I say let people do what they want with there money and with the game they are paying for. Its up to them at the end of the day. After all they can only buy stuff at there level anyway so all it stops them doing spending a week grinding when they could actully be enjoying the game.

SonOfVoorhees

In-game currency does not cost 500 real world dollars, and some people prefer to not waste a week's worth of time grinding to get an item they want. Those people probably have jobs, kids, a wife that nags them to get off the computer, etc. I think I understand the industry (or some of it anyway).

That being said though, the conditions that these virtual farmers live in to get those people that gold is appalling and shouldn't be supported. Not to mention, anybody that buys gold and therefore items that give them a competitive advantage instantly lose my respect, no matter what the circumstances.

Talleyrand

@moe84:

The whole point of the people buying the gold, is so they don't have to "farm", or 'grind' or whatever with their time. Instead, they can be working a job that pays them money, and then use that money for some fake internet currency.

I played WoW a long time ago, and I thought back then, and still think now that buying gold is stupid. But I also think that having to "farm" or 'grind' for in-game currency is also stupid.

Also, instead of buying that MMO gold, why don't people use their money to fund a real-world cause, cause if you got money to burn on MMO currency, then you are one sad motherfucker.

RTW

Considering this was an issue back when I was playing UO (albeit with ebay and not more organized fronts) I'd say this is an issue we're not gonna be rid of any time soon.

Nobuyuki

"I traffic drugs"

"I traffic people"

"I traffic organs!"

"I traffic MMO gold"
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

MasterOfPastures

lol "buying" gold in any game, for real life currency. So you can have that certain item, mount or w/e is just ridiculous.
At least from a WoW prospective, wait a week, farm during that week the amount needed. And buy what you want that way. Save your self 500 dollars.

moe84

RMT, Gold Farming, whatever you want to call it, is not a problem. The problem is the broken games. With the exception of farmers who use cheats to obtain their currency (surely, this is done rather often I admit) there should be no complaints from other players about the behavior. Let me explain:

A game like an MMO is a world of rules. There is nothing you can do in this world that is not governed by some kind of rule or another, that is a simple fact of software. If someone can do something in this world that negatively impacts the game as a whole, whether it be griefing, exploits, or RMT, it is a flaw in the game's design.

The other side of the story is that with too many rules, a game is less fun for many people. Some people thrive on rules, the more the better, as that gives them a straighter path to follow or a bigger challenge to exploit. The fact of the matter here is, though, that any of these MMO's could stop any negative influence of gold farmers. If it's economy impact, they can set rules (wow already has some in place with the binding system) that reduce or eliminate its impact.

So the moral of the story is, as long as the farmers aren't cheating, they are simply playing the game, within its well defined rules. They can't have any more impact on the game than the game allows. They aren't doing anything any other person couldn't do freely of their own will. The only difference is that they have an outside motivation. That shouldn't matter. If it matters, if the game is designed to work only if humans act in an expected way, then the game is broken.

At the end of the day you really need to evaluate why this subject works you up. Is it jealousy? You're angry that someone beat you in a PvP tournament because they paid to get their equipment and you "worked" for 1000 hours to get your? Think about how pathetic that is for a second: 1) It's a game, a game should not require work unless that action is enjoyable and satisfying to you. 2) The game is broken if its PvP system depends so much on grinding for equipment, the best competitive games require nothing but skill from the opponents (See: Chess) 3) Winning because you spent the most money or time in a game is not skill or even anything worth being proud of, you're both douches in this case.

If you can't have fun with a game without requiring every other participant had put out as much wasted time as you then you should find another game. At the end of the day, it's just a game.

cybereal

Divine?

-MoarPlz-

Gold farming will always be around as long as their are lazy lazy mofos who refuse to farm to earn the gold they want.

As for people claiming it's alright, no, no it's not. Farming is a time sink that's in every single MMORPG known to man. If you don't like farming in order to get your stuff then play a offline MMO, supporting RMT's effects everyone who has no issues with spending a few hours every few days to bring in income.

The only MMO that will beat the goldfarmers is one with uses no gold or money system what so ever.

Foxstar Sixtail

The real problem with "gold farming" is the amount of companies who don't farm, but hack accounts and launder gold from them.

iwanttobeasleep

"The only MMO that will beat the goldfarmers is one with uses no gold or money system what so ever."

@Foxstar Sixtail: Or implements its own legitimate currency buying system, with prices such that gold farming is no longer profitable. Or, as in Blizzard's case, make gold rather trivial.

Besides the qualms about underpaid gold farmers in third world countries (see aside), I don't see the problem with buying gold for a game like WoW.

Gold in WoW gives you a negligible competitive advantage at best. The most powerful gear cannot be purchased through gold. At best, purchased gold allows you to gain quicker access to a mount and easy access to consumables. Perhaps the same cannot be said of other MMOs. But for WoW? Who cares.

(Aside: If you do genuinely care for the working conditions of gold farmers, who have only to sit in front of a computer to earn their probably rather meager income, I seriously hope that you're not wearing any clothing or using products produced in third world countries. You do realize that the working conditions involved in creating much of the clothing for first world countries are far, far worse than what's put upon gold farmers, yes?)

SmilingPolitely

RMT, unlike gold farming, is built into the system. The game is designed (hopefully well) to accommodate them.

Gold farming, however, breaks the game and often destroys the economy, making normal trading in game nearly impossible, and causing insane inflation that hurts players who refuse to pay real world cash for their items (and, upon joining the world, did not believe they would have to). Then there's the harassment caused by them, to the point that in some games (such as Lineage 2), it is significantly more difficult to acquire certain gear, because the gold farmers are monopolizing the source.

verrius

Silkroad Online has gotten so bad with gold bots, the servers are constantly crowded with bots, and you have no chance of logging in unless it's a small 2 hour timeframe late at night. It's just ridiculous. Doesn't really help that SRO has no customer service.

JoRo1986

And before everyone screams "You ruined my economy, you pinko commie chinese-gold-farmer-lover", I call bollocks. Buying a few hundred gold three or four times in three or four years just isn't a game balance issue.

I'll put a hand up and say that I think buying gold ought to be a core feature in these games. Think of it as a nice counterbalance to all the bloody 13 year olds with way too much time on their hands.

gblock

I've bought gold on many more than one occasion.

- Big raid later that day, but no time to scavenge for pots or grind.
- Kitting out through the first levels; sure, I could try and keep stockpiles of stuff around for the inevitable alts, but bank management is enough of a pain in the arse. Easiest to just buy gold and hit the auction house.
- Hard-to-find or pain-in-the-arse-to-gather mats...

I trade money for time all the time in my daily life. If I can't use money to buy off grind time, what the hell is money for?

It's not like I'm missing out on a deep and meaningful experience by not killing that 1,000,000 murlocs.

gblock

i bought gold when I first started playing WOW. A couple hundred gold got me a mount, guild, gear and outfitted the half a dozen other people i got started with some funds to get started. All in all, id say it was money well spent :)

crackkills

@iwanttobeasleep:

people should be paying more attention to what you said. Keyloggers, account hacking, guild bank looting by outsiders are all funded by gold-buyers.

Xorrel

If you cant beat them, legalize them

Gorman

I've bought gold in the past simply due to time. As others have mentioned it was worth it to save time, get in game junk such as mounts, so I could navigate the game easier.

Just like when my friend buys weed or coke, and that cash funnels back to some cartel that sets people on fire or caps DEA agents on the border... I know my purchase goes to some "communist" regime in China that only serves to keep things status quo.

OH WELL.

rainmkr

in all honestly you cannot trust the prices of the gold via their website, gold farmer companies have committed so much fraudulent bullshit its impossible to get a good sense of what efforts are working and what efforts are not. if you really want to know what effect preventative measures look at the spam in game, look at the numbers of hacks, stolen accounts and the like as the farmers get desperate to try and regain lost ground.

Also the last time you purchased gold did they offer you more if you waited? this typically means they are running low on stock but don't want to lose their income or possible sale.

the truth is until the public stop purchasing the gold this is never going to go away. just like drugs.

dechire

@Xorrel:

That statement is about as flimsy as the "buying pot supports terrorism" argument. Buying gold isn't a crime, it's a stress reliever. Besides WoW makes it ridiculously easy to get money now anyway.

Sesmu

@rainmkr: MAybe you should start doing coke. A lot of it. Like...too much at once. See where this is going?

Hiroken

Anybody who says "well they do it so they don't have to grind" shouldn't be playing the fucking game if they don't have time to PLAY it. End of story.

I play FFXI and am a 6th grade teacher. I have NO time, but I STILL make my own goddamn gil.

Hiroken

I think it would also depend on what game you're looking at ... different companies take far different measures to get farmers out of their system.

Unfortunately gold farmers are the seedy underbelly of any online game. Similarly the black market for goods in the real world will never be fully eradicated. There's a portion of the population who has no problem dealing with them; there's a portion of the population who has no idea they exist; and there's a portion of the population that would rather not deal with them.

Also... the prices for Guild Wars are a little misleading in the article-- they list them per 50,000 gold, but the starting increment is 100,000 in any shop you'd buy from.

Volturi

@Spiderbait: They could also reduce the need for grinding, which would give the farmers less of a market.

eastx

This problem isn't going to go away for the simple reasons that we have been taught that we can buy what we need from someone else. I'm not talking in the "The corporations are all making us consumer-whores, slaves to their products so they can control us!" I'm talking in the age old way of bartering, which I happen to think is the more civilized part of humanities problem solving capabilities with the other of course being simply stealing the stuff from your neighbors. Bartering has been around probably as long as human civilization and it simply means that one individual will exchange something the latter individual wants from something that the first mentioned wants, in this case money-gold.

The only way that they could shut down the gold farmers is if they made their own gold farming business (which I completely support).

Remember, one of the reasons Rome managed to become so large, great and successful is that they tolerated most things like different religions and prostitution, they just taxed it.

Spiderbait

RMT is always going to be a problem with a game genre that has a fatal flaw of making someone do something unfun, to do something fun.

MMO's have two options

a) Make the grinding fun
b) Reduce grinding

Otherwise- same thing will happen in every game.

arstal

I'd love to see some backup on the claim that

"Keyloggers, account hacking, guild bank looting by outsiders are all funded by gold-buyers."

Keyloggers != gold farmers.
Account hacking != gold farmers.
Guild bank looting != gold farmers.

Why the hell do we have to demonize the gold farmers? What is it with us that makes us do this? I don't want to buy stolen gold, and I don't particularly like paying for someone to hack people's accounts - but what, exactly, is so evil about being a gold farmer that we have to talk about them like they're subhuman grunts without souls and compare them to common criminals?

And where *is* the love.

gblock

@SonOfVoorhees:

That would only be valid if you were playing a single player game. Your actions in an MMO affect the gameplay experience of those around you, especially when buying gold.

Look at it this way; just because you buy a ticket for a movie doesn't mean you have the right to yell and boo loudly. Likewise just because you pay a monthly or hourly fee (as do the Chinese in WoW) doesn't mean you have the right to help unbalance the economy and circumvent game mechanics (higher level gear is balanced by the inherent amount of in-game work required to attain them, no work = no balance).

Or you can think of it in another game genre. Say you paid for CoD4 and so did some other guy. The other guy however copied some files and presto, he's now gunning you down with a .50 cal and you're shooting back with an M16. Both of you have only been playing for a day or two. He's circumventing game mechanics as are gold buyers.

You're playing with other people. Play by the rules or find another game with rules more suited to you.

cowondinosaur

@cybereal: Okay, so based on what your saying, the desire that some lazy people have to purchase fake currency from some sweatshop in china is a flaw in the games design? Not every game can cater to the need of every player, in fact find me one in the next 90 years that does this and i'll be amazed. That said, making any in game currency easier to obtain completely destroys the possibility of a stable in game economy, thus taking a large portion of the game away. And its no flaw of the game itself, its more like a flaw of human nature.

Now, another point I have to make, is that these companies dont just get this gold by using some farm bot for hours and hours and hours. A LOT of this in game currency tends to come from accounts that get keylogged. Ever hear of a buddy in wow getting all his stuff sold, and maybe his character transferred, then used to farm more gold? It happens more than you'd think. And its EXACTLY why this can be a much bigger issue than most people take time to think about.

uppitycracker

Why should people have to spend hours working in-game to earn something that's considered "fake" currency? As others like to label it.

It's all a perception of value when it comes to MMO currency.

I had experiences wih RMT when I played, I just dealt with it and moved on. I learned a long time ago gold farming will never end so why dwell on it?

Ultimately, you can't tell people how to spend THEIR money. Would you like it if random people on the net start telling you what to do with your money?

UmeShoryu

@UmeShoryu: That's like saying that we can't tell people not to buy illegal drugs or human slaves. You're totally overlooking the effects of gold-farming on the game world's economy and balance.

eastx

simple fix for this:

introduce an official system for exchanging real money for game money.

job done. its regulated so no scamming. goldfarmers and their excesses are out of business instantly, or marginalised and easy to bust as are their customers.

theres nothing inherently wrong with the concept of buying game currency. its an exact analogue for real currency - it represents the time you invested making it with your labour, which you exchange for other goods and services made with other peoples to save you, for example, having to farm your food, build a car, wrangle your own internet connection from the telecoms. you may not have the time or just not the inclination to spend TIME making game currency so you pay real money to get it provided to you. mmo's are not like other games. theres a temporal element. it takes time to get stuff and all the while other people are getting it alongside you and may want you to get it etc.

the problem - the problem that is, not the whining of teenagers with too much time who dont like seeing other people unable to invest 16 hours a day owing to having lives and jobs having as much game currency as themselves - the problem is the farmers and the effect their presence has.

its not their fault though, theyre just providing a service for which people will pay. so the answer is to take that opportunity away from them, legalise it. gold buyers money goes straight to the developer, farmers no longer have a market, scamming doesnt happen.

the whining teenagers wont like it, theyd like it if everyone was forced to invest the time because they feel like tools for wasting their lives on it otherwise. hardly a realistic approach though, unless you want to rethink the entire mmo item-currency model, perhaps into some sort of communist principle where youre simply handed the tools needed for the next fight at the door into it, then theyre taken away when you exit, while everyone walks around in coal sacks.

ps. eve online, which i play, regulates currency buying. if you want game currency you buy a game time code with real money from an official retailer (who just resell them from the developers all at the same price) and then sell it via official mechanisms to players ingame, for game currency. the seller receives game currency, the buyer receives a game time code they use to play for another 1-3 months, and the real money goes to the game developers.

it balances things out, since via this method those teenagers who play all day can actually finance their subscription fee entirely with the currency they make ingame by buying game time codes. their time becomes game currency, which is effectively bought by those with real currency - which represents their time at their job - so that they dont have to spend the time the teenagers do making game currency. perfectly fair and it lets everyone convert what they have into what they dont have.

red

@SmilingPolitely:

Regarding you're aside, just because it's the lesser of two evil's doesn't make it any less evil. However, it is a very complicated issue. On one hand, the meager income that people in third world countries make are neccessary sustanance for them and their families. While their work conditions are by no means great conditions, they need the money which as we know, isn't going to be coming in any other way. Yet on the other hand, it is easy for us to say that it's okay, it's alright, when we live in a world surrounded by our over consumerist culture, where we can lavishly spend money for non-existent materials and things (WOW gold) without thinking about where else our money could have gone. Maybe all we need is a little perspective. Maybe when we realize the conditions that people live in and grow up in, in countries far and away from us, maybe then we might consider how our $5 could have gone to someone that really needs it as oppose to our orcs and our mages and what have you. I know I must sound like I'm standing up high on a pedestal but I'm really not. While I don't play MMORPGs or anything that I have to pay to stay online, I do think that it is an important issue that we can address as gamers together.

NeVeRMoRe666

@eastx: No it's nothing like that at all. You're citing the most extreme examples of life and comparing it to MMOs.

I see buying gold closer to paying for DLC. Company A offers new maps/weapons/levels, etc but you gotta pay another $10 before you're allowed to use it. Sounds familiar right? People who pay for DLC encourages developers to release half-finished games then nickel and dime you with minor updates. When in reality you should have already been provided with all features without having to pay an additional X number of dollars. I paid $50 for a full game, not 50 + 10 + 10 + 10.

Lets take a look at Soul Calibur 4, Yoda and Vader are console exclusive characters. However you can bet Namco, if they haven't already decided to do so, will be charging you money to download the other character down the road. Why? Both of their models, moves, animation, everything is done so why not just put both in the game? Because Namco knows people are willing to pay for the download. If people refused to pay, then both would've been included upfront.

With that said I now propose the question. Who here sees the value in paying for DLC? Some people don't, they already paid for a full game (or what should be a full game). But on the other hand, many others do and will gladly pay extra if it means they get to play with more songs in GH3 or whatever. And to those who don't see the value, what right do you have to tell people how to spend their money and what they should be allowed to pay/download?

This is the same as telling people they shouldn't be buying gold just because you don't see the value of the in-game currency. And yes, like how paying for DLC encourages more half-assed releases buying gold encourages more gold farming, but like I wrote earlier it was a cycle I knew would never end so I didn't let it bother me.

I've also heard your other point before many times. How RMT messes with the economy and drives up prices due to more money being in the system. I played FFXI (albeit several years ago) and experienced it firsthand. Equipment selling for double the amount it sold for 6 months earlier. However, the inflation affects every single item in the game. Items you farmed and used to sell for 10K a pop were now worth 20K or more. The difficulty of obtaining items through purchase did not change for me, nor did it change for the people I knew and played the game with. Actually, I noticed that the people who complained the most were the "lazy" ones who wanted the fastest way to obtain equipment but couldn't afford to buy the gold themselves. I didn't have a single problem with the game balance or whatever else people say RMT might affect.

One other thing I want to add, people love to talk about taking the high-road and how they'll never involve themselves with RMT but if someone offered a thousand dollars for your maxed-out high-level character would you refuse? How about ten thousand? 1 million? Everyone has a price.

@red: I thought most Korean MMOGs already used this sort of system. I've played a few games where you can purchase so called "Premium Items". Normally, the company offers a free subscription but charge you for in-game items.

UmeShoryu

If you pay real money to obtain a vanity item by means of RMT then you, the player, are broken.

The sentence are microtransactions which enable publishers to sell vanity items directly and take over the market.

-----------------

If you pay real money to circumvent a grind that is boring and stops you from advancing in the game, then the game is broken.

You are sentenced to having your account banned or choose between stopping to play or continue being stuck in grinds that extend the playtime into infinity and so you keep paying the subscription.

Asbestos_Underwear

aside from all the morality... The article is very far away from accurate. The author assumes constant demand, but as an example the amount of warcraft players exploded after Christmas.

There are too many hidden variables for this brief analysis to be anywhere near definitive.

SorenKier

@NeVeRMoRe666: I agree with you. As for my post, I was merely pointing out the potential irony of someone decked out in [insert brand name here] gear lamenting the working conditions of gold farmers.

SmilingPolitely

Also, what if you give a low level team mate a load of gold? Isnt that the same thing? He didnt buy it from a gold farmer but he still has a load of gold at a very low level. Would that still be considered ok?

SonOfVoorhees

What I find amusing is Google'ing "Age of Conan Gold". A game that is not even out yet, but the secondary market has already found a mean price point for selling their wares.

Power-leveling services, Gold sales, leveling guides. Its all there, for something that isnt even available yet.

Now if I was Funcom's legal team, I would be absloutely livid seeing that. A simple cease and dissit letter is even enough based on Copyright violation alone.

What will they do in reality? Probably nothing at all. Instead they will spend 10 fold the cost of those legal fees into playing catch up trying to circumvent the gold selling problem development wise.

How sad.

Patient

...Do people who buy gold have any life what so ever? I mean really, I understand they want to play the game but are they really that lazy that they cannot make it on their own?

CreativeCat89

Its insanity that idiots actually spend their real cash for fake game gold.

If this insanity is ever gonna stop Blizz is gonna have to create and easier, quicker and more fun way to earn gold in game or else these lazy, obsessed wowers will never stop spending their cash on game cash.

I know quite a few wow players and they are of the obsessed kind. Its sad really and alot of these ppl need to stop thinking about their next great WOW mount and maybe need to try and mount someone of the opposite sex in REAL LIFE.

KRUZ8ER

@Sesmu:

That's a completely bogus comparrison the reason to sell pot is to make money. The connection that's flimsy in the arguement is whether of not that money goes to terrorism. If the arguement was, people grow pot because they can sell it and therefore pot growers are funded by pot-users then then they would have an obvious and correct connection. It's falls apart when they define pot-growers as "terrorists".

Keyloggers, account hacks etcetera are feared for getting on to accounts and stealing all the gold. Without people to buy it there's no reason to steal gold. I didn't say "everyone who buys gold is buying stolen property" or "everyone who buys gold is supporting the killing of PCs in battlegrounds by people with ubber gear" those would be incorrect. What I said was people who steal gold are funded by people who buy gold, that's basic supply and demand at work.

Xorrel

@SmilingPolitely:

lol..I know what you mean. The world is full of hypocrites.

NeVeRMoRe666