December 30, 2006
Gold farmers are like the weather.Every MMO player complains about them from time to time, but no one ever seems to do anything about it. In South Korea, however, proposed legislation may force the national government to do regulate the controversial trade in virtual currency.
Ars Technica reports that South Korea's Ministry of Culture and Tourism would like to prohibit the sale and purchase of MMO gold. Virtual exchange of in-game items like swords and armor would not be affected by the bill.
Understandably, the South Korean bill enjoys the support of the MMO publishers. They generally resent the impact of gold farmers on their carefully crafted in-game economies.
It's no small matter, since Korea's virtual gold and item exchange market is estimated to be in the neighborhood of one billion dollars (that's "billion" with a "b"). 60% of that comes from gold farming.
A number of questions surround the bill, not the least of which is its ability to actually be enforced.
Comments
The dodge they usually use is "oh, you aren't paying for the gold, you're paying for my time and the gold is a bonus" or they sell a pen or piece of lint with the in-game item as a "free bonus" or some other mix of sophistry and bullshit.
I suspect that if this sort of thing were to be brought before a judge, and I pray it is not because that would open a can of worms that I don't think anybody wants to see opened, they would point out that it is a bullshit excuse and it's obvious that it is indeed a transaction of money for gold.
Fortunately, game companies don't have to deal with that shit, they can just say "you're RMTing, you're gone."
Inflation will slow down in WoW.
absolutely you can go for the gold. In fact, you have to... especially when Lvl 40 comes around and you need 90g to buy a mount.
You don't usually see the farmers selling gold in WoW itself. Although you will probably eventually see some people who are obviously farming as you get deeper into the game.
Horde or Alliance?
In an MMO’s your game experience is greatly affected by things other players do. One player affects others all the time as that is the basis the games are built on. One aberrant player isn’t that bad, but when there are hundreds of players, working in shifts, making daily quotas, etc. it adds up. The frustration of trying to go out and get some money for repairs only to find 2 or 3 farmers monopolizing the entire area 24 hours a day gets old real quick. Having the prices on your trade goods undercut, advertising spam for www.wesellcheapgold.com in random /tells and in game emails and Rampant inflation and devaluation of items screwing up the economy. Eventually you start getting to the point where you almost have to buy gold from them to make up for the fact that you can’t earn it as readily yourself.
The developers have to hire extra customer service staff to handle all the extra issues caused by professional farms. They also have to take steps that may hinder and annoy the honest game player in order to curtail the practices of the farmers. In the end they have a big impact on the games. The whole thing is not a good for games in question nor the industry of online games as a whole.
All that being said, whether or not this legislation will have any effect if it is even passed is another mater entirely. Prohibition sure didn’t stop alcohol.
There are two sides tot he argument (from the point of view of players).
AGAINST: These games are about earning and acheiving what you can. If you want the best swords, the best armor, the best spells, a pile of gold, or whatever else - go out and earn them, fair and square, like everyone else has to do. If you can't run with the big boys, there's nothing wrong with that.
Buying gold or powerleveling robs you of the chance to properly learn how to play the game, and utilize your character. People who "buy" high level accounts or gear often get to the end game with very little clue how to REALLY play - which harms their group(s) and makes the end-game less fun for everyone.
Also, many times, gold farmers camp items that are uber-valuable, preventing "legitamate" players from being able to earn/win/capture/etc those items or mobs. This kind of bottlenecking detracts from the fun of paying customers.
FOR: Not everyone has 40+ hours a week to spend gaming. If I have an extra $100 lying around to help me remain competitive, it should be my perogative, if the option exisists, to use that to "catch up" to everyone else.
It's really just an exchange of commodities. Some people have the commodity of time to spend playing all the time. I don't have the time (or sometimes interest) to play for all the best items, but I'm still a player, and dont' feel that my lack of time should prevent me from enjoying the game the way my friends do. Therefore, I should be allowed to use the commodity I *do* have, money, to catch up.
My take - good arguments on both sides. As a purist, I won't be using any gold sites, and would prefer to see the TOS enforced and take no small amount of joy from hearing of mass bans of people who farm or use farming services. The strongest argument, for me, is the one about rare/expensive items being camped and denied from "real" players. Since an account can be run over several shifts, a farmer of group of farmers really CAN monopolize an item 24/7 - which forces players to "buy" that item or skip.
That simply isn't fair.
I keep getting spam from these dudes and juging from a few mistakes in gamer I think some of them may be coming frome the east Asia area.
It's not really a question of the ethics of selling and buying gold, although personally I feel it spoils the game for everyone else (rewards in-game should be derived from your efforts in-game, not your real life cash flow). Even if gold selling were legal, it still would be illegal for anyone to go and farm gold and sell it independently because they do not own what they are selling and none of the profit is being redirected back to the actual copyright holders.
.......then again, their engrish is amusing.
It does hurt honest players by giving buyers a leg up they shouldn't have, by supporting farming which takes away those sites from the honest players (and adds to in game and out of game harassment of honest players), and en masse can cause out of control inflation on a server.
If you have a great 40 hour a week job, congratulations, but that doesn't give you an excuse to cheat.
I recommend all WoW players to download the UI AddOn SpamSentry. You can block all spam over say, yell, whisper, General and other channels. You get a spam button for mail. And you can report spammers to GMs instantly at either a button press or typed command.
Good point, very good point. There's a good number of games out there that allow people to buy virtual items with real money. For example I know there's a lot of smaller MMO's out there that support themselves with "item malls" (Gunbound, Monster & Me, Dragon Raja, etc.) that exchange real money for in game items. So it's not the act that's wrong, but who's doing it. Hopefully they keep this in mind when making the bill.
Second: agree @ pirra's THANK GOD, im so sick of these guys.. screwing up the economy and spamming everything.. I hope they take em all down.
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