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Why is gold selling/buying such big business in today's mmos, now that they are claimed to be "more
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
Gold selling/buying is nothing new. People did it back in the early games too. While I have always condemned it (and never done it), at least back in the early games I understood the players' motivations. Money was hard to come by then unless you were adept at high level crafting (which was not an easy thing to do), you were a masterful trader, or you were at the cutting edge of content where the items you sold were in very high demand. Otherwise, it would take a looooong time to raise the money just whacking things.
But nowadays, gold is much, much, MUCH easier to get. You have daily quests. Normal quests give more gold. More gold is dropped. Trading is much easier and you can even use add ons to help you with pricing. When I played WoW I had gold galore just from playing the game and I wasn't even trying to amass any. I swear they just throw gold at you constantly for almost anything you do.
Yet strangely, despite this, gold sellers have left the shadows, moved into the main stream and become a giant business.
I constantly hear how much "fun" games are, now that all that "not fun" stuff has been removed ( that "stuff" being pretty much everything I ever liked about these games lol). And yet, now that the games are easier, and getting gold is easier, I am amazed at how much gold selling and buying is going on. Why would anyone buy gold in games (or any of the other cheesy practices like powerleveling, faction farming, etc.) where it is absurdly easy to get items, coin and advancement already? Why would they need to do this if they are having so much *cough* "fun?"
By some estimates the gold selling industry's revenue is in the billions. So don't say that ah, it's just a few bad apples doing this. Nonsense. It's huge!
Personally, what this tells me is that we have not seen the end of the trend whereby games are made easier. They obviously aren't easy enough if people feel they still have to bypass game play and shortcut to the part where they just have things for doing nothing. And this mantra of how much more "fun" games are now is belied by so many people doing everything possible to avoid the game play.
In my opinion, modern games have to a large degree stopped being games. They are just exercises in having. Having is fun, everything else, not so much. Thus can gold sellers make millions off of people paying to play games that they then pay more not to have to play.
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Comments
It's the same motivation but it's become much larger due to an increased playerbase with more money playing less and wanting to advance faster.
Has nothing to do with "fun" per se, but with available time.
Has nothing to do with "fun" per se, but with available time.
If I don't have the time to play a game I just.. you know.. don't play it. I wouldn't pay someone to play it for me so I can miss all the stuff I would have liked to have seen, just so I can be a higher level. Even if I've already got a maxed out character it would be weird to pay someone to level an alt, surely I'd be missing out on how to play the class and how the different abilities work.
There just doesn't seem to be any logical excuse for doing it. I'd really like to hear from someone on here who has paid for these levelling/gold type of services, just to find out what possible reason they have for doing it. It's something that's always confused me.
Your argument is not valid. Not everyone has 20+ gaming hours per week, but would like to stay competitive with those who do. They are typically he same people who have enough money to spend on buying gold without giving it a second thought from a monetary perspective.
Though I don't condone it, I can perfectly understand someone who does it. These are games and an activity you do for enjoyment. If buying 20 bucks worth of gold or whatever will increase the enjoyment they gain they'll do it.
The day you and others likeminded understands that games are not anything remotely serious you will understand it too.
Do you actually believe that buying a character, or gold, or whatever with real money is in any sense of the word "competitive?" I don't think so. They are paying to masquerade as someone competitive, when they are simply a fraud. But that goes back to my point that a lot of people don't want to play. They want to just "have" some silly online status.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Old vets like to call all new gamers lazy kids.
Those who would buy gold after the OP (correctly) described the situation are the lazy kids. The reasoning hasn't changed - they're greedy, or they want something immediately and they don't feel like working for the money (however easy or hard it may be to earn). Instant gratification, right? The old farts are right about one thing. It's more visible these days, mostly due to the fact that we have thousands of more MMO gamers than we ever did before. The problem was there in the old games, too, but because the genre was basically still nerds in their moms' basements at that time, it wasn't as apparent. Instant gratification seems more rampant in society overall as well.
I played WoW, the gold was ridiculously easy to obtain, but I was still tempted to buy when I was working for my epic flying mount (back when it was ~5000 gold). I didn't buy any, though, and just mooched off my friends instead. When you want something really, really badly, you want it now. Some people justify spending dozens or even hundreds of real dollars to get what they want in-game. I'm not one of them.
Sure they want to play, that's why they are playing... It is not the gold in itself they are after, they want what the gold can buy - usually weapons and armor.
I'll give you a little example: Lets say a player is craving items costing 100 gold. He can easily make 10 gold an hour, or 10 hours of playing to get enough gold to buy what he wants. Instead of doing this he buys 100 gold for 30 bucks and get the items he desire immediately. For most people, 3 bucks an hour is a laugh, and they get the items they want which usually makes them able to do something they find more fun to do than to play to get gold.
In the end, people play games for different reasons. Some get enjoyment from whatever they can buy or having the coolest stuff. What's it to you anyhow?
Fact is unfortunately, that the gear that their after, isnt for sale, its soulbound loot/quest/dungeon drops etc, that can't be traded, so the gear that their buying off of the AH is not the best, its not the coolest.. its actually second rate.. which shows up immediately on gearscores, so, the buyer ends up whinging about how dungeon groups won't accept them in because their gear doesnt score high enough.. karma.. you can buy stuff, but you can't buy credibility... and thats, imo, exactly how it should be.
I have to disagree.
Firstly, buying gold was pretty rampant in old games too, and unless you have some proof to the contrary, its just that the market has gotten bigger which has led to more sale of gold.
Secondly, not everyone likes grinding for gold. It might not be fun, which is what games are supposed to be. If you take the hourly equivalent wage you get from grinding gold it's going to be pretty low. People therefore do, as they have always done in the genre, substitute their real life wage for virtual life gold.
In the end it is exactly like real life - some people follow the rules, some don't mind breaking them.
Good point, whether its just rebellious natures or.. 'lazyness' admittedly the 'i want it, and i want it now' mentality is probably one of the more likely reasons why people do buy gold.. but, the downside is of course that it is 'breaking the rules' and whether the buyer minds or not, there are consequences, how many players lose everything, because of a bad decision.. it would be interesting if the various games actually published numbers of players banned/punished for breaking the terms of a games EULA.. though personally i would be in favour of more naming and shaming
I agree. Never said I like or condone gold buying, but it differs from understanding why it happens.
Just as in life, being discovered having done this should carry in game consequences mimicking those of real life, i.e. a temp ban and deletion of the ill-gained goods.
Don't you mean "I have to agree"? Because that's basically what I said.
Market bigger (thousands of more MMO gamers than we ever did before). Check.
Not everyone likes grinding for gold (instant gratification, I was still tempted to buy when I was working for my epic flying mount). Check. By "working" I meant grinding.
And I agree with your last sentence, so we're on the same page here. Check.
People tend to make this overly complicated. It is very simply supply and demand.
There are items that people can BUY with gold, that they do not feel are worth the time effort to get themselves. These items are cheap in gold value, but are expensive in time/effort value. People have simply done the math, and decided to take the more efficient route.
This is not about being lazy. It is about being efficient. People buy their groceries not because they are too lazy to grow them, but because the tradeoff of time/money/effort makes it more productive to just buy them.
The solution to gold sales problems is to adress the issue in game (not outside of the game). Make the gold buy less of the items that people want, and make them more desirable to achieve themselves. This makes buying gold less atrractive, and doing it yourself more desirable.
There is usually a first class BoE item or two up for grabs at the AH, for anywhere from 5-15k g a pop. Next, you can always buy a raid slot from the top guild on the server, which will net you a few items plus that damn achievement everyone keeps yapping about. And why not get epic flying and one of those choppers while you're at it? Go that route, and you're quickly out 50k gold, which will take you quite some time to farm unless you a) know how to play the AH, or b) have a cc.
People are lazy. Or you get those Hyper competitive people. but i cant tell people what to spend there money on. but im 100% positive that gold sellers Destroy games.
Aion.<bots>
Daoc.< plat sellers >
WoW.< i was hacked over 4 gold>
im sure there is more , but this is what ive experienced.
They are in infestation that plagues mmo games.
It needs to be boycotted , shunned and Controlled better ingame.
Who is more lazy? Someone who works 8+ hours a day to earn a good income but only has a few hours to play a game at night or someone who spends 18+ hours a day sitting on their behind playing a game.
I vote the person sitting on their behind all day.
So many reasons to buy gold, but in the end, the biggest one is to avoid doing content that a person doesn't want to participate in.
I know many players in EVE who love to PVP. In fact, that's all they love about EVE is the PVP, and they despise anything related to PVE activities. These players are not lazy, they just don't want to grind for ISK so there is a legal way for them to purchase ISK from people who have lots to spare.
Same is true in other games. WOW mounts are a good example. There was a day when even grinding for your first mount was tedious and boring, I didn't get my first one until level 44 because I couldn't afford it (spent all my gold on Engineering training).
Then came 1000 gold mounts and 5000 gold mounts, and those were large sums of gold back in the day and players didn't want to grind it out. Doesn't make them evil or bad or lazy, their free time is worth more to them then mindless grinding.
I blame Devlopers for creating boring game play mechanics for the most part, eliminate them and you greatly reduce the gold farming industry.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This man speaks the truth. It's the general problem that MMO's have, they are so diverse that you will have allot of things you simply don't wanna do, the biggest one would be grinding, especially for money because you will always need tons of it, be it for mats/repair/pots etc.
You know, I simply don't have the time to do all of the things I would like to do in the game becasue I have a busy life. If spending a little cash gives me the ability to enjoy a game the way I want to enjoy it than that's what i'm going to do. I know it's wrong, and in most cases against eula's, but I don't regret my choice to do it and I'll do it again if I feel I need to in order to get the enjoyment out of the game. That's not to say I don't try becasue in most cases I will try to do enough quests or whatever to amke money first but on occasion time restraints are such that I need a little help getting there.
I think that gold buying has a lot to do with the "instant gratification" approach that most modern MMOs have adopted. Following in WoW's footsteps, most MMOs throw epic weapons and armor at you at every step, so you become used to being rewarded all of the time. But these games have certain aspects, like the 5000 gold mount in WoW or a 200g swift mount in AoC for example, that are contradictory to the flow of the game. Because of the fact that we have already been 'programmed' by these games to expect being rewarded all of the time, people purchase gold, in order to not interrupt the flow.
You also have to consider the economies of some of these games and how they are really not newbie friendly and downright idiotic. I remember when STO launched, within the first few hours, there was stuff on the auction house that was priced at over 50,000 credits! I mean how stupid can these people be? The problem is that they set a trend for prices and once that sets in, it becomes impossible to regulate. This plays right into the gold sellers hands because sort of forces legit players into buying gold to stay competitive. I know two people who have purchased gold and both of them did it for that reason--stuff that they needed had very high prices and they needed the stuff to stay competitive.
I can see why people do these things, but, the fact that these things are a breach of a games EULA, means that just by doing it, you could be undoing any previous advances you made in the game, in Eve, they have a simple countermeasure, they delete the isk, unfortunately, this is irrespective of the amount of isk in the actual account, a friend of mine, found himself with an account with a balance of -3 billion isk, in Eve, thats a crippling thing, if you die in Eve, you rely on a clone to maintain your training/skill points, these cost isk, how much depends on how many sp's you have, they can cost millions.. and if you can't buy a new clone.. you lose some.. and bearing in mind that each sp is gained over time, you can lose in one hit, months of training, repeat this and your toon can become useless.. other games have different methods of handling EULA breaches in regards to RMT, but its not a good idea to underestimate the repercussions should you be caught, you can be sure that the RMT companies will not be advertising the percentage of their customers who suffer in this way. i suppose another way to look at it though is that if you dont have much time to play anyway, you probably arent that attached to that particular toon or account, so it doesnt really matter if its trashed.. so its an acceptable risk..
But what about all the inflated prices? The more gold people buy, the higher the prices on the items they are trying to buy. I watched it happen in EQ years ago. People who buy gold end up messing up parts of the game for those of us who don't buy gold.
Ihave a Wife, a kid, a job and a social life but I don' use that as excuse for buy gold, I just don't do it. I just enjoy the game without shortcuts because that what buying gold is, a shortcut. A "harcore player" plays 20 hours a day and for his 20 hours I have to play around 4-5 days(depends on wife) do I complain about the other guy thats plays 20 hours a day? No! because i made my choice: be a family man and having a social life and gaming for a hobbie.
Do you guys use shortcuts for hobbies? Let me see: you are an amatuer surfer and you do it for a few hours a week, what excuse will you have for not being able to compete wtih the "hardcore surfer"?
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Corthala, you're still playing 4-5 hours a night based upon the information you provided. To me, 4-5 hours a night IS HARDCORE.
Yes people DO take "shortcuts" to their hobby. People will buy better surf-boards, take more expensive trips to better surf spots, golfers buy better clubs, gamers better computers, etc.
You don't "EARN" anything in an MMO everything is based upon time spent in game, ANYTHING. If you want skill you would be playing online chess, if you wanted teamwork you would go play on a sports team, if you want a mindless time sink that rewards time spent you play an MMO.
Now MMO's are enjoyable, some really love that mindless time sink as a way to wind down, and buying some extra in game cash for some hard earned real money isn't wrong. What is wrong are people who waste their lives chasing a carrot they will never obtain and thinking they are superior to others in a virtual world.
If you have the cash and want to spent a bit of it buying a mount in WoW or some other time sink gold item, go for it. Don't let the "self-righteous" try to convince you otherwise. Maybe if they spent less time "living" in a virtual world, they would see the logic. FYI: I have bought gold and sold gold (minor amounts once or twice) going way back to the start of EQ.
The current generation of gimme it now with zero effort hooligans. The biggest thing I have against gold farmers is that they themselves are getting lazy. They would rather just hack into legitimate player's accounts and steal all thier stuff instead of farming for it. Anyone who buys gold or anything else from these cyber criminals is only hurting themselves.
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I'd rather buy gold than spend hours doing something boring to obtain it.
I'm ok with spending hours doing something fun to obtain the gold though.
I value my time. If I'm enjoying the game while grinding the gold then it's time well spent. If I'm not enjoying the game while grinding the gold then it's time wasted. I'd rather waste money than time.