Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Countering gold sellers?
Shadoed
Member UncommonPosts: 1,459
Just levelled one of my chars and headed into SW to train and gear up only to be met at the AH by the usual barrage of Gold seller adverts. I got to thinking about how Blizzard could counter or inconvenience them a little more?
It struck me that the main form of advertising was to use a trial account, create a L1 char, run it to the local city, spam for a few minutes and then kill the account. Would it not make this a lot more difficult if it was made a requirement to reach L5/6 before you could exit the start area and even go as far as not allowing anyone under L10 into major cities. I don't see that this would be a major inconvenience to players themselves as they need to level anyway and to those that use bank chars, pushing through to L10 wouldn't be a major problem.
It may not sound like a lot but i am sure it would cause the sellers a little grief and even give Blizzard a little more of a trail to follow if and when they are trying to track these guys down?
Thoughts and other suggestions?
PS: Not interested in hearing blizzard/gold seller conspiracy theories, been there done that!!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Comments
Im not sure what game has this I think WC3 but apply something that you cant say the same thing twice or three times in a row. But still easy to get around. Hm there are things they can do but normal people will suffer like trial accounts cant use macros or cant copy and paste.
I disagree with you thrift, getting to level 10 is nothing challenging. This is an excellent idea, too bad Blizzard won't put it in.
They already made it impossible to post certain URL's, but of course these people find away around and post it anyway.
I was recently thinking of how to crush the market for gold farmers, because I think I spend too much time each day looking for resources to save some gold. The problem is that everything the player needs daily, like mana potions, plants for elixirs, metal, motes of "you-name-it" is quite difficult to farm for the average player, especially since gold farmers usually farm an area clean and the respawn rates are quite low anyway. In time to get to a raid, a player often has to buy the stuff at the AH, paying the gold farmers ... well gold.
I don't have a great solution at hand. But I think Blizz should introduce a system to make it easier for average players to get these materials. Maybe an easy daily quests where you can get 20 mana potions or plants or whatever (let the player select which reward he wants), or that some resources (plants, metal etc.) spawns individually for each player, so that you can get a certain amount of resources within a short time. Or that any certain player can only farm so much of any resource in an area. Remember just suggestions. Probably these would create a host of problems I haven't thought of. But they would reduce the prices in the AH, making it less worth-while for gold farmers.
But most players can already farm for resources. Most people can mine or skin or gather herbs or whatever, and everyone can gather cloth or motes.
All you have to do is then swap these resources with other people (via the AH) to get what you want. If people are too lazy to do the above (which isn't exactly hard) then they are too lazy to do the quest you suggest above.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Buying stuff from the AH isn't necessarily paying the gold farmers, many people (like me) put stuff up on the AH constantly like potions, elixirs, metals and motes to get gold. That doesn't make me a gold farmer, that's just reselling the stuff I have collected. I'm sure some of that is done by gold farmers as well to be able to meet their quota, but I don't think we typically think of the gold farmers as those selling their stuff on the AH. The term gold farmer usually is reserved for the guy who is taking real money in the form of a credit card or pay pal for in game gold, how he got the gold to do that is irrelevent.
I absolutely agree, I think I got misunderstood. I know a great deal of Auctions are from normal players. But I am equally sure, that I've bought tons of stuff from gold farmers (who then sell the gold for real money later), because those same people farmed all the plants/metals/whatever I needed in the first place.
Anyway, back to topic.
Farming for a weeks consumable stuff is pretty painless, an hour's worth of killing mobs gives me cloth, faction drops, some disenchantable items, and even a couple of potions, and if I'm lucky, a rare item. Aldor and Scryer drops sell for 1g each, and the Arcane Tomes and Fel Arms sell for 15g each, stack of Netherweave cloth goes for 5g, disenchanted green items go for a few gold, blue items for like 20g, or more, and the mobs drop around 15s each.
This will earn me more than week's worth of cash to cover repair costs, mana potions, flasks, and other stuff.
Now the hard thing is saving for that 5000g epic mount. And also the epic recipe drops that people sell for almost 1000g. This is both understandable and frustrating at the same time. The flying epic mount is awesome, the reputation-reward mounts look absolutely gorgeous. Netherdrakes ftw.
The hard thing is getting that 5k mount, after that, farming isn't really an issue.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
If they really wanna crack down on some of this stuff, they need to hire a few folks with GM status to police for this and thats it.. This would be thier only job. Have them spend time on random servers each day. Check and police large sums of money being transferred. Have all the reports routed to them via a tab in the report for gold sellling. I know this wont happen but would be nice to see bliz spend a bit of the truckloads of cash they are making on something like this. I dont think it would end it, but I do belive it would hinder them greatly.
What you're advocated is a game ruleset approach to what is a social issue. It can be easily bypassed by the goldsellers by quickly leveling up a charater to level 10, which does not take long.
Just about every MMO out there has to deal with the currency selling phenomenon. The common approach is to find some sort of ruleset way to deal with it, because the problem is so pervasive. It's a lot like spam in email; technical approaches to the problem will eventually be overcome by the spammers every time, because the problem is not technical in nature; it's social. Dealing with social problems is very labor intensive, and the last thing the MMO publisher wants to do is hire people to deal with this issue, because they'll be swamped with it before long.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
There's a mod called spam me not or something like that, it came with my UI and it blocks all messages from level one characters, I think 1-5 you can also change the settings too. I know this because I was playing on a different server and a friend of mine made a level one character to get in touch with me and she couldn't. I recommend you give that a shot, I actually havent recieved any tells from goldsellers ever since I've had the mod.
A man dies daily, only to be reborn in the morning, bigger, better and wiser.
-Playing AoC
-Playing WoW
-Retired- SWG
-Retired- EVE
-Retired- LotR
Computer (- Phenom 9600 Black Edition @ 2.81 Ghz (Quad Core CPU)- Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 - 4 Gigs of PC 8500 ram (1066)- EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS PCI Express 2.0 - WD 500GB 7500RPM - Zalman CPU cooler (air cooled)
- 24" Widescreen 1080P HD display).
I agree with Pappy here as I always am placing items to be sold in AH. There are times when I may have as many as a dozen or more items in at once.Buying stuff from the AH isn't necessarily paying the gold farmers, many people (like me) put stuff up on the AH constantly like potions, elixirs, metals and motes to get gold. That doesn't make me a gold farmer, that's just reselling the stuff I have collected. I'm sure some of that is done by gold farmers as well to be able to meet their quota, but I don't think we typically think of the gold farmers as those selling their stuff on the AH. The term gold farmer usually is reserved for the guy who is taking real money in the form of a credit card or pay pal for in game gold, how he got the gold to do that is irrelevent.
I think Jason_webb brings up a valid point here, while it won't by any stretch stop gold farming it would slow the process down somewhat. At least it's a positive and doesn't really effect beginning characters too much as they really should concetrate on leveling to make basic stats even to get to the main cities.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
I am not quite sure what your overall point was in this post, but yes that is what i am advocating. The reason i think this approach is useful is two-fold;
1 - At the moment goldsellers can create a L1 char and run it to the nearest city in minutes, then run an advert and start again. With this in place it would take a lot more time to level the char first before they could get it to a city, which although is not a total solution, it is a major inconvenience. It may be the difference between one seller running 10 adverts an hour to maybe less than one an hour. Yes, they could overlap new chars too, but that would allow for easier detection if they were creating too many at a time.
2 - It is an inconvenience only to goldsellers as players going about their normal business will not really be affected.
At the end of the day on the social aspect, if there is money to be made someone will always find a way, but that does not mean that we shouldn't make it more difficult to do so.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Well now you have to wait an hour before you get your gold when you sell stuff on the AH, Im thinking blizzard is using this hour to screen accounts and find if the gold is going to an alt with 1000+++ gold on them.
*highlights it and hits ctrl-c*
*launches game*
*ctrl-v*
"buy gold/items/characters from <website>"
*ctrl-v*
"buy gold/items/characters from <website>a"
*ctrl-v*
"buy gold/items/characters from <website>b"
Anyway, the point here is that chat filters are woefully subpar and don't work practically at all in most cases. Yes, it takes longer than a macro, but it just means that the spammer will be around for 15 seconds instead of 5. Disabling copy and paste, as you said, would hurt regular players.
There is no real simple solution, unfortunately. You can have it so that it blocks any tells/says/yells with links in them, but then you just end up with people doing "w w w dot w e b s i t ena me dot co m".
Because of the fact that the virtual currency market is becoming a viable full-time business, we're just, as gamers, going to have to come to terms with the fact that no matter what, you're going to come across spammers in nearly all MMORPGs now.
The only real ways to fight spammers at the moment is through active vigilance by administrative staff (too costly and time consuming) or restricting legitimate player's freedoms (self explanatory).
Trial accounts in WoW have no access to public chat channels.
Now I understand why.
What jolly smart people those chaps at Blizzard are.
Problem is .. u can't counter gold sellers because of the heavy gold requirement for PvE raiding and to a lesser extent PvP. Pots, reagents and repair bills can run into the 100's of gold during the week very quickly.. this is true no matter how successful or fast your guild is with PvE content. Even PvP is hampered by the need for gold (Rogue anyone?) and you need to spend a ton of cash on an epic mount alone to remain competitive. With a staggering amount of people unable to farm regularly to meet these cash requirements they turn to gold farmers and sellers to make up for the time they don't have to keep themselves raid ready. If you want a real solution.. play a game where gold farmers don't have such a tight grip on day to day activities. One thing is for sure.. blizzard will never get rid of gold farmers unless they give up on thier current player economic system.
Sorry dude, but that is total and utter CRAP!!
If you can't make up for the losses that you incurr during a raid in time for the next one, then don't go on the next raid!!! If you don't have the time to get together the cash you need, how do you have the time to raid??
Everything you have just listed above is a pathetic excuse for gold buying and the same lame excuse used by people who buy power levelling too. Why bother subscribing to a game that you are not going to play for yourself but get someone else to do the work for you??
The only reason that gold sellers can stay in business is for people to keep making stupid excuses like this in the first place and keep buying gold from them!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Sorry dude, but that is total and utter CRAP!!
If you can't make up for the losses that you incurr during a raid in time for the next one, then don't go on the next raid!!! If you don't have the time to get together the cash you need, how do you have the time to raid??
Everything you have just listed above is a pathetic excuse for gold buying and the same lame excuse used by people who buy power levelling too. Why bother subscribing to a game that you are not going to play for yourself but get someone else to do the work for you??
The only reason that gold sellers can stay in business is for people to keep making stupid excuses like this in the first place and keep buying gold from them!
I agree. Rationalizations like the one you quoted is what keeps the gold marketing companies in business. It doesn't matter what game you play---raiding COSTS money. However, by the time you're raiding in just about any game, it's not exactly difficult to recoup your losses by doing something else for a few hours. It definitely was not hard for me to make money in WoW by taking a few hours off to do something else, since you can't raid 24/7 anyway.
Well then go pvp/pve farming without a mount or even on a non epic mount. When you are getting your a$$ handed to you becasue you can't ever catch up to your opponent or it takes you forever to get anywhere... You'll sing a different tune for sure. Do you seriously think a pure pvper/pver is going to want to spend ANY amount of PvE time farming so he can catch up to people who invest 100's of hours farming for gold. Fuk that i can go play counter strike and get everything for free and not have to worry about a stupid mount or repair bills for dying. This is not a rationalization.. its the reality of the situation. Who wants to seriously spend any amount of time farming?? I want to raid.. so farming takes 3-4 hours a week.. thats 3-4 hours a week I could be doing ANYTHING other than mindless killing X mobs so i can stay raid ready for a guild. Ya know time you can be RAIDING endgame content. This is why you have gold sellers. If you think quality time in a video game is farming like then.. then you, my friend, are the rl noob.
Hiring people to police? For one they already have GM's online but, the gold farmers counter this by just junking the account after their advertisement I think.
Gold farmers suck - the best way to counter them is NOT TO BUY GOLD FROM THEM. There is no way I would buy gold from these people. It's so ridiculous to be bothered by a tell from some unknown person about selling gold - I can't stand it.
Isn't there a program or something built into blizzards thing that can block tells from people lvl 10 and under or something. If you haven't reached lvl 10 you shouldn't have access to general chat or trade channel or something maybe?
So as far as you are concerned gold sellers are a completely justifiable necessity to feed lazy PvP'ers with the gold they are not willing to earn for themselves?? You are completely satisfied to ruin the game for everyone else as long as you get that mount you want without actually having to do some work for it??
It must really give you a warm feeling of satisfaction to look at your gear and mount and say to yourself "wow, i paid good hard cash for that!" The thrill of buying that next 1000g must be amazing!
If you are not willing to put in the work, why the hell do you play the game in the first place?? Secondly, the reason why it is so damned hard to farm quickly is because lazy people like you are paying the gold sellers to farm the areas to death in the first place!!
You can throw pathetic comments like 'noob' at everyone you wish, but if if you are advocating 'buying' your way through the game rather than actually earning your gear, i think it is about time to take a long hard look in the mirror!
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
So as far as you are concerned gold sellers are a completely justifiable necessity to feed lazy PvP'ers with the gold they are not willing to earn for themselves?? You are completely satisfied to ruin the game for everyone else as long as you get that mount you want without actually having to do some work for it??
Key word in your statement is "WORK" .. You want to WORK for something... WORK for something you take home like a car or a home. WORKING for a mount or any piece of virtual bullshit so you enjoy an aspect of a GAME is stupid. If i want a second job.. I'll give Blizzard a call.
It must really give you a warm feeling of satisfaction to look at your gear and mount and say to yourself "wow, i paid good hard cash for that!" The thrill of buying that next 1000g must be amazing!
Yup buy 1000 gold in 20 minutes or spend 10-20 hours farming it.. You decide which is a more quality use of your time. Even if I buy it, I still WORKED for the rl cash to purchase it. I sure am lazy buying gold with my rl cash..
If you are not willing to put in the work, why the hell do you play the game in the first place??
I PLAY to have FUN.. you know.. the basic premise of any game. Mindlessly killing mobs is not fun to anyone who is reasonably looking for a challenge while gaming.
Secondly, the reason why it is so damned hard to farm quickly is because lazy people like you are paying the gold sellers to farm the areas to death in the first place!!
This all boils down to how you spend your time qualitywise. Most people aren't too lazy to farm.. Its just not a productive or fun use of anyones time.. If you think farming is FUN then either you yourself are a gold farmer or you have no life.
You can throw pathetic comments like 'noob' at everyone you wish, but if if you are advocating 'buying' your way through the game rather than actually earning your gear, i think it is about time to take a long hard look in the mirror!
People have been buying thier way into games for years and buying gold for years. No rant on MMORPG.com is ever going to get rid of it no matter what game you play.
1 - Well Heokin, i take only one thing from your first three statements and that is simply that you enjoy only one aspect of the game and be damned anyone else who gets in the way of that! You have no respect for anyone else in the community and if their game is ruined so that you can enjoy your little niche of it, "SO WHAT!"
2 - As i understood the basic premise of the game it was to rise to the challenges that it puts forward to you so that you work through the game and achieve whatever goal it is that you set yourself. I don't remember it being, if you only want to PvP and own all the best gear, ignore the rest of the game and just buy everything you need through illegal channels!
3 - I personally find it very strange that you would throw away your hard earned RL money on virtual cash and again 'personally' i would much prefer to spend that cash on the social aspects of my life than feed gold farmers. For what you are paying for 1000g i can go out for few beers and enjoy myself with friends instead, at the end of the day it is not the be all and end all to get that next piece of kit and if it takes a few more weeks, so be it. It is very sad that you feel so compelled to get that next 'precious' item and you would throw away RL cash to get it rather than just wait a little while?? I will never get that!
4 - NO! Certain people have been buying their way through games for a while and they are as bad as the farmers themselves for taking part in such activities.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.