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How do gold-selling and power leveling services hurt a game?
Pantastic
Member Posts: 1,204
"Gold/Plat/ISK/Gil/etc sellers, item sellers, and power leveling services which take real money for game money or time hurt the game" is something I've heard from people when they object to the ads for it. But I've never really been clear on what it is that these services do that actually damages the games. If you just don't like it and it 'damages the game' for you by knowing that it exists in-game, that's fine but that doesn't really qualify as damaging the game in general.
Personally, I think that rampant gold-selling etc. is a symptom that a game is poorly designed; some people just want the phat loots without doing anything, but if a significant portion of the player base uses those services, then it seems to me that the game is not really fun for most of its players. I don't see how it actually causes damage in an otherwise healthy game though. Gold farmers and such crowding out good farming spots could be an issue, but that seems more of an inconvenience than damaging the game.
And, to forestall the "Looser, you bought gold and your lootz, you suck, L2P n00b" posts, I've never bought gold, used a leveling service, etc. and would quit a game if I felt a serious urge to use one. For me, if a game is so unfun that I'd pay someome to avoid playing it, then I'd rather just pay no one and no monthly fee and avoid playing it that way. I just don't have any objection to them being in a game.
Comments
Well that's the thing you don't need to have rampant gold selling to affect a game, it only has to be the minority (which it normally is) to buy obscene amounts to throw the economy out of whack. Once a farmer knows that a particular server turns a profit their activity increases. In fact World of Warcraft is the only mmorpg I have played when I have been actively "cold-called" by farmers (on a heavily populted server) even though I've never used any of these services nor have any desire to. This just shows how many there are now, how active they are, how many people do use these services, what little is done to stop them and how brazen they have become.
To me it is the equivalent of buying a qualification or bribing someone to pass a test. It is a way of gaining an advantage, it also means that the person is not really good when they claim to be. Of course if more people did it you will need to get a higher one or bribe someone more.
No annoying animated GIF here!
people who buy gold online should get perm ban ...it least it happens from time to time in wow ,unlike other games
1. Gold farmers and the rest listed in your post are NOT playing the game to have fun. They are not gamers. They could care less if the game dies. They are NOT THERE TO INTERACT WITH OTHER PLAYERS. They are not there to form friendships, to role play, to help newbies, to join and help guilds. They are there only to turn a real life profit. The immediate result is they destroy the in-game economy. Things become worth less and less, and even nothing, from it being over farmed.
2. Items that are suppose to be rare, are not. This throws the game out of wack. Power levelers/gold farmers have multiple accounts, and play in the same spot 24 HOURS A DAY, every day of the week. This is NOT how the game DEVs intended their games to be played. Not even the most hardcore, no life having gamer, plays this way non-stop all month, all year, long.
3. Farmers/power levelers HOG areas. Hog bosses, hog quests, hog content. This also throws the game out of whack. When a normal player goes to an area, they will leave sooner or later after their character levels up enough, they have finnished the epic quest, etc... etc... The power leveler will stay in that area forever power leveling the next character, etc....
4. Farmers/Power levelers destroy ingame immersion. Another poster mentioned how in WoW farmers/power levelers were doing cold advertising in the game, in the open. I've had it happen to me once already in WoW also. Nothing like walking up to an Inn after questing for a day, and get hit with spam for a website doing these types of services. Yes, there are players who do play these games for the RP experience. Further proof is that many games that KNOW this even have name filters.
5. Farmers/Power levelers destroy the longterm life of a game. IF too many players simply BUY a level 60 character, buy a full set of armor, it forces other players to either do the same, or stop playing. Because they cannot compete. Even the players who enjoy these services ultimatly kill their ownselves. Their impatience dissallows them from ever experiencing the full game experience from level 1 to high level. They never learn how to fully play their character. They never build strong in game friendships (example: when you know someone from your level 2 days, and you all adventure together leveling up together.) They get BORED very quick, and leave the game. (Believe it or not, but many of these "fake gamers" even go to forums and whine that the game lacks content, is boring, etc...!!!).
6. MMORPGs that center around PvP are completly destroyed. If just a few players simply buy the best armor, weapons, power-leveled character, it makes PvP into nothing. The game is no longer about how good you are, what starategy you learn, its about how much real life money you have and are willing to waste.
7. And the biggest reason? Just go over to the DAoC forums and post your same thread. Mythic the creator of DAoC won a MAJOR court case against one of the biggest power leveling companies in existance. (They no longer exist because Mythic's court win forced them to SHUT DOWN.)
These services are not a sign that a game is bad. They are a sign that there are some seriously immature, IMPATIENT, people out there who want ultra-instant gratification - even when they know they will only get short term enjoyment. They litterally cannot help their behavior that prevents them from having enjoying the full game experience. Back when Classic SWG was up and alive, there was a case in which some one posted in the forums where a certain quest was, how to do it, etc.... wanting to have their hands held all the way. I and others replied, that's part of the fun - DISCOVERING where the quest leads, what the unknown dangers are, using your mind to form a strategy to overcome whatever the dangers are you discover, and surviving it to get the rewards. A SWG game DEV then responded saying... gues what? Every single thing the person was crying to want. It's the instant gratification syndrome. Just like in Toys R Us when the kiddies scream for their parents to buy toooo many toys. 1 month later they ignore the toy. Better idea the parents have the kid work for some money (cleaning the dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning the bathroom, vacum the rug, etc...). When the kid sees they don't have enough money to buy every toy, they will mature and learn to buy what they have money for. Or if there's a certain toy, they will learn to be PATIENT as they save for months to buy it.
At its very basic, I would say people purchase in-game money so that they don't need to worry about getting the money in the game by "working" for it. Some may enjoy other aspects of the game and the thrill of "earning" the money isn't what makes them play. For others, it may simply be that they "need" the best gear, or whatever, possible in order to have fun. The bottom line is, there are sites out there that sell in-game funds and make a lot of money doing it, so it must be something that's popular even if you don't agree with it.
I look at it like this, if it bothers me too much, I'll simply find something else to play. In some games I can see why people do it more than others.
so...
Well an example was a farmer farming a zone in EQ 24/7. He was making money to sell but at the same time depriving real players of that zone to earn their own money for their own intents rather than an outside intent.
It also depends on the game economy. It hurts a player-controlled economy (WoW, EQ2, SWG) more so than a NPC-controlled economy (CoH/V and DDO).
Let's compare to real life:
Say a country's citizens make money by working in the country. Resources from the land produce jobs and goods like mobs in the game produce gold and items. At this country's market place, items are sold based on effort and what other's can afford. ie, you can't sell a car for $1.5 million because no one could afford it.
Let's say that a growing portion of this country's citizens have wealthy relatives in other countries that are sending them money by the boat loads and/or producing products far cheaper than in their own country. This outside influence on the economy works a little like inflation. Suddenly there are billionaires all over willing to pay top dollar for everything because it's easier that getting it the old-fashioned way. The marketplace responds (because we humans are quite lustful) by raising prices. Who cares if a car costs $1.5million, that's pocket change. ( I won't get into all of the details of supply and demand and such)
The people affected by this are the ones who don't have wealthy relatives shoveling money at them. So they will never be able to afford items or goods off of the marketplace, but only what they can gain from the resources of the land.
So in an NPC-controlled economy, everything is bought or sold on an NPC vendor. Inflation can't increase, it's controlled by the game. But a player-controlled economy can get out of whack pretty quickly.
I can give you an example from the point of view from someone who played FFXI for a very long time.
First a little background on FFXI (incase you're not familiar) FFXI has these things called Notorious Monsters (known as "rare spawns" in WoW) They pop in as little as 5-10 minutes and as long as 48hrs or more. Typically, the rarer the NM the better the drop item is. Spending lots of time in a certain area you can get a somewhat "window" of around when your mob will spawn if you see it die. Like many games, specific mobs ONLY drop specific items, which is why we camp mobs that have drops we seek to use or sell. Naturally the rarer the drop, the higher the pricetag to buy or sell.
SO here's my example:
Lets say you're leveling a Thief and you want (making this up here) The Dagger of Wrath. You research the mob, find out where he spawns, and read every thread there is to read on him. So finally, deciding you're ready, you head down to his zone and start killing place holders and clearing the area. You see a few others in the area just standing still and not moving but pay them no heed, they look afk.
After a few hours, BAM! Your mob spawns nearby so you race over to claim it. Out of nowhere the person (or many times, people) zip over to your mob, claim it and kill it. You sort of feel like you've wasted your time, but you take your wounded pride and just think to yourself "I can get better, they won't beat me many times more"
Happily, you see the guy that got your claim run off so now you have the zone to yourself. You know the spawn time on your mob is around 2-3 hrs, so you patiently go back to popping mobs, chatting with friends.
Time goes by, and you know the window is getting close, but OH NO, guess what? Here comes the EXACT SAME guy who got the last claim and all his buddies who spread out around the zone. You're angry, but you think your fueled rage will help you be faster.
You run around some more, searching, waiting, hoping you get lucky and it spawns in front of you.
BAM! THERE IT IS!!!! You race over, but oh no, you've been beaten again. The silent group runs off with their prize to leave you there fuming all alone again. More pissed off than words can describe due to the fact you burned a whole day and came up empty, you log.
Over the course of the next few weeks you camp your dagger mob as often as you can but it ends in the same result. Now, you're really fed up so out of curiosity you check at the auction house how much a Dagger of Wrath sells for. (FFXI tracks the last dozen or so sales of each item including times and dates)
Looky here at what we discover, in the history of as far back as this items lists it's been sold by the same small handful of people (no including the few that buy, use then resell)
So that was my example. How can you possibly compete against people that camp things day in and day out, week after week and month after month? Not to mention that some people use bots for the really rare spawning mobs. SE has taken a few steps to try to stop or slow down gilsellers such as making some items non sellable and nontradeable. Unfortunately, the gilsellers just moved on to different mobs to camp.
To give another example, and this was an item that SE made unsellable in one of their patches, the Emperor Hairpin. This item is so good I was using it still at endgame with my 70THF. It's a level 24 item and was worth more than I could afford so I decided to camp it.
The gilsellers had gathered so much data from camping it non stop for months that they KNEW when and where it had a chance to spawn. They would actually hit their "flee" ability, turn invisible and run to the claim. And I guarantee they bagged it better than 9 out of 10 times.
I don't want to brag but I'm a really patient, top notch camper. I'm pretty thick headed too and I spent weeks trying to beat them without luck.
In closing, this is just one of many examples why gil/gold/or whatever currency selling really hurts a gamer's good time. I hope I painted a good picture as I'm sure many others have stories to share as well.
Many many problems from farmers....
1. They deny you access to gameplay. There have been several instances in MMO's where I simply couldnt accomplish a goal because something was being heavily camped.
In SWG there were farmers with sophisticated macros working on timers that would steal every single spawn of the nightsister queen and that other rare spawn on corellia. If you were in there, you'd see this toon log in and within 2 seconds the spawn pops up and they kill it, auto loot it via macro and log back out. You go to the trade forums and you see the same names selling amazing loot.
In WoW go to fireplume ridge to try and loot an essence of fire for enchanting. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week there will be at least 3-5 players there farming the location. Combine that with a drop rate of 1% and it might take you 8 hours before you get one essence to drop.
2. They destroy the economy. They escalate prices so high that some players are almost forced to buy gold from them ironically. They farm stuff and post it for outrageous prices. New players are practically hopeless in ever competing in this environment.
3. They dont contribute to the game. Nuff said.
i think many companies that make a mmo also sell gold and stuff. look at what SOE did, they saw that people make lots of money off E-bay so now they sell it themselves on their own service and for a better price than e-bay, u can get SWG credits for 1 dollar for a million.... back in the days when SWG had players and was decent, it was like 5 dollars for 1 million credits and they were from a real player not phoney break the economy credits like they sell now (my brother still plays, God only knows why)
Ok, so Xplororor says that farmers destroy the economy by causing massive deflation, driving the prices of items through the floor. Zeedam and admriker meanwhile say that they destroy the economy by causing massive inflation. So, ahhh, which is it? But more importantly, how do you determine that it's farmers that are the cause of the inflation or deflation? I often hear people say that whatever they don't like about the market is a result of gold farmers, but I've never seen where someome actually shows how farmers cause it. It's very, very hard for me to take claims that farmers destroy the economy of a game seriously when people don't even agree on whether it's inflation or deflation.
[The stuff below is detailed responses, the first paragraph is really the key response]
Ghostinifit and admriker, your examples are both shining examples of how it highlights poorly designed gameplay, not how 'for-real-money' farmers destroy the game. Camping rare spawns is just a horrible game mechanic, it's one of the reasons I didn't even bother to try MMOs for a long time, and it's not suprising that MMOs are rapidly ditching that mechanic in favor of things like boss mobs that spawn when you have the quest and go to that spot. Rare spawn camping, 'stealing', and using bots to do it are all problems with the system of people needing to catch rare spawns for advancement, and the fact that the big guilds in FFXI and EQ set up spawn camp rotations sums up that having 'your' spawn stolen doesn't really have anything to do with real-world money.
Plus your examples only show someome farming for in-game money or items (and I note your use of 'farmer', not gold-seller), it has nothing to do with selling the money out of game. You didn't see that the person was actually selling their profits for real-world money, you just assumed it, and you didn't try to argue that the problem would go away if people were only farming these things to sell for in-game money that they'd use themselves.
For explororor I'll go over your points, but I'm pulling number 6 to the top since it sums things up pretty well:
6. All that buying cash does is let you swap money for in-game time, if someome buying their way to a good set of armor destroys the PVP game, then... "The game is no longer about how good you are, what strategy you learn, its about how much real life" time "you have and are willing to waste". I want PVP to be about your skills and strategy, a bit about picking items, but almost unrelated to spending huge swathes of time in-game (or paying someome to spend the time for you), so I'd say that the selling for real money just highlights a major problem with that game's PVP system.
1. Discussed before the list.
2. "Bind on Pickup" stops that one cold. But the complaint falls under 'highlighting a design flaw'; if the developers want items to be rare, they could make them rare - make it so a given person can only get 1 drop in X time, make it so if you've had X once it won't drop again, etc. And this isn't even touching on whether or not 'rare' items that just take a lot of time but no real playing ability are a good idea.
3. Again highlights a design flaw; if players aren't supposed to compete for the best farming areas, then they should be designed so that it's not practical for someome to hog them. If players are supposed to compete for them, then someome 'hogging' an area is just an expected part of gameplay, and you're supposed to deal with it in-game (mmm, PVP servers).
4. Highlights game companies not enforcing their rules or not having strong enough antispam and pro-rp rules. It doesn't really have anything to do with selling items/leveling for real world cash, if the company would just ban characters and later accounts for spamming and put appropriate restrictions on trial accounts then this point would vanish.
5. This is another example of someome saying that selling stuff for real life money destroys a game without saying how. How does someome else skipping to the end of the game force you to do the same? Unless the leveling part of the game is so boring that virtually everyone wants to skip it, you're going to have most of the game population to adventure with. And how does some guy who didn't want to play most of the game quitting a short time after being power-leveld to the top hurt the game itself? I don't really think that everyone who gets powerleveled and bored would instead be entranced by the game if they leveled from the start.
7. Is not a reason; saying that Mything was able to shut down a company by suing them is irrelevant to whether or not that company's activities are hurting the game. If their lawsuit lists out some ways in which the gold/leveling for real world cash hurt the game, then that would be relevant, but say what those ways are. t
I thank thee for spelling my name right! Sooo many people spell it wrong!
It can cause both. Depending on the game, and even on the server. How many non-farmer crafters are on a server. How many players of a certain level are on a server. Whatever the case, they negativly affect all mmorpgs. Because they are affecting it in a way not intended by the game makers - encouraging real life money as the deciding factor over in game outcomes, and influences.aaahhhh....... You misspelled my name... grrr... ::8
What else would the problem be?
I already stated what it is - people who are utra-impatient. People who are addicted to instant gratification. Even when such behavior keeps them from understanding that "enjoyment is in the trip getting to the goal, as well as the goal itself."
I also touched on the source of this problem - the present culture. Not so great parenting. Parents can get kids to learn to not succomb to instant gratification whims, by giving them a salary for doing chores. This way kids learn to manage money, learn PATIENCE, learn to go after a goal by "doing the work theirselves"... learning how to go about getting the goal. This carrys over to everything in life. From mmorpgs, to dating, to getting ones first new car, to climbing the workplace ladder, etc...
Bind on Pickup is a nice idea. But it can't be for every item in the game. Or else there would be no player economy.
It's nice that you also try to come up with possible solutions. The one you now list is easily defeated by the fact farmers have many, many, multiple accounts. It's still a good idea though, and could stop the casual farmer, the part time farmer, the softcore farmer.
Companies have tried attacking this problem. The revolutionary mmorpg AO was the first to use the idea of Instancing, aka personal encounters/dungeons. It does work. It's games that have zero instancing that is is a problem.
I fully agree. And add to this a special hotkey players can hit to instantly flag a game MOD striclty about this specific problem.
I listed some reasons why, here are more:
- When the ebay guy attempts to play the endgame, he has little idea how to use his character, so he gets other endgame players killed. If too many ebayers are attempting to play endgame, they make the game lousy for the legit endgamers.
- MMORPGs main attraction is the IN GAME COMMUINITY. Re-read those 3 words. This is why UO, EQ, and other old mmorpgs are doing as good, and even better than many new mmorpgs. What BUILDS UP the in game commuinity? Getting to know each other. Adventuring together. When player characters "grow up together" it forms bonds. Bonds that make whatever mmorpg they play more unique.
- The in game community is what keeps a mmorpg alive in the long run. They get their friends, co-workers, aquaintances, to buy the game and play with them. Professional levelers, Professional farmers, are NOT in the game to get to know other players, to form bonds, to bring in friends, family, etc.... Which means they are not there to keep the game alive in the long run.
Oh yes it is relevant. The name of your thread is "How do gold selling and power leveling services hurt a game?". The fact that Mythic went after one of these services, and were able to bring them to court, and WON, and shut them down - is all the proof needed to see that these services do indeed hurt a game. Mythic was able to PROVE ITS CASE in front of a Judge in a court of law. The service/powerleveling company was UNABLE to prove that they do NOT hurt a game. It's the end result that's all that's necessary for you to look at - Mythic WON - you do not need to read the entire legal documents, briefs, witness statements, etc....
Here's another one, a simple one. MMO game production costs are usually amortized over the lifetime of the game, as far as I know at least. During the time you play, you pay to climb up the game's artificial ladder. If you go out and buy a level capped toon with lots of money from someone else, you just need to buy the game and a month worth of subscription time. Boom, you're already at the end game.
Imagine if the developers spent 5 years making a MMO and then made every new character at the level cap. Would it have any longevity?
Of course, the people that farmed those toons had to pay the subscription fee. However, they're professional power levelers and they're making a profit on the toons they sell. The game company still loses.
Finally, in most games the characters and items are still the legal property of the owners, the game company, or publisher, or what have you. You probably agreed to that when you didn't read the license agreement. Wether you like it or not, think its fair or not, you're playing the game and are basically in a contract with the company that made it (or currently owns it).
Games have rules. If someone payed the next door neighbor $10 for an extra Monopoly board game, and then tried to use the money from that game in a round of Monopoly with me, I'd call that cheating.
SOE's way of handeling this was great! In EQ2, they created 2 servers that are called 'Station Exchange' servers and you go through SOE to trade RL money for ingame items. Of course SOE gets a commision off of this, but it is safe, secure, and you know you won't get screwed.
I AM NOT on one of these servers, but I love that they implimented it. The reason is that all of the other servers are pretty much farmer free and leaves the community at peace so we don't have to interact with these types of people. It is one of the best ideas that I have ever seen a company do in regards to farming.
Its not your fault that you don't understand why this hurts a game. Its because you are looking at this problem from the player prespective.
Look at this problem from the service provider prespective. Every year the game company has to protect its server from game exploits which malicous players use to give themselves more money, items, levels, etc.
Now if you add the fact that you can buy money in-game from people do you seriously think these people won't use exploits to gain more money to sell?
When the selling of virtual items hits a game all it does is encourage people to find more and more exploits in the game to use, taking away precious time from the developers who have to keep the game secure.
This is well documented in several books to do with massive multiplayer game design.
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I'm against farmers, especially since they really fudged the Secondlife world up until LL took over. Granted, Secondlife doesn't have a gameplay mechanic, but even then if you were an artist selling textures, model skins, and etc, it made everything like completely whacked out on how to set the prices for your stuff. Often, most artists try to keep a flat rate, others will exploit the constant influx of L$.
Although, personally, what gets me is why haven't any of these MMO companies just strike the root of the problem? And that root being the fact that the in-game currency is a unexhaustable resource. Consider for a moment what I'm pointing out, even in our real world where many countries have gone to fiat/fractional-reserve currency schemes, there is still always a relative 'absolute' value to things insomuch their scarcity of basic resources. Even the most common items have some level of scarcity that keeps every other item value in check within a level of variance[being that certain items are valued more for not the scarcity of their materials, but for other reasons(think of the issue around diamonds, which are now easily created in the lab by Apollo or Geminon(see Wired Magazine articled titled the Diamond Age)]. And even with the constant inflation of real world currencies, the prices of items intrinsically[according to what people feel/think they are valued at...] still remain stable. Thus, all that changes is the buying power of the currency itself.
Now, for MMOs this isn't a problem because both items and currency are literally unexhaustible. It's conceivable if that every MMO with all its players could have all of them decked out in all the same equipment if we were to take the time to attempt such an undertaking to the scale of approaching infinity [WARNING: referenced within the terms of math here, not real world!]. So, what keeps the value of items up in-game? Nothing but the belief in their scarcity, which is often artificial relative to the game mechanic. What I would love to see is that MMO devs would get wise and literally make any in-game 'boss loot' limited per number of spawns. I know people will say,"But that isn't fair and we should all have the sw0rd 0f 1337n3ss!!!ONE!!!ONE," but the reality is if you want to have a 'balanced' player economy, you have to build in such restrictions. Now, games with crafting, that would mean resource spots would probably have to dissappear with relative rarity of the given resource. Meaning, it should be easy to spot the low-end resources, and they should regen within X-amount of game-time.
Oddly, SoR has made their game in a similiar fashion with regard to the most rare of resources, being that it's hard to find them and it depends on a few game mechanics that utilize the concept of seasonal proliferation[being that their gameworld is literally on a living tree/planet]. I'm not saying such models are gold farmer proof, but I would say it would really put a zinger their jobs, being that in-game money and resources would be fixed to a specific game mechanic that could only be circumvented IFF[if and only if] they knew how to hack the game database[thus, change game mechanic values controlling such systems]. Thus, people couldn't say, "But they're not hurting gameplay...." since it logically follows that if you have to hack a game's DB to get your way rather than playing the game as designed, then you're really in a world of hurt among players, and probably the law [being that hacking is nothing more than an electronic form of trepass, which is a FELONY(A to C, depending on circumstance and state/province/city statute)].
-- Bridget
By the principle that we are all innocent until proven otherwise, mustn't they also have been unable to provide reasonable doubt that their actions were harmful (and in breach of agreements made between player and game provider)? I believe that's how it works, even in civil court, in which case it is clear that whatever the case was, it was rather convincing.
So sellers generate the fattest purses. With sufficiently many fat purses about, people will make good money on pricing certain items outside the normal range - as there are some people who have paid real life money to be able to buy it still.
In a game where players are able to effectively oppose eachother, those who do not buy an advantage encounter a problem because they have spent less real life money on the game than their opponents. One might say that's their problem, but if you accept that the gaming elite consists of those who pay extra, you increase the price of the game. And the extra revenue does not go to the provider of the game. The increased cost (accepted or not) makes the game less appealing to existing and potential players, especially those who would like to play it the slow way, give it the time it takes, and pay for every month of it.
Sadly, the games that make the best use of the mmorpg concept are the games most vulnerable to this problem. I like mmorpg's because they allow my enemies, allies acquaintances and strangers to act in non-scripted ways and influence the world in unforeseen ways - because it frees us from the restrictions of a pre-written npc script and a finished storyline to be followed. To take away the ability to interact (positively and negatively) with other players would weaken this feature considerably (and it is often done). But if you don't do it, then some can pay for power over others.
In some games, that might be part of the game, but if so: That is because the developers MADE a game this way, intended that. And they might, in the spirit of SOE, cash in.
In other games, that I'd favour, the point would be to compete with characters only, and not bringing real wealth into it: It would drive the price of the game up for those who are not satisfied to play the underdogs all the way, because with the strongest individuals being the ones who have paid extra, those who didn't pay extra can hardly compete.
The sellers bring more money into the world than any other user of the game. Those who use their services therefore have the potential to get more money than any other users of the game.
The future: Adellion
Common flaw in MMORPGs: The ability to die casually
Advantages of Adellion: Dynamic world (affected by its inhabitants)
Player-driven world (beasts won't be an endless supply of mighty swords, gold will come from mines, not dragonly dens)
Player-driven world (Leadership is the privilege of a player, not an npc)
Quite simply.. they don't hurt the game. People just get bent out of shape when they see someone running around with a bunch of items and they cant afford those same items. Get over it. IGE is here to stay.
I used to level people in EQ all the time. I would get people 100's of aa's while they were at work. These people ended up in most of the high end guilds. Quite simply these guilds couldn't have raided without my work in leveling their tanks and clerics. I also used to run pick-up raids where these same clients of mine would take their time and the skills i got them and get less fortunate people flagged for other zones. I don't believe that what i was doing was wrong in anyway. I took and i gave. I was at the service for the entire community. I made some quick cash off the leveling but in turn invested my time freely to help the non hardcore people progress and enjoy the game.
Make a difference!
People like you SAY that inflation and deflation is the result of farmers, but you fail to show or even provide a convincing argument that there are enough farmers to be the driving force behind the economic shifts. In WOW, for example, it's quite easy for a level 60 to make amounts of money that are incompehensible to a newbie, which is a big source of inflation - once someome has one 60, they can spend silly amounts of money to outfit their other characters. No one has ever said how they've determined that inflation in WOW is a result of people selling gold for real money and not as a result of high level characters just farming more for themselves. And inflation isn't bad for other players anyway, not even low levels, because they can just sell items for inflated rates (a WOW lowbie on an established server can make tons of gold just by farming copper and auction-housing it, for example).
From what I've seen, and what people have done in this thread, the people that don't like items being sold for real money look at anything they precieve as a problem in the economy and say "see, farmers caused that inflation/deflation/stagnation, they're bad for the game". It's not exactly convining to someome who doesn't already believe that farmers are responsible for everything that happens in an economy that you don't like.
Yeah, the kids today are all worthless slackers, and it's documented that people have been complaining about how bad the kids today are since at least the ancient Greeks. Please just discuss the effects of farmers without going into how kids or society or whatever is going downhill today, it's irrelevant to what effect farmers have on the game economy.
Thus, they just highlight that an existing problem is in the game, they don't actually create it, like I said.
Actually, you didn't list a single reason why another person skipping to max level forces you to do the same, which ws the original point I was respinding to. And the 3 reasons that you listed are just that you'll have some people who are bad players and/or don't know anyone else in the endgame. So what if there's a few people who aren't active in the IN GAME COMMUNITY or who don't know how to play? It just means there's a few people you'll ignore for the short time that they hang around while you stay with people who know how to play and are active in the in game community. I don't see how it's really different from someome just not playing the game in the first place, or starting and quitting after a few levels.
No, because that end result doesn't show that Mythic argued that they "hurt the game"; I'm not aware of any court of law that accepts a 'hurting a game' as grounds for a lawsuit. I suspect that Mythic argued something far less relavant to the discussion, like that the companies were in breach of contract, illicitly accessed Mythics servers, or interfered with Mythic's revenue, and not that they 'hurt the game'. The fact that Mythic won a lawsuit against another company for some reason doesn't show anything relevant here.
If the post-level-cap is where the enjoyable part of the game is, then yes - isn't the current incarnation of Everquest sustained only by people in the 'Endgame'? If the pre-cap game is so boring that practically everyone wants to skip it to play in the endgame, then I really think that the problem with the game is the boringness of that part of the game, not anything caused by the farmers. One could argue that this would HELP the longevity of the game, since the company would have people playing 'at the cap' who otherwise would have gotten bored and quit while leveling.
While your wording is a bit hard to follow, are you saying that you believe that gold sellers are the only or primary people who find exploits in a game? I find that a bit hard to believe; certainly gold sellers use exploits if they find them and think they can get away with them, but I'd need a bit more before believing that the websites full of people looking for exploits for their own use and 'leet h4xors' trying to find them are an insignificant force in finding exploits. From what I've seen, gold farmers help the game because once they start using an exploit, they'll use it all over the place, all the time, making it easy for the game company to catch, unlike a random 'h4xor' player who will only use it occasionally, making it more likely that the company will not find it or just ignore them. I honestly don't care about the service provider perspective when it produces bad results from the gamer perspective.
While your wording is a bit hard to follow, are you saying that you believe that gold sellers are the only or primary people who find exploits in a game? I find that a bit hard to believe; certainly gold sellers use exploits if they find them and think they can get away with them, but I'd need a bit more before believing that the websites full of people looking for exploits for their own use and 'leet h4xors' trying to find them are an insignificant force in finding exploits. From what I've seen, gold farmers help the game because once they start using an exploit, they'll use it all over the place, all the time, making it easy for the game company to catch, unlike a random 'h4xor' player who will only use it occasionally, making it more likely that the company will not find it or just ignore them. I honestly don't care about the service provider perspective when it produces bad results from the gamer perspective.
I am willing to bet 100 to 1 that for any given exploit it is used, and so does the most damage, by organized currency sellers more often than a single user or small group of "crackers".
The real problem with currency selling is the social issue. People who have nice gear get an ego, you didn't earn the gear you have an attitude you didn't earn. In MMOs gear and play experience mean everythign and the two are often mistaken. Examples;
1. FFXI: ~60lvl NIN/WAR with a scorp harness who can't keep hate because the only Ni spell he has is Utsusemi...
2. WoW: that sub 50 rogue with DW epic daggers (forgot names, but there are 2 BoE ones that are not worth buying) who claims the opposing team is exploiting in every BG they enter out of jealousy of his/her weapons. Nope just better gear than the player/.
3. EvE: That player with +3 implants who only got minimum requirement skills who can't figure out why suggested setups online won't fit. Puts on what will fit, loses ship, then gets podded...only to complain how they were out numbered so badly. (usually was a couple of full fitting skill equipped T1 firgates lol)
List goes on and on. They do kill the economy, but that is secondary to me in a sense. It kills the social aspect to many MMOs. I don't care if a player has to learn how to do something new (like timing a first SC in FFXI, or makign a first "engage %T now" macro in WoW raiding), but players who have things they haven't earned get this overly defensive attitude that keeps them from ever progressing later in the game.
If you want to play a RPG and want instant gratification consider a cash shop game. Otherwise play standard MMO and when you need instant gratification play a different game. Yeah, looking for a group can get annoying, but get a good guild/LS/corp and chat...Or maybe I am odd and think interaction is a vital part of any MMO?
In the US in general, civil court doesn't touch on the concept of innocence or guilt, and doesn't use the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard but instead 'preponderance of the evidence' standard. Civil court is about disputes between two parties, not whether one party violated a law like a criminal case.
If you can real-money-buy a significant edge in whatever competition there is, then it isn't really a competition just between characters only, it's a competition of who has more free time to grind away. Not anything about how well either player plays the game, or what strategies they learn and employ, or whether they can use the environment to their advantage, just who has more hours to grind/farm/raid for the good stuff. I find that just as much of a flaw as a competition of real money, so the selling just highlights a game flaw.
It sounds to me like the biggest objection to selling gold/items/leveling is that spending a really excessive amount of time on the game is not the sole way to get a big advantage.
In general, I don't care to associtate with people who get an ego over their video game gear whether they 'earned' the gear or not, especially since the 'earning' you speak of is usually just spending a lot of real time repeating some simple task over and over. The attitude of 'elite' gamers is one of the things I strongly seek to avoid in any game. I find that players who have an attitude stemming from an infalted ego due to video game loot tend to have an overly defensive attitude period, a good example are the WOW raid guild leaders that decide that certain specs for certain classes are completely useless in raids even though other guilds or basic math shows how they'd be useful.
[quote]Originally posted by Pantastic
It sounds to me like the biggest objection to selling gold/items/leveling is that spending a really excessive amount of time on the game is not the sole way to get a big advantage.[/b][/quote]
In almost all MMOs there are quick and efficient ways to make income. Actually, the only one I can't think of having one off hand is WoW since that is mostly pure luck on getting a blue or better drop. Although the world drop idea like that seems great to the casual gamer (having a 100g+ random item is always nice) it really kills the casual gamer since they can't mass farm like someone with a lot more time to play. WoW also has the most greatly affected US server economy ATM also...