Taiwan Earthquake Disrupts Virtual Currency Market

miller60 writes "Telecommunications outages from Tuesday's earthquake in near Taiwan have disrupted the market for virtual currency from MMORPGs, with market leader IGE and other major online sellers reporting inventory and delivery problems. The market for the real money trading of game assets is highly dependent upon suppliers operating 'gold farms' in China and other Asian countries. With Internet access from Asia limited, these suppliers are apparently having trouble logging into games to make deliveries of gold and accounts. Online markets for the sale of game assets have grown in recent years, despite heated debates about the practice among gamers."

Re:I am probably a HORRIBLE person for this but...

[The Living Fractal]

Maybe the entire idea of a "different world", set apart from the influence of RL wealth is just a fantasy anyway, but I like the concept, and I hope that gaming communities can find a way to preserve it.

It is complete fantasy. RL wealth provides you time to play more often than people who have to go to work. Someone who can be at the computer 24/7 will always have an advantage over us poor schmucks who have to work. These games are inexplicably tied to real life, no matter how much you want them not to be.

So as far as gaming communities finding a way to preserve it, I don't see that any multiplayer online game in the history of games has ever preserved it. That concept becomes null and void the moment players can play in a persistent universe. Only in single player games does it remain preserved because there is no need to compare your own achievements to those of others. You can get lost completely in a single player game, as the ultimate hero or villain, because when you're in that world there is nobody else to compare yourself against as there are in MMORPGS. In a MMO there's always someone better, and you will almost certainly either run into them or hear about them somehow.

TLF

Re:Prices?

[Bandman]

I thought of this too. Later on down the road, a large DDOS attack could send ripples everywhere.

Very interesting stuff here. I'll be watching more closely from now on, for sure.

Re:Gold farming is a sign your players are lazy.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's precisely the problem - the obsession with the uberleet pixelated object, getting it, and getting it as soon as possible. When I buy a game, I buy it to play it, not skip to the end. As a result I end up getting screwed in multi-player because everyone else is wasting real money on a non-existent car/sword/whatever. It's insanely frustrating to those of us who enjoy playing the game that these people ruin it for the rest of us. Never mind the constant spamming ingame from the people selling the gold.

I know you are all stuck in miserable jobs you don't enjoy, so it's probably escaped your reality TV-doped lives that just because something takes effort doesn't mean it isn't fun. I fucking love my job, and am equally quite capable of finding inventive and fun ways to earn the gold I require inside WoW. Your own failure to do so is a failure of your own imagination.