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Gold Spamming in MMO's?
RudyRaccoon
Member UncommonPosts: 475
I've just come to realise that most of the MMO's I've played has Gold/in-game currency Spamming in it, do you think this ruins the game? I heard that buying gold is illegal, can result in your account being banned or your account being hacked and stolen. It's become such a problem that games like WoW don't sort the problem out. Is it really necessary for this to exist or is it a flaw that's forever here to stay?
Comments
Yes, I believe that it ruins the game as it can distort the ingame economy by creating massive inflation. In just about all games I've seen, player accounts can be banned by purchasing currency wth real money from third party sources. I'm not sure how a player account can be hacked/stolen though unless the player reveals their username & password to another party. I'm sure the game companies like Blizzard are constantly working on the problem but as it's an arms race, there will not be a perfect solution that can eliminate the spammers completely.
I absolutely dont get the mind of goldbuyers.
Who in their right mind would "buy" money in a game ?
Its a number of electrical signals, for heavens sake. And the point of the game is to have fun. So whats the fun in buying gold ?
There is a couple of good strategies against gold sellers, though, such as:
- Limiting communication, such as: no public channels, highlevel players can ignore lowlevel players, tells only between players that accepted each other as friend / are in the same group, guild or alliance, etc
- No buying of really important stuff, you need to actually do quests to get them (this is troublesome, as it also limits crafting)
- Gold restriction, you can gain new wealth only at a certain rate
- Devaluation / Tax, gold "dimishes" over time
- Dont make anything sellable (or very easily buyable) that has a big impact on gameplay, such as mounts, flying mounts, ships, houses etc.
ONe could also point out that the presence of numerous gold spamers is a sign of a healthy MMO. Parasites need hearty hosts...as soon as the host becomes sick and dying, most will abandon ship
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
gold sellers are not part of the game that you purchase to play. So they are making the game bad. Not as intended. Get rid of them.
On a personal note. I hate have a full blacklist of people who are gold sellers.....
I've always had a dream, that one day, a company would be brave enough to make an MMO w/out any economy whatsoever. But alas, those gold farm/spammers would probably become "item spammers" selling/collecting items to re-sell them for live currency. Well at least it would be harder for them if the game had no economy. I would imagine it would make for a community of trading. Still could be interesting to see an MMO like that.
/shrugs
I can't remember the last time I saw gold spam in the games I regularly play. Most of those games have spam reporting tools for players.
The most recent games I played that did have gold spam were Dungeon Fighter Online and Zentia. It' s one reason those games are not on my system. In DFO when you enter city zones there is no way to converse because of how much spam there is. It scrolls by so fast you can't even read it. In Zentia I only saw maybe 2 spammers at any one time.
What games are you playing that have all this gold spam?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
there is no gold spamming in LOTRO. unlike most companies turbine puts foot to ass efficiantly against gold spammers
What you have said haphazardly could be the only solution to gold spammers! From the mouth of babes!!!!
Well the RMT site could use exploits such as the flash player one to compromise the players PC upon visiting the site.
Also if the site asks you to make a user account with a username and password (or email address and password...) some people tend to use the same info for their game accounts as well, pretty much handing the RMT people their login info...
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
I'm not sure it has negatively affected any game I've played except RF Online and Aion. In Aion, the economy was crazy, you were a god/goddess and lived like a pauper. People in the know seemed to attribute a lot to gold bots. Plus, what I know for sure, was the vast numbers of gold bots in PvP areas, cause I killed many of them. That was a buzz kill.
RF Online seemed like 90% gold farmers and 10% players (and most of them were offline farming - which was an intended part of the game).
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
And another one could point out that this post makes no sense considering APB had an explosion of gold spammers after the first month as the population was starting to drop. They even spammed after the annoucement of entering administration and still after the annoucement of the APB coming to a close until the servers went down.
I have to disagree. Anarchy Online is well in its last death throes and the credz selling bots are rampant.
Gold spamming is a problem with every mmo, and their is no cut and clear solution to prevent it from happening. It's an issue that is here to stay from what I can tell.
The best dev's can do is take an active stance against it and ban players that have been reported, reviewed, and confirmed as gold sellers.
I'm not sure how much of a negative effect it has..if a lot of the player base buys gold then yes, the economy will burn and crash, but for the most part I haven't encountered much trouble in any game regarding excessive gold selling since maybe Lineage 2's earlier days.
At it's worst most of the time, it's just plain annoying. But that is what an ignore list is for.
It's a problem of bad game design. If players need lots of gold, it's a pain to get, and vastly more efficient to get gold by farming it than by simply playing the game, then gold sellers become a problem. If there isn't much point to farming in the first place, then you don't get the same sort of gold spam.
Hmmmnmm so if the person wasn't a gold seller but someone you knew and he is selling his items using real money will you purchase it if you really need it just a thought???
I have nothing with gold sellers I'm just curious if RMT is really successful since it seems so much people are doing it
Oh and I watched "Welcome to the NHK" the episode where he tried to RMT but just kept going playing the game and became addicted ^_^
As cash shops become institutionalised in MMO’s you will see gold mining wane. After all the MMO company does not want you spending money with a third party does it? So they have taken over the role of the gold miner. You still will see it of course as gold miners compete by lowering their prices.
1. Game is grindy with ultra low drop rates
2. Ultra low drop rates means long time spent acquiring item
3.If money earned per hour >> time spent needed to acquire gold for item = better off buying gold
Also 1,2 leads to botting
So gold selling is direct resault of poor gmae design.
gold spammers can't spam more than I can block/report/ignore them:)
On a serious note, they never bothered me, I just pass them and dont pay attention. As for people that buy gold from the, it's ther own bussines, I like to make my own, this is a game that we play, and to me - grinding for gold is fun and challenging aspect of it.
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Yeah it's a simple sollution, but still has a weakness. I can still see them selling items for real money, but I bet items would be harder to come by than farming for gold. I like more the idea of not having any economy, not necessarily to stop or slow down the gold farmers from spamming, but also because it would be interesting to see the community dynamic that would be "trader-based" economy than a symbolic monetary one. Will this slow them down? Maybe. Will this stop the gold farmers? Probably not.