Bad Press For Gold Farmers Affects Chinese Players 640
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. "
Serious Problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:5, Insightful)
Gosh, I can think of at least a few good reasons.
Like I said, those are just a few off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty more.
How about American players? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about most of the American players, how will they do?
"lol u wan me 2 tyep u n00b ur gay anywy"
That is the way a huge lot of native english speakers actually type.
Punctuation and sentences are unknown concepts to them. They routinely replace you with u, you're and your with ur, to with 2. And the most advanced ones even subconsciously type in cuss-filter speak too: sh1t, $hit and f*ck are in their natural vocabulary.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Or mabye they just want people who can communicate (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Gold Farming? (Score:3, Insightful)
Common in FFXI too. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:2, Insightful)
Answer: gold farmer.
WOW is too complex to have language barriers (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What's the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, Warcraft has servers in most of the world including China. There is no legitimate reason for a Chinese player to be playing on an American server.
Why not just form Chinese groups? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or am I missing something?
Bogus (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Any Organized, Professional Griefers? (Score:3, Insightful)
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").
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does anyone care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think this is stereotypical or racist then you haven't played WoW. YES chinese farmers DO speak like that if they speak at all. Some are fluent in english but many speak in a perfect stereotype of how a chinese native speaker forms their english sentances.
It might be racist to screen out chinese players but let me tell you that it DOES save you from being ninja looted randomly. Im not so worried about how this is a bad thing becuase they CAN play on official chinese servers if they just want to play a game.
Re:Common in FFXI too. (Score:1, Insightful)
JP players tend to gather at Jeuno, find a camp, kill stuff for x hours, then disband. I don't bother asking for replacments unless it's been less than an hour (two sushi's worth). Not all JP parties are "mad exp", but I have never been in a party where I've gotten negative exp.
But you're right, the auto-translate function in FFXI is severely lacking. And RMT in general affects the gameplay a lot, and SE doesn't have the balls to do anything about it (ie. the recent hyperinflation over Christmas).
-- SF
Geeks just as racist as everyone else (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When gaming meets the economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Why do you care if they are gold farming? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why does anyone care? (Score:1, Insightful)
I also came to the conclusion one night, as I farmed for many hours to get enough gold to pay for my repairs and pots for MC (being MT eats through a lot of money) that "Hey, I really don't have time for this". Oddly enough, I ended up finding a bunch of gold in my mailbox a couple days later, and I get to actually enjoy the game again.
I've had many more encounters with just plain rude players than rude farmers, and half the Americans I bump into type worse than foreign language speakers.
Note: I'm American, and I still don't understand our fascination with hating everyone else.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Why is this even possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Laughably false (Score:5, Insightful)
I hath been pwn3d.
Nicely played
Its about Communcation. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
I will not team with non-English speakers (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Tactics. It's hard to coordinate with people that don't speak English well and have an effective and fun session. I already deal with non-English speakers at work, so why should I have to deal with it during my recreation?
2. Community. I saw someone said that building guilds around localization is not a good thing. Perhaps that's the case with a few, but I think people just want to socialize and have good fun. When I was playing FFXI, we had Canadians, Americans, a few Brits, and even some Japanese players who spoke English very well. You want to be able to communicate!
Now, one thing I see WoW lacking is some sort of library of international expressions which display the language of the client. I know PSO was one of the first, and FFXI did the same.
Re:Why do you care if they are gold farming? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why does anyone care? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Oh man.... (Score:2, Insightful)
First, I'm not confidant enough in my spelling or grammar to pass 100%. I *know* I make mistakes, as does every speaker of every language, we're all human. Now, going just for content, and understanding the person speaking is different. That I'd pass, and I would fail at least 70% of the people I see playing. There's a reason I sit with all but guild/party chat off. I wish I was on my windows boot, I've got a screen shot of something to the effect of "kthx i lrn 1st aid l8r". Seriously, I think I'm going to *start* using this technique to weed out all the annoying 13 year olds.
Second, isn't Chine supposed to be the leading place for players? And don't they have their own servers? Pardon me for sounding crass (I've seen people even called racist for what I'm about to suggest) but, if they don't like how they're treated on one server, change. If they keep having bad experiences in America|Canada|, go somewhere where the majority will speak your language. I'm an Arabic major in school, and have been in rooms filled with native speakers who didn't like that I wasn't one. Fine... I left and studied elsewhere. To be quite frank, if you don't like something, and yet don't do anything about it your an idiot and should be treated as such. Flame me if you want, I'm not a racist, nor do I have anything against Chinese people in game (haven't seen one yet, that I know of, in fact), I just apply my approach to the real world in WoW just as much as real life.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:2, Insightful)
In that case, it would be better if the US government doesn't let people with dark skin on airplanes, so that we won't get Muhammed 9/11'ed, eh?
If you agree with the first, and not with the second, then you don't understand logic.
If you agree with the second, well... let's just say that's not nice, and if everyone thought about that, we'd be back in a WWII era mentality.
Re:Thoughts from a player (Score:3, Insightful)
First, it's easier to use an alt to buy and sell things on the AH while my actual characters are in some other part of the world. The in game mail system makes it simple to transfer items to that mule and sell them there. Same idea applies when it comes to buying items; just log the mule in and bid/buyout an upgrade item. Second, it's convienient to have a character to store things on, and have an extra bank. My mule currently has leathermorking materials in storage while I wait for my LW character to reach a level when he can use them. And finally, there are mods out there like Auctioneer that require you to occasionally scan the AH in order to get a bead on how much certain items are generally bought and sold for.
Also, most gold farming accounts aren't owned by the person using the characters. They themselves are essentially doing a (poorly) paid job using company equipment, and they share that equipment with their coworkers. How would they be able to make mule characters for using the AH with when 1) they never log off and 2) they don't own the account?
MMORPGs don't have an "egalitarian nature"! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:2, Insightful)
Round Robin: People take turns looting corpses until everyone has looted a corpse, and then the cycle starts again.
Group Loot: Same as Round Robin, except there is a loot "threshhold"; if an item is of a certain quality or higher (common, uncommon, rare, epic), then everyone is given a chance to roll on item. Blizzard recently introduced a new loot rolling system so that players can roll Need on an item, indicating they will use the item, or Greed, indicating they will sell it. If there are any Need rolls, the Greed rolls are ignored and only the Need rolls are compared.
Free-For-All: Anyone can loot any corpse.
Need before Greed: Essentially the same as Group Loot, except that people who cannot use an item cannot roll on it; if a piece of armor is dropped that is mail, only mail wearing classes can roll on it.
Master Looter: Only a designated person can loot the corpses, but they can give the loot to anyone. This is usually used by guilds on bosses, to prevent item theft and to provide time to discuss distribution of the item.
How, with these rules in place, can item theft pe so rampant? Under the old Group Loot rolling system, you could be branded a ninja if you rolled on and won an item not useful to your class - a warrior taking something clearly meant for a mage, for instance. It's somewhat easier under the new system to just wait until everyone has rolled Greed or passed and then to roll Need - the item is automatically yours.
And, for some unknown reason, it seems popular to have everyone pass and then type
And that is WoW's loot system in a nutshell, with some minor analysis and bias thrown in for good measure.
Re:If they weren't farmers, they'd be on their own (Score:2, Insightful)
One good reason for dividing the game into regions is that it makes it possible to test new code without doing a world-wide rollout that could prove disastrous if there were any show-stopper bugs. For instance, WoW is now at version 1.9.2 in Europe, but I believe it's still at 1.8.x in the US. The new patches are being tested in Europe first - and the folks in the States will never have to suffer through 1.9.0 and 1.9.1, both of which had unpleasant little bugs! EVE may well have cottoned on to the same idea, using China as a test bed.
US Only ? (Score:2, Insightful)
I know I'd fail the test - I am truly terrible when it comes to in-game typoes, I'm just glad that as a sys admin and consultant in real life I do some what better.
Dapprxxx on the Dragonblight Euro server (and Test2 during the Final and Open betas).