We all know that in-game Gold is sold for Real Money in a process called RMT. We know it because we get tells in-game from seller accounts and because we sometimes (think we can) see the farming accounts at work in our beloved game.
That there is a market for in-game gold can not be doubted once one looks at Google's WOW Guide WOW GOLD trend analysis. Some go as far as to compare the phenomenon to prostitution, claiming it's the unsavory elements around it that are the problem, not the "service" itself.
Game Security blogger Play no Evil got some statistics straight from the monster's mouth. IGE has been busy tearing itself to shreds so was unavailable for comparable figures.
The article is an interesting read, showing some interesting tidbits like WOW-EU gold being persistently cheaper than WOW-US Gold. Could it be that Blizzard patrols the EU servers less fanatically or is it to do with time-zones, the proverbial Chinese Farmer doesn't have to wait nearly a day for the US market to wake up before offloading the hot goods. Some of the comments are even better. Truly showing how complex and diverse this issue really is.
It's interesting to see that while the price for gold has declined in WoW, it has actually been climbing upwards in GW. I don't play WoW, but could anyone tell me what happened in August?
And those articles were indeed interesting to read, yet slightly disturbing for me.
I asked around at the WOW site a month or two back when I noticed a very distinct dip in concurrent players. The shown dip in Gold price is actually mid July though.
Oh PULEASE, dont get me started on in game tells. My lvl 50s email box in City of Heroes is SWAMPED with the bloody things. I dunno if the devs can do anything about it eitehr...it just reaaaally ticks me off.
Bleh, i just dont use my email box, i beleive i have over 150 emails from those people, although i clean it out every month, i instead occupy myself with finding a hero to confuse me and i kill the farmers in RV or use a SBed Heavy to kill the mobs before they can >.>
i don't see why people get that gold anyways. Guild Wars green items are random dropped, but the item itself doesn't change. 5+ of the same boss green is still the same boss green. for other items like armor and such, i guess people really do want that gold faster, and they could just pay their way through to get it.
those scams make me wish i got back into this game, so i could start making the big bucks. luckily for me, Guild Wars still lags, so i never get to log on anymore :(
1. they spent 30-50$ to buy the game.
2. why spend more $$$ on a free game?
maybe that's why gold purchasing went down in WoW - they have the pay2play system. it is a double loss for those players, and it probably is in the long run for GW, too.
i think players who buy gold through these "people" should have their accounts perma-banned, cause i never liked it when the chat panel was full of "paying XXXX for run/mission+bonus" or any green item that goes for more than 10k. it sickens me. i am guilty of asking myself, but i at least earned my gold the way it should be.
if buying greens is that important to players, GW needs to step it up and add variety (as far as properties) to those greens. 2 players with the exact same setup (armor, skills, equipment, etc) isn't quite competitive, even for a pvp based game. with 4 million players strong and growing, at least 2 people are gonna to have the exact same setup.
it's GW's job to add variety, and i think MORE variety would help hunker down on this issue.
Buying ingame gold vs earning it through play is a very old argument.
It's really Those who have Time vs Those who have Money. You spend what you have on the game, that's generally either time or money. Hardly ever it's both. Developers design their games so you 'need' to do either...
Well from the WoW side of it, I don't have tons of time to play and still I devastate the economy on the game. The age old argumant that you have to split time between playing and farming is total BS. I raid, and I farm, and I run plenty of heroic instances. All the while spending 3-4 week nights with the GF.
I stepped across the portal to Outland last year with 100 gold in my pocket from pre-TBC adventures. I currently run with a baseline of 6000 gold, have 4 epic flying mounts and blew 2k on stuff for my alt last week without batting an eye.
The bottom line is that folks who buy gold are flat out lazy. They can't possibly raid or PvP 24-7. Previous to patch 2.4, you could do 10 dailies a day. It was relatively easy for me to hit 3-4 quickies in an hour before I went to work. And I only get to play after work 2 nights a week(got a GF I'd really like to keep ya know), and then on my designated play nights I'd mop up a few more after hitting an instance or raid with my friends. Now you can do up to 25 dailies a day, and at least 10 of them are bundled quite close to each other on the new Island.
But I guess I devastate the economy because folks are lazy. Alchemists that won't herb and such(I still think that Herb/Alch is the biggest money maker in the game. Everyone needs potions, same as everyone in the real world needs groceries.) Simple mods like Auctioneer keep me abreast of current market trends and item prices.
Gold buyers ruin the economy on servers where folks genuinely want to play the game as it was designed, not CHEAT the system. And it is cheating. Just like those game shark codes you put in your playstation. Only the Playstation games never interfered with anyone elses gaming experience.
So do you want to earn the right to spend that gold, and be smart enough to make more, or are you a lazy cheater too stupid to play the economy game that is built in? You get out of it, what you put into it. When you just buy the gold, what satisfaction is there in spending it? You didn't earn a damn thing based on your ability to play the game as a whole. Buying gold just proves that you suck at the game.
If anyone wants any pointers on making good money as an Herb/Alch and limited game time player. Start up a post on the WoW boards and holla my name. I'll give you tips and pointers on how to put the gold farmers out of buisiness, and line your pockets with gold and riches. It's really NOT that hard of an embedded game system on WoW.
As you can tell, I have quite a bit of contempt for those who buy or sell ill gotten gold on my favorite game. PLAY the game, EARN your rewards or go home!
Because this is something that affects the communities of every released game on this fansite network, even EverQuest 2 which, oddly enough, has not much different prices for the servers where one can buy in-game gold direct from SOE than from the ones where you can't.
