WoW speaks about gold farming/power leveling.

[Ratman_tf]

Mirroring some of the topics discussed over here recently.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

[Slyfeind]

Nothin' new, but interesting to see that on their home page. I'd like to see a gold farming company accuse Blizzard of slander and try to sue them. That would be high-larious.

[UnSub]

Nothin' new, but interesting to see that on their home page. I'd like to see a gold farming company accuse Blizzard of slander and try to sue them. That would be high-larious.

I think the gold farmer response would be closer to:

were in ur relmz, steeling ur moneyz lol

It is an interesting article and combined with some of the things I've read about the Sony Exchange sale to Live Gamer, it sees MMO studios finally opening up about how damaging external RMT organisations can be to them.

However, it will all the effectiveness of this guy on the problem



which is to say minimal.

[Slyfeind]

I wonder just how rampantly farmers steal credit cards and accounts; if it's as bad as the devs say, or if it just happened once or twice and they're using it as a scare tactic.

[Xanthippe]

I wonder just how rampantly farmers steal credit cards and accounts; if it's as bad as the devs say, or if it just happened once or twice and they're using it as a scare tactic.

Seems pretty rampant to me, judging from the comments in game, the forum posts and blog posts/comments about it.

[Merusk]

I wonder just how rampantly farmers steal credit cards and accounts; if it's as bad as the devs say, or if it just happened once or twice and they're using it as a scare tactic.

The devs that post here commented in the post about SOE's sale of the Exchange to LG that it's pretty common and pretty rampant.  These are, after all, 'criminal' enterprises. Why does it shock some people that they'll partake in more illegal activities than just break 'some silly EULA.'

[tmp]

I wonder just how rampantly farmers steal credit cards and accounts; if it's as bad as the devs say, or if it just happened once or twice and they're using it as a scare tactic.

It seems frequent enough to cause some bank(s) start blocking payments for Blizzard across the board

http://kotaku.com/357533/british-bank-blocks-wow-payments

... which could perhaps be reason for that article on WoW page in the first place.

[Nebu]

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't the easiest solution be for the company that developed the game to sell cash in their own game at a price lower than any farmers could match?  Game devs get more money and players get what they want.   Sure, this would mess with the game economy, but it's already headed toward inflation anyway.  Besides, the goal is to make money, right?

[Kitsune]

Back when I was playing WoW, I personally knew two folks who'd had their accounts 'hacked' and stuff stolen.  So yes, fairly prevalent.  If the trend follows the (very small) sample group from my experience, that works out to about four percent of the playerbase.  Spread that out among, what, ten million people now?, and you get 400,000 people who've been fucked with.

[Morat20]

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't the easiest solution be for the company that developed the game to sell cash in their own game at a price lower than any farmers could match?  Game devs get more money and players get what they want.   Sure, this would mess with the game economy, but it's already headed toward inflation anyway.  Besides, the goal is to make money, right?

EVE does that -- their only legit ISK-selling is through game-time-cards. They (EVE) set the price and even offer the equivilant of an escrow system through their website. You find someone who wants to by a GTC and has the ISK, and then you use EVE's website to offer the GTC code to that guy.

He only gets it if he offers the money back.

You could find ISK-sellers making a better offer (more ISK for that cash), but if you go through CCP you run into no problems with the EULA, you know the code is legit, and you know you'll get the ISK. No risks.

Doesn't even mess with the economy, since it's just moving money around. If you're going to do it, that's not a bad system.

[Ratman_tf]

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't the easiest solution be for the company that developed the game to sell cash in their own game at a price lower than any farmers could match?  Game devs get more money and players get what they want.   Sure, this would mess with the game economy, but it's already headed toward inflation anyway.  Besides, the goal is to make money, right?

IMHO mudflation would drive the prices up, since you'd be replacing time with money instead.
Then the gold farmers come along and try to undercut the exchange rate, and you're back to square one.

And I'd quit because while timesinks driven by catasses suck, moneysinks driven by rich guys would suck more to me.

I have no beef with RMT in general, but it's something I don't care to participate in.

[Nebu]

I guess this comes down to the fundamental argument of $$$ vs time.  Should players be allowed to legally buy their way out of content?  If it benefits the game developer, I don't see why not.  If you have more money than time, buy your way through.  If you have more time than money, grind it out.  Either way, it's about satisfying the needs of the customer in a way that doesn't negatively impact subscriber retention.  Right?

[tmp]

I guess this comes down to the fundamental argument of $$$ vs time.  Should players be allowed to legally buy their way out of content?  If it benefits the game developer, I don't see why not.  If you have more money than time, buy your way through.  If you have more time than money, grind it out.  Either way, it's about satisfying the needs of the customer in a way that doesn't negatively impact subscriber retention.  Right?

Probably, but if people are willing to pay you money just so they don't have to play parts of your game... well that should be sending some signal.

[Merusk]

I guess this comes down to the fundamental argument of $$$ vs time.  Should players be allowed to legally buy their way out of content?  If it benefits the game developer, I don't see why not.  If you have more money than time, buy your way through.  If you have more time than money, grind it out.  Either way, it's about satisfying the needs of the customer in a way that doesn't negatively impact subscriber retention.  Right?

Probably, but if people are willing to pay you money just so they don't have to play parts of your game... well that should be sending some signal.

There's folks who only play games while using cheat codes/ game sharks/ hacks.  Does this mean all games are flawed, or merely some players?

[Dtrain]

Both. And it's as dysfunctional as domestic abuse.

The games are flawed because they nearly always devolve into some form of grinding.

The players are flawed because they do not have the patience to invest time into a goal that is not immediate gratification.

I'm not sure about you, but I don't think it's the game developer's job to change a person's attention span, but I do think it's their job to entertain people.

Beyond that though, there will always be cheating because the problem is unfixable within the scope of a game: Poor people use the internet too. 

A) Bomb the poor people.
B) Fix the poor people.
C) Live with it.
D) Conduct the Sisyphean task of fighting it.

I don't think there's really a clever way out of it. (IP ban would be awesome, but there are really so many ways to circumvent that, it's not even worth trying.)

[tmp]

There's folks who only play games while using cheat codes/ game sharks/ hacks.  Does this mean all games are flawed, or merely some players?

Would say as far as these particular people are concerned it's probably the latter -- and it's such extreme case it can probably be ignored, since you can't realistically expect to be able to entertrain everyone with your product. But when on the other hand so many people want to shell out money to skip your content that it allows for thriving 3rd party business to emerge... then it may mean there's actual problem with design of these game bits.

[WindupAtheist]

From the money perspective, a game that people will pay you to not play is totally rad.  Which is why I'm surprised we don't have company RMT already.

[Calantus]

Eve's solution is truly the best solution. They don't create the ISK so it doesn't affect the economy and it doesn't disenfranchise players as much as ISK being sold directly from the company. Also, because it's linked to timecards there is zero actual RL cash flowing to the sellers, so the RMT companies can't use it. It enables people with more money than time to buy the ISK they need, and it allows the people with more time than money (or who can't justify the RL money cost on a game) to still pay for the game. They even have a system where you can buy charactes. If you could do that in WoW I'd still be playing that game (what burnt me out was wanting to play another class but getting burnt out gearing it up for arena).

Also the "grinding for money means your game sucks" only applies to DIKU games like WoW because they use it purely as a longevity device. Games like EVE use ingame wealth as a form of ante (your ship blowing up hurts your pocket) which enhances the game experience.

[CharlieMopps]

That article about the bank banning Wow transactions sheds new light on this... My buddy owns a business and when he started accepting credit card payments he showed me the contract they made him sign. It was scary. Basically if there is a dispute, you agree to always be in the wrong, unless you have absolute proof the customer made the purchase, which is nearly impossible. Also, the more disputes you have the more likely it is that Visa/Mastercard will pull your contract and not allow you to use their services anymore. If banks start dropping MMO companies, they are going to have a BIG problem.

As far as EVE goes... Buahahaha, they have just as much Gold spamming/Farming as any other MMO. I think that the game card thing actually helps the spammers because it sets a minimum value on ISK. The only thing about EVE that hurts gold farming is full PVP.

[Venkman]

Also the "grinding for money means your game sucks" only applies to DIKU games like WoW because they use it purely as a longevity device. Games like EVE use ingame wealth as a form of ante (your ship blowing up hurts your pocket) which enhances the game experience.

Except it doesn't work well in WoW. Oh, making money and grinding and RMTs happen all the time. But there's only one of six currencies in WoW in which that works, and the only real things of value of BOE goods that you can disenchant for uncommon consumables. Gold's not going to help you get Raid drops, PvP purchases, Arena purchases, Reputation purchases, nor Badge of Justice purchases, all of which net you better gear than the BOE stuff you can buy at auction. Yea, as has been discussed, there's ways to still make cash like people opening raid or arena slots to others for a fee. But even then, these types of operations probably don't bother with Gold because, per above, at that level of play there's really not much to buy. UO this is not.

Other games have done this to some degree, but I think it's more obvious in WoW because there's more people banging on it.

That is a way to combat RMTing. There's enough commerce for the majority of players not at the endgame (you can be 70 without being in the endgame), so you can say you didn't remove commerce altogether. Meanwhile, the best stuff is locked behind content guards that can't be bridged

[tazelbain]

As far as EVE goes... Buahahaha, they have just as much Gold spamming/Farming as any other MMO. I think that the game card thing actually helps the spammers because it sets a minimum value on ISK. The only thing about EVE that hurts gold farming is full PVP.

The third party RMT can still survive in EvE is because the first  party micro transaction has a poor interface.  If it was as convenient to buy and trade parts of timecards as it is spaceship parts, the market efficiency would make it unprofitable.

[Merusk]

Both. And it's as dysfunctional as domestic abuse.

The games are flawed because they nearly always devolve into some form of grinding.

The players are flawed because they do not have the patience to invest time into a goal that is not immediate gratification.

I'm not sure about you, but I don't think it's the game developer's job to change a person's attention span, but I do think it's their job to entertain people.

Except that it's all subjective.  ALL of it.  There is no universal metric for what one person will find as 'grind' vs 'deep game play' or 'fun' vs 'mother fucker what do you mean I have to kill/ craft/ explore/ harvest 12 more widgets.'

Here's a secret, I fucking hate UO.  I tried it a few years ago between COH and WoW going live and didn't get the love.  I still don't.  It wasn't a graphics thing, because I play plenty of throwback games.  It was just a horrible experience of random crap from struggling with the UI to having to find a direction that I didn't bother beyond two days.  However, there's so much love from folks here for it at times that they make WUA look positively neutral.  This doesn't mean either one of our opinions is flawed, just that we're looking for different things.

[Slyfeind]

I guess this comes down to the fundamental argument of $$$ vs time.  Should players be allowed to legally buy their way out of content?  If it benefits the game developer, I don't see why not.  If you have more money than time, buy your way through.  If you have more time than money, grind it out.  Either way, it's about satisfying the needs of the customer in a way that doesn't negatively impact subscriber retention.  Right?

That's my biggest problem with RMT; players buying their way past the content. If players would rather pay cash out of their pockets than play parts of your game, then those parts need to NOT EXIST. Those are wasted development dollars, and the resources put towards those areas need to be shifted to other areas. Let's say the Dungeon of Second-Best Adventure took a dev team 120 hours to build. And let's say half the playerbase buys their way past the Dungeon of Second-Best Adventure. That's 120 hours that could have been spent elsewhere.

[Nebu]

That's my biggest problem with RMT; players buying their way past the content. If players would rather pay cash out of their pockets than play parts of your game, then those parts need to NOT EXIST. Those are wasted development dollars, and the resources put towards those areas need to be shifted to other areas. Let's say the Dungeon of Second-Best Adventure took a dev team 120 hours to build. And let's say half the playerbase buys their way past the Dungeon of Second-Best Adventure. That's 120 hours that could have been spent elsewhere.

Most MMO's are fun the first time through.  I think that it's the subsequent times through the content that most players would prefer to bypass.  How do you reconcile this from a developer standpoint?  I'm not sure. 

What strikes me funny is that many MMO's devolve into little more than forcing players to sit at the keyboard for hours doing repetitive tasks only to be rewarded by a pull of the slot machine every so often.  People beg for this shit... so there's obviously something to it. 

[Slyfeind]

Most MMO's are fun the first time through.  I think that it's the subsequent times through the content that most players would prefer to bypass.  How do you reconcile this from a developer standpoint?  I'm not sure.

Something to try: after a player reaches max level in a game, once, he can generate all his characters with max level from then on. You don't need to raid in order to get your Tier 5 gear. You just click a "Tier 5" button on your character sheet and it appears in your mail box. (Just in case the player's inventory and bank are full.)

Or screw that. Don't make the player grind to max level in the first place. Players can level manually, OR they can click the "MAXIMUM POWAR" button and start out with a character that has everything.

I think it would be a very interesting experiment. It would also be rather pointless to put that in a game, if the game is about aquiring levels in the first place. It's kinda like playing Bejewelled, and having a big red button on the side that says "Click here to win!" But then, I don't know any RMT companies that sell high scores for Bejewelled....

[Nebu]

Well, things only have value if they are perceived to be valuable to the playerbase.  Gold gets you the shiny you want sooner.  That has value.  The rarer the shiny, the more value it has.  This is what perpetuates the grind in many mmos.  People want to have the best gear in the game mostly because it allows them to stand above the average player.  In buying gold, you're buying perceived status.  Well, there's also the mechanics issue... better gear allows you to kill tougher monsters which allows you access to better gear, etc.

You already know all this, but the psychology of it still fascinates me.  It's as if the MMO industry thrives on the fact that most people are disillusioned with their real lives and can only find some perceived status in these alternate worlds.  They're in the business of generating virtual self-esteem. 

[Dtrain]

Here's a secret, I fucking hate UO.

Same here - and I probably fit the profile of a UO lover more than you, having played at release. I have great memories of the game, because of the people who played it with me, but not because of the game itself (which sucked.)

I'm at a point right now where I am playing nothing that resembles an MMO, and I fear that I have grown to hate them. Compared to other types of games, the only thing they offer is a method to have your gaming accomplishments evaluated by others. I think I may just be past the point where that matters to me, especially when those accomplishments in MMOs have more to do with stamina than any kind of skill.

[tmp]

Most MMO's are fun the first time through.  I think that it's the subsequent times through the content that most players would prefer to bypass.  How do you reconcile this from a developer standpoint?  I'm not sure. 

This is usually caused by people 're-rolling' into character of another class. So the problem of repetition comes (in part) from character being stuck with single skillset that cannot be modified beyond some small adjustments like WoW talent trees etc. If you want to have other play style, you have to raise brand new character from the very beginning.

Matrix Online dealt with this in interesting imo way -- a character could switch to any 'class' i.e. combination of skills with very little limitation. At lower level you'd of course have access to just part of skillset of any 'class', but you were still free to play any style and change at will. So there was never need to repeat something with another character because you generally didn't need more than one character to experience various play styles. SWG sort-of had that too with their ability to pick character abilities from different 'class' sets, except iirc SWG did also the dumb thing and forced players to re-grind experience shall they ever drop some ability and then want to have it again.

[Venkman]

I liked UO's system the best, where your single character could be built into anything you'd ever want. The only reason to have alts at all is to have instant access to multiple roles with your buds, or a crafting mule. Otherwise, you could play UO forever on one character and see and do everything the game offered. I went through four complete template changes in the time I played.

It's that one aspect of UO I wish was emulated more. SWG sorta got it right except it over-drove players to achievement with those Master boxes, as an attempt to help guide players who got all confused with UO's be-anything template. I think you help newbs understand it better by simply giving them the goals (do X and Y to become 'class' Z) while giving veterans ways to experiment. A biyotch to balance though.

It's as if the MMO industry thrives on the fact that most people are disillusioned with their real lives and can only find some perceived status in these alternate worlds.  They're in the business of generating virtual self-esteem. 

Exactly. And it's even more poignant in countries where RMTing is the way of playing.

[Ralence]

Except it doesn't work well in WoW. Oh, making money and grinding and RMTs happen all the time. But there's only one of six currencies in WoW in which that works, and the only real things of value of BOE goods that you can disenchant for uncommon consumables. Gold's not going to help you get Raid drops, PvP purchases, Arena purchases, Reputation purchases, nor Badge of Justice purchases, all of which net you better gear than the BOE stuff you can buy at auction. Yea, as has been discussed, there's ways to still make cash like people opening raid or arena slots to others for a fee. But even then, these types of operations probably don't bother with Gold because, per above, at that level of play there's really not much to buy. UO this is not.

  Actually, some of what you said just isn't true.  A friend of mine sells arena points/ratings for gold on a weekly basis, he runs 3 arena teams over his 3 alts, and brings in about 8-12k gold per week, which he then turns around and sells for cash.  The current purchase price for gold FROM players runs at about $25 per 1000gold.  Given, he doesn't collect all the cash himself, the two other guys that help him to rank up the teams get some split too, but to guess each of them is making $100/week minimally, makes it a pretty lucrative enterprise, given you can do this in all of about 3-4 hours per week.
 
  Nonetheless, the usefulness no longer comes from players having the gold to use in game to buy anything, the benefit is that they are able to unload the gold for real cash, which is then sold back into the system by the third party gold sellers.  Which more likely than not use the gold to buy arena points/ratings, and the cycle continues.

[Venkman]

What part of "making money and grinding and RMTs happen all the time" isn't true?

You substantiated what I said: there's no real value for Gold in the system for people at that level. That your friend makes it to sell to RMTers who sell it back doesn't invalidate that premise. That's not helping him gain Arena ranks, and the final consumer of the gold he's selling to RMTers still can't buy much that's worth buying*, because it's all locked behind the other currencies.

*You can cap out of the AH in lowbie purples, but you need to be able to do something with it. If you're not getting raid drops, arena purchases and so on, it's not because you can't afford the gold. It's likely you can't afford the time. No amount of gold's going to buy your way around that problem, because you're not going to suddenly gain 3 hours a night by going from quest blues to BOE Kara drops. It's just a matter of how much you $$$/gold you spend before you realize that.

(and not you personally Ralence).

[Ralence]

  The part that I was addressing was when you referred to arena points/ratings sellings for gold;

But even then, these types of operations probably don't bother with Gold because, per above, at that level of play there's really not much to buy.

  It's not about the gold for the players anymore, it's all about the conversion of gold->cash.  The part that you're not seeing is that the BEST pvp gear in the entire game is bought/sold this way, which makes Gold a very valuable currency to everyone, for the people willing to buy it, and for the people who are willing to sell it.  And in the case of WoW, I'd bet that more than 75% of the playerbase at 70 is involved in the Arena system in one way or another.  So we are talking about the best items in the game, at least for a large amount of the players.  It does, in fact, take a huge timesink out of the game, the logical progression for PvP gear being BG's for S1, Arena for S2, then Arena for S3.  To grind out a full S1 set, I can't even imagine the total time investment you'd need, seriously, it has to be close to 100 hours (Rough guess, but probably a lowball and not as far off as you'd think)  Alternatively, you can do Arena only each week in under 2 hours, the difference is buying 1000 points is a lot easier than losing every match for 3 weeks to get the same amount.

  So technically, you are buying yourself a time saving, as the current scenario is nothing more than a time sink.  Grinding out the honor points slowly in order to NOT play as much, which really is the end result here.

  It's really not locked behind any other currencies as you implied, because the direct exchange of Gold -> Arena points happens on a daily basis, and clearly people do feel that the points are worth buying for gold/cash, or there wouldn't be the current scenario.  The only benefit to the people selling the points is that conversion back to cash, and as long as that supply/demand wheel keeps churning, people will continue to do it.

[Sky]

Here's a secret, I fucking hate UO.  I tried it a few years ago between COH and WoW going live and didn't get the love.  I still don't. 

You were about six or eight years too late.

[Sky]

What strikes me funny is that many MMO's devolve into little more than forcing players to sit at the keyboard for hours doing repetitive tasks only to be rewarded by a pull of the slot machine every so often.  People beg for this shit... so there's obviously something to it. 

I'm trying to understand the other side. I've done several raids in EQ2 in the last week. It's mind-numbing standing around waiting for people to show up, then it's a boring fight because everyone knows all the tricks of the raid mob and explains it to those who don't (me) beforehand, because any surprise just wastes more time. Then it's just applying a known combat formula repeatedly until you win. Then hope that you get lucky on a roll between 24 people on the pitiful handful of loot that drops.

No wonder some people spend money on it. I've wasted about 6 hours over three days on five raids. That's valuable time to me, because I don't have that kind of time to sit waiting for people to get their asses someplace, in every case I was on the other side of the gameworld and got there and hour (!) before some people. Yesterday a cleric took a half hour to get from Feerrott docks to the CT area (!!!). I believe these people have brain damage.

But I'll be damned if that motivates me to spend money, I'll just stick to the solo game and being a second-class citizen rather than a first-rate mmogtard. No wonder I'm the minority opinion, a sane person wouldn't bother with such drivel.

[Merusk]

Raids on "Farm" status are undenably boring bullshit.  I like first time and new boss kills.  Even if you have a strategy, the players are different vs the ones who came up with the strategy, so you always have to massage it.   Figuring it out until it clicks and you down the boss is more fun than knowing it's going to die when you get there.   If everyone got loot or tokens, or SOMETHING so that you didn't have to kill the guy 37 times before moving on, I'd be much happier with raiding, even though I already enjoy it

I am also not in the majority on this.

Here's a secret, I fucking hate UO.  I tried it a few years ago between COH and WoW going live and didn't get the love.  I still don't. 

You were about six or eight years too late.

Wouldn't have mattered, the game's system was still shit. Those of you with the uber memories of it always speak more of social ties (or manipulation) than game-related bits.

   Plus, that bit that Darniaq mentioned he loved?  Drove me apeshit in SWG.  Discarding advancement for other advancement is crap, regardless of the game.  Suppose someone said, "Sure, you can have a Rogue alt in EQ2.. but for every level you gain your Shadow Knight is going to go down a level."  It'd be bullshit, but somehow it's "ok" for UO/ SWG to do it.