Bad Press For Gold Farmers Affects Chinese Players

Next Generation is running a piece entitled Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers. Editor-in-chief Greg Vederman talks about why they decided to no longer accept advertising from 'Gold Farming' services for Massively Multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. Though there are moral grounds for this decision, it contrasts with a Eurogamer piece on the negative reactions Chinese players recieve on English-speaking servers. From that article:"Apparently there is a common belief among English speaking players that most non-English speakers are gold farmers and are only playing for commercial gain. As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected. Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem. "

Don't farmers just work with other farmers?

So if you're a gold farmer, hanging around with your gold farming buddies at the gold farming office, wouldn't you just team up with them instead of trying to solicit groups with American players, who are likely to just slow you down?

And if you are a non-gold farming player, and someone wants to team up with you to help accomplish missions, what difference does it make what their motive is? Given that gold (or influence or whatever) is required to get stuff, to some extent, aren't we all gold farmers? For your practical gaming purposes, what makes a player who is accruing it to sell different from a player who is accruing it to buy a neat new sword (or new enhancements or whatever)?

If someone doesn't want to team up with foreigners, I'm guessing that there's something going on other than not wanting to support gold farming. It's probably because either a) for roleplaying purposes, you need to be able to communicate with your teammates (optimism), b) the farmer is not playing they way the group leader wishes and puts high pressure on him or her to rush through the missions (neutral), or c) they just don't like foreigners (pessimism).

Re:Don't farmers just work with other farmers?

If someone doesn't want to team up with foreigners, I'm guessing that there's something going on other than not wanting to support gold farming.

I use the German client, just to get practice on my German. Every item I link is in German on the text bar. One day someone asked me why everything I linked on the chat was in German, and I said 'cause I'm using the German client, and he said.

"Sorry, I just can't support those who didn't support us during the war." Then left the Guild.

Now, be entirely aware that I am: a.) american, and b.) support the war.

Re:Don't farmers just work with other farmers?

Maybe he was really an 80-year old man and was talking about WWII.

Re:Don't farmers just work with other farmers?

So if you're a gold farmer, hanging around with your gold farming buddies at the gold farming office, wouldn't you just team up with them instead of trying to solicit groups with American players, who are likely to just slow you down?

Gold farmers often join groups with regular players to "ninja" the loot drops. Basically the whole group works to get a good item, then the farmer grabs it and runs. Not only does that mean they steal the item, they leave the group shorthanded and angry, so the group usually gives up and disbands right away.

I hate to break it to them...

but I can after 5 years on EQ1, I can pretty much predict that anyone who will only group with people who can type 2 complete sentences without mistakes is doomed to a lifetime of soloing.

Class: Grammar Nazi

but I can after 5 years on EQ1, I can pretty much predict that anyone who will only group with people who can type 2 complete sentences without mistakes is doomed to a lifetime of soloing.

Class: Grammar Nazi.

Description: A sage, specialized in the subtleties of language.
Common jobs: Deciphering ancient runes, translator for diplomacy
Bonuses: Intelligence +5, +5 bonus against chaotic enemies.
Penalties: Charisma -10, they don't use to get along with characters of age Alignment: Good, neutral or evil, but always lawful.
Common phrases: "Grammar tip of the day". Very annoying.

Serious Problem?

In other serious news today, some WoW gamers cannot complete their quests...

I know a lot of native English speakers...

...who cannut be countid on, to submit a coupel of errorfree sentences of proper correct and tpyofree English themselves.

What about Zonk?

If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected

Are you always playing WOW alone?

from a multi-nation server perspective.

Playing FFXI unlike WoW everyone is on the same server. Even here despite some of the rivalry that exists between the NAs and JPs BOTH along with the EU gamers are pretty much in agreement that all chinese players are gilfarmers. Even with there being a few HK LSs.

I think the underlyiing factor is that no matter ow many legit players there are, way too many ARE infact there for the selling reason. Its unfortunate that such descrimination exists now, and I can tell you at first it didnt to this extent. But way too many people ruined it for the few.

On the oposite side of the coin, many NA are accused of buying gil by the JP for the exact same reasons.

You know, sometimes....

The "one or two sentences in English" thing doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'm not so sure that's the result of gold farmer paranoia.

Re:Wait, What?

and English incompetence isn't a communication barrier?

Doesn't seem to be a problem on /.

Or mabye they just want people who can communicate

As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English.


Just because they are asking people to pass a literacy test doesn't mean that they are descriminating because they dont like gold farmers. It might actually be beneficial to be able to talk to the people you are playing with, if just to be able to set up strategy. Nobody wants someone on their team who cannot communicate because that person might get the whole group killed for not paying attention to directions.

Laughably false

As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.

If this were the standard WoW players were held to, there would be very, very few groups indeed!

However, I do know plenty of people who have kicked group members for not being able to type well enough to communicate with the group. I have grouped with people like that (Chinese or otherwise, I have no idea), and I must say it sucks. The whole point of grouping is cooperation after all, which is pretty damn difficult without communication. I have a pretty high tolerance for all manner of bad grammar and spelling in MMORPGs, but if I flat out cannot make heads nor tails of what another character is saying? Some multiplayer quests in WoW take several hours -- if my hours are wasted because a party member can't understand an instruction, I'm going to be understandably pissed off and reticent to group with such people in the future.

Keep an open mind? Absolutely.

Put up with people who do all manner of stupid shit AND we can't communicate with each other? I don't think so.

Re:Laughably false

Some multiplayer quests in WoW take several hours -- if my hours are wasted ....

There's something deliciously ironic about this statement, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is, exactly...

Re:Laughably false

*cringe*

I hath been pwn3d.

Nicely played :)

Gold Farming?

Can someone fill me in on what Gold Farming is?

Re:Gold Farming?

Gold Farming:

Large numbers of very poorly paid people play WoW for hours with the sole purpose of collecting (in-game) gold. Said gold is then resold to players who dont mind putting $70 worth of WoW gold on their Visa cards. Since the "farmers" are so poorly paid, there is plenty of money left to pay the workers and give the middleman a hefty cut.

The New York Times had an article about this [nytimes.com] a few months back. I don't remember it being interesting enough to pay for, but you never know :)

Re:Gold Farming?

Try the first result. ;-)

http://www.google.com/search?q=gold+farming [google.com]
 

Common in FFXI too.

Though the issue wasn't as loudly protested in FFXI as it is WoW, there was quite a bit of segregation between American and Japanese players as well. Japanese would refuse to group with Americans for reasons I never precisely found out, but the common sentiment was that Japanese felt Americans were too stupid to group with.

Americans would refuse to group with Japanese for the same reason.

The game didn't really require much communication to be able to function in a group, and any communication that did need to happen could be done by building comments with pre-translated keywords. And yet the two sides almost exclusively played in their own little world, despite sharing servers with others. Only the bilingual folks were able to exist in both worlds.

Based on my experiences with FFXI, I think the anti-Chinese sentiment in WoW is simply a human's innate tendency towards racism. Don't get me wrong, a lot of gold farmers are in fact Chinese, but a lot of them are European and American as well. Yet, everyone "knows" that all the farmers ruining the game are Chinese.

Wrong reasons

I don't group with people who can't speak english because they fall into 1 of 2 camps:

1)Foreigners who will have limited ability to communicate strategy with them. They may be decent players, but if we can't talk we can't team well.
2)US morons. I won't team with them because morons get you killed.

Gold farming has nothing to do with it. Hell, I like gold farmers- they save games with horribly broken implementations that require you to grind for gold. Without gold farmers MMOs would be unplayable. Using them minimizes the boring, pointless parts of the game and lets you get on with the fun parts.

WOW is too complex to have language barriers

I can't be trying to do a quest and have people who can't understand "Ok, sap that guy." or "Please don't break that sheep"

Most end game raids require CTRaid, Ventrillo, Decursive....So non-english speaking players set this up with ease? and then communicate on vent easily? No...it's a matter of "is this guy gonna wipe us..." the answer is usually yes.

Unless you are Boccd.

Why not just form Chinese groups?

OK, I don't know much about WoW, so maybe the answer to this is obvious, but... if Chinese players aren't accepted into English-speaking groups, why don't they just form their own groups? I'd think that that's what farmers would do, anyway - work together in groups to maximise "profits" without having to wait for/rely on "regular" players.

Or am I missing something?

Bogus

I can't belive that both /. and Eurogamer fell for this! It's obviously a bogus article POSTED BY A GOLD SELLER to get hits on his site.

The idea that people are using English typing skill tests is ludicrous. Anyone who has played an online game (such as many of the people who have posted comments here already) will tell you that the average level of writing skill on such games is abysmal.

Any Organized, Professional Griefers?

Are there any organized, professional griefers in these games?

I would figure that if a professional Chinese-mafia would have no problem profiting from the ruination of the barbarians.

Your perception of it would be that Chinese characters were teaming up on you, robbing, you, etc.

You'd expect some typical "social identity" processes to kick in: white people would organize against the Chinese, figure out how to spot them, etc. That seems to be exactly what is happening (e.g. "type two lines in English").

Grammar mistakes

"My grammer is definately very good, i swear i live in teh US!"

BUZZZ - REJECTED!

Good English should be encouraged

I think it's fine to only allow in people who use good English, considering how annoying "leet speak" and its derivatives can be. Now, I recognize the difference between someone trying to learn English and someone who cnt b bthred 2 typ out ntir wrds n sntnces or someone \/\/ho 7h1|\|ks 73hy @r3 1337 b3(@us3 73hy (@|\| 7y|>3 1|\| symbols.

(Note, the last sentence was made using a "l33t translator" and reads as: who thinks they are elite because they can type in symbols.)

Just join a good Guild

Whoever you are, Chinese gold farmer, PvP addict, PvE carebear, if you join a good guild in WoW, you end up having a great time and not having to worry about group with "randoms". Just make some friends in the game, or find people you know that play on your server, and join or make a guild. Thats half the fun of WoW, seriously.

I used to play WoW religiously (clocked in 55 days of play) before I quit a few months ago. For around 3 to 4 weeks, I was a guild leader on the Blackrock realm for the Guild NoMaam on a character called "Ruins". The guild had around 100 or so people, all with max level (60) characters. We did all the high end content, including Molten Core, 40 man PvP, raiding enemy towns and the obligatory 40-man fishing squads that kill players with fishing poles in between catches. It was very entertaining, especially since we used voice chat software whenever we did things in a group. Nothing is funnier than secretly bribing a friend to wipe the entire 40-man raid out as a joke, and hearing the mixture of laughter and angry screams when a tiny gnome leads a train of 10-story tall giants towards the group.

Back on topic, I personally did not like people that only farmed gold, as it is only a small part of the game. Playing on a PvP server, which allows you to kill opposing faction players, the unspoken rule of repeatedly killing farmers is pretty much a given for most guilds. The only farming that gets done is when you are in a group, which led to the formation of farming guilds. I am not joking. I once killed a few farmers solo, and in 15 minutes, a group of 40 arrived, all from the same guild. Then, my guild arrived. Ah... good times. WoW: Gang Warfare.

I was born in Hong Kong and lived there until I was 10. I have friends in the guild that are Chinese international students, with heavy accents and poor English. I had real trouble understanding one of them when he spoke in English, typed or vocal. We always joked about their poor English, but as they are in the guild, everyone got along, especially since the higher level content demanded group work. Sometimes, we had a guy translate raid instructions to Chinese for a few of the players, which always had a lot more swearing in it for some reason. "If you get the "Living Bomb" curse, run the fuck away from your group" translates to something a Chinese sailor wouldn't say at a Bachelor Party lol.

Personally, if people play on a PvE server that is inherently based on conquering the environment, farming is inevitable. Whether the player sells what they farm on Ebay is up to them, and the punishment should be dealt by Blizzard. On a PvP server, I usually kill any opposing faction player I see unless I know them on IRC or IRL. Most PvP-oriented guilds like us had farmer-killing runs where we visit every popular farming spot and get some PvP points off farmers for our guild members. Farmers have a tough time in general, and if they want to suffer to earn money, its up to Blizzard to ban them.

The idea of using grammar and spelling levels as a filter has its good points, to allow for easier communication for giving raid instructions, loot disputes and friendly chat like "ROFL we have 3 healers not healing, a tank not tanking and me, the mage, dying in 2 seconds..." It will likely reject the following people:
1) Foreign players
2) Kids in general, of all ages (up to 30 years old at times...)
3) Most members of my Guild, including me
4) Anyone on a WoW binge, going for a full 24 hours or more
5) People that find it stupid and offensive to be tested and leave the party

Why does anyone care?

First off, Blizzard should just recognize that the reason farmers exist is due to their game design. If I am paying $15/month to play some game and I find parts of it to be boring, why should Blizzard care if I want to pay someone else to play that part? It is no different from real life, where I pay someone else to grow (and sometimes cook) my food, kill cows for me, etc. If someone is hacking their system, they should crack down on that, but most farmers have real paid accounts. You can say it causes inflation, but I would counter that this is just normal economics - market forces bringing down an artificial economy.

Second - no chinese farmers want to group with non-farmers. I actually know some farmers in China. They have about 40 people working there, each playing several characters at a time in different windows. The pay is OK and the work is easy, but the hours are long (10 hours per day, seven days a week, plus the next day off if you work the night shift). They employ a few english speakers who handle the case where someone tries to talk to them, so the idea that asking a few English questions will identify a farmer is just wrong. They are very polite and don't use bots, etc., because they don't want to be caught. Most of the problem farmers are not the chinese companies but the western college students trying to make beer money on eBay.

I think a larger part of this is racism. Look at the ads for gold on eBay. People actually say "not chinese gold" in their ads - as if the fact that a chinese person farmed it instead of a Westerner makes a difference!

The real mystery for me is why someone would pay someone else to play their character for them... THAT seems really strange... but I can imagine that it would be easier to pay $5 for an item that makes the game more fun for me than playing the same instance 100 times in a row hoping for a drop.

Re:Why does anyone care?

If I am paying $15/month to play some game and I find parts of it to be boring, why should Blizzard care if I want to pay someone else to play that part? It is no different from real life, where I pay someone else to grow (and sometimes cook) my food, kill cows for me, etc.

The short answer is that Blizzard minds because the players mind. The long answer is that the players mind for a reason. The problem is not inflation, because someone would probably be killing the monsters and causing the gold and items to drop anyway, even if in a slightly lesser quantity. The problem is rather that of influence and distribution. The external nature of the money that people buy the gold with means that the egalitarian nature of the game (that people start off equal and distinguish themselves via work and skill, with a small amount of luck). Additionally, since one in theory has to work hard in game to make something of oneself, it is a mockery of the dedication people put into the game to see what is in a sense a mark of distinction placed upon one who does not deserve it.

To illustrate these points, I would like to offer some analogies. Suppose that you went to your friend's house to play monopoly, but because someone paid your friend $10 under the table, he started with triple the money of everybody else. The game would be more fun for that person, but less fun for everybody but the person who had the extra money: the shape of the game changed because of something which should not be affecting the game. Or if you spent all year preparing for a golf tournament and finished spectacularly, but the trophy were given to a man who did not do as well but had promised to donate a new clubhouse if he "won". Or what if legislation was passed to make it illegal to circumvent any encryption used as a means of copy protection because someone had enough congressmen on payroll? Money can buy things that make some things just less enjoyable for the majority of people.

Just because certain actions can't be controlled by software does not mean that they should be allowed; just because one can do something does not mean one should. Rules exist for reasons. People disapprove of paying off players to throw sports games, and people disapprove of paying players to farm gold. Just because both still happen despite the rules does not mean that we should accept it and stop trying to fix the problem.

MMORPGs don't have an "egalitarian nature"!

MMORPGs favor people who have oodles of spare time. Time is money. Someone is paying for your rent, clothing, food, electricity, and broadband while you are online. And there's an opportunity cost -- every hour you spend online could have otherwise been spent doing something else, like working for money.

You're welcome to spend your time and money however you like. If you prefer to play WoW for 20 hours a week, and you take great pride in having done everything for yourself, that's fine. I'm glad that having this hobby makes you happy. But don't pretend that you're somehow morally superior to the guy who pays for Chinese-farmed gold. Both of you are spending money to advance in WoW. The difference is that you are spending more money, because an hour of your time is worth more than an hour of a gold-farmer's time. (If this is not true, you should consider becoming a gold farmer!)

If you find this disturbing, perhaps you need to switch to a game that places more emphasis on actual skill (obtained through hours of practice) and less emphasis on "skill points" (obtained through hours of work that could just as well be done by someone else). Try chess. Try poker. Try any of several hundred other online games.

English speaker?

From the article:

Mark MacKay, owner of the WOW Gold Price List website, has condemned this practice in a statement which reads: "Over over 1.5 million World of Warcraft players are from China alone, with the majority of these players being non-English. While their has been recent publicity about the gold farm factories in China, it by no means justifies thinking that every Chinese or non-English speaking player is a gold farmer."

Now, Mark MacKay does not sound like a Chinese name, but I'm having trouble believing that he's an English speaker.

Geeks just as racist as everyone else

Assuming a Chinese player is more likely to be a gold farmer isn't much different than assuming a Middle Eastern looking person is more likely to be a terrorist. This is prejudice, and if your prejudice translates into denying goods or services solely because of the ethnicity of the person, it's racism. So even people who consider themselves rational become racist when convenient because it's easier to assume a Chinese person is a gold farmer and deny him access than to actually find a better way to screen.

Of cource PC Gamer is upset!

These so-called "gold farmers" are freelancers who get paid to play games, so naturally the PC Gamer editors are getting irate. It's unwelcome competition! The only difference is that the farmers don't then turn around and kiss up to the publishers of the games they play so that they get to sell ad space and scoop the screenshots for the next round of titles.

Keep the gold farming where it belongs: in the reviews where games get glowing reviews and turn out to suck ass!

Thoughts from a player

(1) They have localized servers. If they are wanting to "play the game" why are they not playing there?

(2) 9 times out of 10 the Gold Farmer (or as I refer to them "Foreign Language Virtual Asset Acquisition Agent") will screw things up in their greed-driven rush. Pull adds when we're not ready, have problems with Aggro Management, etc.

(3) 9 times out of 10 the FLVAAA will attempt to lie/cheat/steal in order to obtain something sellable. This includes claiming to "need" an item (using it to upgrade their character) and then instantly trying to sell it, attempting to "ninja-loot" an item (call it a "Snatch-n-Grab" in meat-space), or piss/whine/moan until the group just hands them something to shut them up. If the above fails they will attempt (typically via badly mangled English) to destroy the reputation of the group by calling them "Ninja-Looters" or something similar in open chat in Ironforge or Orgrimmar (where most of the bored higher level people hang out looking for something to do)

Why should I subject myself to this crap? If there is someone answering the LFM (Looking For More) call for a particular instance run and they can't say more than "me go" or "I want (insert Item name here). u give plz?" then I feel pretty justified in calling them a FLVAAA and adding them to my ignore list. If the person passes the "interview" but proves on the instance crawl that they're more interested in acquiring items, I'll boot them. I ran one instance crawl where the 3rd mob in dropped a decent "Bind On Equip" epic helm. 2 Hunters instantly voiced their desire for the helm and I explained that it would be dealt with at the end when we're deviding up the rest of the loot. It would be rolled for by Need basis and would have to be equipped on the spot. They both claimed the understood, but while Hunter 1 continued through the instance without further problems Hunter 2 was messaging me every 5 to 7 minutes asking for it to be rolled on *now*. After an hour of this I got sick and kicked Hunter 2 from the party. Hunter 2 was doing very little at all other than whining about the hat.

They've taken up the tatic of selling loot using "disposable characters". I see a level 1 Gnome named Jlsdkfj selling [Uber Sword] for 1250g, I know that's a Gold Farmer. I see the crap in the Auction House. They come up to me and shove Eternium and Thorium Lockboxes in my face without ASKING if I would mind opening it. 3 days later Jlsdkfj is gone and in his place spamming up IF (and now thanks to 1.9 Stormwind and Darnassus as well) selling the same items because no one BUT someone who bought the gold online would pay the inflated price they're asking.

Why is this even possible?

It seems the problem stems from a seemingly infinite supply of gold in the games. We all know what happens when governments start printing currency like mad. It leads to insane, spiralling inflation and eventual economic breakdown. Can you say, "Chile?"

What these games need is a "Fed," an entity which controls and regulates the dispensation of large sums of gold. It doesn't need to be implemented in an even remotely similar way to in the real world, but some kind of control has to exist.

When the real world price of Game Gold starts going up, the "Fed" should pump more gold into the game, somehow, in order to deflate its value relative to the dollar. I have no idea how to implement this in a way that's true to the character of the game -- somebody who actually plays these games a lot might get some creative ideas about it. It seems like you should also be able to "sell short" the game gold, and increase your game wealth, since the value of the gold is decreasing relative to some other currency. Converting between game gold and real dollars give you all sorts of opportunities.

If I was a player in one of these games, and rumors got started that the game economy was about to be regulated, I would be overjoyed. I would purchase, with real dollars, huge quantities of gold, and wait until regulation caused the value of gold to rise. Then I'd auction it back off and walk away with real cash.

Re:Why is this even possible?

I believe the MMRPG you are looking for is called "the stock market". I wasn't able to afford the subscription, but I hear its very popular. However, it also has problems with gold farming, griefing and people exploiting bugs in the system.

Its about Communcation.

Okay....heres the deal. MMO's force you to group to tackle quests and monsters that you can't handle alone. Some of these encounters are extremely complex requiring some form of gameplan in order to ensure survivability.

Personally I don't care where you from or what language you speak or how old you are. I DO however care whether or not you can understand enough to be a contributing member of the group. If I can't count on you to follow instructions because you don't understand....I can't count on you to not steal someone elses item that they have been working for. With some items taking upwards of 50 runs through the same dungeon, thats just not a chance I am willing to take.

I don't have hours and hours to play all the time so you can be damn sure that I am going to do a communication check at the beginning of a large run to make sure everyone understands thier part and the loot rules. Some people call this a farmer check and I can't say I don't disagree, but it is not designed to discriminate because they are chineese or french or mexican. If you can't communicate effectively then you are liability. I have knowingly grouped with people from Japan and while thier english was broken they could communicate enough to get the job done and they played an active part in our group.

As far as dumping ads from gold selling services, I say good. Its kind of sketchy for a any publication to host ads for services which violate the terms of service for the games/services they review. They don't have banner ads for companies that will sell you a downloadable copy of autocad, windows xp or OfficeXP, how is gold selling any different?(yeah I guess theres the whole stolen and then sold vs bought and then sold, but if its not technically yours to sell in the first place....bah. I don't want to go down that road.)

Multiculturalism FTL

About a week ago, I was by the AH in Org with my mage when a person (rather rudely) demanded, "Make me food." I was about to blow him off when I saw the character name was Chinese.

I'm a white guy, living in California, but I've taken a year of Chinese, so I don't know enough to really talk to Chinese players in WOW, but I have faked it well enough to get into all-Chinese parties. =)

[lai = come
qu = go
xia = down
shang = up
"qing lai" == please come (here), etc.]

So I asked the person in Chinese if they wanted food, and, sure enough, in Chinese they were a lot more polite (using "qing", please, instead of the imperative form they used in English).

Since then, whenever the player logs in, he asks for food in Chinese, and I make it for him. In exchange, I apparently get stacks of major healing and mana potions in the mail every day. =)

So, the Chinese guy (who I later learned was a woman, living in Manchuria) has been asking me to take her to UBRS. So last night I put together a party, went to UBRS... and yeah.

My Chinese friend accidentally clicked Need on an item she didn't need. So it pissed off the party, especially when they found out she was Chinese. But I smoothed it over. Then she Needed a loxbox. That just totally pissed off the party, so they wanted me to boot her. I puzzled out what she said, and apparently she just needed it for the lockpicking. So again, I got the item from her, and then lotted it to the party. After that, she passed on everything, and gave away all the other items she even legitimately won, because she was on the verge of tears after being yelled at by everyone. So yeah. I'd left some of the people in the party as assistant leaders, and at some point down the road, they booted her. So I reinvited...

Anyhow, to make a long story short, it was a pretty crap experience. They all called her a Ninja Chinese Gold Farmer, she was desperately trying to explain that the 1st was a mistake and the 2nd was for her LP skill (and yeah, I agree she should have just greeded it and LPed it later), so she started the run happy (because she could never find a Chinese speaking UBRS party), and ended sad and hurt, and the Americans left with a further deepening of the stereotype that all Chinese people are Ninja Gold Farmers. And I was in the middle having to deal with both sides with only a year of Chinese under my belt.

Sigh, multiculturalism for the loss.

The ironic twist here, of course, is that I think she does sell gold. Or maybe she buys gold (without tone mai (buy) and mai (sell) are the same, or maybe she was just asking if all Americans buy gold. My Chinese really isn't that good. :p

The Benefit Of Farmers

Everyone hates the farmers as players because they're jerks in game. But they have a massively stabilizing influence on the economy of the world. They increase the size of the overall economy for the shard by maintaining a constant flow of gold and drops into the system, which is deflationary. The gold that other players buy from IGN and others gets dumped into the economy in lots for epic items, and trickles down to regular players selling hot drops; or is simply recirculated through the farmers, who are making more blue and purple drops available on auction than would otherwise be available (again, deflationary); or goes into a money sink like an epic mount which removes it from the game.

The problem isn't that the farmers exist, it's that they're assholes. If they were smart, they'd be good, co-operative players, exerting a net benefit on their chosen shard.

Horsepucky

One author has a weird experience with a guy, then decides that it's a big trend. Most people playing on WoW are under 16 anyway and can barely form a sentence. This isn't happening. It's like the fake bluesnarfing or podjacking. Just something an author thinks he sees.

It's true that people id'd as gold farmers will get worse treatment, but not true that people with poor language skills are treated like this. Honestly, have you seen the chat in any MMO lately? I call bullshit.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

Gosh, I can think of at least a few good reasons.

• Maybe he or she wants to play with his or her friend who lives in America.
• Maybe he or she wants to play on a more/less populated server.
• Maybe Americans/Europeans are better roleplayers or otherwise generally play more in a style he or she likes.
• Maybe he or she has a nighttime job, and can only play when Americans are generally awake and playing.
• Maybe he or she hopes to move to America or Europe someday and is using the game to also help practice English. (Two birds with one stone!)
• Maybe he or she just likes Americans/Europeans. I know I always think it's pretty neat when I get in a group with a lot of foreigners, and often, I ponder the possibility of trying out a foreign server.

Like I said, those are just a few off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

All are good points. But God help them if they're trying to learn English in WoW. Chatting with some people there makes the part of my brain that learned English die a little bit every time.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

I just had an argument with someone on another MMORPG's fan board about the very point you make. Some people do in fact learn english playing on english language servers, but unfortunately some of the examples of english they learn from are filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography. While I suppose it is admirable that they are making the effort to learn english, it is truly unfortunate that some of what they are learning is about as useful in real life as pig latin. Even worse, they may not even realize it and make posts in other english language venues that are a mishmash of styles, which can lead to great confusion for readers who don't know whether they should take their post seriously or not.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

unfortunately some of the examples of english they learn from are filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography

It is called "American English".

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

Some people do in fact learn english playing on english language servers, but unfortunately some of the examples of english they learn from are filled with slang, colloquialisms, horrible grammar and inept orthography.

LOL. ne1 nos y?

You make a good point. A MMORPG is a rather bad place to learn a language. What with abbreviations and unavoidable typos and the like. Some people argue that it's a good way to learn slang and colloquialism, but a lot of those are the kind that would never be used outside an online context.

Best way to learn them, imho, movies, tv and the written word (fiction works: novels, comic books). Of course, you might end up with an accent that's all over the place (say, a mix of Frasier and Walker Texas Ranger) but what the heck.

As to legitimate chinese users on US servers: asian servers didn't come online until several months after the US servers did, and even then they were only the Korean servers. So it's not unthinkable that a chinese player might have invested considerable time and effort in leveling his chars to simply give them up for new chars on chinese servers.

He (they) might not have a choice eventually, tho. Wasn't there a rumor that China was going to impose restrictions on online games? And then curfew them? Eve online states that they have a single universe except for a separate universe for chinese players for "legal reasons". They don't explain what those reasons are, tho, so it might be something unrelated.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

I was playing with a female paladin who I can only assume did not speak english as a first language. "She" was exceedingly hurried, bouncing around, drawing aggro and generally careless in her actions--and didn't seem terribly receptive to the requests or recommendations of anyone else in the party.

Trying to be tactful but express concern with the behavior, I said "you're a little gung ho, aren't you?"

She replied, "what's gung?"

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

Oh god... I just had an image of a bunch of tourists running around screaming nothing but "Chuck Norris" and "Vin Deisel". Please don't let foreigners learn their english from WoW!
Regards,
Steve

Re:OMGWTFRUTLJKINABOOT?!

TLKNABOOT?!?

That ain't English, it's Canadian

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected.

You also seem to be able to speak English better than your average American "LOLZ HI@U I WHAT A ITAM PLX OK !!" gamer kid. Typing one or two sentences in English shouldn't pose a major problem for you. It's the American kids that should really be worried about this practice. =)

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

I was thinking that maybe the "type two or three sentences in english" thing was also to keep annoying kids out of the group. That's more of an immediate annoyance than any goldfarmers.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

More to the point, someone who can't communicate with the rest of the party is a serious liability in any dangerous situation. For many people, the fun of games like this lies in cooperation with a group to overcome dangerous situations.

If you can't speak english, you have every right to play on an English server, but don't be surprised or upset that people don't want to play with you. It's just common sense to want a party that can operate as a party.

That's why I no longer group with Chinese players

A while ago, there was a rash of Chinese gold farmers in the game. At least what I heard was that they were farmers. What I DO know is that grouping with them was a guaranteed waste of time. I don't know how many times they would do things that any even remotely competent player would be smart enough to do, and in other cases would not do things that they should have learned some time between 1 and 50. (I play DAoC, max level there is 50.) To put it simply - they sucked. They may have been intelligent, but they had no concept of group strategy, and most importantly, WOULD NOT LISTEN. My friend and I would routinely ask them to do something so that we would stop dying every 2-3 minutes, but they would never do it or even respond.

As a result, I refuse to group with anyone who can't speak decent English, and also have 2-3 predominantly Chinese guilds blacklisted.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

I don't play the game myself, and while what you're saying might be true

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Internet Discourse in a Nutshell".

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

It might be racist to screen out chinese players but let me tell you that it DOES save you from being ninja looted randomly.

It is racist. Ninja is Japanese, not Chinese. Learn the difference or you will be called an ignorant bigot.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

Ninja is Japanese, not Chinese. Learn the difference or you will be called an ignorant bigot.

I see you got a Funny mod, but I get the impression you were actually serious. So just in case... Ninja-looting is a term referring to someone taking measures to ensure that once there is a corpse in the vicinity to loot, they are on it faster than you can blink, and have looted it before anyone else gets the chance to start typing the command, because it was the one and only thing they were really watching for. It has nothing to do with race at all, just the impressive inhuman speed of the Ninja.

If you were actually just going for the Funny mod, then I appologize for the lesson.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

Add...maybe Blizz added the servers in China MUCH later than the ones in the US, and people wanted to play the game NOW! And once you have a high level player, it's not fun to start over...

By the way, much of this is FUD. I'm sure that the things in the article actually do happen, but they're so far from commonplace that it's barely worth reporting on.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

This was actually a decently big problem in EQ2. On pretty much every server there's an underlying current of hatred towards the mysterious plat farmers, which degenerates very quickly into a rant about Chinese players.

There were a couple communities I actually left because I was sick of people talking about "those damn Chinese players" and crap like that, except descending into more slurs and epithets. Yeah, a lot of plat farmers are Chinese, but I found the backlash to be much more offensive than the initial "problem."

What people seem to fail to realize is also that plat farmers don't want to group with non-plat farmers. I have no idea why someone turning a profit wouldn't buy five more accounts (or whatever fills a group in WoW) and gain the ability to loot everything that drops, and efficiently. Finding a group can already be hell, and then if you turn up incompetent companions, or you don't win the roll... forget about it. Chances are you're just running into an idiot ninjalooter of the garden variety if someone with poor english skills up and offs with your loot.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

As a long time non-american MMORPG player (I played from '99 to 2004), I'll tell you how I see it: first, localization usually sucks. Second, you don't necessarily want to meet the retarded 14 yo from your own country, at least on english-speaking servers you don't meet them, and since you're not playing during the top hours of the server you don't get hit by the TardTrains of the english speaking servers. Third, when you're playing on a US server as a european or asian, you're basically playing in the low-load hours of the server, while you'd be playing at rush hour on your own server, and it's much simpler and less stressing to play with a slightly lower population.

Other factors may include overseas/net friends (meet someone on the web, they introduce you to a game, you'll want to play it with them, even if you're chinese and the guy is canadian), desire to better your knowledge of foreign languages (spending 3+ hours every day typing mostly english can help there), ...

Considering that someone not playing on a localized server is a gold farmer is stupid and sad, it's akin to considering everyone from out of your country a proven terrorist.

Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own

Second, you don't necessarily want to meet the retarded 14 yo from your own country,

Yes. Use different servers to meet the retarded 14 year olds from someone else's country!

Re:Ultima Online

If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their native language server.

I don't know about you, but when UO was released in Japan and Korea, a great many US players played on those servers.

1. Because there was a chance to actually have a place to put a house.
2. Most of the US servers were overcrowded and laggy at times.
3. It was soon discovered that the influx of foreign "noobs" were ripe for the theifs and player killers.

Ever have some guy scream at you in ghost language in Korean... No? Well... Its the same as US ghosts screaming at you in anger. Oh raiding Covetous dungeons... Those were days.

The funny thing was when we were building up newbie characters in the woods on the Ariang server and out of the blue (no pun intended) a red jumped out and went "cor por cor por!" and killed my friend and I shouted "wait wait! don't kill us we are americans!"

And the PK said... "Oh my bad" Rezzed my friend and went on his way.

So yeah... What you are saying works both ways. I bet a few Americans on WoW go on Asian servers to grief and their gaming sites are complaining about the American greifers.

Re:Ultima Online

Completely offtopic but, I remember the UO launch fo Japanese servers vividly. They had plans to get people to join, including instant skills and free gold.

This quickly backfired.

Not only was the server PACKED, but murderes and griefers ran rampant, and it was very easy to happen upon, oh 500,000 gold. And in UO that is impossible to carry. So suddenly I found myself in the midst of a Japanese-American war where everyone was slaughtering eachother, there was gold everywhere, and it was impossible to drag it to your bank. You were effectively stuck in one place with that much gold, and one hell of an easy target.

I amassed and lost several small fortunes that day. It was quite fucking hilarious, as well. OSI certainly learned their lesson that day and the servers soon got wiped into oblivion and got the clean start they should've had in the first place.

Re:When gaming meets the economy.

No. There's nothing new here. Games met the economy thousands of years ago.
There have always been people willing to cheat to get ahead in a game; and when there is real money to be made the cheaters come out of the woodwork.

Its simple really.

Games have rules.

Those rules may forbid the sale of in game assets for real world assets or they don't. People who violate the rules are cheating and should be removed from the game, and prevented from playing again.

---

You can't go to a Scrabble competition and pay the guy to your left for the letters you want. You can't go to Vegas and pay the dealer to give you the hand you'd like to have. You can't slip the monopoly banker an extra $20 for some additional monopoly money, and maybe the title to Boardwalk. etc etc etc.

Doing so is called cheating. Getting caught will get you removed from the game, and likely ensure that the people you play with will refuse to play with you in the future. Even being suspected of cheating will rapidly diminish the number of people willing to play with you.

MMogs are no different. Except that right now the other players have a hard time isolating cheaters and a limited ability to do anything about them except refuse to group with them; and the game host has little incentive to remove them; as they are paying customers. As long as the host feels they are getting more customers by allowing the cheaters to play then they lose from people refusing to the play the game due to the hosts inaction cheaters will prosper.

So ostracising suspected cheaters has become the prevalent, and really the only way to retaliate at this time.

I think eventually we'll see mmogs stabilize into games that explicitly allow gold farming, and games (or servers) that in response to a customer demand for 'purity' - do not. It will be interesting to see how the two models fare... but there is certainly room for both.

Magic the Gathering has 'draft' tournaments for players who like to compete on luck of the draw and skill, and 'constructed' for players who like to bring their wallets.