I hate gold farmers. They totally destroy MMO economies. Everything becomes so expensive that the only way to afford in-game items is to purchase in-game currency.
I just logged on to one of my other accounts to find that Virtual gamer tried to ban my umbagumba account for exposing him for the idiot he is, and this further proves his retardedness. How FN pathetic do you have to be to try to ban somone because your proven to be retarded? virtual gamer is a b!tch. You will now get it a lot worse.
I was reading some of the legal jargon, and the lawyer who representing the plaintiff has some really good credentials. This could destroy IGE, and the gold farming business. Not to mention the lawsuit Blizzard filed against another gold farming site (Peons4Hire).
I hope these lawsuits go through. Gold Farmers destroy games.
They went unchecked on Square Enix's MMO Final Fantasy XI for a long time. It really harms the games, and I'm surprised more companies have not already taken action.
I played that game for a year. I had spent hours mining in Ifrit's Cauldron just so I could have some spending money to buy overpriced items and staffs and crap. I don't miss it at all. Some aspects of MMO's are right on. However, when they require soooo much time it becomes pointless. Goldfarming arssholes only make it worse.
I remember certain character were ALWAYS in the mines 24/7. That's brings up competition for mining points. It sucked. I used to drag enemies towards them and then magic out of the mine. With any luck the enemy would agro the gillfarmer. It made my day.
I'm sorry I'm not too savvy in the world of MMO's. I find them to be a enormous drain on your spare time in life.
But anyways, my question. What the hell is gold farming? They somehow actually affect the online economy? Wow these games have gotten pretty complex I must be behind the times.
Basically people will obtain in-game currency and/or items and sell them to people for real money. In FFXI they worked in shifts and you would see the same group of players online 24/7 doing nothing but earning game currency. This creates a sort of false demand since buyers are given loads of game currency without taking the time to earn it. The higher demand usually leads to higher prices on rarer items, and makes it very difficult for legitimate gamers to afford those items.
Basically what some people do is they get many multiple accounts and they pay people to collect in-game currency by killing monsters, selling items,ect...Then they turn around and sell the in-game money to other players at about $5/5000 gold(Warcraft). There are always people willing to pay so they don't have to earn it themselves. Then when this money becomes overabundant item costs skyrocket, forcing honest players to work endlessly to buy Necessary items.
It is seriously complex in one sense since no one believes the money you can make from playing these games until they try it.
And seriously just normal everyday business when you take away the fact that your money is coming from fantasy land.
depending what waves you ride during the games lifespan, you can make a decent weekly salary or a down payment on your new NYC home if you catch some lucky times when money sells good and some tricks are available before the game catches it.
Ive seen this and know plenty about it from Everquest 1 to WoW.
Seriously profitable depending how good you have developed your characters, or how much time you spend playing or researching all the money makers everyone knows about so you dont do the same ones:)
IGE ruins the games on one hand, yet keeps it playable for those people with little time to spend making fake money to buy the good items.
But i always agreed they suck...
They ruined my love for those games and brought me away form the PC and too the console systems.
Nothing beats good ol' EQ though for immersion into a game back in its hay day when ige was doing nickels and dimes and trying to buy eq related websites for thousands .
Now they make millions a quarter from what ive seen which shows how far they have grown destroying MMo's
Finally! Damn those gilfarmers in FFXI taht ruined it for me. Hopefully the person wins, and other companies follow suit or something. At least FFXI is back to how it once was, almost, though you can still buy gil.
Yeah I heard the gil sellers are starving on FFXI now. Before I quit the economy was in the middle of a massive deflation. Nice to see the banning of all those mule accounts worked.
take off the %20 from the end of the url when it times out. It's just a legal document tho, unless you speak the elusive language of "Lawyers" then it's just so much gibberish.
Soz, I get the inflation bit and all that (I'm not too MMO-savvy either), but how can earning loads of money push up the prices of items? I'd assume that the price of items (which you'd buy in shops I suppose?) is dictated by the Devs; so people having more money just means they can buy more of them, surely? Unless it's not a command economy and it's a free market? But how on earth do you create a free market in a game; that must mean that a particular groups of players are responsible for supplying different things (e.g. potions), but that sounds like a stupid idea because players could charge whatever they want for much-needed items. So there must be another way this game works, but I don't know how. I'm confused :s Sorry
ANYWAY I'm hearing that this is ruining the game and I think anyone who ruins games should be dealt with, so I support all you WoW fans and wish you the best of luck in getting your game back!
Internet Game Economies are highly complex. You won't actually understand one until you play a MMO. But, let me try to explain as best as I can.
Basically, these guys are on 24/7, and have max level characters. What they do is sit around and wait for rare monsters to spawn, which drop very good loot which can sell for a high price. Since there are so many of these farmers, they get an effective monopoly on rare goods, and they can jack up the prices however they want. And eventually get to control the game economy, because they can dictate prices. Supply goes down, demand goes up, so prices go up.
though you are right considering other MMORPG you miss the mark considering WOW. There is no way for farmers to monopolize rare items in wow, as specific spawn mobs only drop bop (bind on pickup) items that are absolutely worthless considered selling to players as you can't sell em to other players.
The only reason goldfarmers exist in wow is because Blizzard made the age old error of making ingame vendors selling certain skills or items that give you the edge over other players for insane amounts of ingame cash. Like the epic flying mount that puts you back a nifty 5300 gold.
Whenever you try yourself to farm some metal or plants for your own usage you will instantly see why that is an idiot approach. The lucky few who have that amount of ingame cash overtake you on the race to every single plant resulting in ZERO plants and metals for the average poor player so that the players with the high speed mount can make back the insane cost at the auction house by selling the perfectly free plants to you.
If blizzard had made the skill a long and hard quest sequence, gold farmers wouldn't be able to cash in on players who want a flying mount NOW, and not in half a year or so with boring farming, thats even made harder cause the ones with the cutting edge equip farm better than you ;)
So good idea by blizzard: making all the good equip bound on pickup = no selling of the real good stuff = no market like in other games
bad idea by blizzard: giving players the edge over other players for only huge amounts of ingame cash, contradicts the whole bop idea, results in gold farming = people willing to sell ingame cash for real cash.
good idea by blizzard: make good stuff available for "heroic tokens" earned by playing dungeons on hard mode: no way to buy em, you earn em, no goldfarmers here ...
A generalisation of how Gold Farming ruins games... (not necessarily applicable to WoW but it'll give you the idea of how it hurts MMORPG games)
Player A finds an Item and puts on the auction for 1 Gold
Player B wants that item, so has three choices: - Go and find the item in the game world (possibly time consuming, maybe it's a rare item and hard to find) - Earn the money to buy the item on the Auction (possibly time consuming and may require more time than the item will be available) - Buy some gold from a company like IGE
So at that point the item is worth 1 Gold. Depedning on how quickly it sells, the next time someone puts it on the auction house they may put it on for 2 Gold. The cycle repeats with the item costing more and more each time and is amplified if people are buying these items using money bought from IGE. Items do not find their 'natural' value (i.e. supply vs demand, and the price the market can bear).
Companies like IGE are flooding the game world with Gold so it causes massive inflation. Everything starts costing more because more money is available. Plus it gives those people willing to spend real money to buy in-game money an advantage... which in turn may push a previously legitimate player to say 'what the hell, everyone else is doing it'.
IGE have such huge reserves of in game Gold because they run teams of people playing the game 24/7. Not only does this build up their reserves but it potentially stops legitimate players making money (the gold farmers find the best camping spots to always get the lucrative spawns, best mining points etc). In some games gold farmers use software to automate gold farming - little human interaction is required.
Also, gold farming teams who are working specific areas may be monopolising certain desirable items. They can then dictate the market price for these items, artificially inflating prices to drive more people towards buying gold.
Before you know it, low end items are costing crazy amounts of money. As a new player you can't afford anything, and as a veteran player you are almost forced in to buying gold to stay competitive (in PvP for example). If you are faced with the option of spending 100 hours earning 5000 Gold to buy an item that is really worth 1000 Gold or spending $5 to buy 5000 Gold which will be delivered almost immediately... what are you going to do?
I hate gold farmers. They totally destroy MMO economies. Everything becomes so expensive that the only way to afford in-game items is to purchase in-game currency.
I was reading some of the legal jargon, and the lawyer who representing the plaintiff has some really good credentials. This could destroy IGE, and the gold farming business. Not to mention the lawsuit Blizzard filed against another gold farming site (Peons4Hire).
I hope these lawsuits go through. Gold Farmers destroy games.
It only took them years to do it. This and the peons4hire case should settle down the gold spam, at least I hope so...
They went unchecked on Square Enix's MMO Final Fantasy XI for a long time. It really harms the games, and I'm surprised more companies have not already taken action.
I'm sorry I'm not too savvy in the world of MMO's. I find them to be a enormous drain on your spare time in life.
But anyways, my question. What the hell is gold farming? They somehow actually affect the online economy? Wow these games have gotten pretty complex I must be behind the times.