World of Warcraft Gold Market Soaring 78
Gamespot has an article discussing the realities of Virtual World economics as they pertain to the real world. World of Warcraft is used as an example throughout, and they quote some staggering statistics that remove any last shred of hope that Blizzard's bluster may be having an effect on the gold market. From the article: "Sukow discovered that the top seller of WOW gold made more than $23,000 in April, just on WOW gold. And that wasn't even a good month--in January and February the number-one seller took home more than $44,000 each month."
Its called speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
If i were a more supicious man
Re:Its called speculation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Its called speculation (Score:3, Funny)
new plan:
-sell gold
- imform buyer he has suspicious gold amount
-gold is removed from player
-warn player about buying gold being bad
Re:Its called speculation (Score:1)
The scary thing is, if you replace 'Gold' with 'Weapons', and 'Player' with 'Third World / Middle East Regime', then you have American foreign policy for the last forty years in a nutshell.
Re:Its called speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
In March, Blizzard had 1.5 Million subscribers. That's 1,500,000 * $15/M = $22,500,000 / Month. $200K per month would be nothing compared to that revenue stream. If they sold so much gold that they cause significant inflation and lost even 1% of their user base as a result, they would lose $225,000/M. If word got out that blizzard was selling gold themselves, they could easily lose 5 times that.
I wonder how long it will take... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder how long it will take... (Score:1)
Dear Friend,
I Request Your Assistance For An Affair Of The Highest Importance...
Re:I wonder how long it will take... (Score:3, Informative)
Side effects (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Side effects (Score:5, Informative)
Money really isn't that important in WoW and Blizzard has accomplished a very good job in allowing the market for lower-level items to flourish (That is, it is easy for a low level player to sell their drops and make cash). There are very few top-tier items that you can buy, the rest are drops from which you must be a part of the group/kill. Nevertheless, there are still people who will pay 500+ gold for an item that is probably +5% better than what you could get yourself with a moderate amount of effort.
That said, money isn't irrelevant. At level 60, you still need cash in order to buy consumables, repair your equipment, and even save up for that pink elephant. IMO, the volume in the gold selling market is a testament to the lengths people will go in order to be 'King of the Hill' (IE, buy that item that is 5% better).
Re:Side effects (Score:5, Informative)
- The Auction House, an in-game "eBay like" construct, lets you sell and buy items. For anybody with an eBay addiction, or for those that that want to upgraded their items for that incremental increase in power, this place place will suck your gold dry.
- If you want a Mount (Horse, etc) at L40 when it first becomes available, then you need to collect 90 Gold (minimum). If you want a Superior Mount at L60, thewn you need 900 Gold. These are the two *must have* you-are-an-outcast-if-you-do-not-have-it items in the game.
I am sure the argument can be made for other minor thing, but these are the main 2 reasons the market for Gold is so high.
That, and just like in Life, Money means Power to a lot of people, and they will do whatever it takes to possess it, even if it's only digital.
Re:Side effects (Score:2)
Getting gold is easy.
Scary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Scary (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scary (Score:2)
It'd be much better to trade, say, 6 chickens for a virtual goat. I mean, you certainly can't eat a gold brick, so it's really not of much use, is it?
I.e., "pay to cheat" (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I have no respect for that kind of people. Cheating in a single player game is one thing, and I have nothing against that. But cheating in MP? That's the kind of thing that's already the mark of the low-life lamer.
Doubly so for those who actually _pay_ for that. I mean, FFS, at least the lamers with wall-hacks and aim-bots in CS have just downloaded those. But actually paying good money to cheat in MP? How desperate _can_ one get?
Methinks that that's well past the point where one should take a break and just think it all over. I'm a game addict myself, and all, and normally won't go "it's just a game", but... when one gets _that_ caught up with keeping up with the virtual joneses, when those virtual achievements become a _must_ at all cost, it's time to worry. Really worry.
Re:I.e., "pay to cheat" (Score:2)
Re:I.e., "pay to cheat" (Score:2)
I know many multiplayer games take quite a bit of skill, but saying anyone deserves anything in WoW is like saying a rat in a skinner box deserved the pellet.
Re:I.e., "pay to cheat" (Score:2)
That said, it is not cheating. Cheating would be gaining an unfair advantage over other players, like free teleports or invunerability or something like that.
Buying gold is just that, buying gold. You can join a guild and have them give you bunch of gold. You can sell a small item for a bunch of gold. Some guy could walk up to you and hand you a ton of gold because he is quitting. Or, you could pay some guy irl for the gold and he s
Re:I.e., "pay to cheat" (Score:1)
it is assumed by teenie boppers and those of higher age and lower intellect that anything "virtual" has no value whatsoever.
apparently they feel that way when they go buy those "virtual" games on plastic discs too...
you are free not to spend a penny on anything you don't feel is worth it to you... but shut the hell up about others buying it, it's their money.
Re:Scary (Score:3, Insightful)
And you have real gold in your wallet? Or do you have a little card that is money only because a computer file somewhere says you have that money? Even real folding money is virtual; what can you use a dollar bill for, other than give it to somebody who'll give you stuff for it?
Chris Mattern
Re:Scary (Score:1)
Re:Scary (Score:1)
Sorry, but these things have value in the real world (and don't say anything like, "We're in the Matrix! This isn't the real world!" because I can see that as a likely response). Unlike gold in WoW, money serves a purpose to your
Re:Scary (Score:1)
Re:Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
We all pay to play. Some people pay a little more. Acquiring gold in WoW isn't particularly difficult, but it isn't fun, either. Acquiring gold generally requires grinding.
Let's say I'm level 60, all my friends in my guild have epic mounts, and they all like to go raiding the enemy. I, with my non-epic mount, can't keep up, so I don't get to play and have fun with my friends. So I n
Its Not Virtual Gold, Its Real Time (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Some people have no life (Score:2)
I think I'll go buy a motorcycle or soemthing with my $2000 though . . . .
Re:Some people have no life (Score:5, Funny)
No wonder he commited suicide, the guy's on dialup!
Wha-huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's it validate? That your game is so boring that people don't want to spend the time playing to earn their gold/levels?
Re:Wha-huh? (Score:2)
Re:Wha-huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Which is all the more ironic since an inexperienced player at level 60 is basically worthless in the endgame content. The only thing I can think would go easily is ganking people of way lower level where skill isn't as much a factor. Although I have seen the pvp go wrong for some of those eBay level 60s.
Re:Wha-huh? (Score:2)
Re:Wha-huh? (Score:2)
Easy fix (Score:3, Interesting)
The article talks about the possibility of monitoring large transfers of currency between players. Why not just eliminate currency transfers? It would have the additional benefit of eliminating all the begging in cities.
No doubt the farmers would find a way around this, like setting up auctions where they bid enormous amounts for commonplace items...but then something like that would be easy to spot.
There's another way to discourage this, by taking a tip from The Untouchables. When they couldn't get Capone for his blatant crimes, they resorted to nabbing him for income tax evasion. I would guess that a good percentage of these top farmers aren't paying taxes on their eBay incomes. Call the IRS and sic 'em, boys!
Re:Easy fix (Score:1, Funny)
The "Chicago Way" (Score:4, Funny)
"How we gonna get the gold farmers, then?"
"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a gankfest, you pull a slaughter. He sends one of yours to the graveyard, you send on of his to permadeath! That's the Lordaeron way, and that's how you get them gold farmers! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?"
-Trillian
(With appologies to "The Untouchables." The original quote: 'You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send on of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?')
Re:The "Chicago Way" (Score:2)
I've retired my WoW account because my machine/video card is a little outdated and the lag was impossible to live with in high-level instances.
But while I was playing, interfering with known gold farmers was quite a bit of fun. I always felt that it would be great to be part of a guild whose mission statement included anti-gold farmer activities.
Re:Easy fix (Score:1)
Re:Easy fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Passing a few gold here and there to guildmates or newbie players is normal, but some guy who hands out hundreds or thousands of gold per week would stand out from the crowd. Have a GM monitor him for an hour to establish that they are really meeting up with and giving cash to nearly random folks, then kill the account along with all the farmbots that are colleting the gold. Maybe nuke the accounts of people who were buyers just to attack the market from the demand side too.
Re:Easy fix (Score:2)
Re:Easy fix (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's your rule: It's violation of the TOS to give away large amounts of gold, and it's a violation of the TOS to accept large amounts of gold. Your account will be killed and your CC# banned.
Here's the first effect of your rule: There are no more "charitable" donations. No snappy replies that there is no such thing. If this point became visible enough I guarantee that we could document such occurances.
Here's the second effect of your rule: If I want to get rid of you, I
Re:Easy fix (Score:1)
Alternatively, you could simply only punish the "giver", and just negate all the givers gold... the punishment for the person who recieved it would simply be that they lose the "dirty" gold.
Re:Easy fix (Score:1)
the fact that several million gold appears and disappears instantly apparently means nothing.
online gaming used to be the holy grail. but most people who have ever partaken in it, can tell that it is complete and utter crap.
either only play with your friends or give up and go back to single player (which is far superior in most respects).
Bounties (Score:1)
solutions? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:solutions? (Score:2)
Granted that's a brutal and severe way, but it also works. The real question is, is there a good way which doesn't harm the game as seriously as what I just suggested would?
Many people say no, but then again, many people have said "this can't be done" about dozens of things in gaming; there aren't really very many MMOs (maybe 100 in history,) so there's a lot of room for novel behavior.
This is the kind of thing that makes designers rich. S
Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to agree not to hold Blizzard liable for this every other day if you play WoW. So your right, they wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. If someone wanted to create a PR nightmare but have no legal leg to stand on they can do that now without virtual gold. In fact, I would argue that someone who spent 50 hours earning an item and then losing it to a time warp
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:5, Interesting)
One problem is that the associated "value" of items often leads to anti-social behavior and the breakdown of in-game ettiquete. For example, if a powerful magic staff drops in a group, a warrior might roll on it (distribution of item drops are handled by random number "rolls"), despite the fact that the staff might be much better used by a wizard type character. This can lead to the breakdown of friendships and general ettiquete in the game.
"Okay", you might say, "so you need to find new friends and people you can trust". That may be the case, but sometimes the desire to earn these items leads people towards disruptive anti-social behavior that effects people even outside their group. For example, in EverQuest, known eBay farmers would frequently attract the attention of huge packs of monsters, far beyond the ability of any group to deal with, run up to a competing group, and use the "feign death" ability. This would cause all the monsters to lose their focus on the eBay farmer and instead turn towards the nearest target: you.
"Okay", you might say, "but World of Warcraft staff will ban disruptive player slike that, plus it mitigates this problem by creating instanced areas for groups to fight in, avoiding disruption by outside players." While this is true, it takes a fair amount of time for an eBay farmer to get caught, and they will not always be. Often, Customer Service staff must actually witness such an event happening, and it can take hours for them to respond.
While instanced content really alleviates this problem a lot, you still have the problem of pickup groups. To some extent, almost everyone is forced to group with strangers at one point or another. Grouping with a stranger who has relied on items they would never be able to naturally obtain, or who purchased a character can often result in hours of frustration as you deal with warriors who don't know how to hold the monster's attention, priests who don't heal, and wizards who are inept at dealing damage. It's just not a fun situation overall.
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:2)
The perceived value is there among groups who do not exchange re
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:2)
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:1)
Rogues who never stun or expose enemy armor (Or worse, waste stuns on enemies that are clearly stun-immune)...
Priests who use mind blast at the beginning of combat (Which makes it very difficult to pull the monster away from them)...
Warriors who charge into huge groups of enemies (Then complain when two priests can't heal them fast enough)...
Druids who never shapeshift (That's only the one greatest strength of the druid class)...
Mages who use area spells when we're
Re:Why does everyone think this needs solved? (Score:1)
as long as one has to put up with the crap of other people, then no matter what MP gaming brings to the table, it's not worth a damn.
Re:Ca$h for credit... (Score:2)
Why are you playing MMORPGs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus, I am absolutely stupefied that people do this.
I've already written one comment [slashdot.org] about this in a different article and mentioned it in a blog post [blogspot.com] at my blog, so I'll try not to repeat that stuff here.
But for real, I'm truly saddened that the "RP" in MMORPG means so little these days. Everyone keeps taking about how much they hate grinding levels. Funny, when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with my buddies, I never seemed to mind that my wizard was only level (whatever). Why? Because the point of the game wasn't to win, it was to have fun and (gasp!) socialize. Those of you who remember the old pencil-and-paper games, can you imagine a player offering a game master five bucks for 1,000 freebie gold pieces? If I were the game master, I would immediately figure out some heinous irrevocable death for that character.
What some people see as mindless grinding through levels, I see as an opportunity to meet other players, some of whom are rather interesting. What some people see as farming for game currency, I see as an opportunity to roleplay and boost my reputation. Not this silly reputation by ownership of a cool gametoy, but the reputation as someone who is fun and interesting to run missions with.
My MMORPG of choice is City of Heroes [coh.com]. One of my favorite characters is a Taxibot [taxibots.com]. We hardly ever level. We can't kill crap by ourselves. We have a lot of fun. The fun of the game isn't mindlessly killing mobs of enemies, although I do get fleeting enjoyment from figuring out strategies to defeat particularly tough enemies. The fun isn't even getting that new high-level power, although I do get fleeting enjoyment from seeing the cool effect of it. These things are supposed to add to the enjoyment of the game, not to be the enjoyment. My advice for MMORPG players (most MUD players figured this out a long time ago): If you really want to get long-term enjoyment from the game, get over that stuff quickly.
I get frustrated because I often wonder how many people even bother to read the mission descriptions they're given before they go to empty a warehouse full of villains. Sometimes I'll be in a group of people and I'll say something game-related ("We can't let Ubelmann succeed!"), and I often get responses that indicate that the people in my group have no clue ("Who's Ubelmann?"). Needless to say, those people don't get invited to run in a group with me again, and the people who do run with me regularly have lots of fun "grinding" levels, even if it is the 100th time we have been to disable the Rikti portal devices.
If level grinding has got you down and you've having so little fun that you feel the need to buy stuff on eBay or Sony's Station Exchange to use in the game, I'm begging you to play Progress Quest [progressquest.com] instead. We'll all have more fun, and you don't even have to spend a dime!
I know what the first replies to this post will be: Wah, people play games for different reasons. Yeah, well, if your reason is so that you can brag about your über-whatever with a gazillion gold to the lower levels, you're not playing at all; you're being a pompous ass that the game would be better off without. Do you go around in real life bragging about how much more money you've got than people on welfare? We're not impressed.
Damn, so much for keeping this post short. Oops, maybe I'll do better next time we have an "Buying virtual goods is a good thing" type of story.
Re:Why are you playing MMORPGs? (Score:1)
Re:Why are you playing MMORPGs? (Score:2)
Certain people get their thrills out of lev
Re:Why are you playing MMORPGs? (Score:1)
What exactly was your reason again? If I understand correctly, you're proud that you can play in a hollywood set and pretend it's the real thing. How is that superior to people who are competing?
-Jeff
MMORPG - revised (Score:3, Funny)
very simple way of.... (Score:1)
simply ban the bastards who use bots to "farm"
that'll end the situation so quickly it'll make their heads spin.
imagine if they actually had to sit there and click and click over and over for 12 hours a day... yeah, they wouldn't.
the fact that there is an industry in the first place is because those cheating punks have a lot of stolen accounts, so on the !extremely! rare occurence of getting banned, they're right back in the next day where they left off. wh
m........do not know if it is good (Score:1)
Re:m........do not know if it is good (Score:1)
good news (Score:1)
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