Where Politics And Video Games Collide

See, I see this differently then some of the players here. I was a WoW player for a while, on both PvP and on PvE, and gold farming hurts the game play on both. Now some of you will be going "Wah wah, he annoying me in teh game! Waaaah!" in parody of the slighted player, but keep in mind you are talking about a game that people pay $144 annually to play, for each account, and some people have multiple accounts (especially if your spouce plays).

In PvE, the effect you have is a group of players monopolizing certain resources. Think of it similar to a hurricane relief effort handing out food, and someone pays a group of people to stand in line over and over to collect all the food, then opens a tent selling the food. Since food isn't as important as water, some people are saying, "Stop bellyaching, it's just capatilism at work. It's not as if they are doing it with water!"

Next, imagine our economy if a 10% of the people got machines that could create gold. Suddenly, the value of gold would go down the tube. Of course they would be illegal, and your money would be taken away if caught with it, but people would still do it. Suddenly, that car you need to get to work costs $75,000, and they don't mind charging that much because they know that people are able to get that much money, as long as they don't mind breaking the law.

Now, on PvP servers, things are worse, because they aren't just selling food after the huricane relief, they are selling uzi's. What's the matter? Can't keep your food because people keep shooting at you? No problem, buy an uzi, too? Except they now cost $120,000 for an uzi since the economy is screwed (I'm assuming uzi's don't cost this much normally).

So you are paying for this game, but even pumping money into it isn't enough, you can't keep up with everyone who is breaking the licencing agreement. You loose time that you paid for every time someone with an epic this or that walks by you and decides to gank you. You can't get the drops you need for your quests because people are bot farming the mobs you need.

And none of this even touches the illegal side of gold farming, such as the stolen accounts to get gold to sell, accounts created with stoen credit card numbers to run bot farms, etc...

"Well, if you don't like the game, stop playing!" But I DO like the game, I don't like the people CHEATING at the game that is ruinging my moneys worth. It's like people talking loudly on their cell phone in the theater, I don't hear people justifying it by saying "They paid money to be in here just like you did, if they want to spend it on their cell phone, why not? It's a free country!"

So yes, I feel that botters and gold farmers should be stripped of virtual posetions, kicked, banned, their web addresses and all itinerations of their addresses be filtered from the chats, and even up to and including IP blocks banned.