainable market for both power-leveling and game accounts.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[SydShamino]

If an individual in China posted his "isellgold.ch" web site and asked for your credit card number, would you give it to him? If he doesn't farm your server, would you do a google search through hundreds of hack, warez, and cheats sites until you find one with a link to someone who farms your server and accepts credit cards?

The middlemen act as a "legitimate" front to a distributed back-end operation. I don't think there's any doubt that they are necessary for this operation.

Now, regarding the price, other posts have established that the farmers are paid a little better than the going rate for unskilled labor in China. US customers pay the going rate for gold, based on years of market experience on the part of the middlemen. The middlemen pocket the difference because neither end complains.

The free market doesn't work to minimize prices. It works to find a balance between bid and ask price in a transaction. In this case, ask prices on the farmer end are low, and bid prices on the consumer end are high, so the market acted to create middlemen to absorb the difference.

Re:brought to you by ...

[jacks0n]

why don't they play online poker?

getting a winrate better than 1.25/hour is trivial. you could do it playing 2 tables of .50/1 limit or 1 table .25NL, and there's lots of room for advancement.

by Julian Dibbell author of "A Rape in Cyberspace"

[Tracy Reed]

I thought it was worth noting. Julian Dibbell wrote "A Rape in Cyberspace" which brought a crushing amount of attention to Lambda Moo and some say effectively destroyed it leaving many old time Lambda users very bitter. The best way to stir up convo on Lambda to this day is to simply mention his name. Lambda still exists. I've been using it off and on for many years now. It's funny to see Julian pop up again after all this time.

Time is money friend.

[iceperson]

Whether your giving someone $$$ or farming yourself you're "paying" for the gold.

I'm curious though, do you wonder why the guy who takes his Ferrari to someone else to get it detailed bought it in the first place?
What about the person who has someone else do all of their pool maintenance?
For many gold farming is one aspect of a game they don't consider "fun" but other aspects are enjoyable enough that they are willing to part with $$$ so that when they log in they can focus on the things they like to do.

Re:Time is money friend.

[misleb]

I'm curious though, do you wonder why the guy who takes his Ferrari to someone else to get it detailed bought it in the first place?

No, because the person buying a Ferrari bought it to drive it, not clean it. Presumably if you pay to play a game, you're paying to play the game. Paying someone else to play a game for you is bordering on absurd. It would be like buying a Ferrari and paying someone else to dress up as you and drive it around town in your place.

What about the person who has someone else do all of their pool maintenance?

What about the person who has someone else swim in their pool?

"Who's that swimming in your pool, Bob?"

"Oh, that's my pool boy. I don't have time to swim in it myself so I pay this Chinese guy to swim in it for $.30 an hour. Pretty cheap compared using my much more valuable time to do it."

"Gee, Bob, don't you think it is kind of silly to own a pool, not use it yourself *and* pay someone else to use it? I mean, shouldn't your pool boy be paying you for the privilege of swimmin in it?"

"Privilege? Swimming is a lot of work. My time is money. Swimming in that pool would actually be a loss of money above and beyond the cost of purchasing and maintaining it. It is much cheaper to pay my pool boy to do it."

"Then why'd you buy a pool then, Bob?"

"Because the pool looks good in my back yard and having someone swimming in it makes me seem more active to my neighbors. Did you notice that the Chinese guy kinda looks like me from a distance?"

"Oh."

For many gold farming is one aspect of a game they don't consider "fun" but other aspects are enjoyable enough that they are willing to part with $$$ so that when they log in they can focus on the things they like to do.

Our friend Bob likes to sit around the pool and watch the pool boy swimming.

-matthew

Re:Time is money friend.

[KyleTheDarkOne]

By your analogy, Bob must be getting a good tan and tone muscles, even though he can't use those muscles properly or efficently, he has the appearance of a seasoned swimmer. ~Kyle

Re:Time is money friend.

[misleb]

By your analogy, Bob must be getting a good tan and tone muscles, even though he can't use those muscles properly or efficently, he has the appearance of a seasoned swimmer.

Well, he has a appearance of seasoned swimmers insofar as his neighbors think he's the one out there every day swimming.

-matthew

Re:Time is money friend.

[Anonymous Coward]

That was really good until the last sentance. Surely he'd pay someone to sit around the pool, watching the pool boy swimming?

Re:Time is money friend.

[iceperson]

No, in every situation I brought up one person was paying someone else to handle what they might consider the routine maintenance for an activity they otherwise enjoy. Gold farming isn't "playing" anymore than painting the lines on a baseball field is "playing baseball."

By and large the people who think like you have minimum wage jobs or no jobs/friends to otherwise occupy your time (this is /., hence you get modded up) so you feel cheated when people actually have a life outside of game can still log in for a few hours and have fun.

This post paid for by iceperson (he's just too busy to spend anymore time in this thread.)

Re:Time is money friend.

[IsoRashi]

Errr, not quite.
 
In WoW there's a whole side to the game that I wouldn't really consider fun, but it needs to be done in order to enjoy some of the other parts. I play a healing spec'd raid priest, so when I log on during a raid night I'm expected to have plenty of reagents, potions, elixirs or flasks, and then to pay for my repair bill at the end of the night. All of this costs gold and/or time. So in between raid nights, I have the pleasure of grinding out some gold so that I can afford to raid. It's not very entertaining to just kill the same mobs over and over again (especially since I am spec'd to heal/support, not damage); I only do it because it's necessary if I wish to continue raiding. I've almost quit raiding a time or two simply because I was having trouble finding the time to grind in addition to having a life.

Re:Time is money friend.

[misleb]

Gold farming isn't "playing" anymore than painting the lines on a baseball field is "playing baseball."

I've never played WoW, but I hope gold "farming" isn't actually a required part of the game for each player like maintaining a car is. If it is, it is a stupid game and I'm glad I haven't wasted a cent on it.

By and large the people who think like you have minimum wage jobs or no jobs/friends to otherwise occupy your time (this is /., hence you get modded up) so you feel cheated when people actually have a life outside of game can still log in for a few hours and have fun.

People who "think like me?" WTF are you talking about? You're the one playing a "game" which is so readily compared to work that lots of people are willing to pay other people to play it for them. I don't play the stupid game because I do have better things to do with my time.

Re:Time is money friend.

[misleb]

Sounds like the game is hopelessly broken. It is amazing that it is so popular.

Re:Time is money friend.

[iceperson]

Better things to do? Like what? Show me your hobbies and I'll show you a waste of time.

The difference between you and I are that I'm not so deluded into thinking that anything someone else enjoys is automatically a "waste of time" just because I don't.

I don't play online games. I have in the past, but don't ATM because my interests lie elsewhere.

Re:Time is money friend.

[misleb]

Better things to do? Like what? Show me your hobbies and I'll show you a waste of time.

Heh, first you accuse me of being some kind of loser who has nothing to do and now you are going to nitpick the things I do do? Nice troll.

The difference between you and I are that I'm not so deluded into thinking that anything someone else enjoys is automatically a "waste of time" just because I don't.

"The difference between you and I?" What the fuck do you think you know about me, anyway? Just a post ago you thought I was a full time WoW player who felt "cheated" by people who buy gold.

I don't play online games. I have in the past, but don't ATM because my interests lie elsewhere.

You show me an interest, and I'll show you a waste of time. Dick.

-matthew

Re:Time is money friend.

[GWBasic]

No, because the person buying a Ferrari bought it to drive it, not clean it. Presumably if you pay to play a game, you're paying to play the game. Paying someone else to play a game for you is bordering on absurd. It would be like buying a Ferrari and paying someone else to dress up as you and drive it around town in your place.

Keep in mind that a Ferrari must be broken in before it can really be driven. There are people who actually do break in cars for rich people who just want to enjoy the car.

Granted, the vast majority of a Ferrari's life is spent in the stage where it doesn't need to be broken in. It appears that WoW is a game where the vast majority of time isn't spent doing fun things.

So, add enconomic fluzations to the AI

[gatkinso]

Inflation. Deflation. Banks. Interest rates.

Wait... most people play a game to escape from that crap.

Sorry, bad idea.

Re:So, add enconomic fluzations to the AI

[maroberts]

Inflation and deflation happen "naturally" as supply and demand of good fluctuates.

The only thing missing in WoW is the idea of credit and loans.

Re:So, add enconomic fluzations to the AI

[gatkinso]

So one day you log on to WOW and that sword that cost 10 gold peices or whatever is now 17?

I have never played WOW, but I suspect this does not happen.

Re:So, add enconomic fluzations to the AI

[maroberts]

Actually yes, some items are more in demand than others and prices can vary quite widely.

For instance, Auction House trading range of a stack of light leather can be from 20s to about 1g50s (1g = 100s = 10,000c), and this fluctuates according to supply and demand. Weapons fairly stable in Alliance/ Horde Auction houses, but a rare pickups at bargain price can be had, especially in the Neutral houses.

Fun can be had watching the neutral houses as its the only way to get items from an Alliance character to a Horde character. You can intercapt items placed at a low level to facilitate this by AH watching.

Re:So, add enconomic fluzations to the AI

[Chris Mattern]

So one day you log on to WOW and that sword that cost 10 gold peices or whatever is now 17?

I have never played WOW, but I suspect this does not happen.

Yes, that's EXACTLY what happens. Less in WoW, as it doesn't really have a player-run economy. In Final Fantasy XI, where you do have a real economy, most mid to high-level equipment (and all high-quality equipment) and a lot of necessary supplies can only be created by player crafting, using resources that must be harvested from the world (monster drops, mining, fishing, harvesting, gardening, and so on). The prices for all this stuff are not set by the NPC merchants because the NPC merchants don't sell them; players do. And the prices change on a daily basis with supply and demand.

Chris Mattern

So should they stop lifting weights?

[FatSean]

Steroids aren't illegal, they are controlled. Under the care of a doctor with regular blood-tests, they are quite safe and quite legal.

The game is about 'juicing up'? Steroids give you more muscle mass, and thereby make you stronger. You're saying that stronger players negate the skill factor? Maybe baseball should stop their players from lifting weights, eh? Maybe they should just run laps arround the bases, practice drills and that's it? Do you even read what you type?

If it were legal to take steroids for performance enhancement, the players would be able to have proper doctor supervision, and would not compromise their health. As it is, they must sneak arround to get that edge, and they are compromising their health. The government made it illegal to use steroids for performance enhancement, but people want that enhancement. People don't want to go to jail tho...so they compromise and don't use steroids with the proper blood-tests and doctor check-ups.

I hope I've opened your eyes...the lines you spout sound straight out of a D.A.R.E. presentation!

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Lord Ender]

But it is fair. Nobody is stopping these guys from setting up their own business.

The illusion of skill...

[C10H14N2]

The fact that your level 47 avatar can slaughter an entire plain of level 30's with the same single-finger-salute that had no effect on that level 3 landstrider a month ago has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with simple time-served. Frankly, after wasting countless hours slashing through endless droves of completely uninspired beasties on WoW just to endlessly level up an erg at a time through weeks of tediously dull quests and insipid wandering, I don't blame people for buying their way in, though I question the worth of it...I mean, just how much better does it get after you've dedicated 2700 hours to the !@%^ing thing?

MTV

[CraniumDesigns]

MTV's Gideon Yago did a report on this a long time ago showing the working conditions and discussing wages. this is old news.

Numbers don't add up...

[Joe Snipe]

100gc/10cy = 12.5 cents, US.
30 Cents/hour = 4 hours/100gc
9 farmers @25gc/hour * 12 hours = 2700gc (270cy, incidentally)
2700gc @ $3/100 exchange to online retailer = $810 per day
$810 * 300days = $243,000 US; NOT 80,000.
2700gc @ ($3 - 1.25 labor) =$475 * 300days = 142,000 NOT 80,000

Unless the overhead costs for internet and space rental cost 60,000+, this is way more than an 80,000/year operation. PLease verify ALL other facts before disseminating this potentail FUD further.

Re:Numbers don't add up...

[mdahl]

You have to realise the time these guys waste on getting banned and starting over. I don't know if that covers the entire 60 grand, but in terms of lost profit, it is highly significant.

Re:by Julian Dibbell author of "A Rape in Cyberspa

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to rape Julian Dibbell with kitchen knives.

Another perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, people farming gold leads to gold-selling operations, and that leads to people buying gold, and that leads to competition, which leads to a pressure to bring the price down.

Let's put that in cold perspective.

"For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less. The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20."

$20 for 100 gold? Which planet are you living on? IGE is the biggest and arguably the most expensive, because they tend to shy away from affiliates which use excessive numbers of bots and account hacking. Even there, however, $20 would get you about 200 gold. Go to the shadier sites, however, and you'll find $20 would get you almost 400 gold; in one case, nearly 1000 gold.

Odd, that, isn't it? You couldn't possibly hire even a Chinese gold farmer for that kind of wage. So what's going on?

Simple. Someone used a handier and much cheaper way of obtaining gold than by hiring Chinese people; steal it from another player.

All those keyloggers on the WoW forums and buried in advertisements to some sites, with web browser exploits attached? Yup, that's right.

To a black-hat, right now, a stolen login and password to a World of Warcraft account is worth more than a stolen credit card number, and it's a lot easier to sell on to an affiliate.

That's where we're at now - people buying gold are directly funding the creation of malware... Still feeling good about it? Thought not.

Re:Another perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

just cuz WoW or EQ cant design a game(s) to handle inflation aint the players fault. it has been said many time the designers can add or remove money in the game(s) with the click of a mouse. dont blame the players cuz they use botz or team up to farm for gold. the designers/programmers can design there way out of inflation. its just a few clicks away to them. let the game designers/porgrammers hack there own games to deinflate the economies. besides it has been rummored that the under paid in the designers/programmers/dba ranks who work for these companys(use to work rather, what ever the case) have been know to make a few bucks on the side selling money or xploting bugs for plat or gold.

(BTW what does it take to get a rank of GT Zero on this board?)

Lucky

[no1nose]

They get paid to play games all day. In the article, it said one guy plays for 12 hours a day 7 days a week. I am lucky if I get 2 or 3 hours a day 5 days a week - and I don't get paid for it.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, pshaw. It'd be a level 70 Night Elf Hunter. Duuuur.

Specifics please

[jhRisk]

I believe the virtual world's population, game mechanics, economic framework and a number of other significant components in an MMORPG all play an important role in determining the extent to which gold farmers affect the game. It's unfair IMHO to make generalizations about their affect on all MMORPGs as I liken it to speaking on the affects of money supply changes regardless of the country, its regulations and current economic state. Also, I think it's only fair to separate the process of farming and selling virtual GOLD versus ITEMS or POWER LEVELING as the three inherantly affect all MMORPGs differently regardless. I'm going to limit this post to World of Warcraft GOLD farming since we have to start somewhere. Yes, I've been playing since it came out... play often... have several 70s... play on several servers (except the weirdos on RP ones) and am not talking out of my anus. In short, I don't believe this virtual world's stability is affected by gold farmers except for pissing off bratty kids that like to stomp their feat when life isn't fair. Sure you can use gold to buy reputation to a certain extent but not with the important ones (ex. Violet Eye.) Who cares if you're Exaulted with Aldor and get some slightly better gear. If you buy your way into that rep you've bypassed no skill test as it only takes an unearthly amount of time to farm the rep from easy kills. Granted one can argue that the time it takes to do so is a writes of passage that ensures only those with X skill gained through Y farming time are worthy of Z item. Hence you can only complain about it not being fair as that does not significantly affect the stability of the playing field. If you take it a step up in quality and consider epics, each faction only offers a few and they may not even match your class or build. Also, how many epics are actually Bind on Equip and can be purchased? The few that are go for $200-$800US a pop, have insanely limited drop rates (ex. .001%) and find it hard to believe they're being bought up all over the place. There just doesn't seem to be enough there to tilt the scales. Think about how the tremendous amount of counterfeit money in the US does not significantly impact the economy. Sure it does to a certain extent but the theoretical money supply is so vast it's a drop in the bucket and other measures are in place (ex. interest rate changes) to keep it in check. The same applies here but I'll spare you the details. At the end of the day if you get pwned by some rich kid who bought his way into his gear then you deserve to die! Really, give me any build in decently clad blues and I'll pwn any purpled out gold buyer (except locks of course.) Besides the Hunter epic bow, Priest staff and a few other quests I've not seen a single task a player is charged with that truly takes any skill whatsoever. Everything in WoW takes one or both of these things: TIME, PEOPLE. You either spend a bunch of time doing something simple or you need to get people to join your party and help with a challenge that tests your collective coordination. I do not buy WoW gold as I make plenty with having one of each class AND profession at my disposal. I do, however, pay people to do my laundry, clean my house and perform other duties not worth my time. That is perfectly ok. Paying someone to write term papers, do my job, etc. is NOT ok and thus made the distinction between GOLD farming and ITEM FARMING, etc.

Re:Specifics please

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of something called a paragraph?

Re:Specifics please

[idesofmarch]

No, he has played so much that his only practice is typing in chat, which does not allow paragraph marks (hitting Enter submits the message).

Re:Time is Money

[Frumply]

There are many MMOs that agree wholeheartedly with you -- games where you can purchase power-ups and equipment from the official store, using real money. With those I don't see a problem -- everyone's entitled to go and spend a few hundred bucks for a nice set of armor, double-speed potions, etc etc etc. Those that do not have the money can spend the extra time w/o experience bonuses or insane stat boosts and pay extra game money for the same armor. So why do it on a game where the rule tells you it's not OK to purchase game items w/ real world currency? It's like playing a game of pickup Ultimate (or soccer or whathaveyou) with a pair of cleats, when the rules are calling for a barefoot game. Sure, you might be able to burn everyone (or play evenly w/ someone else that you'd be no match to otherwise) since you're the only one on the field with any sort of traction, but is that really fun? Having said that though, I guess this is the internet, and any rules that can be broken, will be.

I vote "aye."

[LoyalOpposition]

I'm going to come down on the side of allowing gold farming. For the longest time I looked to see what I wanted, then looked to see what the materials were, then went and farmed for the materials. The problem became apparent to me when I decided I wanted to buy some fire resistance gear. To make it I need to farm motes of fire. The problem is that I'm not well equipped to farm motes of fire. I'm equipped to farm herbs--mana thistle, netherbloom, nightmare vine, etc. That means that it takes me a lot less time to farm the herbs, sell them on the auction house, and then buy the materials, than it would take me to farm the materials directly. Now I go buy the materials, and only go farm them when I get tired picking the thousandth felweed. Buying gold seems to me to be the same thing, but with a real-world component. If I'm going to do what I'm good at and buy stuff from people who are doing what they are good at, then why shouldn't I let others--even when what they are good at is making money in the real world and using that to buy from someone who is good at farming gold.

-Loyal

It's against the rules.. nuff' said

[Anonymous Coward]

The rules say that you can't sell Gold for money. The rules say that you can't buy Gold for money. If you break the rules, you get banned. Argue all you want, but these were the rules set forth to keep the game fair to everyone. People who play more SHOULD have the advantage. It is a game of grinding for glory. Sorry if you don't have the same time as everyone else.. but that doesn't mean you should be allowed to buy your way to victory. Blizzard, for one, seems to think the same way. They put fairness at the forefront of their policy.

I find it a joke that some people think it's alright to break the rules simply because it makes poor people money. Is it alright if a bum on the street is paid to kill some random person he doesn't know? Maybe too extreme... is it alright for him to rob a liquor store so that he can eat?... still too extreme... is it alright for him to steal candy from a rich child in order to eat?

NO.. It's against the rules!

Re:gold farming is all well and good...

[Ezzaral]

Yes, of course, buying gold supports terrorism and makes baby jesus cry. The fact that that even comes out of someone's mouth just galls me.

Re:brought to you by ...

[Copid]

There's also a lot of room to drive your little company under with a short losing streak. There's always a risk/reward trade off, and I doubt that many people who live on $0.30 an hour feel comfortable going the high risk route. You need a certain amount of capital to take on a high-risk investment, even if you know that you'll come out slightly ahead in the long run.

Gold Farming is A-OK with me

[CharAznable]

I support any consensual transaction between two people, as long as it doesn't hurt any third party. Some dude in China is making a living and allowing some lazy rich dude in the USA save himself some boring grinding. I don't see anything wrong with that. If anything, it only means that the game is so poorly made that in order to succeed you need to waste your time doing mindnumbing, soulcrushing repetitive tasks that people are willing to pay not to do. And if you are a MMO player and you think that your enjoyment of a broken, poorly designed game is so important that you want to deny someone the chance to earn a living, then you need to blame the designers for making such a system possible, and yourself for totally buying into it. Myself, I made the choice to not play anymore.

Re:Gold Farming is A-OK with me

[Spy Handler]

But in this case, there IS a third party being hurt... other players who aren't rich and who grind for themselves. I am such a person who is being hurt. (not in WoW but another game called MapleStory).

Professional gold farming causes massive inflation (because so much easy money is being generated by farmers), making things hard for regular folks to buy. And we have to fight over good training spots with these farmers. And usually lose, because these Chinese farmers are real professionals, they have bots (hacks, etc.) which give them a huge advantage, and they have a lot more time to spend on the game than me.

Which is of course why the game publishers' TOS expressly forbids gold farming and selling game currency (and hacks and bots). And these gold farmers are not playing by the rules, pure and simple.

Re:Gold Farming is A-OK with me

[Udderdude]

WoW does not require you to farm gold, unless you're going for really high level content or trying to get an epic flying mount.

There have even been new 'Daily Quests' added that give out tons of gold, so that you can easily make 100g a day just screwing around doing them.

Gold buying is only for the lazy, and the majority of players don't buy gold. They look down on gold buyers, as well.

Torture?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I wonder if we could employ convicts in our jails to do this work. Bleeding hearts would call this a cruel and unusual punishment. Placing a cheep value on human life. What is sad is they do it because it feeds their families better then other opportunities they have. Just what is it exactly we are exporting here anyway.

Gold, Germs and Steel

[K-Man]

This is an old story -- hunter/gatherers displaced by farmers and traders. The hunters always complain, until the farmers introduce them to beer.

I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that there's any inherent unfairness in making it entirely meritocratic and letting people decide how much of their real-life time they're going to invest in advancement.

Given that a gold-farming discussion even needs to be underway, it is obvious that not everyone agrees with the established meritocracy.

There are a large number of people who feel that time invested should be far secondary to skill, and these people have been complaining about this issue for far longer than gold farming has existed.

All posts like yours do is stand up and say "We like our time-investment-based 'meritocracy' and don't want you to mess with it." which, given that the game is as much mine as it is yours is tantamount to saying 'It's my game, so leave me alone."

Unfortunately for you, it's not just your game.

Re:Time is Money

[dbIII]

Fair enough - but make it clear that such a game does have paid advancement so that people like me can avoid it.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[phaunt]

If an individual in China posted his "isellgold.ch" web site (...) I'm sorry, .ch is Switzerland. You mean .cn. (The Swiss are known for their banking...)

Fear of taxes

[dbIII]

Who gets hurt? If it becomes commonly accepted that WoW gold has a certain value in the real world as a tradeable currency then the tax man in dozens of countries will start coming after Blizzard in addition to the possibility of money laundering schemes. That would probably kill off the game and IMHO is the entire reason why these things get clamped down on and Blizzard emphasises that they own all the virtual property.

Give this man a cigar!

[PMBjornerud]

It's much more interesting to focus on the game design instead of only discussing the act of buying versus grinding.

IMO, MMOs are still in their toddler stage. Single-player games also had lots of grind 10 years ago. As the genre matured, repetetive and boring gameplay has largely been removed.

Though there is some deeply rooted satisfaction in repeating activities to gain power in a virtual world. So it may take awhile before someone tried to make a non-repetitive MMO. Not to mention it would be insanely expensive. Repetetive content is obviously much, much cheaper.

If they know what a keyboard is

[hackingbear]

If those farmers know what keyboards are for and mouses can mean something other the rats they are trying to kill with dangerous baits, they likely need not to work in that trashy environment... Even in China, there are more comfortable jobs.

I guess you haven't met real poor and illiterate people before... and just speaking out from your own little virtual world.

Re:brought to you by ...

[Old Wolf]

    why don't they play online poker?
    getting a winrate better than 1.25/hour is trivial.

Rubbish. True numbers are hard to come by but informal reports place it at about 90-95% of online players being money-losers.

Did you start this post just to brag that you're ahead for the month?

Open Trade Window

[George Johnston]

Gold Farmer whispers to you, "water now" You notice there is no gold in the trade window... they want it for free. That is why gold farmers are despised...

Simple

[Lost Engineer]

I'm bored of Oblivion, Halo 3 beta is over, and $15/month is a hell of alot cheaper than a PS3.

Oh wait you were asking why people pay for gold...
Gold farming sucks. The game can be genuinely fun, but no one wants to go around collecting resources or "massacring monks."

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Guzzitza]

Hey buddy, look at your keyboard, look at your LCD, look down at your Nike shoes, you know how you paid a lot for them, I'll tell you a secret.... the poor guy who made them made only $2 a day!!! Shhshh... don't tell anyone, exploitation of workers in poor developing countries will just be our little secret... ; P

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Palmyst]

Hey buddy, look at your keyboard, look at your LCD, look down at your Nike shoes, you know how you paid a lot for them, I'll tell you a secret.... the poor guy who made them made only $2 a day!!! Yes, I understand that. That is why I specifically mentioned the fact that in this case, the whole thing happens on the internet. One would have thought that that would even out the playing field a bit, but I guess not.

I love video games, but...

[merikus]

I've been a gamer for a long time. Started with the original Atari, and bought every console available up until the N64 (I now have a Wii!). I think video games are an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours blowing off steam and having fun.

However, I have a serious problem with the MMORPGs.

When I was in high school, I was very involved with AOL's Rhydin in the FFGF. This wasn't anything like a BBS or modern MMORPG (though it was one in the strictest sense of the word); it was a game played out in chat rooms with an integrate series of conventions and understandings between the players that governed the game. There were no stats, no way to decide who was a higher level that another. The determining factor, ultimately, was the amount of time and energy one invested in the game. If you played a lot--and I did--you became well known. By becoming well known, you gained influence and were invited in to more and more exclusive guilds, and gained higher standing in those guilds. I spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in that game, increasing my standing in the community and ultimately becoming a key member of that community. These few sentences simply do not do justice to the amount of time I spent in that game.

These few sentences also don't do justice to the amount of time and money I wasted in that game. I basically missed my entire high school experience playing. I would come home from school, log on, and not leave the computer until it was time for bed, often staying up well past when I should have just to continue playing. I was part of few clubs, and had few friends. I would do my homework while playing, eat dinner while playing, watch TV while playing. I skipped get-togethers with friends and families, and left early from things I did go to if something was happening online.

I did this for three straight years.

When I went to college, I realized something: all the hard work and energy I put in to that game was for nothing. While it did teach me a little about leadership and responsibility (as I said, I had some significant positions of power in the community), I gained nothing more than that. I missed real experiences, lost friends, and squandered chances to learn and better myself...for what? For some text on a screen; for some logs I had saved of interesting gaming sessions. But all of this was at the expense of my real life. In a sense, my character had consumed me, and I was living more for him than I was for myself.

It was not easy for me to leave the game. As I said, I had serious responsibilities in game. When I decided to leave I tried to make the transition smooth, but there were a number of people very angry at me. But I knew that if I did not leave the game my college experience would have been much like my high school one: real experiences squandered and put off to sit in front of a computer screen and type, type, type.

I realize now that what I had was a serious addiction, and I didn't totally stop playing for years afterward. And that's my problem with these MMORPGs--they hook you, like a drug, and they don't let you go. They set it up so if you want to enjoy yourself at all you need to grind, and when you do grind, you get some sort of reward for it, thus hooking you in to further grinding. It feels wonderful when your character becomes a real contender in the world, but the flip side of that is in order to remain in that position, you need to devote more and more time to it--and less and less time to those things that really matter, like friends, family, and learning. You can be a casual player, but at lower levels the game is repetitive and alienating; it's the higher level characters that have all the fun, and you're reminded of that every time you see a cool new spell or item that you can't use.

Some may disagree with me, and that's cool. I believe in free will and all that jazz. But I know exactly what people who play these games are feeling, and I wish they would realize that there is a real life going on out there that can be infinitely more rewarding than the one on the computer screen in front of them. Because, in the end, by playing MMORPGs you gain nothing; by spending that time in your real life, you can gain a hell of a lot more.

Re:I love video games, but...

[idesofmarch]

You should post that on wowdetox.com instead of here - it is a better audience for it. As it is, without at least an obligatory reference to gold farming, you are completely off topic.

Re:I love video games, but...

[DirtyFly]

Well that is the main reason why buying an account isnt such a scandal. If by then I went to offer you $ 1500 for an account , youd problably accept it añd I just had bought 3 years of your hard work for a very low hourly ratio.

Re:I love video games, but...

[merikus]

Very good point.

So, to amend my post... ...gold farming's bad, m'kay?

Happy? ;)

Re:brought to you by ...

[nixkuroi]

That's just ONE shop. There are probably a hundred of them that all sell to the retailer. 80k for one shop might not be that far from the truth.

Re:Time is Money

[fractoid]

Sadly, there's a large group of people who would love to do exactly that. They'll bring a knife to a fist fight or a gun to a knife fight if they can get away with it. These are the type of people that twink characters for lowbie battlegrounds in WoW, for instance. They can't compete gear- or skill-wise with people at the level cap, so they sink hundreds of gold into setting up a low level character with the absolute best gear and enchants, and basically buy their way into having three times the health and damage of a normally equipped player of that level - and then deliberately avoid leveling up so that they can guarantee they'll have the strongest character on the playing field.

Some people just like to feel big, and if they can't do it by making themselves bigger they'll do it by surrounding themselves with smaller people.

Re:brought to you by ...

[Macthorpe]

brought to you by the thirty cents an hour Bill Gates pays people to post crap like that And you wonder why you keep losing your karma bonus.

You are not buying Gold , you are buying Time

[DirtyFly]

Simple math, you spend 10 hours getting 1000 gold (mind that the numbers are completlly made up), chinese gold farmer spends the same time getting it, doing your job you earn 500 usd in the 10 hours if you are working instead of playing, you pay $50 USD to the chinese for the 1000 gold , you end up with 1000 gold, and 450 usd in real maney.

You can extrapolate to : for 50 usd you can still have your time free to do what you want.

there is NOTHING wrong with gold farming

Re:You are not buying Gold , you are buying Time

[Killjoy_NL]

As a WoW player, I hate the farmers and the bots, they screw up the economy and make playing a lot more difficult than it has to be.

Re:You are not buying Gold , you are buying Time

[Anonymous Coward]

there is NOTHING wrong with gold farming

yes there is :

1) Blizzard forbids it so its against the rules no matter what you say. it is their game after all, you just pay for the privilege of playing it. same things as not going to a movie theater with a camera, really

2) incessant ads are a pain in the ass, or maybe you like to get spam too ?

3) teams bots and chinese farmers ruin some parts of the game when they all go to the same place and farm, preventing you to access the same resource or even completing some parts of the game (quests, necessary objects dropping from some unique monsters)

4) as a result, items prices get bumped forcing you to pay $$$ for gold therefore keeping the farming going on

they should be tortured a few days before being executed, thats all.

Currency value

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Chinese Yuan were allowed to appreciate to world market levels the average Chinese would be 50% richer. Like most asian economies the Chinese consumer is getting screwed because his country manipulates the currency to inflate exports. Powerful consumers are, perhaps, not in the Communist Party's best interest.

The people hurt

[Anonymous Coward]

The people hurt are the ones who log on and all their money and gear are gone because the 'honest chinese gold farmers' have hacked their accounts and stolen everything.

Solving the Gold farmer problem in one easy step

[AP31R0N]

Have servers where players cannot trade between each other. Not all of the servers, just some percentage. Any items in the game must be found as loot or bought from NPC vendors. On such servers, allow players greater flexibility in what they can buy in the shop and what they can make. No trading, no auction house, no mailing money. This way i can't buy imaginary currency with real currency and have the farmer mail it to me. If i have the item i must have either made it, bought it or found it. There would be one remaining cheat; buy someone else's account. i would love to play on such a server. i'd also offer a few servers where characters gain XP, skills and wealth at twice the normal pace so the 12 year olds can bleat about how leet they are in half the time.

Re:Time is Money

[revengebomber]

Some people just like to feel big, and if they can't do it by making themselves bigger they'll do it by surrounding themselves with smaller people. If hanging out with midgets is wrong, then hey I don't wanna be right.

The reason...

[Dobeln]

...is one of competition. If steroids are allowed, anyone who wants to compete in any major sport must use steroids. And of course, it won't stop at steroids - there are many more chemicals out there. Which also means that your talk about "safe, supervised steroid use" will mean silch when the next generation of performance-enhancing drugs roll into town. It is no more illogical to ban steroids in Baseball than to ban stealing cash from the bank in Monopoly - even if neither activity directly harms competing players.

As for the argument about banning weight lifting, it would not only be unenforceable to a much larger degree than banning steroids, unlike steroids, it is a technique that is bounded more firmly, and brings less danger and side effects to the user.

Re:The reason...

[FatSean]

...is one of competition. If steroids are allowed, anyone who wants to compete in any major sport must use steroids. And of course, it won't stop at steroids - there are many more chemicals out there. Which also means that your talk about "safe, supervised steroid use" will mean silch when the next generation of performance-enhancing drugs roll into town. It is no more illogical to ban steroids in Baseball than to ban stealing cash from the bank in Monopoly - even if neither activity directly harms competing players.

As for the argument about banning weight lifting, it would not only be unenforceable to a much larger degree than banning steroids, unlike steroids, it is a technique that is bounded more firmly, and brings less danger and side effects to the user. So we want to preserve competition? Maybe we should institute salary caps? That sounds way more effective than all this hoopla to ban a legal substance being used in a game. I mean, what about supplements and the like? You have the same 'performance enhancing drugs race' when you take standard steroids out of the picture, it's just with un-tested and un-regulated products.

How about an over-arching ruling, instead of picking on one type of substance? It just seems an impossible goal, and it's wasting my tax dollars! Make the MLB Millionaires pay for this arbitration. Blech.

The original poster argued that steroids made people stronger, and that reduced the importance of skill. I don't really think we should stop weightlifting, just pointing out the flaw in his argument. Plenty of people are crippled for life due to weight-lifting issues. Of course you can reduce risk by having spotters at all times and therapy and proper training management to ensure joints and tendons aren't damaged. Of course, steroids are also very safe when used with therapy, proper management and the like.

first and Third worlds...

[jax9999]

I play Runescape. It's not the most advanced game, but its fun and a lot of friends at work play it. so its social. I've been a member since Jan, and I noticed a marked difference. Members worlds are like first world nations, and non members worlds are like third world nations. Its kind of errie how close the analogy is. their are beggers, and noise and bustle on the free servers. If a paying player wants something cheap, some resource, or such they duck over to a free world and exploit the players there then duck back beyhind the gated walls of the member server. While in the members world things that are precious to the free players are almost disregarded. take bows for example. Every general store in the members world is polluted with bows. they are hard to find in the free world.

Eat the rich?

[xPsi]

Many other posters have used some variation of "some rich asshole" as a metaphor for the murky, selfish, shadowy figure in the background buying his way into something he didn't earn, driving this gold farming racket. As a general principle, I can see why this might be a problem. But I take issue with the word "rich" in this context. Let's keep in mind that WoW itself costs something on the order of $12-14 per month, not to mention the first 20-50 bucks you paid for the box itself (plus owing a computer at all, plus having some broadband connection...). In comparison, a one time 100g purchase might cost roughly $20, a relatively small fraction of playing the game for one year and a modest amount of one-time absolute money, even by student Slashdotter standards. So one certainly need not be "rich" to buy into this gold farming thing. One might argue, however, that even having the luxury to play the game at all (measured in dollars and time) might already tag you in fairly privileged class on a worldwide scale.

oh, big gnome deal ...

[freaker_TuC]

I gnome mage just refuse any deals, some people are hectically trying to scream at me *I WANT SOME WATER* while I pretend I am stupid, blind and deaf. Sometimes works like a charm or I make the lowest food I can make and give that; if they complain you tell them to eat whats served or give that warrior some high-level manajuice; he will sure like that in his blood.

For the friendly people I am always open to trade, I say hi, create, give and shake hands ... depends on how someone asks me WATER! or "Can I have some water please?".

Re:Time is Money

[UniCeta]

Wow. Tele-Arena. Quite an old example, let me borrow it for a moment. I believe many are overlooking one powerful gameplay ideal: "realdeath". In Tele-Arena, as well as many muds I played in the 80s and early 90s like "MUME", there were at least some classes who could experience a death to their character that eliminated it from the game, or brought it back down to naked level 1. In MUME, another quality that leveled the playing field was lost of equipment. Even if I am an 80 hour a week player, if I die and my corpse is looted, much of my investment would be lost to others by way of equipment being taken. This is particularly effective in PvP environs. In this new genre of MMORPGS, there is no such thing. There isn't even experience lost for death in WoW, which babifies it enough so as to not discourage subscribers to quit after a fully equipped death. In MUDs and Tele-Arena et al, a really ballsy player would become legendary because of extreme risks and outrageous acts of "heroism". In WoW, there is no real risk, beyond a corpsewalk. I want hardcore worlds, where there is a "real" loss. Unfortunately, because these sites are subscription-based and people are making a lot of money, it doesn't make sense.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Time is Money

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference due to putting people with either less skill, or less interest, in higher positions than they would otherwise occupy.

What about people with less time?

well duh pick up another game, dumb-dumb ?

take a look at another game like chess or even better, go. do you think it is ok to beg your opponent or a computer player to get a few more pawns or a dozen stones just so you can kick his ass and humiliate him faster, err, I mean, finish your game faster ? who cares about your opponent anyway ?

hey bozo, you are sharing those game instances with thousands of other players. respect them by playing fair or just leave it already. if you want to play for your own pleasure only, go pick up a copy of Diablo 2 or Dungeon Siege...

Re:brought to you by ...

[kamapuaa]

why don't they play online poker

Because online gambling sites are on the other side of the Great Firewall of China, and are specifically illegal in the PRC.

pfuh you should see made in orgrimmar...

[freaker_TuC]

you should see the copies made in Orgrimmar (made by slaves in the sewers) or made in Darnassus and you will change your mind immediately my dear traveller!

Curiosity

[Slashdot Parent]

Out of curiosity, what would make a person "rich" in your mind?

Re:Curiosity

[Arterion]

Someone who, because they possess more money, has standard of living is significantly better than than of the standard of living those who have a median income for their location.

For an example: I live in Nashville, TN. There is a town directly south of here named Franklin, and a town a little South East of Nashville called Murfreesboro. Franklin is generally thought of as a "rich" neighborhood, while Murfreesboro is considered "average", or maybe a little above average. A quick look to wikipedia reveals the median income for M'boro is $39,705, while the median income of Franklin was whopping 65% higher $65,605.

These two cities are only about 30-40 miles apart. Both cities, however, are in "middle tennessee". The price of goods and services is approximately the same in both areas. Housing in Franklin is comparably expensive, when you take into account the quality of the property.

I generally consider "rich" anyone who makes six digits a year. While that might seem a low number to a lot of people, it's my opinion that anyone should be able to live very comfortably on less than $100,000 a year. I feel that, generally speaking, most people who make more than that are taking more than their share out of the nation's prosperity.

Interesting

[Slashdot Parent]

I generally consider "rich" anyone who makes six digits a year. While that might seem a low number to a lot of people, it's my opinion that anyone should be able to live very comfortably on less than $100,000 a year.

It might surprise you to know that the median household income for the county that I live in is (you might want to sit down before you read this) ~$90,000/yr. One county over, the median household income is (you'd best stay seated) ~$100,000 per year. Pretty nutty, huh?

It's pretty easy around here to make $100,000 per year and not feel too rich. ;) You'd feel right about average, and well, you'd be right.

I feel that, generally speaking, most people who make more than that are taking more than their share out of the nation's prosperity.

What does that mean?

Re:Interesting

[Arterion]

Well, it depends on the cost of living there. I guess I should have said the six figure bit applied only here in the U.S.A. If the cost of living if proportionately higher, then, no, $100,000 there isn't "rich".

My last comment means basically this: Everyone contributes, in some way, to the economy. (Most) everyone works, and everyone pays bills. Everyone needs the same basic services. What is the virtue by which one person deserves a much higher standard of living than someone else? Is it really fair to say that Person A deserves an order of magnitude more than Person B? I'd rather see the wealth spread around more evenly. I'd like to see people that do a lot of hard work in low-paying jobs have a higher standard of living, and, frankly, see people who don't actually work, but just live off investments have a lower standard of living. The thing is, the wealthy people who live off investments are the ones who decide how much to pay the low paid worker. And those wealthy people are the ones in government who make all the laws. (heh.)

Ideally, the "free market" would take care of this. I think the problem is that employers don't need to compete for employees. It's pretty typical here for someone to worry about being fired, but I've never once seen an employer worried about people leaving their company.

Re:Interesting

[Slashdot Parent]

I guess I should have said the six figure bit applied only here in the U.S.A.

That would have only made me clarify that I do, indeed, live in the USA. I'm about a 10 hour drive from you. But you are right, the cost of living where I am is much higher than in Nashville.

I did some thinking about the median household incomes around here last night, and the more I think of it, the more I can see how it's true that they are really that high. It's pretty standard around here for a non-entry-level job to pay more than $50k. Even many entry level jobs pay that much here (my first job out of college paid $52,000 per year and I progressed quickly from there). There are hardly any single-income households around here, so viola. You're at 100k.

Single income households don't drag us down too much, either. With a few years' experience, it's very doable around here to make $75k-$100k. Also, there are many many attorneys who live here and they tend to make over $100k. Before you ask, neither my wife nor I are attorneys. ;)

What is the virtue by which one person deserves a much higher standard of living than someone else?

Well, that's easy. Some people's work is more valuable than others'. There are many reasons for this. Some jobs require more education and training than others. A doctor needs to go through 11 years of expensive training and zero income post high school. A janitor can learn his trade in 11 minutes. We must pay the doctor more than the janitor, otherwise there would be no doctors. You'd have to be an idiot to waste 11 years of your life studying to become a doctor when you could earn the same amount to feed your family in 11 minutes' training.

Some jobs require more risk, and therefore there should be greater rewards. Do you think I would have started 3 small businesses if I didn't think there would be a reward for that? Heck no! I would have stayed at that first job out of high school. Why should I take huge risks for no reward? There are a lot of reasons why some people earn more money than others. These reasons are usually valid.

I say usually, because I'm sure you'll point out that some people get their jobs not because of talent, but because of family connections. Indeed, I have an uncle who owns a company, and his adult son can't seem to hold down a job. Rather than continuing to just give his son money for nothing, he gave him a 'job'.

You'd probably argue that it's unfair for his son to be given a job that he did not earn himself, and I'd tend to agree with you. However, these cases, while highly visible and controversial, are actually quite rare. Or at least in my observation they are rare.

But my point still remains. Take away the incentive to invest in oneself and you'll find that people won't invest. If I can make the same money as a master electrician as I can doing unskilled carpentry (there is a difference between skilled and unskilled carpentry, to say the least), why would I become a master electrician?

Remove the reward for taking risks, and then why should I start 3 companies? And what about my employees, what would they do? Why should I give up the comforts that I was used to like heat in the winter while getting things off the ground? Well, I wouldn't have. I would have gone to work in nice clothes, punched my timeclock, driven home in a nice car, watched cable TV (yup, that got canceled, too), enjoyed my climate-controlled home, gone out for dinner (HA! that was the first habit out the window when I quit), and just basically lived the yuppie lifestyle.

Instead, I took that risk, my wife and I gave up the comforts that we were accustomed to, I worked more than I had to or wanted to. I did it because I believed that there would be rewards on the other end. So I find it laughable when someone says that I shouldn't make what I earn, if he didn't go through what I went through. Where were you all those cold nigh

Re:Interesting

[Arterion]

Well, that's easy. Some people's work is more valuable than others'. There are many reasons for this. Some jobs require more education and training than others. A doctor needs to go through 11 years of expensive training and zero income post high school. A janitor can learn his trade in 11 minutes. We must pay the doctor more than the janitor, otherwise there would be no doctors.

I'm not sure I agree with this. The reason being, those 11 years the doctor spent in school, learning, the janitor was scrubbing toilets. If I had to choose between eleven years of education, or eleven years of scrubbing toilets, I'd gladly pick the education. But that's not the path for everyone. I think some people enjoy learning, and some people enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.

The other issue with this one is the cost of eleven years of education. My opinion here is that the more educated people we have in the country, the better. The current system of grants and loans -- and this is coming from someone working a full time job to afford going to school full time -- is rather inadequate. The cost of tuition is skyrocketing, and the only solution is more loans. I think in a world with a fairer distribution of wealth, a good college education would be available to anyone, much in the same way a high school education is available to everyone.

So speaking as someone who one day plans to just live off of his investments, as you say, I'd like to remind you that a) if that happens, I believe I've earned it, and b) you (or anyone else) could do it too, if you only wanted to badly enough.

My granny always used to say, "Want in one hand, shit in the other -- see which one fills up first." Wanting something badly doesn't mean you'll get it. There are only so many resources. The economy is a finite thing, and the more one person has, the less someone else has. If this weren't true, everyone would be infinitely wealthy. Regardless of any other factors involved, I can't see how one human being deserves more than another. That could be in this country, or worldwide. Sure, it's idealistic, and some might say unrealistic, but I think it's not too crazy to think every human being should get an equal share of the world's resources, both natural and otherwise.

Re:Interesting

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm not sure I agree with this. The reason being, those 11 years the doctor spent in school, learning, the janitor was scrubbing toilets. If I had to choose between eleven years of education, or eleven years of scrubbing toilets, I'd gladly pick the education.

Totally irrelevant. I'd rather be traveling the world right now, but that's not going to earn me any money. It's not investing in myself.

The aspiring doctor is spending 11 years learning to do something that takes 11 years to learn how to do. That the janitor might rather be attending med school is nice, but totally irrelevant. He is NOT attending med school, so he doesn't get the benefit of having attended med school.

The other issue with this one is the cost of eleven years of education. My opinion here is that the more educated people we have in the country, the better. The current system of grants and loans -- and this is coming from someone working a full time job to afford going to school full time -- is rather inadequate. The cost of tuition is skyrocketing, and the only solution is more loans. I think in a world with a fairer distribution of wealth, a good college education would be available to anyone, much in the same way a high school education is available to everyone.

Well, believe me, I'm not looking forward to paying for my kids' college, so I won't argue with you here. However, again, it is beside the point.

The doctor still went through 11 years of highly specialized training, and the janitor did not. In order to hire a doctor, you need someone who went to med school. Not everyone goes to med school, so that creates scarcity of supply. And bingo, higher prices.

Making med school free doesn't help, either. Time, the ultimate scarce resource, will always limit you. Sure, you can go 11 years to free med school, but can you go to med school and law school and vet school and get a PhD in chemistry and .... See what I mean? People are always going to have different backgrounds and different skills, and yes, different values on those skills.

My granny always used to say, "Want in one hand, shit in the other -- see which one fills up first." Wanting something badly doesn't mean you'll get it. There are only so many resources.

Well, I'm sure your grandmother was a great person, but what kind of an attitude is that? That saying doesn't even make any sense to me. Why are my only choices wanting or defecating?

I agree that the world and the economy are both finite, so you cannot have everything that you want. No one can. But if you pick something realistic, you can achieve it. You may not be able to achieve it faster than you can fill your hand with fecal matter, but you can achieve it.

Regardless of any other factors involved, I can't see how one human being deserves more than another. That could be in this country, or worldwide. Sure, it's idealistic, and some might say unrealistic, but I think it's not too crazy to think every human being should get an equal share of the world's resources, both natural and otherwise.

Obviously no human life could have more value than any other human life. However, some people do produce more value than others. If you want them to continue producing more value to society, then you need to compensate them for it. The free market does this.

The ideal that I ascribe to is that every person should have his or her basic needs met. A society that allows people to starve on the streets is not a just society. However, once each member of society's basic needs are met, then I say let the market decide who gets what.

Re:Internet commerce, but 90% goes to middlemen.

[Chris Mattern]

Because it would be detrimental to the game. Gold selling is against the rules in WoW, and if Blizzard made it legal and sold gold themselves, it would become a rich man's game. Biggest wallet wins. I believe most people in WoW do *not* buy gold, and would be highly offended if Blizzard sold gold themselves and might leave. I know that if Square-Enix started officially selling gold in my MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI, I would quit, and I'd be a long way from the only one. Fortunately, SE is enforcing anti-gil-seller measures even more severely than Blizzard in WoW--they just did another big mass banning of gil-seller accounts.

Chris Mattern