Originally posted by Torak You guys are funny... gold farming in video games has nothing to do with the history or trade agreements between the U.S./China. You are dancing around the real issue...the gamer. It has everything to do with YOU the gamer buying the crap to begin with. If no one bought the crap no one would farm it. I guarentee that statement. Nomatter how rediculous it seems to me to type it, trying to get people to stop buying online gold from slave labour would be like telling the Northern textile industry to stop buying Southern Cotton. Not going to happen, this gaming gold farming thing is a tiny microcosm of free-trade-slavery, and the games arent even that fun. Just another notch in the belt of slavery, a very tiny notch. Its not how many/where they are from that matters...its all the Americans on American servers buying it that counts. You are paying the farmer after all. Stop buying the gold and the gold farmers will disapper. That is a promise
Originally posted by Vyava Originally posted by Nerf09 This is what the Democrats and Libertarian-Republicans wanted, free trade. How pathetic, the games arent even that fun.
Unfettered Free trade---->Slavery. Many people died in a war about 150 years ago to ban slavery, try honoring their sacrifice for once.
The Civil War had almost nothing to do with freeing slaves. Sad but true. It was purely about the Northern factories needing the materials created on Southern farms and that if the south formed their own country they could create their own economy through trade with the same countries the origianl colonies broke off of. The slavery issue was drummed up to add support to the northern cause from the various groups that didn't want to fight a war.
The outcome was beneficial to the salves, but that was really a secondary issue at best. This myth that the war was started for that cause is just people trying to glorify the war for more than it was. Besides if the war was truly to free the slaves and give them freedoms then why didn't they get them at the end of the war?
You really haven't paid a lot of attention in life have you?
If you want to hear it from the mouth of an american soldier woprking as a historical guide may I suggest visiting Fort Snelling National Park.
You have zero knowledge of history, and how it applies to today. The civil war was a battle between protectionist Lincoln-Republicans vs. free-trade-libertarian-Democrat Slavers. And apparently the war aint over.
Originally posted by Ridetsu Look, i personally dislike gold farmING. that is not to say i dislike Gold-farmERS.That is why, when it comes to games, i feel that item based trading is best... not currency. At any rate, i have no problem with a gold-farmer. he is doing what he needs to do to survive. He/she knows that what they do isn't anything to be proud of... that is humiliation and degradation enough. They are people simply trying to get by, and i can respect that.
I do not like gold farming though... it ruins economies, and creates annoying pop-up adds on the many sites i visit. But that is their life, and i won't stop them from managing to even put a scrap of food on the table.
I may not lie what they do, but the human will is to survive by any means possible. When the last of a species of woodpecker was killed by a starving hispanic man, he only smiled and said that it was the best meal his family ever had. I know that goldfarmers aren't killing off species and whatnot, but people do what they have to to survive. If you had the choice of killing the last of the blue cow, or feeding your family after a week of starvation, would you not kill the cow? A little empathy goes a long way.
That is exactly how the Dixiecrats rationalized slavery! They felt compasion for the poor poor starving Africans. They were bleeding heart slavers 150 years ago, they are bleeding heart slavers today.
Originally posted by Xenduli If you buy an item, how do you know that wasn't farmed by a farmer or was duped?
There is a word for claims without substantiation.
Its called bull$hit!
And your comment proves exactly what Im saying. In the abscence of evidence, its all just heresay.
When you buy an item you dont know if it was duped, farmed or legitimately gained. Ergo the effect on the economy is either not measurable or not significant, either way there is no proof.
+-+-+-+-+-+ "MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol" http://purepwnage.com -+-+-+-+-+-+ "Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
It's abit difficult for a gamer to prove that, they don't have access to server logs. I may not know, but someone who has access to privileged information will. I don't know this urge to find a "smoking gun", to say that gold farming has no effect and is just heresy is pretty naive coming from a supposedly experienced mmorpg player.
the problem is obvious and has already been stated more than once
Originally posted by Mylon Another user here says it best with his signature: If your game makes a user wany to pay money so someone else can play it for them, perhaps that is a time to rexamine how the game works. (Paraphrased.)
I could go into details of how an mmo should be, but I'm not sure that anyone would listen at this point seeing all the trolling. Just ask yourself if there are any gold farmers for counter-strike, then go to Xfire's site and see how many people still play it.
Originally posted by Nerf09 You have zero knowledge of history, and how it applies to today. The civil war was a battle between protectionist Lincoln-Republicans vs. free-trade-libertarian-Democrat Slavers. And apparently the war aint over.
Obviously the war for equal rights isn't over (Although that was not the civil war. The battle against the Jim Crow laws would be a more accurate one.) since you spout uneducated prejudiced hatred everywhere you step.
As far as knowing if somethign is duped or not even with logs it would be incredibly difficult. Unless you ahve a red flag to investigate a person or item you are talking about going through tons of logs looking for a single deviation per dupe. As far as farming even multiples of rare items may not indicate farming since many guild banks sell drops from raids and split the gold between members or to fund crafting and faction increases. At one point my guild bank in WoW had 2 krol blades up both legitimately dropped. In FFXI the LS bank had 3 damascus ingots for sale once just because others undercutting the price left our previous drops unsold.
Nerf: Dude, none of your quotations of the LP or the other sources make them connected in any way. You are assuming that free trade equals slavery. Sorry, it does not under any circumstances. According to your logic, anyone that buys anything outside of their country and does not hate a foreigner must support slavery. That does not follow, nerf, stop lying and stop trolling this thread. This thread is about the gold farming companies, their impact on games, and their impact on the economy in the real world. The fact is this, the gold farmers are filling a service, a need that was always there. Is that really a problem? Yes, only because many games have broken economies anyways and were never designed to handle people that would literally harvest gold from loot drops. So, in a way, we can thank the gold farmers for showing all of us how broken our games really are and how many people will exploit them through gold farmers to not have to play like the rest of us who do pay that monthly fee. It means we can all ask the right question of MMO developers such as "will you have a system to control the amount of total currency, and special items, in-game..." and so on. Questions like this will drive MMO developers to either embrace the open-ended/broken economic model of the current MMO coding schemes, thus importing the system into their payment/subscription scheme, which could mean MMOs that are technically free, but you might have to 'buy' your currency to get anywhere, but even that looks a tad bad to me since it would ruin the fun of rising in the economic ranks on your own power in a game...
All in all, I think that is the point of this thread and not this political trolling! OI!
Originally posted by Nerf09 You have zero knowledge of history, and how it applies to today. The civil war was a battle between protectionist Lincoln-Republicans vs. free-trade-libertarian-Democrat Slavers. And apparently the war aint over.
Error again, nope, the South was free trade only because they had no other goods to trade. For them, the North wanted to keep the local goods of cotton and other farmed resources in the South at a depressed price, which in turn caused even the price of slaves to go up since now you couldn't pay people to do the same work for a wage now, which is why many a yeoman farmer could not keep a living for his family. Now, according to your logic, free trade caused slavery, yet if you logically look at the causes of slavery, it was not due to free trade, it was due to the fact that one group of people under the guise of 'protecting the economy' wanted the cheapest product with the least amount of competition. In short, protectionism is the cause of slavery or atleast the cause of the continuation of slavery in the US at the time prior to the Civil War. In fact, this is why the US became an industrial power, we made the cheapest products of all the competing world powers at that time. As the old joke about anything from Japan being flimsy, the US products of that era were likened in the same manner. Where as the UK's products were deemed the 'best' or 'most durable' of goods, but also more expensive.
Also, another error of your logic is not the issue of the lacking evidence, but rather the most common fallacy of all: False Dichotomy. You assume there are only two options in a debate, when the reality is, I shown there are other options to the debate. Which you have not falsified out of the situation, and you continue to ignore that fact. Now, I ask you to prove there are no other possible alternatives to free trade v protectionism[aka MERCENTALISM], if you cannot do so, then I must recant your claims.
I must say that it's not only the gold framers that are at fault, even though they are still at fault, but also, like it's been said before, the players that buy gold for cash are at fault. Ok, that's been mentioned, but also there is another solution and one more person at fault, the publishers of whatever game are at fault also because they release the game in China where this stuff is going on. I understand that people from China can still get into a game but it's not as as rampant as if the publisher kept the game out of China. In fact that's going to be the best way, IMO, to keep gold framers from ruining a game economy.
Exactly, but I think it tells more about how short sighted the developers are when they coded the game economics. I mean, think about it, how many countries really keep printing money to the point of hyper inflation? Not often, and only in times where either the system is about to collaspe, or whatever. So, really the developers need to be long sighted and consider a way to restrict the volume of currency in a game. Whether that means in-game 'taxes' or whatever, to make the players be more careful with their gold and to restrict the capability of gold farming [like having gold not on every drop...]. o_O But that's just me.
Originally posted by Xenduli It's abit difficult for a gamer to prove that, they don't have access to server logs. I may not know, but someone who has access to privileged information will. I don't know this urge to find a "smoking gun", to say that gold farming has no effect and is just heresy is pretty naive coming from a supposedly experienced mmorpg player.
Oh man thats sooooo rich Im surprised your sig doesnt say unlimited gold.org, seems like 99.99% of the people on that site are happy to live a delusional fantasy realm of thinking they have ANY idea whats going on as well.
Im not saying gold farming has no effect. Im saying it has no proveable effect. Now admittedly the end result of that is the same so I dont mind shortening my claim to the obvious outcome, it saves me typing.
My enitre point is that firstly the game developers have complete control over thier own virtual worlds, they just find it more profitable NOT to exercise it. Also that there is nothing you can point to, not a shred of evidence that gold farming ruins economies.
In any other feild of endeavour that would be called "speculation" not fact. I guess the world of anti gold farming has its own particular brand of logic and truth huh ?
+-+-+-+-+-+ "MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol" http://purepwnage.com -+-+-+-+-+-+ "Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
In that case Razorback why aren't there 10,000 players banging down Blizzards door saying "Oi, why did you ban me?". Are you saying Blizard and other game companies are just banning players because they just feel like it. Are you saying those GM's in the RF Online video were just making the whole thing up? That the 2 months spent analysing server logs [evidence!] was just a figment of their imagination. And you call me illogical! You know I had you down as one of mmorpg.com more smarter members, I guess I need to rethink that. Why don't you email wowgm@blizzard.com and tell them what you think?
Originally posted by Xenduli In that case Razorback why aren't there 10,000 players banging down Blizzards door saying "Oi, why did you ban me?". Are you saying Blizard and other game companies are just banning players because they just feel like it. Are you saying those GM's in the RF Online video were just making the whole thing up? That the 2 months spent analysing server logs [evidence!] was just a figment of their imagination. And you call me illogical! You know I had you down as one of mmorpg.com more smarter members, I guess I need to rethink that. Why don't you email wowgm@blizzard.com and tell them what you think?
Im saying with a player base of 6 million, Blizzard only need to worry about banning the worst and most obvious cases, which is clearly all they do. Im not good enough at maths to work out what percentage 10K is of 6 million... but its a bees $#%^ of the over all numbers involved and is nothing more than window dressing in the total scheme of things. Considering they could change the games code to stop it altogether, any time they felt so disposed, its an insult to the intelligence of anyone who cares, and I do.
Also considering that any current level 50+ player can immediatley take you out to a hunting spot and show you farmers at work RIGHT NOW or ANYTIME, it tells you EXACTLY how much effort they are ACTUALLY putting in to stopping it.
Whether Blizzard examines its server logs is conjecture. They tell you they do and you believe them, thats cool. Im more skeptical than that.
As for emailing Blizzard and other companies on this topic. I have done it many times, every time we have a major thread on this topic I send most of the companies I have played games with a link, just to let them know its on peoples minds. I rarely even get replies, let alone any sort of commitment for them to do anything. Im just a ratbag with a big mouth to them, like most of us are.
However this is a numbers game in a commercial enterprise. To rehash what I posted on NoGold.Org recently, its basically like this.
6 million people play WoW (cant help using WoW as an example but it applies accross the board)
Maybe 1% care enough about farming to let it affect thier play experience. (its probably less)
1% of that 1% quit in disgust over it (I did)
100 people care enough to register at sites like nogold.org (actually 106 but whos counting)
1 person cared enough to start nogold.org.
If Blizzard catered to those numbers they would find themselves working out of a shed in someones backyard, instead of working from high rise office buildings and hundreds of staff. They will continue to appeal to the largest market segment until the maths change.
One thing I can tell you FOR SURE is this. If even 10% of their current subscribers emailed them and said :
"We feel that you have the ability to alter the game's code to completely stop farmers plying their trade and we are suspending our subscriptions until you do it"
Then WoW would have a currency and item system that was not tradeable outside the game in place in the next patch. This also tells us conclusively that they could stop this anytime they wanted.
So whos to blame ?
MMORPG.com ?
The Farmers ?
The advertisers ?
Me ?
You ?
No it is of course the people who create, run and utimately have full legal, developmental and overall responsibility for the games. The developers.
I have yet to hear an argument that even begins to make me think otherwise and Im pretty certain that by now, I have basically heard it all.
+-+-+-+-+-+ "MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol" http://purepwnage.com -+-+-+-+-+-+ "Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Originally posted by Razorback Im saying with a player base of 6 million, Blizzard only need to worry about banning the worst and most obvious cases, which is clearly all they do.
Surely thats a start.
Originally posted by Razorback nothing more than window dressing in the total scheme of things. Considering they could change the games code to stop it altogether, any time they felt so disposed, its an insult to the intelligence of anyone who cares, and I do.
Next you'll be telling me that all those who download illegal stuff through torrent can be caught just through the use of clever coding, it takes more than that.
Hmmm window dressing, let's assume that these players banned been playing for a year. A reasonable assumption especially how you are saying Blizzard are complacent, not going to disagree with you there. 10,000 players x 2 x $77.94 [6 month sub], thats a $1,558,800 window dressing.
Originally posted by Razorback Whether Blizzard examines its server logs is conjecture. They tell you they do and you believe them, thats cool. Im more skeptical than that.
Does a bank go about telling everyone how they catch fraudsters? Does the police put a press release explain how they catch criminils? Surely to give detailed information is counter-productive. Are you saying Blizzard just go about banning random people now, you don't really that beleive do you?
Originally posted by Razorback One thing I can tell you FOR SURE is this. If even 10% of their current subscribers emailed them and said : "We feel that you have the ability to alter the game's code to completely stop farmers plying their trade and we are suspending our subscriptions until you do it" Then WoW would have a currency and item system that was not tradeable outside the game in place in the next patch. This also tells us conclusively that they could stop this anytime they wanted.
But currency is exchanged inside the game [more information about how it works here], until the farmers start distributing their stock-piled gold [unnnatural accumulation of money into an economy] they are nothing more than another player. Let's pretend that I am a gold farmer, all I do is spend every day along with my "colleague" making gold. Until I actually sell that gold, just another player on the server. It's not like catching drug dealers, when a raid is done on a production lab[or gold-farming sweatshop ]. These farmers can only be caught when the act is done.
Next you'll be telling everyone that this video was made by a Blizzard employee and that gold-farming doesn't actually exist.
Yes its a start but its still pathetic considering the developer completely controls all aspects of their created environment.
Downloading illegal stuff is not a valid analogy since the internet is a creation of many many different companies and systems. The end result of which is the conglomerate of systems we call the internet. No one company has complete control over it. Conversely every MMO developer has the ability to completely control the world they created. There is no valid comparison there.
Its window dressing because it doesnt matter about the dollars, its the percentage. Like I said they HAVE to address the most obvious cases or they would lose credibility completely with many many people. They have already lost it with me because I recognise window dressing when I see it.
Again there is no comparison with the bank example because the bank does not design the financial regulation systems, or the total environment under which money that they have responibility for passes. For example if an ISP was complicit in distributing intercepted usernames and passwords of a banks customers, its beyond their control. NOTHING in a created virtual world is beyond the control of the developers. Its only beyond their motivations.
*sigh*
As for the last part you need to exercise your imagination here. Lets just drop the veil of BS about me being stupid, or unable to understand this situation or somehow trying to obfuscate its existence shall we. Its not helping and its just annoying and uneccesary. I dont need an explanation of how currency trading works thanks, but I do appreciate the link for informations sake.
Everytime any MMO company releases a patch, they confirm the fact that thier code is imperfect and that they have the ability to improve it. Lets use that as a thought base for the rest of what I will say.
Imagine if you will, a game economy were currency was not tradeable for example. Ok you and I probably cant picture how that could be done. But the guys who designed the WoW world from scratch could and they probably already know how to do it. But do they want to change the game so radically to implement such a thing ? Of course not, the ramifications could be financially disasterous for the company, so it is more profitable to leave things as they are and window dress. Therefore this is not a question of ability, it is one of motivation and fiscal common sense. ( I notice you conveniently decided to not respond to my assertion about 10% of thier user base threatening to cancel, its a tough one to argue isnt it ?)
I have listed in several threads now, many ideas I have put forward to more or less completely remove virtual trading of any sort from the economy of any and every MMO in existence and all those to come. Simply put if you did these 2 things it would stop it 100% overnight :
Remove currency and replace it with non transferable credit that only workked with NPC's. So for example you kill a monster and you get 10 credit points with any NPC.
Every single item is made soulbound and no drop.
Game over for virtual trading right there. 100% problem solved.
So now you can respond with your long list of valid reasons why that wont work and you will be mostly right.
Im not saying that is a desirable solution, Im not even saying its realistic. Im saying it would WORK, its beyond question that it would be 100% effective in the initial instance, though Im sure someone would find a way round it and Im also sure it would do nothing to stop power levelling services, which are another kettle of fish altogether.
It also removes a very big part of an MMO's interest for people which of course is player to player trade, so I repeat. Im not saying its a valid solution. What I am saying is this.
If I can come up with that, as a non developer of MMOs, after 5 minutes of thought, then the combined brains of companies like Blizzard could actually work out a far better solution that could be made to work if they actually decided to remove thier fingers from their butts and got on with it.
So like I said, lets drop the bitch talk and get real.
If you have the money and programming muscle to create a game like WoW from scratch. You have the money and programming muscle to secure its economy.
If you asked any MMO devloper this question : "Are you in control of your virtual world? " Thier answer would of course be yes. So whats the problem here ?
+-+-+-+-+-+ "MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol" http://purepwnage.com -+-+-+-+-+-+ "Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
It also removes a very big part of an MMO's interest for people which of course is player to player trade, so I repeat. Im not saying its a valid solution.
Having a token-based casino-style system may well work, but what you describe is removing all player to player trade. It could work and a lot of mmorpgs do have items that are souldbound, nodrop. You won't find an epic uber-sword dropped from the new AQ raid on eBay, but you will certainly find plenty of gold.
Originally posted by Razorback Conversely every MMO developer has the ability to completely control the world they created.
Let's say we are both playing this game using this token system, you have an item I want and I have an item you want. We can't trade, we are both screwed. We want to trade, but we can't. So we've gone from "gold farmers have no proveable effect on the economy" to "well let's just remove the economy altogether then just to be on the safe side." Your system could be adapted to work and we may well see it used in games liked Vanguard. It's well known that Sigil are anti-gold selling. I have no doubt that these games can still be fun even if there is no player-based economy. They won't be as fun though.
Let's take another example, by looking at reasons to buy gold. One reason to buy gold for World of Warcraft is for an epic mount. What if there was a quest for this mount rather than just handing over gold. Actually you can get one cheaply if you have high PvP rank. That would still be fun wouldn't it, rather than legitimately farm gold to save up for it. You may not be able to lend someone in your guild the money to get it, but you can certainly help them on the quest to do so. Blizzard have introduced a quest design, that if you complete quests at level 60, the XP is translated into gold. That's because the 3 things to do at 60 are raid, PvP or farm items/gold. I think that it's more reasonable to remove the reasons to buy gold, just a guess but most people buy gold for WoW to purchase an epic mount, epic PvP rewards and for any money sinks i.e. repair costs for raids and potions.
I personally think if it makes money and puts food on the table for someone then its fine .
The first farmer shop in the video was probably the most common.If you notice it had no ventilation,must be quite hot(many had no shirts on),horrible sleeping facilities,one of them sitting on the dining table looked like he been playing at least 24 hrs.
The next one looked quite nice and organised and the workers looked more relaxed.
Originally posted by ladyattis Originally posted by Nerf09 You have zero knowledge of history, and how it applies to today. The civil war was a battle between protectionist Lincoln-Republicans vs. free-trade-libertarian-Democrat Slavers. And apparently the war aint over.
Error again, nope, the South was free trade only because they had no other goods to trade. Error again, nope, the South was free trade because the only way for abolitionists to stop the slave trade was to put restrictions on the Atlantic Slave trade using heavy fines. Then along comes the newly formed Republican Party which came up with the brilliant idea of slapping on a 50% tarrif. The obvious immediate effect is that the slavers in the south who depended so heavilly on cheap labour to pick their cotton would be ruined, as should they be ruined for destroying the wages of free-men and middle class with their slavery. For them, the North wanted to keep the local goods of cotton and other farmed resources in the South at a depressed price, Wrong, the North found slavery to be unprofitable in manufacturing, the Abolitionists with half a brain realized that the wages of free men are depressed by the wages of slaves just like mexican slavery destroys the middle class today. Abolitionists also lived in the South just as some slavers lived in the North. which in turn caused even the price of slaves to go up since now you couldn't pay people to do the same work for a wage now, which is why many a yeoman farmer could not keep a living for his family. Now, according to your logic, free trade caused slavery no, im saying that slavers of yesterday are using the same "Free Trade" excuse as slavers of today are using. I didnt say anything, I cut and pasted quotes, I report, you decide, hah. , yet if you logically look at the causes of slavery, I never said "Free trade" caused slavery, I said "FREE TRADE" is an excuse and rationalization for their business it was not due to free trade, it was due to the fact that one group of people under the guise of 'protecting the economy' wanted the cheapest product with the least amount of competition. Slavery is due to people like the Coyotes, and business owners that like to work under the table for an easy profit at the expense of the labour market In short, protectionism is the cause of slavery Protectionism is the cure to slavery, just like Abraham Lincoln said or atleast the cause of the continuation of slavery in the US at the time prior to the Civil War Wrong, the cause of slavery is business owners who want the cheapest possible labour, and they will do anything to get it, even enslaving an entire group of people (Mexicans) for a buck . In fact, this is why the US became an industrial power, we made the cheapest products of all the competing world powers at that time. We werent a world economic power until after the first world war, way after slavery was abolished by right thinking people like Lincoln. As the old joke about anything from Japan being flimsy, the US products of that era were likened in the same manner. Huh? Where as the UK's products were deemed the 'best' or 'most durable' of goods, but also more expensive. Huh * 2? Also, another error of your logic is not the issue of the lacking evidence, but rather the most common fallacy of all: False Dichotomy. You assume there are only two options in a debate, when the reality is, I shown there are other options to the debate. Wrong, I am comparing the rationalization of african-slavery, to the rationalization of latino-slavery. Which you have not falsified out of the situation, and you continue to ignore that fact. Now, I ask you to prove there are no other possible alternatives to free trade v protectionism[aka MERCENTALISM], Free trade is an excuse, a RATIONALIZATION of their business of slavery. if you cannot do so, then I must recant your claims. -- Bridget
You people need to get out more. As someone who dealt with every faucet of industry (truck driver), the Mexicans ARE treated as slaves. Every plant I went to, the lowest dirtiest jobs are done by mexicans, they are slaves. And dont dare call me a bleeding heart, I could care less about the Mexicans, I care more about Mexican truck drivers, because unlike allot of you bigots, I know a Mexican can drive a truck just as well as I can at ten percent of my wage. SLAVERY!
Do you people honestly think anyone personally cared about the African slaves 150 years ago, back then when most people were bigoted. Why do you think the abolitionists started a war if they were bigots? BECAUSE THEY CARED ABOUT THEIR JOBS AND HOW SLAVERY EFFECTS THEIR WAGES! The african slaves didnt just pick cotton you know, they were also blacksmiths, railway switch operators, riverboat workers..........
Nice link, thanks for providing the voice of yet another extremely experienced player and farmer to back what Im saying. I will make one quote from his post then rest my case since I am starting to feel like Im banging my head on a wall. The answer to all this is so obvious and simple its mindblowing to me that its so elusive for so many.
I will close with the words of the guy from EQ clerics, who sums the entire issue up so well.
"I find it absolutely amazing that SOE does not know what this is and how to stop it. I can't imagine they don't want to stop it. But I also have to wonder if they are taking it as seriously as it really is. "
Thats it in a nutshell, right there. Nothing more to be said.
+-+-+-+-+-+ "MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol" http://purepwnage.com -+-+-+-+-+-+ "Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
And I shall give you another quote from the same link.
"But it does affect everyone. Turning a blind eye to it does fine in the short term, but the effects do reach everyone eventually, and the longer it is left unchecked the worse that effect will be."
What exactly is your stance, it's clear what mine is. All you've done so far is point the finger at the game makers. If you don't do anything, then why should SoE, Blizzard et al.
Hmm.... several pages of typing and I havnt made myself clear ??
Ok Ill keep it simple.
Totally against virtual trading of all kinds
Totally disagree that the farmers are the villains though
Totally adamant that the real culprits are the developers
The farmers couldnt farm in a well controlled game. They simply exploit the loophole left for them by sloppy world creation.
The developers dont do NEARLY enough to create secure worlds. Then they do even less to fix the screw up they themselves created in the first place.
Whilst I am against farming, I dont hold the farmers responsible, I simply see them as nothing more than opportunists. Opportunists who wouldnt have an opportunity unless it was presented to them by the developers. Attacking the farmers is like pissing on a forrest fire, the problem is how the fire started.
I completely disagree that thier actions wreck in game economies and STILL no one has provided anything but heresay and claims that this is true. Not one scrap of evidence of a wrecked economy.
I do however strongly contend that farmers RUIN the play experience of most MMO's with thier use of names like hgaodfbao and hpmxxhjgkr and the way they just camp and loot. It ruins the suspension of disbelief that most of us play fantasy games for.
The main thing I would like to see is everyone who claims to be agianst this like you Xenduli is stop wasting your posts on forums like these, essentially preaching to the converted and use your energy to email the developers and let them know how you feel.
They create the problem, they maintain the problem, they ignore the problem, they support the problem, they ARE the problem.
+-+-+-+-+-+ "MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol" http://purepwnage.com -+-+-+-+-+-+ "Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
I would also offer up that the MMORPG community also share in the problem. They truely control the demand of the farmers service. While the Dev can not/will not fix the problem the community fuels it on and on.
Lets face the fact.....if no one purchased currency, this would be a non-issue. The farmer is the opportunist but it takes two to tango. Someone is buying all that currency. The number of farmers in a game is proportionate to the demand. The demand of the PLAYERS. (of course thats like saying if no one used drugs no one would grow/sell it)
So really what we might ask is "why does one buy virtual currency" to bring with. If you can identify the root cause...the motivation of the player....you might be able to better address the problem.
Comments
The Civil War had almost nothing to do with freeing slaves. Sad but true. It was purely about the Northern factories needing the materials created on Southern farms and that if the south formed their own country they could create their own economy through trade with the same countries the origianl colonies broke off of. The slavery issue was drummed up to add support to the northern cause from the various groups that didn't want to fight a war.
The outcome was beneficial to the salves, but that was really a secondary issue at best. This myth that the war was started for that cause is just people trying to glorify the war for more than it was. Besides if the war was truly to free the slaves and give them freedoms then why didn't they get them at the end of the war?
You really haven't paid a lot of attention in life have you?
If you want to hear it from the mouth of an american soldier woprking as a historical guide may I suggest visiting Fort Snelling National Park.
You have zero knowledge of history, and how it applies to today. The civil war was a battle between protectionist Lincoln-Republicans vs. free-trade-libertarian-Democrat Slavers. And apparently the war aint over.
There is a word for claims without substantiation.
Its called bull$hit!
And your comment proves exactly what Im saying. In the abscence of evidence, its all just heresay.
When you buy an item you dont know if it was duped, farmed or legitimately gained. Ergo the effect on the economy is either not measurable or not significant, either way there is no proof.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
It's abit difficult for a gamer to prove that, they don't have access to server logs. I may not know, but someone who has access to privileged information will. I don't know this urge to find a "smoking gun", to say that gold farming has no effect and is just heresy is pretty naive coming from a supposedly experienced mmorpg player.
No annoying animated GIF here!
I could go into details of how an mmo should be, but I'm not sure that anyone would listen at this point seeing all the trolling. Just ask yourself if there are any gold farmers for counter-strike, then go to Xfire's site and see how many people still play it.
Obviously the war for equal rights isn't over (Although that was not the civil war. The battle against the Jim Crow laws would be a more accurate one.) since you spout uneducated prejudiced hatred everywhere you step.
As far as knowing if somethign is duped or not even with logs it would be incredibly difficult. Unless you ahve a red flag to investigate a person or item you are talking about going through tons of logs looking for a single deviation per dupe. As far as farming even multiples of rare items may not indicate farming since many guild banks sell drops from raids and split the gold between members or to fund crafting and faction increases. At one point my guild bank in WoW had 2 krol blades up both legitimately dropped. In FFXI the LS bank had 3 damascus ingots for sale once just because others undercutting the price left our previous drops unsold.
Nerf: Dude, none of your quotations of the LP or the other sources make them connected in any way. You are assuming that free trade equals slavery. Sorry, it does not under any circumstances. According to your logic, anyone that buys anything outside of their country and does not hate a foreigner must support slavery. That does not follow, nerf, stop lying and stop trolling this thread. This thread is about the gold farming companies, their impact on games, and their impact on the economy in the real world. The fact is this, the gold farmers are filling a service, a need that was always there. Is that really a problem? Yes, only because many games have broken economies anyways and were never designed to handle people that would literally harvest gold from loot drops. So, in a way, we can thank the gold farmers for showing all of us how broken our games really are and how many people will exploit them through gold farmers to not have to play like the rest of us who do pay that monthly fee. It means we can all ask the right question of MMO developers such as "will you have a system to control the amount of total currency, and special items, in-game..." and so on. Questions like this will drive MMO developers to either embrace the open-ended/broken economic model of the current MMO coding schemes, thus importing the system into their payment/subscription scheme, which could mean MMOs that are technically free, but you might have to 'buy' your currency to get anywhere, but even that looks a tad bad to me since it would ruin the fun of rising in the economic ranks on your own power in a game...
All in all, I think that is the point of this thread and not this political trolling! OI!
-- Bridget
Originally posted by Nerf09
You have zero knowledge of history, and how it applies to today. The civil war was a battle between protectionist Lincoln-Republicans vs. free-trade-libertarian-Democrat Slavers. And apparently the war aint over.
Error again, nope, the South was free trade only because they had no other goods to trade. For them, the North wanted to keep the local goods of cotton and other farmed resources in the South at a depressed price, which in turn caused even the price of slaves to go up since now you couldn't pay people to do the same work for a wage now, which is why many a yeoman farmer could not keep a living for his family. Now, according to your logic, free trade caused slavery, yet if you logically look at the causes of slavery, it was not due to free trade, it was due to the fact that one group of people under the guise of 'protecting the economy' wanted the cheapest product with the least amount of competition. In short, protectionism is the cause of slavery or atleast the cause of the continuation of slavery in the US at the time prior to the Civil War. In fact, this is why the US became an industrial power, we made the cheapest products of all the competing world powers at that time. As the old joke about anything from Japan being flimsy, the US products of that era were likened in the same manner. Where as the UK's products were deemed the 'best' or 'most durable' of goods, but also more expensive.
Also, another error of your logic is not the issue of the lacking evidence, but rather the most common fallacy of all: False Dichotomy. You assume there are only two options in a debate, when the reality is, I shown there are other options to the debate. Which you have not falsified out of the situation, and you continue to ignore that fact. Now, I ask you to prove there are no other possible alternatives to free trade v protectionism[aka MERCENTALISM], if you cannot do so, then I must recant your claims.
-- Bridget
Exactly, but I think it tells more about how short sighted the developers are when they coded the game economics. I mean, think about it, how many countries really keep printing money to the point of hyper inflation? Not often, and only in times where either the system is about to collaspe, or whatever. So, really the developers need to be long sighted and consider a way to restrict the volume of currency in a game. Whether that means in-game 'taxes' or whatever, to make the players be more careful with their gold and to restrict the capability of gold farming [like having gold not on every drop...]. o_O But that's just me.
-- Bridget
Oh man thats sooooo rich Im surprised your sig doesnt say unlimited gold.org, seems like 99.99% of the people on that site are happy to live a delusional fantasy realm of thinking they have ANY idea whats going on as well.
Im not saying gold farming has no effect. Im saying it has no proveable effect. Now admittedly the end result of that is the same so I dont mind shortening my claim to the obvious outcome, it saves me typing.
My enitre point is that firstly the game developers have complete control over thier own virtual worlds, they just find it more profitable NOT to exercise it. Also that there is nothing you can point to, not a shred of evidence that gold farming ruins economies.
In any other feild of endeavour that would be called "speculation" not fact. I guess the world of anti gold farming has its own particular brand of logic and truth huh ?
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
In that case Razorback why aren't there 10,000 players banging down Blizzards door saying "Oi, why did you ban me?". Are you saying Blizard and other game companies are just banning players because they just feel like it. Are you saying those GM's in the RF Online video were just making the whole thing up? That the 2 months spent analysing server logs [evidence!] was just a figment of their imagination. And you call me illogical! You know I had you down as one of mmorpg.com more smarter members, I guess I need to rethink that. Why don't you email wowgm@blizzard.com and tell them what you think?
No annoying animated GIF here!
Im saying with a player base of 6 million, Blizzard only need to worry about banning the worst and most obvious cases, which is clearly all they do. Im not good enough at maths to work out what percentage 10K is of 6 million... but its a bees $#%^ of the over all numbers involved and is nothing more than window dressing in the total scheme of things. Considering they could change the games code to stop it altogether, any time they felt so disposed, its an insult to the intelligence of anyone who cares, and I do.
Also considering that any current level 50+ player can immediatley take you out to a hunting spot and show you farmers at work RIGHT NOW or ANYTIME, it tells you EXACTLY how much effort they are ACTUALLY putting in to stopping it.
Whether Blizzard examines its server logs is conjecture. They tell you they do and you believe them, thats cool. Im more skeptical than that.
As for emailing Blizzard and other companies on this topic. I have done it many times, every time we have a major thread on this topic I send most of the companies I have played games with a link, just to let them know its on peoples minds. I rarely even get replies, let alone any sort of commitment for them to do anything. Im just a ratbag with a big mouth to them, like most of us are.
However this is a numbers game in a commercial enterprise. To rehash what I posted on NoGold.Org recently, its basically like this.
6 million people play WoW (cant help using WoW as an example but it applies accross the board)
Maybe 1% care enough about farming to let it affect thier play experience. (its probably less)
1% of that 1% quit in disgust over it (I did)
100 people care enough to register at sites like nogold.org (actually 106 but whos counting)
1 person cared enough to start nogold.org.
If Blizzard catered to those numbers they would find themselves working out of a shed in someones backyard, instead of working from high rise office buildings and hundreds of staff. They will continue to appeal to the largest market segment until the maths change.
One thing I can tell you FOR SURE is this. If even 10% of their current subscribers emailed them and said :
"We feel that you have the ability to alter the game's code to completely stop farmers plying their trade and we are suspending our subscriptions until you do it"
Then WoW would have a currency and item system that was not tradeable outside the game in place in the next patch. This also tells us conclusively that they could stop this anytime they wanted.
So whos to blame ?
MMORPG.com ?
The Farmers ?
The advertisers ?
Me ?
You ?
No it is of course the people who create, run and utimately have full legal, developmental and overall responsibility for the games. The developers.
I have yet to hear an argument that even begins to make me think otherwise and Im pretty certain that by now, I have basically heard it all.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Surely thats a start.
Next you'll be telling me that all those who download illegal stuff through torrent can be caught just through the use of clever coding, it takes more than that.
Hmmm window dressing, let's assume that these players banned been playing for a year. A reasonable assumption especially how you are saying Blizzard are complacent, not going to disagree with you there. 10,000 players x 2 x $77.94 [6 month sub], thats a $1,558,800 window dressing.
Does a bank go about telling everyone how they catch fraudsters? Does the police put a press release explain how they catch criminils? Surely to give detailed information is counter-productive. Are you saying Blizzard just go about banning random people now, you don't really that beleive do you?
But currency is exchanged inside the game
]. These farmers can only be caught when the act is done.
[more information about how it works here], until the farmers start distributing their stock-piled gold [unnnatural accumulation of money into an economy] they are nothing more than another player. Let's pretend that I am a gold farmer, all I do is spend every day along with my "colleague" making gold. Until I actually sell that gold, just another player on the server. It's not like catching drug dealers, when a raid is done on a production lab[or gold-farming sweatshop
Next you'll be telling everyone that this video was made by a Blizzard employee and that gold-farming doesn't actually exist.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Yes its a start but its still pathetic considering the developer completely controls all aspects of their created environment.
Downloading illegal stuff is not a valid analogy since the internet is a creation of many many different companies and systems. The end result of which is the conglomerate of systems we call the internet. No one company has complete control over it. Conversely every MMO developer has the ability to completely control the world they created. There is no valid comparison there.
Its window dressing because it doesnt matter about the dollars, its the percentage. Like I said they HAVE to address the most obvious cases or they would lose credibility completely with many many people. They have already lost it with me because I recognise window dressing when I see it.
Again there is no comparison with the bank example because the bank does not design the financial regulation systems, or the total environment under which money that they have responibility for passes. For example if an ISP was complicit in distributing intercepted usernames and passwords of a banks customers, its beyond their control. NOTHING in a created virtual world is beyond the control of the developers. Its only beyond their motivations.
*sigh*
As for the last part you need to exercise your imagination here. Lets just drop the veil of BS about me being stupid, or unable to understand this situation or somehow trying to obfuscate its existence shall we. Its not helping and its just annoying and uneccesary. I dont need an explanation of how currency trading works thanks, but I do appreciate the link for informations sake.
Everytime any MMO company releases a patch, they confirm the fact that thier code is imperfect and that they have the ability to improve it. Lets use that as a thought base for the rest of what I will say.
Imagine if you will, a game economy were currency was not tradeable for example. Ok you and I probably cant picture how that could be done. But the guys who designed the WoW world from scratch could and they probably already know how to do it. But do they want to change the game so radically to implement such a thing ? Of course not, the ramifications could be financially disasterous for the company, so it is more profitable to leave things as they are and window dress. Therefore this is not a question of ability, it is one of motivation and fiscal common sense. ( I notice you conveniently decided to not respond to my assertion about 10% of thier user base threatening to cancel, its a tough one to argue isnt it ?)
I have listed in several threads now, many ideas I have put forward to more or less completely remove virtual trading of any sort from the economy of any and every MMO in existence and all those to come. Simply put if you did these 2 things it would stop it 100% overnight :
Game over for virtual trading right there. 100% problem solved.
So now you can respond with your long list of valid reasons why that wont work and you will be mostly right.
Im not saying that is a desirable solution, Im not even saying its realistic. Im saying it would WORK, its beyond question that it would be 100% effective in the initial instance, though Im sure someone would find a way round it and Im also sure it would do nothing to stop power levelling services, which are another kettle of fish altogether.
It also removes a very big part of an MMO's interest for people which of course is player to player trade, so I repeat. Im not saying its a valid solution. What I am saying is this.
If I can come up with that, as a non developer of MMOs, after 5 minutes of thought, then the combined brains of companies like Blizzard could actually work out a far better solution that could be made to work if they actually decided to remove thier fingers from their butts and got on with it.
So like I said, lets drop the bitch talk and get real.
If you have the money and programming muscle to create a game like WoW from scratch. You have the money and programming muscle to secure its economy.
If you asked any MMO devloper this question : "Are you in control of your virtual world?
" Thier answer would of course be yes. So whats the problem here ?
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Originally posted by Razorback
It also removes a very big part of an MMO's interest for people which of course is player to player trade, so I repeat. Im not saying its a valid solution.
Having a token-based casino-style system may well work, but what you describe is removing all player to player trade. It could work and a lot of mmorpgs do have items that are souldbound, nodrop. You won't find an epic uber-sword dropped from the new AQ raid on eBay, but you will certainly find plenty of gold.
Originally posted by Razorback
Conversely every MMO developer has the ability to completely control the world they created.
Let's say we are both playing this game using this token system, you have an item I want and I have an item you want. We can't trade, we are both screwed. We want to trade, but we can't. So we've gone from "gold farmers have no proveable effect on the economy" to "well let's just remove the economy altogether then just to be on the safe side." Your system could be adapted to work and we may well see it used in games liked Vanguard. It's well known that Sigil are anti-gold selling. I have no doubt that these games can still be fun even if there is no player-based economy. They won't be as fun though.
Let's take another example, by looking at reasons to buy gold. One reason to buy gold for World of Warcraft is for an epic mount. What if there was a quest for this mount rather than just handing over gold. Actually you can get one cheaply if you have high PvP rank. That would still be fun wouldn't it, rather than legitimately farm gold to save up for it. You may not be able to lend someone in your guild the money to get it, but you can certainly help them on the quest to do so. Blizzard have introduced a quest design, that if you complete quests at level 60, the XP is translated into gold. That's because the 3 things to do at 60 are raid, PvP or farm items/gold. I think that it's more reasonable to remove the reasons to buy gold, just a guess but most people buy gold for WoW to purchase an epic mount, epic PvP rewards and for any money sinks i.e. repair costs for raids and potions.
No annoying animated GIF here!
I personally think if it makes money and puts food on the table for someone then its fine .
The first farmer shop in the video was probably the most common.If you notice it had no ventilation,must be quite hot(many had no shirts on),horrible sleeping facilities,one of them sitting on the dining table looked like he been playing at least 24 hrs.
The next one looked quite nice and organised and the workers looked more relaxed.
You people need to get out more. As someone who dealt with every faucet of industry (truck driver), the Mexicans ARE treated as slaves. Every plant I went to, the lowest dirtiest jobs are done by mexicans, they are slaves. And dont dare call me a bleeding heart, I could care less about the Mexicans, I care more about Mexican truck drivers, because unlike allot of you bigots, I know a Mexican can drive a truck just as well as I can at ten percent of my wage. SLAVERY!
Do you people honestly think anyone personally cared about the African slaves 150 years ago, back then when most people were bigoted. Why do you think the abolitionists started a war if they were bigots? BECAUSE THEY CARED ABOUT THEIR JOBS AND HOW SLAVERY EFFECTS THEIR WAGES! The african slaves didnt just pick cotton you know, they were also blacksmiths, railway switch operators, riverboat workers..........
Well Razorback, you may want to read this, from a different point of view.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Nice link, thanks for providing the voice of yet another extremely experienced player and farmer to back what Im saying. I will make one quote from his post then rest my case since I am starting to feel like Im banging my head on a wall. The answer to all this is so obvious and simple its mindblowing to me that its so elusive for so many.
I will close with the words of the guy from EQ clerics, who sums the entire issue up so well.
"I find it absolutely amazing that SOE does not know what this is and how to stop it. I can't imagine they don't want to stop it. But I also have to wonder if they are taking it as seriously as it really is. "
Thats it in a nutshell, right there. Nothing more to be said.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
And I shall give you another quote from the same link.
"But it does affect everyone. Turning a blind eye to it does fine in the short term, but the effects do reach everyone eventually, and the longer it is left unchecked the worse that effect will be."
What exactly is your stance, it's clear what mine is. All you've done so far is point the finger at the game makers. If you don't do anything, then why should SoE, Blizzard et al.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Hmm.... several pages of typing and I havnt made myself clear ??
Ok Ill keep it simple.
The farmers couldnt farm in a well controlled game. They simply exploit the loophole left for them by sloppy world creation.
The developers dont do NEARLY enough to create secure worlds. Then they do even less to fix the screw up they themselves created in the first place.
Whilst I am against farming, I dont hold the farmers responsible, I simply see them as nothing more than opportunists. Opportunists who wouldnt have an opportunity unless it was presented to them by the developers. Attacking the farmers is like pissing on a forrest fire, the problem is how the fire started.
I completely disagree that thier actions wreck in game economies and STILL no one has provided anything but heresay and claims that this is true. Not one scrap of evidence of a wrecked economy.
I do however strongly contend that farmers RUIN the play experience of most MMO's with thier use of names like hgaodfbao and hpmxxhjgkr and the way they just camp and loot. It ruins the suspension of disbelief that most of us play fantasy games for.
The main thing I would like to see is everyone who claims to be agianst this like you Xenduli is stop wasting your posts on forums like these, essentially preaching to the converted and use your energy to email the developers and let them know how you feel.
They create the problem, they maintain the problem, they ignore the problem, they support the problem, they ARE the problem.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Excellent Razorback,
I would also offer up that the MMORPG community also share in the problem. They truely control the demand of the farmers service. While the Dev can not/will not fix the problem the community fuels it on and on.
Lets face the fact.....if no one purchased currency, this would be a non-issue. The farmer is the opportunist but it takes two to tango. Someone is buying all that currency. The number of farmers in a game is proportionate to the demand. The demand of the PLAYERS. (of course thats like saying if no one used drugs no one would grow/sell it)
So really what we might ask is "why does one buy virtual currency" to bring with. If you can identify the root cause...the motivation of the player....you might be able to better address the problem.