Gold selling: Immoral or Industrious?
I've been doing a fair amount of following on Blizzard's war with gold sellers for the past 4 years, and from skimming a recent AoC post (I don't have experience with the game), it looks like the same activities are going on in that game. In fact I'm pretty confident few would disagree when I claim that gold/account/item selling has been a shady part of pretty much every MMO that has some sort of marketable item.
My question, and this is genuine curiousity (my degree is not in economics or law) is this: What's so bad about farmers and gold sellers?
Hear me out: gold sellers are fueled by companies who employee low wages "workers" (gamers) to play the game exhaustively for items / gold (form here on out I'm going to refer to all resellable items as "gold.") They can collect mass quantities of gold, and turn around and sell it to people who don't want to put forth the personal effort to purchase something in game; i.e., someone considers it easier to spend 100-ish American dollars to buy enough gold for an epic flying mount than to farm the gold themselves.
I'm not sure where farmers and gold sellers hurt the gameplay of those who don't partake in their services (with two exceptions, that I will explore later). If you don't use their services, they are not hurting you or anyone else. In fact, they are probably *helping* you.
How? An item farmer will spend hours and hours farming a specific item, with the primary goal of converting that item to gold (Auciton House) and then selling that gold to a client. This creates an inflated supply of said item (for example, primal fire), which dictates that the market lower the average selling point of primal fires. Obviously, if the market price shrinks too much, farmers would abandon this item for more favorable items, but this *does* hold the general price of items to a lower than normal price point. This is great news for someone like me, who regularly uses gold from dailies to purchase primals or other materials for crafting. Item farmers are the Wal Mart of MMOs: they employ ridiculously low cost labor and volume sales to force prices on all markets down. I don't really see where the problem is here.
Now, I do see two specific examples where farmers and gold sellers can hamper one's gameplay:
1) "I am a gathering profession and farmers are wrecking my profits." Well, this is true, but to be honest I don't have much pity for real-time material gatherers. These people represent the small businesses being squeezed by Wal mart's razor thin margins, and as a purchaser of AH goods myself, I'm a little indignant that gatherers think they deserve a 20% markup on primals.
2) I just pugged with a level 70 in all BOEs. (S)he was awful. Obviously just chucked gold at the character. This complaint I can readily acknowledge and I do understand that ignorant people who try to use American funds as a replacement for experience are a real drag on everyone else. Sure, this issue can be solved by refusing to group with people covered in BOE epics, but I will grant this is a problem.
edit: 3) Keyloggers and account theives. These people are just disgusting human beings and really represent the underbelly of the MMO machine. I was not considering these people in my original statement, but they're definitely a part of the system and would not exist without the incentive to commit such acts.
So in review, I don't beleive that gold farmers and sellers cause much (if any) negative impact to the servers they inhabit (keyloggers aside). To the contrary, they actually keep prices on materials low by providing a glut of items on the AH. Sure, they'll cause you to run into the occassional noob Hunter (Sorry Ivan, they're my class of choice=) with 2500 AP, 30% crit, and absolutely no idea what's going on (a 11/30/10 spec is a clue), but other than that have a really minimal impact on a normal person's gameplay.
As stated in paragraph 2, my knowledge of economics is relatively incomplete, and it's VERY possible I've missed an important nuance of gold farming that just wrecks the planet, so I am interested to hear your thoughts.
I normally have 0 problems with gold farming/selling/buying except for one thing:
This market makes account hacking a viable monetary industry for some assholes out there. Because gold farming is such a lucrative enterprise (ugh, that just sounds bad) it also has the bad side effect of making account hacking and theft lucrative.
As someone who has been hacked, that just blows.
Unfortunately, if I slash my wrist with my lightsaber it cauterizes instantly. - PurEvil on emo Star Wars plots.
keyloggers! They're definitely a part of the system. I'll edit my original post.
Thank you, that's an excellent example of a demand for a product causing theft to be profitable, and therefore detrimental to the server.
I think you are wrong in your assumption that gold sellers only get they're money by selling items on the AH. While this is one means for them to get money, another (and probably the more used process) is simply by collecting money from mobs killed (whether straight gold or through items sold off to vendors for gold). This causes the simple problem of inflation. As more gold enters the economy, the value of a single gold piece drops.
So how exactly does this affect a player? Despite the fact that items on the AH cost more than "normal", players still only earn gold at the base rate from the game (while questing and general mob looting). So while I might have had enough to buy that cool weapon off the AH, I no longer can because of inflation. This forces players to either partake in collecting items and selling them on the AH to make enough money or to simply forgo buying that cool new shiny.
Again, how bad is this? Well, it really depends. I'm the kind of player that will just play the market, and as such will generally make the money I need despite the inflation. The real question should be asked to all the players who don't like playing the market. Who simply want to play the game. What can they no longer afford because the value of a gold piece has dropped.
Chumpy wrote:
There's also the problem with the gold sellers camping the resource sites and the mob spawns. Normally players out questing will kill the mobs or whatever and move on but the gold sellers just stay in the same area and continue to farm the mobs and resources. This causes problems when the regular players show up because they have to compete with the gold farmers for the same resources.
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How about someone trying to level up their mining/herbalism, only to find that the few zones they can use to gain skill points are so heavily farmed that what should be a 30-minute quickie turns into 2 or 3 days-worth of play time trying to catch things "just right"?
I won't lie - I've considered buying 10k gold. Repeatedly. 5k for me, 5k for the wife, just to not have to farm that for a fast flyer. I won't do it, but I think about it at least once a week. Then I remember what a pain it is to farm up 120 Adamantite ore.
It sounds like you don't gather. You probably have no idea just how frustrating it is to be repeatedly thwarted trying to skill up or just gather goods for a new weapon/armor, and not by another person doing the same, but what looks and acts like a goldfarmer. It is a truly annoying and frustrating situation.
The thing is, your post sounds like you're trying to justify buying gold to yourself. You may not be, and maybe our opinions are just so divergent that we're speaking different languages, but if you reread your reply to point 1, you may find you're making false assumptions.
For example, a small business is NOT getting a 20% markup on something while Wal-mart is only taking a 1% markup. They're both marking up 1%. It's just that it really does cost the small biz 20% more to do X, because they don't engage in shady business practices like foreign sweatshops, illegal immigrant employment, employer law loopholes, etc.
Charging 20% more does not necessarily mean I'm pocketing that 20%. In fact, I'm probably making less "profit" than the bigbox/farmer, simply because I am obeying the laws.
Free market, yeah, yeah, yeah. How about obeying the laws we've got. If you don't agree, work to change them.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
I considered writing a paragraph about this in the original post.
It's true that having a mage just AOE farm an area 12 hours a day for gold / vendor drops / etc and then mailing that in introduces an unintended amount of funds to the economy.
But so did the creation of dailies, the introduction of "gold for quests when you're at the level cap," and increasing the daily limit to 25. Blizzard is intentionally and manually causing inflation at a rate that a couple mages blasting away in Zangarmarsh can never, ever hope to equal.
the FUNNY part is that as gold becomes more and more easy to get, gold sellers have had to re-price their gold accordingly (100g used to cost around 75 american dollars; now, even with the American dollar worth exactly nothing, that same amount buys substantially more gold). It's possible that Blizzard is even doing this intentionally to run gold sellers out of a job -- what's the point of farming gold if you can't sell it for any sort of profitable amount?
Either way, I don't think that farmers and gold sellers raise the price of AH items by any sort of noticeable amount. At level 60 I would watch AH prices very closely, and after a Blizzard announced "purging" of farmer accounts (sometimes 15,00 or more accounts banned in a single day), I never once saw the price of AH items decrease as a result of that lost gold revenue through the server. I did, however, regularly see item prices increase because greedy people suddenly thought felcloth was worth triple what it used to be now that farmer3846 wasn't up in felwood 12 hours a day killstealing.
Hey duck, long time no see. =) How's Peec doin? Now don't start a flame war because you want to overcharge me for primals. =)
Anyway, the EULA clearly states that the sale of in game merchandise is illegal -- but likewise there's a lot of people trying to hold Wal mart's feet to the fire for anti competitive practices. I'm just trying to show the similarity between the two providers.
Ducki, I'm going to hazard that your competition is from your epic flying mount peers. I'm not a "ninja" ie: if I see another player fighting near a node I won't take it. I know for a fact that I'm in the minority as far as for-profit gathering is concerned. But even given that, I follow a pattern using a gathering mod that allows me to quickly accumulate ore.
And remember, the Japanese aren't commercially whaling. They're conducting "research". Like "researching how delicious this whale is". - Paleocon
That's exactly what they're doing. With the addition of Burning Crusade and onward they've been adding ways to make it easier to get in game gold instead of relying on outside resources.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
missed this one.
I agree, this is INSANELY annoying -- farmers who impede in the leveling process. Come to think of it, they're probably the reason why I don't enjoy leveling.
Thank you!
Add to that, all the non-gold ways of attaining in-game assets...
Badge Loot, PvP/BG/Faction Loot that you buy with Honor/Marks, Spirit Shard Loot, etc.
I'm just waiting for the ability to buy a mount with badges/Honor/Marks/SpiritShards (or a combination thereof).
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
Hell, people claimjumping my resource nodes as I'm fighting a mob right on top of them is bad enough. Lately, it's gotten worse, with people spam clicking my nodes AS I'M MINING THEM and taking them from me. Seriously, WTF?!
That earns someone a permanent spot on my friends list so I can note them with the tag "claimjumping piece of sh*t" and make sure to treat them just as kindly anytime I run across them.
Turn off Autoloot, mine node, and leave the loot window up until they leave. Problem Solved.
I haven't had this particular problem in ages, so I have autoloot turned on, but if you're having that problem, this is how I used to solve it. I'd open the loot window(mine the node) and if they stood there trying to mine, I'd go get a drink or whatever.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
"Purging" a large amount of farmer accounts won't have that effect. The gold has already been introduced into the economy. The price of the items on the Ah won't fluctuate dramatically, if at all. However if you graphed the prices of items on the AH from the beginning of the game to now, I bet you would see a large increase in prices.
Chumpy wrote:
The Stormpike Battlecharger costs 50AV. That's a laughable amount of marks that you could get in about five or six hours.
And remember, the Japanese aren't commercially whaling. They're conducting "research". Like "researching how delicious this whale is". - Paleocon
Thanks for the tip, I may just do that!
My problem with gold sellers is simple: I don't like people obtaining with no effort what I decided to earn by playing the game the way it was meant to be played. It has nothing to do with economics. I could care less about the effect gold farms have on the economy. I don't like the grind any more than the next guy but, for me, my personal opinion is this: only losers buy gold from gold farmers. It may be short-sighted, I know, but thats how I feel.
It is somehow assumed that gold famers add to the economy, while it is probably more accurate to describe it as taking away. Farmers do not add additional resources they farmed to lower the prices of all the other farmed resources. No, they farm out ALL of the resources, so nobody else can, and then they set whatever price they want. In the end, you MUST buy gold from them to be able to afford the prices they set for the things you need that you cannot get because they took them away from you.
Never forget, it is their JOB to farm it all away. That's how they get paid in order to eat and live and have children. If they don't do it, they don't get paid. Ergo, their motivation will always be greater than yours when it comes to competing for resources. 3 8 hour shifts a day ensure that you will NEVER be able to circumvent the system.
(@)
This is similar to the new policy on the PVP server for our resource collection for our guild city.
Pharacon wrote:
It seems like the fact that it's against th EULA should be enough reason to be against it, all other issues aside. And comparing gold sellers to Wal-Mart would really only be fair if Wal-Mart set up shop inside K-Mart and was trying to sell their merchandise without their permission. The simple fact is that gold sellers are selling something that is not theirs to sell.
That being said,
This is my main reason for being against it as well.
Here's a couple of reasons you missed:
1 The f*cking chat spam in every major city. In some MMOs (LoTRO especially), I actually like reading the city chat. It makes me feel like I've come out of the wilderness back into civilization. But now there's always some gold farmer with a paragraph chat spam that gets blasted every 30 seconds. So I block him and go on with life...and the next time I enter the city, there's the same exact message from another "player". You just can't get away from it.
2. You wanted to site economic theory, but you really missed the big picture. Farmers don't just get items (and remember the truly valuable items are usually BOP), they get gold as well. Gold = money. And what happens when you put too much money into circulation? Inflation. What happens when you put waaaaay too much money in circulation? Hyperinflation. As such, I think gold farmers easily cause more inflation than they reduce by enlarging the supply of items.
3. Bots. You've already mentioned spawn competition. Add in bots and you've got an entirely new level of spawn competition. You name a good gold-farming area in an MMO and I'll point to some bots. They'll clean out an area and keep it cleaned out permanently.
That's beyond the fact that they'll leech onto a group and ninja items in instances.
No, there's a special hell for gold farmers. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
I am so going to quote that out of context.
I wouldn't mind it if it was minor. I have no problem with some rich guy saying screw it I want a tweaked out account or some extra gold and I have no problem with some guy who plays too much saying screw it I quit time to cash in my account or sell off some gold.
Problem is theres enough money to be made compared to some peoples wages in other places in the world its not minor. The economy, the chat spam, the farmer vs normal player collision is just annoying. Thats not even getting into the account hacking and stealing.
Strange aside. I once took a chance on an Ioffer seller from China who had a pair of shoes I really wanted fully knowing I could be getting screwed in many different ways. Funny part it all worked out but for some strange reason I received a large amount of email spam right after trying to screw me out of my banking information. As for the shoes they are most likely fake but of still high quality and I would never be able to get my hands on a real pair for me to compare. I've since purchased another pair from the same guy and same thing. I don't get ripped off, they are probably fake but of good quality but I get a influx of 'give us your banking information' spam. I always found it strange that they would never try to rip me off on the sale I guess cause they didn't want a negative rating but at the same time they were willing to try to email scam me instead.
I wonder how many people who buy gold are then targeted for potential account theft and the irony of that.
Edit: How far off are we of a company saying screw it and legalizing account sales but only if they are done through their own services that take a nice little cut. Makes sense if they can get past people getting all mad about it. They offer a legit way for people quitting to cash in while taking a cut and keeping the account as a subscriber with the new owner. And yes I obviously sold my first WoW account when I quit ;P
I'm still not buying the inflation thing. The only real cause of inflation in WoW is Blizzard.
I also don't buy that farmers don't add to the economy. spawn points are on a timer, and they are keeping those timers on constant cooldown, introducing greater than normal amounts of materials into the game. Of course, this is coming from a consumer perspective (Ducki's right, I don't have any gathering professions so I *have* to buy my mats on AH, so I'm delighted when a farmer unloads 20 stacks of terocone for 30% off the next lowest seller). I will agree that farmers make the lives of other gatherers more difficult -- in the same way that Wal mart makes the lives of small businesses more difficult. A normal person with a job just can't compete with a 3 shift operation perma farming motes / nodes.
There are some good points that were brought up that hadn't crossed my mind:
1) the trade channel spam is infuriating, especially since blizzard limits my ignore list.
2) gold farmers DO wreck the economy for sellers by forcing pricepoints down on materials (still not sure why people are under the impression that gold farmers increase prices -- I might be missing something enormous but so far it hasn't been mentioned).
I think mostly, people hate gold farmers because they break a collective sense of fairness that the vast majority of WoW players have. Several people, including Coping, mentioned this. In reality, gold farmers are little more than a minor annoyance (pvp griefers, server crashes, idiots in 5 mans are all much bigger problems), but because gold farmers are effectively cheating -- and making money by cheating -- they are reviled as a horrible subculture, because it's not fair.
I compare them to Wal mart because of their brute manufacturing capabilitity, but people might like this analogy better: they're basically the strip club owners and drug dealers of MMOs -- the peddle a product no one claims to be interested in, and communities erect laws to try to keep them out, but SOMEWHERE people are buying their stuff -- otherwise they'd just go away.
If you had tracked prices from the start to now you'd see spikes in inflation after certain rises in farming population. Yes they were there at the start, but they were reaching critical mass and beaten back down at different times. Ones that didn't coincide with events, or expansions.
because there's always some people who will take an easy way out if it's offered regardless the price. there will always be people willing to sell that out regardless if it's right or wrong.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
This is the one argument that I disagree with vehemently.
You obtain "with effort" in the game.
If I buy gold, I obtain "with effort" outside of the game.
My time is valuable and too short. You grind out 1000 gold in 3-6 hours in game, I grind that out slinging code and earning enough money to buy gold via RMT.
Time is time, and your argument that people that buy gold are not putting out any effort is incomplete. We are, after all, Gamers WITH Jobs.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
It may be effort, but it's the same as cheating, and prohibited by the rules of the game. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
I didn't say that.
What I said was, that particular argument was, IMO, shortsighted and wrong.
It is still against the rules, but that isn't why.
It sounds mildly elitist.
Kinda like "I would never pay someone to mow my lawn, I do it the old-fashioned(read: right) way. Paying someone to do something you can do yourself is _wrong_."
Games are part of life, just like other things we do. If - and only if - it's allowed by the rules/laws, there is NO reason it should not be ok. Sure, you can look down on people that outsource the crappy/boring/timewasting parts of their lives. That's your perogative. But just because you disagree with it doesn't make it "wrong" IFF laws allow. And your viewpoint is probably NOT the reason it's illegal.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
This is a lot worse in free-to-play MMO's, where GM's don't really give a hoot about the spam, or what they're spamming. It's hard to walk into a city in 2Moons because there's always at least one person spamming a site every few seconds.
I'm not sure I'd compare them to drug dealers though. I hear where you're coming from with that, but it still doesn't hit the mark very well. I think I'd go with hookers. You can put in the time with a girl, marry her, and get sex for your commitment... or you can just pay cash for it.
I don't particularly care for gold sellers, but for the most part they're easy to ignore, and I think Blizzard was taking some decent steps to help cut down on them. I'd never buy gold, because my real money is worth more to me than my fake money, but if someone wants to risk their account to laziness, that's their choice.
IronClad Online: PurEvil
I thought the "My time is valuable and too short." was on the elitist side of things. The argument as Cop presented was that he had no truck with someone who went against the rules of the game. Which buying gold in WoW is.
Game balance is a tricky thing and having outside influences tipping the scales one way or another is something that should be dealt with harshly. Having a sour outlook on those that help those influences is completely justified. Especially since the imbalance that is created effect the valuable/short time that the majority of the players have in game.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
Oh, sure, outsourcing boring parts of your life is definitely elitist. I think that was ducki's point. That doesn't mean it's immoral, though. =)
If I made enough money that I could pay a lawn service (and maid service...and daycare...and limo driver...professional chef....), i'd TOTALLY do it.
Likewise, if my WoW goal was to have an awesome character in all purples to parade around IF, and I had plenty of cash, I'd totally buy an account.
Truth is, I kinda like grinding sometimes, so not only is the price point and the risk too high, it's just not something I'm in the market for.
But I won't fault people richer than I am who do it. Just because someone breaks a rule set by a corporation to protect the integraty of their IP doesn't make something immoral.