Well China has one thing in abundance that the rest of the world does not have... that is cheap human labor. With 1.2 BILLION citizens to feed in a single country China has way too many people compared to jobs available so most people are willing to work for cheap unlike other countries which has a set wage standard mandated by the government. As the article points out $40-200 a month in wages is nothing compared to the wage of what an average US worker earns, but $200 dollars a month just playing games is decent enough money considering you just sit around and play games instead of working in the field under the hot sun 12 hours a day or doing jobs in dangerous mineshafts (hundreds of accidents happens in those) and mortality rate is very high. Chinese are also very resourceful people, they waste no opportunities when it comes to making money.
I would love to see how farming works in a game with full looting.
Who buys from them, I mean really who? No one I know does.
Any game where farming takes place is a game I don’t want to play. It says something very negative about the game. Lets take the guy that just paid 10k for a character. He is saying that getting to the top (playing the game) is so boring, he is will to pay 10k to skip all that boredom. That says something very bad about the game. That someone is will to pay 10k to not play a game that he wants to play? I just don’t f**king get it!
Someone should do an article on the losers that buy gold in the first place, deal with the nerds that buy in game items for real life money and you deal with the people who supply said items in game. And its hardly a sweat shop, these guys are basically pro gamers of the underground variety, they get payed to play games. Some of them say it them self its a chance to do a dream job for them not something people in china can realistically look forward to doing for the most part. One of the key points that would be brought up in an article about gold/item character etc buyers is how all of them think their justified in doing it, apparently it keeps the playing field even lol Btw to the tards, because thats what you guys are who say blame developers, seriously you are no better than the nerds buying gold although most likely you are or have done said activity which is why you defend it so much. Its these guys that are choosing to cheat, they don't have to cheat no one else is making them cheat they are choosing to. Its not the devs fault its the lazy ass nerd that thinks hes accomplishing something irl by furthering his in game characters by cheating thats the cause of the virtual item industry. The devs do not encourage you to cheat, if theres a flaw in the design of the economy why the fuck exploit it? how is that the devs fault that you have no morals, that you choose to cheat to get to a goal you are meant to reach in the intended way you know that amazing activity of actually playing a game. If theres someone who you know is buying gold report them, that will get rid of the gold farmers. Theres no Supply without Demand, aka if theres noone for these guys to sell to, then theres no reason for them to have a business or it becomes so risky that the overall amount of companies doing it will be very small thus alot easier to track down and deal with or to the point it wont make such an obvious impact on the game. And btw these are games duh, forgive people for actually want to play them as that. Not the muppets who take the game so seriously that they have to use real money to buy a few bytes of data their the ones that are pathetic. Its like trying to insult those that get athletes banned for taking performance enhancing drugs to give them selfs an advantage over everyone else by exploiting the rules.
Well, some of these "nerds" are stock brokers, lawyers, physcians, teachers, cops, contractors, game developers, computer technicians, house wives/husbands, business operators, and ect. I think you can get the message here. The only reason any gold business is succeeding is because of the American dollar and the European Euro. You first must have money in order to purchase online gold. In order to have money you need a job. In the case of that person buying someone's character for over $9000, a very good job!
Yes, I suppose mommy and daddy buy for their lil kiddies still at home and without a job, however, the bulk is from hard working, tax-paying citizens. I am not defending, I am saying stop with the juvenile, cafeteria, playgrond name-calling.
All I want is the truth Just gimme some truth John Lennon
I would not care if they would not affect the economy.
Buying in-game items for real cash is not allowed in almost every mmorpgs out there.
It is against the rule, don't do it. End of argument.
Is that so hard to understand?
Buyer are as responsible as sellers.
Look if they wanted players to advance more quickly by buying stuff with real cash, they'd have a cash shop.(They would get more money to fix bugs and add more contents)
Play the game by the rules or just don't, its not more complicated than that really.
I play games to get out of the real world. To do things I wouldn't normally be able to do. Now that Chinese farmers are ruining that by destroying markets with their cheap ( mind you shitty labor ). People with wallets in the real world now own me in video games also? GTFO china.
Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a worldwide leader in online games, today announced the results of a 12-month study of Station Exchange, SOE’s online auction site which allows EverQuest II subscribers to securely buy and sell the rights to use virtual characters, items and coin for real money.
Launched in June 2005, Station Exchange’s first-to-market product marked the inaugural entry of an official, sanctioned virtual economy into a Massively Multiplayer Online game. The White Paper highlights data collected during a 12-month period covering June 2005 to June 2006.
The auction site, which has operated since June 2005 on specific EverQuest II servers, generated player transactions of $1.87 million during its first year, according to the White Paper published today. Players have paid as much as $2,000 for the right to use a single EverQuest II character and one seller earned $37,435 from 351 auctions, according to the report, entitled Station Exchange: Year One.
“The Station Exchange White Paper results demonstrate beyond a doubt that there is a significant demand for a secure, sanctioned online marketplace where players can enhance their gaming experience by spending real dollars,” said John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment. “We’ve found that Station Exchange is providing an excellent ancillary revenue stream for both SOE and our players. Some of our Station Exchange players are literally paying for their subscription to EQII, while others are making significant money.”
Some of the study’s other findings include:
* Two players each collected over $37,000 from their auction activity in the first year. The top 15 sellers each took in over $10,000.
* Characters were by far the most valuable trade category. The top 20 character auctions were each for over $1,000.
* The highest valued character race was the Dark Elf, followed by High Elf and Human.
* 34-year-olds were the biggest buyers of virtual goods; 22-year-olds were the biggest sellers.
* Auctions for coin led to a stable, real-money average exchange rate for the year of $7.35 for one piece of platinum.
* In keeping with the EverQuest II player base as a whole, Station Exchange traders were predominantly males, who accounted for roughly eight times the spending of females. However, average spending by gender was roughly the same: $63 for men and $66 for women.
* Close to 18% of active buyers and sellers were located in northern California. However, the zip code where the most buying and selling took place was Levittown, PA. Northumberland, PA came in second. Antioch, TN was a close third.
While a minority of players were able to derive a significant income from their sales on the site, many more earned between $200 and $500 per month after listing and subscription fees. According to White Paper author Noah Robischon, however, a least some players selling items on the site felt they got more than money out of their transactions: “The sellers who provide armor and weaponry feel they are providing a service to players while elevating themselves to elite status among fellow gamers.”
The study concludes that the vast majority of players who earned money on Station Exchange did so through the sale of items they quested or crafted within EverQuest II, rather than by buying items at auction and selling them at a higher price.
Buyers appear to use Station Exchange for a variety of reasons, but the study shows that the vast majority of sales are settled through instant purchase at a set price, rather than through a traditional auction process. This indicates buyers are typically looking to fulfill an immediate desire, such as a particular type of armor needed to defeat an enemy in a quest. Interviews and anecdotal evidence suggest players also make purchases to stay aligned with friends who have attained a higher level within the game or to re-experience the upper levels of play from the vantage point of a different character.
Station Exchange was developed to provide players with a secure alternative to rapidly proliferating third-party markets for in-game characters, items and coin. These unsanctioned auction sites have given rise to scammers who often deliver different items than promised or fail to deliver at all. SOE constantly monitors usage patterns both inside the game and on Station Exchange to detect fraudulent activity among buyers or sellers.
“Station Exchange is one of the most exciting experiments in game design this decade. For the first time, we have reliable, verified numbers about the real-money trade phenomenon. Those numbers indicate that this market is driven by ordinary people, spending ordinary amounts of money, for ordinary reasons. In other words: as long as the game design gives people incentive to spend real money on virtual money, they will do so. The Invisible Hand strikes again. Moreover, the evidence suggests that making RMT an official part of the game has little effect on whether people do it. Customer service costs fall dramatically, though. There’s just as much activity, but a lot less fraud,” said Edward Castronova, an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington and a preeminent expert on virtual economies.
It's simple, it's a game. DOn't take things to serious. If you want to buy gold, do it. If you don't, don't, And don't worry to much over what the next guy does, cause it's just a GAME!
Yes it is just a game, But in order to keep up with people like I suspect You, buying gold and Crashing the Econamy then i hafta work Twice to Three times as hard because you just whiped out the old Creddit card and POOF im max lvl and got more gold than i ever woulda playing the game on my own.
No Thes farmers are the BANE of online games and the losers that buy the gold.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams
Just make items and gold in your game worthless. Make it so that you can't "buy" anything in game. Every item you get is quest based and given as a reward that binds to your character instantly, so you are unable to transfer it or sell it. Make the currency in the game for gear repair and things like that. This will eliminate the gold farmers. One thing is doesn't get rid of, is the power level for money characters.
But yeah, at the end of the day, it's the people buying this virtual crap for real money which fuels the business. It's fueling economies like China's in a big way. One gold buying customer will usually pay for a worker or two's wages for a whole month in an economy like that. They are getting rich off our right out and total LAZYNESS.
I was very disturbed when my best friend told me he was going to buy everquest 2 platinum. I raked him over the coals and mouth lashed him for even thinking about it, and he went and did it anyways. It made me sad.
'There are even gangs of gamers who systematically harass and massacre suspected Chinese gold farmers.' I'd like to meet these people so that I could shake their hands. Gold farmers are a bane to online gaming.
ive done that in lineage2 and WoW. truly inspiring and major stress releiver for me and my friends. in Lineage2 it was far more organized, as we would go out into catacombs and find a farmer, and train his ass with like 20 mobs or set up to start hitting one our decoys whenhe turned purple wed come in from the other room and kill him, and continously kill him over and over. i remember this one farmer player ( think was a prophet) we killed him excess of 15 times back to back. after a while he had 2 friends come, a tank and a archer, and managed to kill them at least 5 times before they all logged finally. biut like roaches they came back when the 'coast was clear".
with WoW i was in nagrand and since im a lvl 70 holy priest hahah i kicked ass as a holy priest. this lvl 66 rogue,and another lvl 67 not sure if she was a rogue, or another class cant remember but they were always near that orc outpost near ring of trails off to the left killing cleftfoots thats all those 2 did was kill cleftfoots lol, and they had crap gear. so i took advantage of ther situation and was able to solo both them or kill them one at a time. back to back lol. was fun as hell, i call it freebie honor points cause i ended up getting multitude of HP from them in the hundreds before they either logged, or brought in one of their friends which i call their protectors or just general horde that happened to be around.( if they managed to that is)
but i always came back to kill them over and over. that was just as fun as Lineage2. very gratifying. I will continue to to harass and massacre gold farmers until they day i die. to me they are second class citizens in the game. they are filth, they are scum, they are trash that got past the filters. to me they are nothing more than a infestation that needs to be dealt with. they exploit the game, i figure hell why dont i exploit them. the way I seen it, in lineage 2 i had a chance to get some truly remarkable items dropped from them if they died from a train or pked with my friends. In WoW its a bit simplier but just as good as honor points gave me the ability to buy some special items. but its was more gratifying as it was what i call a "thrill kill" i killed them for being gold farmers. dIE u dirty farmers! die lol. there is fun to be had in everything. killing farmers is my idea of fun, even to just slow them down even a bit, is mission accomplished.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Comments
Well China has one thing in abundance that the rest of the world does not have... that is cheap human labor. With 1.2 BILLION citizens to feed in a single country China has way too many people compared to jobs available so most people are willing to work for cheap unlike other countries which has a set wage standard mandated by the government. As the article points out $40-200 a month in wages is nothing compared to the wage of what an average US worker earns, but $200 dollars a month just playing games is decent enough money considering you just sit around and play games instead of working in the field under the hot sun 12 hours a day or doing jobs in dangerous mineshafts (hundreds of accidents happens in those) and mortality rate is very high. Chinese are also very resourceful people, they waste no opportunities when it comes to making money.
I would love to see how farming works in a game with full looting.
Who buys from them, I mean really who? No one I know does.
Any game where farming takes place is a game I don’t want to play. It says something very negative about the game. Lets take the guy that just paid 10k for a character. He is saying that getting to the top (playing the game) is so boring, he is will to pay 10k to skip all that boredom. That says something very bad about the game. That someone is will to pay 10k to not play a game that he wants to play? I just don’t f**king get it!
Well, some of these "nerds" are stock brokers, lawyers, physcians, teachers, cops, contractors, game developers, computer technicians, house wives/husbands, business operators, and ect. I think you can get the message here. The only reason any gold business is succeeding is because of the American dollar and the European Euro. You first must have money in order to purchase online gold. In order to have money you need a job. In the case of that person buying someone's character for over $9000, a very good job!
Yes, I suppose mommy and daddy buy for their lil kiddies still at home and without a job, however, the bulk is from hard working, tax-paying citizens. I am not defending, I am saying stop with the juvenile, cafeteria, playgrond name-calling.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
Yes its a game.
I would not care if they would not affect the economy.
Buying in-game items for real cash is not allowed in almost every mmorpgs out there.
It is against the rule, don't do it. End of argument.
Is that so hard to understand?
Buyer are as responsible as sellers.
Look if they wanted players to advance more quickly by buying stuff with real cash, they'd have a cash shop.(They would get more money to fix bugs and add more contents)
Play the game by the rules or just don't, its not more complicated than that really.
I play games to get out of the real world. To do things I wouldn't normally be able to do. Now that Chinese farmers are ruining that by destroying markets with their cheap ( mind you shitty labor ). People with wallets in the real world now own me in video games also? GTFO china.
x_-
SOE Exchange Server White Paper
Punters cash in on In Game content
by Desire Athow
February 22nd, 2007
Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a worldwide leader in online games, today announced the results of a 12-month study of Station Exchange, SOE’s online auction site which allows EverQuest II subscribers to securely buy and sell the rights to use virtual characters, items and coin for real money.
Launched in June 2005, Station Exchange’s first-to-market product marked the inaugural entry of an official, sanctioned virtual economy into a Massively Multiplayer Online game. The White Paper highlights data collected during a 12-month period covering June 2005 to June 2006.
The auction site, which has operated since June 2005 on specific EverQuest II servers, generated player transactions of $1.87 million during its first year, according to the White Paper published today. Players have paid as much as $2,000 for the right to use a single EverQuest II character and one seller earned $37,435 from 351 auctions, according to the report, entitled Station Exchange: Year One.
“The Station Exchange White Paper results demonstrate beyond a doubt that there is a significant demand for a secure, sanctioned online marketplace where players can enhance their gaming experience by spending real dollars,” said John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment. “We’ve found that Station Exchange is providing an excellent ancillary revenue stream for both SOE and our players. Some of our Station Exchange players are literally paying for their subscription to EQII, while others are making significant money.”
Some of the study’s other findings include:
* Two players each collected over $37,000 from their auction activity in the first year. The top 15 sellers each took in over $10,000.
* Characters were by far the most valuable trade category. The top 20 character auctions were each for over $1,000.
* The highest valued character race was the Dark Elf, followed by High Elf and Human.
* 34-year-olds were the biggest buyers of virtual goods; 22-year-olds were the biggest sellers.
* Auctions for coin led to a stable, real-money average exchange rate for the year of $7.35 for one piece of platinum.
* In keeping with the EverQuest II player base as a whole, Station Exchange traders were predominantly males, who accounted for roughly eight times the spending of females. However, average spending by gender was roughly the same: $63 for men and $66 for women.
* Close to 18% of active buyers and sellers were located in northern California. However, the zip code where the most buying and selling took place was Levittown, PA. Northumberland, PA came in second. Antioch, TN was a close third.
While a minority of players were able to derive a significant income from their sales on the site, many more earned between $200 and $500 per month after listing and subscription fees. According to White Paper author Noah Robischon, however, a least some players selling items on the site felt they got more than money out of their transactions: “The sellers who provide armor and weaponry feel they are providing a service to players while elevating themselves to elite status among fellow gamers.”
The study concludes that the vast majority of players who earned money on Station Exchange did so through the sale of items they quested or crafted within EverQuest II, rather than by buying items at auction and selling them at a higher price.
Buyers appear to use Station Exchange for a variety of reasons, but the study shows that the vast majority of sales are settled through instant purchase at a set price, rather than through a traditional auction process. This indicates buyers are typically looking to fulfill an immediate desire, such as a particular type of armor needed to defeat an enemy in a quest. Interviews and anecdotal evidence suggest players also make purchases to stay aligned with friends who have attained a higher level within the game or to re-experience the upper levels of play from the vantage point of a different character.
Station Exchange was developed to provide players with a secure alternative to rapidly proliferating third-party markets for in-game characters, items and coin. These unsanctioned auction sites have given rise to scammers who often deliver different items than promised or fail to deliver at all. SOE constantly monitors usage patterns both inside the game and on Station Exchange to detect fraudulent activity among buyers or sellers.
“Station Exchange is one of the most exciting experiments in game design this decade. For the first time, we have reliable, verified numbers about the real-money trade phenomenon. Those numbers indicate that this market is driven by ordinary people, spending ordinary amounts of money, for ordinary reasons. In other words: as long as the game design gives people incentive to spend real money on virtual money, they will do so. The Invisible Hand strikes again. Moreover, the evidence suggests that making RMT an official part of the game has little effect on whether people do it. Customer service costs fall dramatically, though. There’s just as much activity, but a lot less fraud,” said Edward Castronova, an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington and a preeminent expert on virtual economies.
SOURCE Sony Online Entertainment LLCNo Thes farmers are the BANE of online games and the losers that buy the gold.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Just make items and gold in your game worthless. Make it so that you can't "buy" anything in game. Every item you get is quest based and given as a reward that binds to your character instantly, so you are unable to transfer it or sell it. Make the currency in the game for gear repair and things like that. This will eliminate the gold farmers. One thing is doesn't get rid of, is the power level for money characters.
But yeah, at the end of the day, it's the people buying this virtual crap for real money which fuels the business. It's fueling economies like China's in a big way. One gold buying customer will usually pay for a worker or two's wages for a whole month in an economy like that. They are getting rich off our right out and total LAZYNESS.
I was very disturbed when my best friend told me he was going to buy everquest 2 platinum. I raked him over the coals and mouth lashed him for even thinking about it, and he went and did it anyways. It made me sad.
with WoW i was in nagrand and since im a lvl 70 holy priest hahah i kicked ass as a holy priest. this lvl 66 rogue,and another lvl 67 not sure if she was a rogue, or another class cant remember but they were always near that orc outpost near ring of trails off to the left killing cleftfoots thats all those 2 did was kill cleftfoots lol, and they had crap gear. so i took advantage of ther situation and was able to solo both them or kill them one at a time. back to back lol. was fun as hell, i call it freebie honor points cause i ended up getting multitude of HP from them in the hundreds before they either logged, or brought in one of their friends which i call their protectors or just general horde that happened to be around.( if they managed to that is)
but i always came back to kill them over and over. that was just as fun as Lineage2. very gratifying. I will continue to to harass and massacre gold farmers until they day i die. to me they are second class citizens in the game. they are filth, they are scum, they are trash that got past the filters. to me they are nothing more than a infestation that needs to be dealt with. they exploit the game, i figure hell why dont i exploit them. the way I seen it, in lineage 2 i had a chance to get some truly remarkable items dropped from them if they died from a train or pked with my friends. In WoW its a bit simplier but just as good as honor points gave me the ability to buy some special items. but its was more gratifying as it was what i call a "thrill kill" i killed them for being gold farmers. dIE u dirty farmers! die lol. there is fun to be had in everything. killing farmers is my idea of fun, even to just slow them down even a bit, is mission accomplished.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.