Legally this is pretty accurate. The gold sellers are, in reality, selling a service: it's essentially the time to acquire the virtual item. Instead of the player using his own time to get the gold, he pays someone else for their time. This is the main reason why gaming companies have not been able to shut down these sellers, even when they have tried to do so.
Of course that doesn't mean that the sellers have the "right" to do what they do -- that is a matter of contract between the game developers and the game users, and if it violates the terms of that contract (which it does in most games), then the sellers can get bounced for doing it, and they do get bounced. Now as we know this isn't terribly effective, because new accounts and new characters will simply be created to facilitate the service, and in fact the way that the bigger operations work is to have many characters available for farming because they assume some will be caught and banned -- it's a part of the business plan to have enough to be able to withstand bans coming along every now and then.
So basically, you folks need to get over it. It's not going away as long as these games feature money/ietm grinds which are RL time sinks, and offer ways to get around those time sinks through the purchase of currency. Games have started to change some of this. For example, WoW now has much, much more gear that is tied to reputation than it did before the recent expansion, and beyond using a powerlevelling service to rep grind for you, there isn't much of a help in buying currency for these items. Still, that's been more than offset by the introduction of a huge money sink in the flying mount (~5k gold!), and surely that is keeping the currency sellers well in the black during these months.
gold buyer = cash rich & time poor
gold seller = time rich & cash poor
the needs for these 2 types of people to come together nicely in item-centric game design, without which there is no demand.
PS i didnt really want to post beyound keeping the massive uote the quote the quote chain going to see id Cabe2323 originally quoted quote can be whited out
PS i didnt really want to post beyound keeping the massive uote the quote the quote chain going to see id Cabe2323 originally quoted quote can be whited out
Why buy gold? To avoid endless grinding of money to get new gear, a mount etc.
As a former WoW player i remember the hours i spend grinding money for my first mount, and i seriusly consideret buying gold online. But when i finally had the money and had bought my mount the satesfaction was great. I had my own mount and I had truly earned it.
But a lot of people dosnt care about small things as actually having to work to get something. Instead they just use all their hard earned money on ingame cash to give themself a major advantage. Personally im against online sale of ingame gold. I know a few guys who decided to get a job only to earn money they could spend on their WoW character.
We can all point fingers and support this or that,. But gold buying really does come down to the game design itself. As someone posted earlier take Oblivion for example, its a fun game, and even the monster bashing is fun. Theres good loot along the way, and you just enjoy the path, because its A Good game at all levels.
The problem with most MMORPGs, except WoW and old ultima online being the only exception is that the low level game on most of these are horrible at best, and theres to much emphasis based on phat loot. In old Ultima Online stuff was cheap, the only thing that cost anything was buying a house, in which didnt take long to buy anyways. The game was actually made with a virtual world in mind. Objects had little value at all. If you died it was easy to gear up and take back to the game. All of the best items where made by players not by a monster that spawned once a week that had to be camped. And social interaction took place without forced grouping,.. EQ's success changed all of this but that thats another story
Most people dont buy a mmorpg to slay 20,000 rats, and I can honestly say if I slayed 20,000 rats in order to get the gold I needed to buy a sword I would not feel as that was and accomplishment, I would feel like I was retard for slaying 20000 rats with my free time.
Now look at WoW's system, perfect?? Not by a long shot, but at least the journey to 60 is halfway fun. Now by opposite take Lineage 2, which is the most boring POS grindfest I ever played. I never bought gold when I used to play WOW bought I bought plenty of Adena in Lineage 2. So what we need is games that make the path to get to max level FUN, without so much emphasis on gold and items in the first place, and BTW the word GRIND should not even part a game we buy, much less pay a monthly fee for.
If there is a means of buying gold in a game I'll do it, over and over and over again. Why? Just to hear everyone piss and moan about why I shouldn't. I don't care what some developer has written as a EULA, they violate it themselves whenever possible so its worth about as much as the game company is willing to enforce it. I have the money to burn on buying gold/isk/adena/powerleveling etc... so I will, if you can't then I suggest getting out of that minimum wage job and getting a better one and stop crying about it.
I'm a gold buyer and theres nothing you can do about it......
whiskey; Nobody has mentioned the actual COST of buying the gold (its irrelevant) its the motivation behind it. Read peoples posts before "pissing and moaning" as you so eloquently put it.
Hmm got a warnign and post deleted, my own fault lost my temper with the above post and posted some inappropriate words
so here is a clean version
What a fool you are
Commenting on people getting out of minimum wage jobs etc and how you would but all the gold you could, Gold buying is almost the same as selling drugs, the people who do all the work get paid peanuts for doing all the hard work while the fat cat gets richer
I personally dont work on minimum wage but thanks to the way the government loves to levy tax on us most of my earning are swallowed up by them and what i have left is used to keep and provide a roof over my head
Not everyone is blessed with a silver spoon in their mouths or still lives at home with mummy and daddy credit card to keep them going knowing mummy and daddy while pay for them
I actually get satisfaction out of gaining my own money and will not give it to someone just to provide me with some items in what is essentially a GAME
Commenting on people getting out of minimum wage jobs etc and how you would but all the gold you could, Gold buying is almost the same as selling drugs, the people who do all the work get paid peanuts for doing all the hard work while the fat cat gets richer I personally dont work on minimum wage but thanks to the way the government loves to levy tax on us most of my earning are swallowed up by them and what i have left is used to keep and provide a roof over my head Not everyone is blessed with a silver spoon in their mouths or still lives at home with mummy and daddy credit card to keep them going knowing mummy and daddy while pay for them I actually get satisfaction out of gaining my own money and will not give it to someone just to provide me with some items in what is essentially a GAME.
Obidom I think you just took the bait.
Regardless, I think the idea of associating MMO gold farming with the exploitation of human labor as an argument against it is a bit of a stretch. That is a much larger issue with much more blatant examples than gold farming. It is also something which most of us in the western world are guilty of subsidizing in some way or another.
As far as currency in MMOs go, as long as those games are item- and character building-centric, there will be those who feel the process too tedious and, if they have the means, will pay someone else to do some of it for them.
Of course he took the bait, its always fun to catch one and having his post deleted is just a bonus. You hit it on the head though, if a person has the means and the grind isn't worth the end result, taking a shortcut is what will occur. FYI I make just shy of 6 figures a year take home and I'm blessed with a job that is 90% sit around time and 10% actual work, I purchased and paid for the home I live in with my wife and kids. I started out with one of the most humble beginings imaginable and it was the motivator for never being in that position myself. There isn't a silver spoon anywhere in my home, but there is a brand new game rig downstairs that I just built for my online gaming hobby and if I spend some cash on powerleveling or in game currency I don't see any reason not to. I don't ask what the conditions are where it is being produced nor do any of us ask that question about any of the items we use in our everyday lives we just accept the fact that the shoes we're wearing are comfortable and could care less that a sweat shop in China is making them.
A buddy of mine and his family, all four of them race cars on the local circuit as a hobby. He lays down thousands of dollars each year on building the cars up, repairs, tires, entrance fess etc... Do they win more money than he spends? Hell no, but they keep doing it because they get a kick out of it. Now as far as things go online gaming for me is a hobby, how I choose to enjoy it is my business. If I spend cash to put myself in a better position then I will do so and as I said before, theres nothing you can do about it. The people who can do something about it could if they had the desire but they don't, why? Well heres a big surprise or you, money. I'm a guarented check coming in every month whether I play the game this month or not. I'll add to this in a bit, the 10% of time at my job just cropped up.
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Legally this is pretty accurate. The gold sellers are, in reality, selling a service: it's essentially the time to acquire the virtual item. Instead of the player using his own time to get the gold, he pays someone else for their time. This is the main reason why gaming companies have not been able to shut down these sellers, even when they have tried to do so.
Of course that doesn't mean that the sellers have the "right" to do what they do -- that is a matter of contract between the game developers and the game users, and if it violates the terms of that contract (which it does in most games), then the sellers can get bounced for doing it, and they do get bounced. Now as we know this isn't terribly effective, because new accounts and new characters will simply be created to facilitate the service, and in fact the way that the bigger operations work is to have many characters available for farming because they assume some will be caught and banned -- it's a part of the business plan to have enough to be able to withstand bans coming along every now and then.
So basically, you folks need to get over it. It's not going away as long as these games feature money/ietm grinds which are RL time sinks, and offer ways to get around those time sinks through the purchase of currency. Games have started to change some of this. For example, WoW now has much, much more gear that is tied to reputation than it did before the recent expansion, and beyond using a powerlevelling service to rep grind for you, there isn't much of a help in buying currency for these items. Still, that's been more than offset by the introduction of a huge money sink in the flying mount (~5k gold!), and surely that is keeping the currency sellers well in the black during these months.
gold buyer = cash rich & time poor
gold seller = time rich & cash poor
the needs for these 2 types of people to come together nicely in item-centric game design, without which there is no demand.
PS i didnt really want to post beyound keeping the massive uote the quote the quote chain going to see id Cabe2323 originally quoted quote can be whited out
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PS i didnt really want to post beyound keeping the massive uote the quote the quote chain going to see id Cabe2323 originally quoted quote can be whited out
support this worthwhile community project now!
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support this worthwhile community project now!
2nd thoughts dont bother - looks like we have already reached maximun white-out
As a former WoW player i remember the hours i spend grinding money for my first mount, and i seriusly consideret buying gold online. But when i finally had the money and had bought my mount the satesfaction was great. I had my own mount and I had truly earned it.
But a lot of people dosnt care about small things as actually having to work to get something. Instead they just use all their hard earned money on ingame cash to give themself a major advantage. Personally im against online sale of ingame gold. I know a few guys who decided to get a job only to earn money they could spend on their WoW character.
We can all point fingers and support this or that,. But gold buying really does come down to the game design itself. As someone posted earlier take Oblivion for example, its a fun game, and even the monster bashing is fun. Theres good loot along the way, and you just enjoy the path, because its A Good game at all levels.
The problem with most MMORPGs, except WoW and old ultima online being the only exception is that the low level game on most of these are horrible at best, and theres to much emphasis based on phat loot. In old Ultima Online stuff was cheap, the only thing that cost anything was buying a house, in which didnt take long to buy anyways. The game was actually made with a virtual world in mind. Objects had little value at all. If you died it was easy to gear up and take back to the game. All of the best items where made by players not by a monster that spawned once a week that had to be camped. And social interaction took place without forced grouping,.. EQ's success changed all of this but that thats another story
Most people dont buy a mmorpg to slay 20,000 rats, and I can honestly say if I slayed 20,000 rats in order to get the gold I needed to buy a sword I would not feel as that was and accomplishment, I would feel like I was retard for slaying 20000 rats with my free time.
Now look at WoW's system, perfect?? Not by a long shot, but at least the journey to 60 is halfway fun. Now by opposite take Lineage 2, which is the most boring POS grindfest I ever played. I never bought gold when I used to play WOW bought I bought plenty of Adena in Lineage 2. So what we need is games that make the path to get to max level FUN, without so much emphasis on gold and items in the first place, and BTW the word GRIND should not even part a game we buy, much less pay a monthly fee for.
If there is a means of buying gold in a game I'll do it, over and over and over again. Why? Just to hear everyone piss and moan about why I shouldn't. I don't care what some developer has written as a EULA, they violate it themselves whenever possible so its worth about as much as the game company is willing to enforce it. I have the money to burn on buying gold/isk/adena/powerleveling etc... so I will, if you can't then I suggest getting out of that minimum wage job and getting a better one and stop crying about it.
I'm a gold buyer and theres nothing you can do about it......
Hmm got a warnign and post deleted, my own fault lost my temper with the above post and posted some inappropriate words
so here is a clean version
What a fool you are
Commenting on people getting out of minimum wage jobs etc and how you would but all the gold you could, Gold buying is almost the same as selling drugs, the people who do all the work get paid peanuts for doing all the hard work while the fat cat gets richer
I personally dont work on minimum wage but thanks to the way the government loves to levy tax on us most of my earning are swallowed up by them and what i have left is used to keep and provide a roof over my head
Not everyone is blessed with a silver spoon in their mouths or still lives at home with mummy and daddy credit card to keep them going knowing mummy and daddy while pay for them
I actually get satisfaction out of gaining my own money and will not give it to someone just to provide me with some items in what is essentially a GAME
#its only a gameshow, its only a gameshow#
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
Regardless, I think the idea of associating MMO gold farming with the exploitation of human labor as an argument against it is a bit of a stretch. That is a much larger issue with much more blatant examples than gold farming. It is also something which most of us in the western world are guilty of subsidizing in some way or another.
As far as currency in MMOs go, as long as those games are item- and character building-centric, there will be those who feel the process too tedious and, if they have the means, will pay someone else to do some of it for them.
Of course he took the bait, its always fun to catch one and having his post deleted is just a bonus. You hit it on the head though, if a person has the means and the grind isn't worth the end result, taking a shortcut is what will occur. FYI I make just shy of 6 figures a year take home and I'm blessed with a job that is 90% sit around time and 10% actual work, I purchased and paid for the home I live in with my wife and kids. I started out with one of the most humble beginings imaginable and it was the motivator for never being in that position myself. There isn't a silver spoon anywhere in my home, but there is a brand new game rig downstairs that I just built for my online gaming hobby and if I spend some cash on powerleveling or in game currency I don't see any reason not to. I don't ask what the conditions are where it is being produced nor do any of us ask that question about any of the items we use in our everyday lives we just accept the fact that the shoes we're wearing are comfortable and could care less that a sweat shop in China is making them.
A buddy of mine and his family, all four of them race cars on the local circuit as a hobby. He lays down thousands of dollars each year on building the cars up, repairs, tires, entrance fess etc... Do they win more money than he spends? Hell no, but they keep doing it because they get a kick out of it. Now as far as things go online gaming for me is a hobby, how I choose to enjoy it is my business. If I spend cash to put myself in a better position then I will do so and as I said before, theres nothing you can do about it. The people who can do something about it could if they had the desire but they don't, why? Well heres a big surprise or you, money. I'm a guarented check coming in every month whether I play the game this month or not. I'll add to this in a bit, the 10% of time at my job just cropped up.