Chinese Economy Soon To Collapse

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Elok
The Chinese Gold Farmer is the modern-day Moneylending Jew. Everyone kvetches about how evil he is, but obviously somebody's using his services or he wouldn't be in business. Make that a substantial number of somebodies...

This comparison fascinates me. Have we yet experienced e-pogroms of WoW Gold Farmers? On PvP servers that they operate on, are they attacked for being farmers, or do they tend to stay in "safe zones?"

[Blake]

On PvP servers there are people who hunt gold farmers for ****s and giggles or for honor. The Gold Farmers however will gang up on hunters, which is the only chance they have because their gear is ****ty. Like a fully decked out Rogue can murder gold farmers all day.

I believe in some cases there are both horde and alliance gold farmers in the same area, co-operating. For example, keeping track of intruding players, or simply swapping factions until the hunter goes away, like if a horde rogue starts murdering gold farmers they could just farm there with a horde toon or go to another character/server.

On the topic of this thread, the rule is only applicable to minors. The vast majority of WoW players, and this is no doubt even more true in China, are adults. Meaning unless China expands the scope of the rule it wont do much to gold farmers, and in any case the gold farmers wouldn't own the accounts they use, making it moot.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


I agree.
For example in Wow, I saw very few people explain properly why exactly gold farmers are a net negative.
In general, it keeps prices down, which is both good and bad depending what side of the market you are mostly on.
It's usually just something that focuses the complaint of people.

Actually, it boosts prices by flooding the market with money that wouldn't otherwise exist. Yes, the very specific things they farm might become cheaper, but other things such as low level gear become much more expensive (To an extent that happens anyway when high level people play lower level alts and send money there). Then again, I have recently made a killing selling Mithril for stupid prices to people with too much money on their hands.

At any rate, paying someone real money to produce nothing is stupid. Paying someone to play the game for you is a sign that maybe you shouldn't be playing the game in the first place. I mean, if it's not fun enough to play it yourself...

[Provost Harrison]

June 15th?! Tested by July 15th?! Damn, these Chinese bureaucrats don't live in the real world do they?

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
June 15th?! Tested by July 15th?! Damn, these Chinese bureaucrats don't live in the real world do they?

I don't think they'd mind shutting down the games until compliance is achieved

[Elok]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
At any rate, paying someone real money to produce nothing is stupid. Paying someone to play the game for you is a sign that maybe you shouldn't be playing the game in the first place. I mean, if it's not fun enough to play it yourself...

I didn't realize MMOs were "fun" to play for anyone. WoW, at least, appears to be a treadmill of rote tasks performed over and over again in cycles in order to kill vast amounts of time and brain cells. Unfortunately, it also has the function of earning "glory" among the nerds who play it, because nothing says you're a big man like getting sores on your butt from sitting there killing three hundred furbolgs at a stretch so the other furbolgs will sell you their pattern for Sparkly Mooncloth Condoms.

Players who wish to earn "glory," sad as it is, without the arduous task of grinding down monsters forever (perhaps due to a lack of free time) employ the services of Gold Farmers. It's not really cheating to my eye, since the money they use to pay the Gold Farmers is earned at a tedious, soul-crushing job in the real world; in other words, the core WoW experience remains intact, although the venue has changed. Think of it as a sidequest where the level 42 Human Consultant slays three hundred Paperworks to gain Favor with the Brotherhood of International Applied Data Solutions Incorporated.

[Kuciwalker]

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Cyclotron


This comparison fascinates me. Have we yet experienced e-pogroms of WoW Gold Farmers? On PvP servers that they operate on, are they attacked for being farmers, or do they tend to stay in "safe zones?"

You'd be surprised.
A majority of players HATE Gold Farmers, but don't really know why.
It's a group mentality thing.
So that part of the comparison holds well.
As someone mentionned some people spend some effort disturbing the farmers, but the game mechanics don't allow for that much disruption.


It's a bit funny that Wow players think like that. When you think about it, many players spend a lot of time doing exactly what gold farmers are doing (grinding for cash) just maybe to buy a mount instead of sell it.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Victor Galis


Actually, it boosts prices by flooding the market with money that wouldn't otherwise exist. Yes, the very specific things they farm might become cheaper, but other things such as low level gear become much more expensive (To an extent that happens anyway when high level people play lower level alts and send money there). Then again, I have recently made a killing selling Mithril for stupid prices to people with too much money on their hands.

You don't understand how gold farmers work.
They don't actually produce money directly.
There are very few ways to produce gold directly in the game (questing and selling stuff to vendors) and those are too inefficient to be used on large scale by gold farmers.

They actually produce lots of different types of goods (greens for Disenchantings, gathered goods, etc...) and sell them.

Thus, the money that gold farmers "create" is not created at all, it came from other players.

Gold farmers is in fact a misnomer, they farm pretty much anything but gold.

Ask yourself this : when a smart player wants get money for his mount, whatever he chooses to do, chances are a very small amount of the money is going to be produced directly. Why would it be different for "gold farmers"?

Bottom line is, just normal players doing normal stuff (which is the majority) produces extra gold (by questing, and selling some stuff to vendors). That's the source of the gold in the system.

[Whoha]

Shouldn't players who legitimately threw their time down the drain be somewhat angered by those who can just come in and buy all the good stuff immediately?

[Jon Miller]

In EVE people camp them, and since there is open PvP in many parts, many gold farmers die. In the empire zones (which are policed by NPCs) people come up with cheap ships that can blow them up and try to kill them before gtting blown up by the police.

Jon Miller

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Whoha
Shouldn't players who legitimately threw their time down the drain be somewhat angered by those who can just come in and buy all the good stuff immediately?

"should" is a hard question.
Some do, some don't.
On the "no" side, you could argue that that person spent money, while other players spent "fun time" playing to get to the same place, so the buyer is the dummy.
Of course, there's another perspective to the whole thing.

[Jon Miller]

People play MMOs (well, one reason people play MMOs) is to get easy rewards. When the rewards become difficult because gold farmers increase the rewards to an insane degree.. then people don't get rewards as fast, which removes some of the reason they play.

Jon Miller

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


You don't understand how gold farmers work.
They don't actually produce money directly.
There are very few ways to produce gold directly in the game (questing and selling stuff to vendors) and those are too inefficient to be used on large scale by gold farmers.

They actually produce lots of different types of goods (greens for Disenchantings, gathered goods, etc...) and sell them.

Thus, the money that gold farmers "create" is not created at all, it came from other players.

Gold farmers is in fact a misnomer, they farm pretty much anything but gold.

Ask yourself this : when a smart player wants get money for his mount, whatever he chooses to do, chances are a very small amount of the money is going to be produced directly. Why would it be different for "gold farmers"?

Bottom line is, just normal players doing normal stuff (which is the majority) produces extra gold (by questing, and selling some stuff to vendors). That's the source of the gold in the system.

Hadn't quite considered that. In DAoC, gold production was much more direct. Nonetheless, these farmers concentrate gold in the hands of a few buyers who then drive up prices by being able to pay much more than reasonable people. Incidentally, the gold farmers probably end up selling a lot to their own customers. I mean who in their right mind would be paying some of these prices.

On the "no" side, you could argue that that person spent money, while other players spent "fun time" playing to get to the same place, so the buyer is the dummy.
Of course, there's another perspective to the whole thing.

In a game with PvP, where people who didn't work for it kill you with better gear...

[Geronimo]

What makes these gold farmers so easy to spot in game? Do people playing the game purely for fun sometimes get attacked as gold farmers?