A new view of gold farmers

[Zonzede]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... aming-scam

An interesting story

[Chasey]

I'm not suprised. Sounds like there is still little control over it. Seems like a sure fix would be for Blizz to sell gold, while not popular it would put a stop to this kind of pratice or at least slow it.

[Hokahey]

Wow...just wow. I guess I can be naive. The thought never occured to me that gold farming was a form of prisoner labor in China. I always marveled at how it was even remotely possible for someone to genuinely make any amount of money from selling gold. I guess if you're doing it through slave labor with multiple people, it has some potential.

Even worse- That gold farmer you griefed for several hours one day when you were bored? Totally got physically punished for low productivity. Wow.

[Daeren]

Well, I rather farm gold for several hours than doing hard manual labor for the same amount of hours.

[Snake-Aes]

Well, I rather farm gold for several hours than doing hard manual labor for the same amount of hours.

Either way it wears you out. Can't really say which is worse.

No big news here though. If their free people already work like that, the caged ones would definitely go under something similar.

[Tev]

Even worse- That gold farmer you griefed for several hours one day when you were bored? Totally got physically punished for low productivity. Wow.

Hmm, new tactic, harass the gold buyer wherever possible.

[Shyrtandros]

I'm not suprised. Sounds like there is still little control over it. Seems like a sure fix would be for Blizz to sell gold, while not popular it would put a stop to this kind of pratice or at least slow it.

This sounds like a good idea, but the threat of banning players for gold buying is the only thing keeping thousands if not million(s) of players from pulling out their credit cards, buying tons of gold and flooding every market to be a complete MAYHEM.

Right now the only thing that stabalizes a market is the lack of people willing to supply certain goods with access to large gold piles the economy would go to heck.

[Snake-Aes]

Not really, a fixed price will also gives you a roughly stable price ratio. After a certain point people won't be willing to pay for gold because of how devalued it becomes.

[rodos]

Blizzard selling gold would cause such insane inflation that in-game gold sources such as daily quests would become trivial. People would stop logging in to do those things, get bored and quit the game. It would be the same as if they started selling gear - a lot of people wouldn't bother raiding any more and quit the game.

[Snake-Aes]

Blizzard selling gold would cause such insane inflation that in-game gold sources such as daily quests would become trivial. People would stop logging in to do those things, get bored and quit the game. It would be the same as if they started selling gear - a lot of people wouldn't bother raiding any more and quit the game.

Not if the effort and reward from gaming the gold matches paying the gold (put aside figuring out that ratio for now).

[Hokahey]

Blizzard selling gold would cause such insane inflation that in-game gold sources such as daily quests would become trivial. People would stop logging in to do those things, get bored and quit the game. It would be the same as if they started selling gear - a lot of people wouldn't bother raiding any more and quit the game.

Not if the effort and reward from gaming the gold matches paying the gold (put aside figuring out that ratio for now).

Nerdfights over BoE epics are bad enough, as it is. How much worse would it be if there were a directly calculable real world currency value tied to them?

[Candiru]

They could do it EVE Style, where you can buy (For 1 month's worth of subscription fee) a 1 month game card INGAME. You can then sell/trade this gamecard for any in-game item you like, and the buyer can use it to add a month of game-time to his acount. No gold is created so there wouldn't be massive inflation, but people can easily buy gold buy buying more gametime and swapping it for gold with other people.

There is also little opportunity to "cash out" your gold into real money under this scheme. You would have to persuade people to swap in-game game-cards for real money, and the risks of that trade for being scammed should stop most people from doing so.

[Kelaan]

There'd have to be a way to prove that it hasn't been used, but yeah -- I thought EVE's currency->credits machine was very smart. People like Stokpile would play for free, and Joe User would be able to sell a month of game time for several thousand gold.