Farming Article

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815

just sick. its sad that just it always gets down to pure greed...

Yeah, seen it elsewhere. The dude buys a 1.5mil house from his galaxies earnings :O

It's sad and very lame, but hey people do anything to make money and with it being relatively easy to do you can expect more and more people to do it. :(

wow, thats a side of gaming and MMORPGS that i never expected...

thats farked...

So let's recap:

1. People who can't be arsed playing WoW for 15 hours a day can get some parity with addicts for a few bucks.
2. Some of those hard-currency bucks go to developing countries to pay addicts who previously would either have even worse jobs.
3. Some guy somewhere buys a nice house into the bargain.

Explain again what's wrong with this picture.

It sounded bad until the articles conclusion that the people dont mind their jobs, and they have pretty good conditions. Just the pay sux, but that's put down to a completely different economy.

Personally apart from being gay and annoying, it's not as bad as it sounds.

Well it ruins the game's economy, and makes it pointless to even try, when you can buy it for free. It ruins the game for everyone else, and is hugely unfair. That's what's wrong with it.

Quote from uber tard:
Well it ruins the game's economy, and makes it pointless to even try, when you can buy it for free. It ruins the game for everyone else, and is hugely unfair. That's what's wrong with it.

This is not really a soluble problem for so long as new gold is being created by the server. Until the money supply is fixed, you'll see problems.

As I pointed out, some people work long, well-paying hours. Maybe when they come to play for an hour or two they don't want to be completely trounced by Centrelink regulars who play all day, every day. So they use their hard-earneds to even things up.

This will not, I grant you, represent the entire gamut of people who purchase gold etc outside the game. Some people prove Gabriel's Greater Theorem of Internet ****wards by their existence. But for a lot of people it may be fair and reasonable for them to spend more money to enjoy their fewer hours more.

That's what trade is, by the way. People swapping things for something else they desire more highly.

Haha, i'm not going to get into a debate about the economics of online games, but without gold selling, most mmorpgs manage to keep the economy fairly stable, with highly desirable items costing alot, and less desirable items costing less, good ole supply and demand. With retarded gold farming accounts, (these accounts are active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week farming gold), the money supply just goes up and up. Inflation is rampant and before long all the desirable items cost megamillions. So that leaves the people who don't buy gold at a huge disadvantage. That is the reason why most mmorpgs have banned it. Because it screws people over. People who can only play a few hours a day should just have to accept, like i do, that there are losers who play wow rather than have a real life. It's a sad fact but at least they are playing within the rules, and don't screw people over like gold farmers/buyers.

i tell you whats wrong with it el hero.

its a game...that was made to have fun, now people are making a living out of it and breaking laws to find more money and exploits...its sad to see, game is a game, business is business, but like i said, greedy little turds try and scam anything they can.

:| .. Got low!! u cant get any lower than that

Well, its impossible to farm for Guildwars. i did it for UO tho and shadowbane quite easily when i wasnt playing, I have no troubles in my mind for running a bot/macro to do shit that is anouying to do, like collect gold.
For guild wars, anet made it harder by not making a keyboard command to "pickup object". Ive read you can run a memory address searcher to find gold, but it cannot determine objects, because the memory address' change each time, even if your inthe same zone.

But i dont sell the gold on ebay, i just use it to make my gaming easier.

Quote from HeReTiC:
i tell you whats wrong with it el hero.

its a game...that was made to have fun, now people are making a living out of it and breaking laws to find more money and exploits...its sad to see, game is a game, business is business, but like i said, greedy little turds try and scam anything they can.

1. What law - precisely - has been broken?
2. How is The Grind meant to be fun?

the end result is if people are willing to pay. there will always be someone willing to sell.

i think it breaks copy right laws, as money is being made off the game and the game creators are not getting there share. Not exactly sure.

I don't think it's a copyright issue.

I think it's more of that Blizzard own everything in the game. That includes gold and other items you find in the game. I dont think Blizzard is happy about people selling Blizzard's property.

The same I suspect is for other MMOs out there.

Quote from DVD:
I don't think it's a copyright issue.

I think it's more of that Blizzard own everything in the game. That includes gold and other items you find in the game. I dont think Blizzard is happy about people selling Blizzard's property.

The same I suspect is for other MMOs out there.

You'd have a tough case to argue that there is any property to be "owned". There's no actual gold, it's just a number attached to a character reference. That's all there is - the problem thereby arising, how can property rights arise in a purely virtual number?

These people probably must answer to a contract dispute. There's problem a terms of service document which forbids this sort of thing. In which case Blizzard have every right to stop the trade, or try to by suing folk for breach of contract.

Wasn't there something about this brought up when that guy murdered some other guy in china over a mmo? Something about people having rights to virtual property or somesuch.. can't really remember.

Either way prez, its against the game rules. I would suspect its in the user contract thingy you have to agree to every patch. Bliz says its wrong and you will be banned for it. Because it ****s everyone around plain and simple. See my earlier post.

1. Quote from "Blizzard":

Selling of Items:
Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were "licensed" the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was "limited"? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale, gift or trade in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft.

Ownership:
All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to World of Warcraft (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, "applets" incorporated into World of Warcraft, transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games played on World of Warcraft, and the World of Warcraft client and server software) are owned by Blizzard Entertainment or its licensors. World of Warcraft is protected by the copyright laws of the United States, international copyright treaties and conventions, and other laws. All rights are reserved. World of Warcraft may contain certain licensed materials, and Blizzard Entertainment's licensors may protect their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.

As far as i can get from that, is that they own EVERYTHING and reserve the right to protect it with the means of the law. but obviously you cant take 6000 people to court, its just not that easy. but nevertheless, selling someone elses property is illegal. These kinds of statements are in all games. wow just happend to be the easiest to bring up.

And its real life property now, just because it has no physical form, does not mean its not real. an aussie guy paid almost $20,000 for land in a game. cant remember which one, but he actually owned an island on the offical servers that he could do anything he liked to it. it was an mmo, but some low level one.

2. i really couldn't care less what you think about the game, it is a game wether you like it or not, and they are fun to the people that play them. the "grind" is enjoyed by most. one being me.

Its really a double-edged blade.
There is obviously HUGE demand for it, yet it hurts the game at teh same time.
El Pres, you should understand what pumping unregulated money into an economy can do, wether it be virtual or real :)

You really do have to hand it to them though, these guys are making alot of money, from items that have no physical existence. Its pretty clever really. Its just a shame that there are real people getting exploited to do it.
But then when you think about it, what might they be doing if they werent playing games? Being exploited by a multi-national to make a pair of sneakers?

Lesser of two evils.

That said, I have bought IGE gold in the past.

Quote from El Presidente:
2. How is The Grind meant to be fun?

The level and xp grind IS fun to some people. Granted, not JUSt the grind, but it goes hand in hand with other aspects of the game. Just look at LineageII, it has a massive grind (IMO), yet its still pretty fun to play.
Just ask Coco, mofo loves that game :)
The grind isnt put in place to encourage people to buy their way around it.

However....i am a firm believer that NCSoft owns IGE.

A guy paid "600 for a weapon on our server recently.

His clan leader promptly scammed the weapon off him and kicked him out of the clan.

Quote " No ****ing way that weapon is leaving my clan"
Some very interesting legal ramifications have arisen because of it.

I think the crux of the matter is do you OWN the time you took to play your character.

Verant and some of the anti-ebay MMO groups cannot defeat this as it stands legally.

Perhaps an example would be stealing El Pres University code and then using it or selling it.
It's all virtual bits of code right? 1's and 0's.

Why is the time taken to write a bit of code treated differently?
Your not inventing anything or doing anything that hasn't been done before.

Even Yoda would have a hard time trying to sort this out

Quote:
coco - A guy paid "600 for a weapon on our server recently.

His clan leader promptly scammed the weapon off him and kicked him out of the clan.

Quote " No ****ing way that weapon is leaving my clan"
Some very interesting legal ramifications have arisen because of it.
pwned

Quote from Milenko:
El Pres, you should understand what pumping unregulated money into an economy can do, wether it be virtual or real :)

I surely do, although Blizzard do, as I understand it, delete gold which is paid to NPC merchants. It's a crude way of controlling the money supply, especially since it can't keep pace with gold created by professional farmers unless NPC merchants raise their prices - in which case, you've got inflation anyhow.

The only answer would be a fixed money supply. A fixed amount of gold per server. This raises other problems because there's no depth to virtual economies. Very little in the way of production takes place compared to the amount of merchandise in circulation, there's very little separation of labour etc etc.

As for problems of virtual property, I do find it fascinating and some items can be owned. My point is that server gold, such as it is, is a statistic attached to a player - an abstract heaped on a virtual. I am particularly fond of private property, but my feeling is that players cannot "own" the "gold", but rather that they have a contractual relationship with Blizzard which allows them to access the server. It's the contract which creates a framework like property, though legally, no property relationship exists between the human and the gold held by their character.

In short: contractual rights, yes. Property rights, no. Barring a look at relevant caselaw I think this is the argument that would stick.

Translated: I'm out of my depth in this argument because I have no first hand experience....so let me blind you with legalistic nonsense :)

Sorry bud but you don't seem to have much of a clue how MMO economies operate :)

To sum up

player: doop de doo grindy grindy

chinesey: you bye gold? "00 get 1000G = [Arcanite Reaper] + [Magic Pants] + [Wang]

player: oh hurrah an end to the grind

------ 6 months later and 100 Billion Gold injected into the economy later -------

player2 doesn't ebay gold

player2: doop dee doo grindy grindy

player2: I need to purchase me a weapon of more significant stature

player2: I shall buy a [Sword]

auction house: GIMME 1000G

player2: I cannot afford that as it is beyond my non-ebaying means

player2: My economy noooooooooooooo!!!

DON'T BUY EBAY GOLD KIDS

Harb is right on the money. haha get it, money... gold... wang... oh dear.
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but seriously, harb is right.

I don't care about player 2 tho.

1000 gold is already the going rate on several items, the people stupid enough to buy gold from ebay, which all moral/legal/whatever arguments aside, blizzard said they will not have and will permaban anyone caught, so they run a huge risk for the sake of some grinding. Yes grinding is boiring as ****, Im doing it myself currently to get aroun 1000g for some gear, but I want it bad enough, so Im dealing with it.

I cant even save 500g :S
I dont know how people ever save 1000g.
Mind you, i havent seen any epics drop for me :(

The overtones seem to indicate, money is simply increasingly pumped into a MMO's economy, and even more so with farmers involved, with no checks or balances.
The creators realise this problem and implement ideas to ease this effect of money accumulation, however the farmers still accelerate the accumulation of wealth as a whole on the server.

Most MMO's however have these little things called 'money sinks'(and 'time sinks'). For example in L2, theres a chance your weapon(or armor) is destroyed when you overenchant(beyond +3), however overenchanting gives your weapon different shades of glowing effects depending how high you get. Now of course all the little kiddies want glowing weapons so guess what? Weapons get destroyed left, right and centre. On top of this there are many other things, porting costs(to get around the lands), soulshots(increase your damage when you use*cough*every swing*cough*), heal pots, materials to craft and many others. You would be surprised how well some MMO's can siphen money out of the game, and reduce the pressures of inflation.

Coco, I actively avoid playing MMORPGs because my friends play them like they're chugging on crack pipes. I don't have time for it. So I'm an outside commentator, and since all my friends spend a substantial portion of their time talking about (currently) WoW, I pick up stuff here and there. I also ask a lot of questions. I find the economics interesting.

Quote from Frenzy:
The overtones seem to indicate, money is simply increasingly pumped into a MMO's economy, and even more so with farmers involved, with no checks or balances.
The creators realise this problem and implement ideas to ease this effect of money accumulation, however the farmers still accelerate the accumulation of wealth as a whole on the server.

Well the problem is that strictly, money does not equate to wealth. It never has. If it did, we could all become tremendously wealthy if only the government would speed up money production.

Quote:
Most MMO's however have these little things called 'money sinks'(and 'time sinks').

So I'm told. As Coco points out, I'm not a player. But to me it seems that if the money supply goes up by X, then to keep inflation under control, money sinks must try to remove X. How is this done? There can only be three ways:

1. More places to spend on attractive items, possibly upsetting game balance.
2. Higher prices for items etc at money sinks - all the ill effects of inflation occur anyhow, or
3. Simply take player gold away. Good luck keeping them after that.

My point is that even in artificial economies, economic rules still apply. The problem is that a virtual economy is not very complete, so distortions and unpredictable unpleasantness is bound to occur. Not a soluble problem, until something resembling a more realistic economy is created - fat chance, given that nobody else has done it.

That's very interesting... no really it is, i'm not being sarcastic, i like economics, i'm doing it @ uni ^_^ but prez it's completely irrelevent. Gold farming ****s players around. you're saying artificial economies don't function as well as realistic ones, well fine. it's ok. they function a whole f*cking lot worse when gold farmers and little shits with nothing better to spend their money on than an mmo get involved.

So gold farming ****s up the economies by increasing the rate of inflation yeah? Some level of inflation is bound to happen because of the level cap and max level characters having nothing to spend their money on.

Couldnt designers of MMO's factor gold farming into their economies somehow? Ive got no idea how they would do this though. I suppose they could have a closed system as El Pre was saying, and increase the amount of money per player on the realm but it doesnt really seem feasible due to inactive accoutns and the like.

Could you build an MMO without an economy in the first place?

Or should people stop farming and ****ing it up for the rest of us? Although I have noticed on WoW that because of the huge player base, the farming isnt having a great effect on my gameplay enjoyment, and the increasing inflation has contributed to me being able to sell resources for a lot more and therefore buy my lvl 40 mount much quicker than anticipated (with my current character :).

I don't really think you should be comparing a MMO economy to real world economies.

In MMO's there are no world banks, there are no organisations setting interest rates, hell there are no interest rates. There are none of these numerous rl organisations/governments who keep our humble little planet from inflating into a blimp.

A MMO economy should be considered in itself something new, not compared to existing rl economies. Money is accumulated by different means, there are no loans(unless u have friends-then interest free loans), there is no importation/exportation, there is only one currency, there are no exchange rates, there are no taxes :D ,the list goes on.

Quote from lurker:

Couldnt designers of MMO's factor gold farming into their economies somehow? .

Yes and to a degree, they are getting more and more geared toward avoiding the farmers.
Take WoW for example. All good weapons/armour etc, are 'bind on pickup'. This means that they cannot be traded or sold to other players at all. Only sold to an NPC merchant for a smidgen of what you would sell it to a player for.

The problem is, is that if players have nothing to work towards, ie expensive items, then the interest is lost in the game. The expensive item is made easily attainable by buying gold with real money and hence saving yourself an ass load of time. Its an attractive solution to a time intensive problem.

I've bought IGE gold before, i know exactly why people do it. Its because its just so much easier. You literally think 'I can spend over 1 month saving virtual currency to buy 'x', or i can spend "00 and get it right now'.

Not all MMO's economies are diverse and dynamic which is where the farmers affects are more noticable. WoW in particular, has an Auction House system, which means players can actively undersell the other guy to make a sale, and this to a degree alleviates the issue. However its not going to work forever. The more gold that gets pumped in, the higher the mean price will go, the unhappier mr joe average will become.

lol sounds like a frigin awesome job if you ask me except for the pay

Do farmers really screw things over that much though? How many people on a WoW server? 3 or 4000? Lets say there were 20 farmers on a server and their gold income was 10 times as much as a non-farmers, that would only be the equivalent of 200 extra people assuming they could sell all their gold. (No idea about numbers but I hope you can see where I am coming from.)

Seems like the level cap would be a bigger killer to the game economy

These guys can effectively 'farm' about 100x as much as the average person would, during their adventures.
That may be an exaggeration, but it wouldnt be far off :P

Imagine it like this:

Scenario 1 :
Average Joe goes about his WoW day as a level 60. He might chance upon 100-200g during his day. Id say thats a fair estimate as an average. Most people would be less, few would be higher. Lets just use it as a place-holder number for now.

Scenario 2 :
Mr Farmer sits down and grinds mobs for 15 hours. Mr Farmer makes himself 20g per hour (thats their average quota). 300g later, he goes to sleep.

Its not so much of a difference really?
Well, it is. the money made my Average Joe goes towards new weapons, mounts, repair bills etc. Mr Farmer does not have these costs. All his gold is cream, its pure profit. Its 300g per day, per farmer, going right back into the economy.

Discussing the economics of MMO's. Anyone else realise that's pretty geekily cool?

Its probably the only form of economics i can grasp :P

Id like to know how the hell you can make 100g in a day :-/

I can 30g a hour.

Im sick of hearing people say that but no one saying how the hell you do it....closest I can come is farming felcloth and runecloth in felwood at Jadefire Run.

Reason no one says shit is casue blizzard nerf all the good places once they become knowen.

I noticed, my farming spot in RFK got ninja nerfed last week.

I can make a small amount by farming Runecloth, but then when i go to sell it i think 'Man, my tailor could use that shit'.

lol.. dj kitty.. bwahaha

http://goldfarmer.ytmnd.com/

Ahahahaha

Quote from Frenzy:
I don't really think you should be comparing a MMO economy to real world economies.

People continue to exhibit economic behaviour: they continue to maximise desired qualities for given resources. To a very limited extent trade exists, which is the basis of all other economic behaviour.

Quote:
In MMO's there are no world banks, there are no organisations setting interest rates, hell there are no interest rates. There are none of these numerous rl organisations/governments who keep our humble little planet from inflating into a blimp.

I'm in a minority for this opinion, but central banks actually cause inflation because they increase the money supply. That's what inflation means.

Quote:
A MMO economy should be considered in itself something new, not compared to existing rl economies. Money is accumulated by different means, there are no loans(unless u have friends-then interest free loans), there is no importation/exportation, there is only one currency, there are no exchange rates, there are no taxes :D ,the list goes on.

Money is still obtainable by labour and trade. Imports and exports is a political construct anyhow, so no problems there. Gold was the universal currency until quite recently, so no difference there.

I take the view that MMORPGs take on certain aspects of real economies because they must. Otherwise they face classic problems of central planning with an anything-can-be-duplicated twist.

Quote from El Presidente:
I'm in a minority for this opinion, but central banks actually cause inflation because they increase the money supply. That's what inflation means.

Monetarism for the win!

Oh dear, if anyone else has heard, there has been a huge bug allowing players to copy items and money... I'll find the pic if it's still around. Bliz has deleted all posts on the wow forums about it and are considering a rollback.

edit: here's pic http://www.firepacket.net/duppe1qa.gif