Comments on: Gold farming: illegal?

By: Chill

Chill — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:21:08 +0000

I know it’s a different topic than the op but since it has wormed its way in here I’ll give it a go.
[i]
1) The first criteria to join any endgame activity people are looking for is gear
2) Now give players the possibility to purchase gear for money in a game which wasnâ€™t designed that way
3) Players who do not participate in tacked-on RMT will get overlooked and will have a much harder time to find the groups needed to gear up so that they can at least compete for the activities as above, first point.[\i]

The faulty logic in this argument is to say that currently all players are on even ground. Or, if you prefer, that only new players would ever buy levels/gear. I’ve found that though I have over 2 years of playing time on WoW and have played every race and every class, I can’t join in on end-game raiding in the way that I would like. My level 70 toon is a warlock. I’m tired of dps’ing in dungeons and raids and I want to tank. Now, I know what it takes to be a good tank even though I don’t have one. I also don’t have the time or desire to spend countless more hours wading through westfall to level a new character. Because I have a job and a wife and a family, I’m already limited on my ability to compete with the hard-core players who have virtually unlimited time to play.
These players are “purchasing” their toons and their gear with currency. That currency being time. I can’t afford to spend as much time as they do on mindless farming. Does that make me a worse raid-member? Only by standards of gear.

By: Gwaendar

Gwaendar — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:17:49 +0000

How about allowing my account to unlock a similarly advanced character of the other classes with a quest completed at the level cap?

That one I’m all for it. You get to level 80 and quest to unlock an option allowing you to select to reroll new toons either at 1 or at the DK’s starting level. Had that thought since DK got announced, moreso since they aren’t introducing a healing hero class at the same time as DK.

By: Decado

Decado — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:56:12 +0000

well this is an interesting discussion.
For what it’s worth I don’t think it is technicaly illegal however since it does go against the EULA your account could, and should, get banned.
Toward the other comments, I don’t think gold should ever be made for sale by Blizzard. I agree with several above posters when I say that it would really screw up the in game economy.
Character leveling on the other hand I would handle a bit differently. they are already planning on the death knight starting at a higher level (rumor says between 55 and 60) after your high level toon finishes a quest to unlock it. How about allowing my account to unlock a similarly advanced character of the other classes with a quest completed at the level cap?
if implemented in the expansion one would still have to level through the last 20 to 25 levels with the character, learning the class on the way. It might be said that this would starve the new player of people to quest and instance with, but I don’t think so. The folks that are leveling alts through grouping, instancing, and generally running with others of their current level would continue to do so. Those that are just interested in leveling up as fast as possible to catch up to the rest of their friends are already likely to be using a solo questing type leveling guide to get it done as fast as possible.
And now off on a tangent, Another thing that would be interesting would be to have a way to temporarily “scale down” your character. So for instance a friend new to the game wants to run wailing caverns on his level 21 main character I would be able to come along with my 70 and have his abilities and bonuses temporarily dropped down to level appropriate for the instance.
You would get lots more folks running the lower level stuff if you could do it this way, effectively recycling old content.

wow, sorry for the “wall ‘o text” apparently I got carried away

By: Fedorin

Fedorin — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:16:35 +0000

Either that’s not [2. Trade] or that hasn’t actually been transcribed verbatim.

All the words are spelled correctly, for a start.

By: Kyrilean

Kyrilean — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:10:10 +0000

@ Gwaendar
1) Agreed.
2) Blizzard’s solution to this seems to be the badges. I hope they continue this. Granted the way around this is through power-leveling options and not gold selling.
3) I disagree. I believe there’s still a lot of us out there that are unwilling to pay additional for gear. I already pay enough as it is, no way am I giving someone more money to gear up! Besides that, I believe a majority still enjoy the experience of leveling up and gaining things through “legitimate” means.
**Regarding full capped characters
1) Yes some, but again I think there’s a majority of people that still enjoy going through the process.
2) This is the biggest reason why I’m against power-leveling and think it’s detrimental to all.

By: Kyrilean

Kyrilean — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:02:17 +0000

Adam: I am not much of a MMO player, but I fully believe that MMO creators should sell their in-game currency, and they should also allow players to buy characters that start at a specific level, for non-PVP servers [and not allow â€œboughtâ€ characters to transfer to non-PVP servers.]

Not sure why you have such an opinion if you’re not really into MMO. I disagree that all MMO creators should allow this. If they want to, fine I don’t much care, it’s then part of the game.

Adam: The type of fun that I may want to have in the game â€” fueled by gold/level purchases or not â€” does not infringe the fun that anyone else can have in the game, unless Iâ€™m actively doing things to grief someone, which would be frowned upon regardless of how my character got to the power level they were.

As it pertains to gold purchases, I agree. Power leveling would be something different based on circumstances. Recently I kept running with a level 70 warlock, not by personal choice, that was always 7th on the damage meter. Whether or not this person power leveled, she doesn’t know how to play her toon and ultimately affected all of us.

Adam: Itâ€™s a *cooperative* game, not a competitive one.

Amen to that!!! I still think RMT is cheating, but that’s based on my views and why I play. If someone else wants to do that, as long as it doesn’t adversely affect my game, then why should I care? I’m not enough of an expert to see if it adversely affects WoW’s economy or not. I’ve been playing less than a year, but it doesn’t appear to do that much harm. So why should I care why someone else, especially someone I don’t know, geared up through RMT or power-leveling services?

Hopefully we’re only competing against ourselves and not others. Just like in real life there’s always someone else out there that’s better than us in one aspect or another. Hold your candle against yourself, not others, and you won’t be disappointed.

By: Siha

Siha — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:52:38 +0000

Given the nature of raiding, the addition of RMT for gear would certainly pose some problems for endgame. RMT for gold only, on the other hand, may be a different matter.

By: Gwaendar

Gwaendar — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:29:44 +0000

OK, I’ll try to explain this slowly, try to follow:
1) The first criteria to join any endgame activity people are looking for is gear
2) Now give players the possibility to purchase gear for money in a game which wasn’t designed that way
3) Players who do not participate in tacked-on RMT will get overlooked and will have a much harder time to find the groups needed to gear up so that they can at least compete for the activities as above, first point.

You just created an additional divide between players, this time based on money. Real money effectively becomes an additional barrier to content.

Got that part or do I have to type slower?

Now if you also add the possibility to purchase full level-capped characters, the following will happen:
1) Activities in the levelling part of the game will dry up even more
2) The slots for endgame activities will be competed for by players who will require piggybacking because they can’t play their toons.

Two different types of transactions, two different effects. Got it now?

By: Adam

Adam — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:34:22 +0000

So, this invasion of RMT players is going to somehow ruin the game by monopolizing everything, even though they’re also going to suck because they aren’t taking the time to learn the game … right. That makes a lot of sense.

By: James

James — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:06:40 +0000

Actually i can’t find the original interview but i did manage to find a few things that concern this topic.
Firstly i must say i do not sympathize with gold farming companies in the least not only do they destroy wow’s economy but they also exploit workers the farmers getting 71 cents an hour 100 bucks a month which is just insane to me. That being said i can understand the farmers themselves why they do it (lack of jobs) however that shouldn’t stop you from reporting them and making life difficult. Hell if they get banned they don’t have to pay for it their parent company does. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH1LGdjZUKQ – An interesting take on gold farming i must say i raised my eyebrows at a few things he says specifically about Botting and his Policeman and thief analogy.
Anyway concerning the legality once more http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=106771592&sid=1
i think this suit is just to “test the waters” so to speak. They chose a relatively large company to deal with and only one rather than taking on multiple companies i think this to see if they will be successful at taking down any gold farming company.

Also note Eyonix does not mention anything about gold farming per say rather the spam within it perhaps they have already realized they can’t win? if this is the case their lawyers attacking the spamming must have some rarely used law on their side else they would attack the farming/hacking as well in my opinion.