Goldfarming industry worth $500m [Archive]

Cal

08-22-2008, 04:42 AM

From the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7575902.stm

Maybe i was being naive to think it was only a few small companies doing it!

Prof Heeks said very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector were hard to come by but his work suggested that in 2008 it employs 400,000 people who earn an average of $145 (£77) per month creating a global market worth about $500m.

Appraently there are more goldfarmers now than IT Dev's in india, a country famed for having a LOT of cheap dev's

"The Indian software employment figure probably crossed the 400,000 mark in 2004 and is now closer to 900,000," said Prof Heeks. "Nonetheless, the two are still comparable in employment size, yet not at all in terms of profile."

Its predicted that this will be a billion dolalr industry by next year, that seems really shocking to me, having played WoW for a few years i cant imagine anyone really paying money for in game gold, but seems its a booming industry! Am i the only one to be suprised at how big the industry is already?

Kaylin

08-22-2008, 04:53 AM

RichardC

08-22-2008, 04:54 AM

having played WoW for a few years i cant imagine anyone really paying money for in game gold

Nor did I until I started looking at the cost of mats for the high-end tailoring gear compared to the amount of time it would take to farm the stupid things. Didn't actually buy gold, but ooh, the temptation was so very, very much there...

Greybriar

08-22-2008, 05:06 AM

I knew a 15-year-old who charged his parents' credit card for $1,000 to buy WoW gold. It's a good thing I wasn't his father.

Anyone who buys ingame gold with RL money shouldn't be playing the game in the first place in my opinion.

MarinusWA

08-22-2008, 05:28 AM

Nor did I until I started looking at the cost of mats for the high-end tailoring gear compared to the amount of time it would take to farm the stupid things. Didn't actually buy gold, but ooh, the temptation was so very, very much there...
And this is how it goes. At first there are only a handful players who buy gold. They buy stuff at "expensive" prices. Sellers notice this and start raising prices. Prices become higher so more people feel compelled to buy gold. Prices go up even higher. Repeat as often as can be afforded.

The inflation rate in WoW has to be massive by now. I quit about a year ago but I really would like to login one more time just to see how much the prices for various mats has risen.

How much do the various essences go for these days?

Eric Majkut

08-22-2008, 05:35 AM

Massive gold seller spam and people ruining the economy by buying it is one of the main reasons I stopped playing Eve Online. It's really frustrating that MMOs can't do more to fight this crap.

mlatin

08-22-2008, 05:51 AM

Massive gold seller spam and people ruining the economy by buying it is one of the main reasons I stopped playing Eve Online. It's really frustrating that MMOs can't do more to fight this crap.
Maybe I'm just not in the areas to see it, but I haven't seen it in Eve for *ages* now. I used to get mails on all my characters at various intervals for ISK sales.

However, I think it helps a *LOT* that CCP basically controls the ISK sales market now exclusively. They provide a legal manner for players to buy ISK, and of course, all the actual money now goes directly to CCP.

FoRmaT

08-22-2008, 05:54 AM

Someone wanted to sell me a bag with 18 slots the other day. For 45 gold. Seriously, what the fuck?

KiloOhm

08-22-2008, 06:13 AM

The inflation rate in WoW has to be massive by now. I quit about a year ago but I really would like to login one more time just to see how much the prices for various mats has risen.

The inflation is massive - but they've made gold easier than ever to come by. I resigned up for 2 months, in that time I leveled from 60-70 bought my engineering epic flyer (probably cost me 6K with training plus the mats I needed to buy (I farmed a lot of them). Throw in another 500-600 to buy my last few engineering skill points and then when I recently canceled my account again I had 4K gold ready for Rich Kid - That means in 2 months of playing (probably averaged 15 hours per week) I gained about 11K gold. Most of it was from sunwell or farming and selling mats. And to top it off, running the sunwell netted me a few nice items when I hit exalted.

Really - it's not that hard to farm for what you need. Inflation is so high because gold is way easier to come by than ever before. 2 hours in the sunwell will net you 200+G.

Oh along the way I did find a blue jewell recipie I sold for 700G. For someone like me who doesn't raid or even go on PUGS hardly ever - you've got plenty of time to farm what you need and since people are bored with the game in general - you have very little competition for farming, everyone seems to log in, go on their raid and then log off. This means I can sell a stack of nightmare vines for 60G because they are too bored to go farm it themselves.

intruder

08-22-2008, 06:30 AM

35.000 gold waiting for WoTLK
I started with around 2k into BC.

I think I spent about 13.000 gold in BC (2 lvl 70s with epic flying mounts + mats for some items) so I think I'm set for the next expansion unless WoW's inflation rate hits the one of certain African countries... ;)

VegasRobb

08-22-2008, 06:54 AM

$500m seems low.

McBain

08-22-2008, 06:56 AM

Its predicted that this will be a billion dolalr industry by next year, that seems really shocking to me, having played WoW for a few years i cant imagine anyone really paying money for in game gold, but seems its a booming industry! Am i the only one to be suprised at how big the industry is already?

Plenty of people who are financially well-off buy gold because they don't have the time (or don't want to spend the time) to go through some of the ridiculous grinds that are needed to do certain things in WoW.

I've bought gold before, when it was cheap, and it was well worth it. I used to pay like $15 for 350g before the expansion, which was a pretty good deal. 350g would have taken me at least 25 hours to farm back then, and I was making about $28 an hour working in the real world. I actually took an extra hour or two at work every week and I used that cash to pay for consumables and gear enchants and all of that crap I needed for raiding.

With 35 minutes of real world work, I made enough money to pay for 25 hours of virtual work. That's a fucking steal.

Powerleveling services can be a bargain. I found out that some old friends were playing Alliance characters, and they asked me if I wanted to reroll and join them. I wanted to, but I also didn't want to spend 200+ hours leveling up to play with them. Solution? Paid $150 for powerleveling and saved myself 200 hours of boredom.

Think about it this way: MMOs are basically labor timesinks. The cost of labor in China is a lot cheaper than the cost of labor in the United States. This is true in the real economy and in the virtual MMO economy. You bet your ass I'm going to take advantage of it to skip the tedious, shitty parts of the game and get straight to the really fun parts that are the reason I play it in the first place.

Bahimiron

08-22-2008, 06:59 AM

I've always wondered how much of this farmed gold is actually purchased.

Does the supply far outweigh the demand, or are there huge stockpiles of gold spread across hundreds of dummy accounts like Swiss bank accounts...?

It shifts. The value of gold in real world dollars can actually change based on supply and demand. When Blizzard goes in and shuts down a bunch of farmer accounts and deletes their gold from the world, the price really does go up.

It's a little ooky when you think about it.

Cal

08-22-2008, 07:02 AM

Plenty of people who are financially well-off buy gold because they don't have the time (or don't want to spend the time) to go through some of the ridiculous grinds that are needed to do certain things in WoW.

I've bought gold before, when it was cheap, and it was well worth it. I used to pay like $15 for 350g before the expansion, which was a pretty good deal. 350g would have taken me at least 25 hours to farm back then, and I was making about $28 an hour working in the real world. I actually took an extra hour or two at work every week and I used that cash to pay for consumables and gear enchants and all of that crap I needed for raiding.

With 35 minutes of real world work, I made enough money to pay for 25 hours of virtual work. That's a fucking steal.

Powerleveling services can be a bargain. I found out that some old friends were playing Alliance characters, and they asked me if I wanted to reroll and join them. I wanted to, but I also didn't want to spend 200+ hours leveling up to play with them. Solution? Paid $150 for powerleveling and saved myself 200 hours of boredom.

Think about it this way: MMOs are basically labor timesinks. The cost of labor in China is a lot cheaper than the cost of labor in the United States. This is true in the real economy and in the virtual MMO economy. You bet your ass I'm going to take advantage of it to skip the tedious, shitty parts of the game and get straight to the really fun parts that are the reason I play it in the first place.

Money isnt an issue, im sure we could all buy as much gold as we wanted and whatnot.

Im not sure i see the point of playing a game and paying someone else to level your char's through the content, and then pay to get your char outfitted with all the best of the best gear.

Maybe to me the day you think about paying for your chars's to be levelled up and have gold posted to, is the day you should prolly stop playing, as it is no longer a game.

McBain

08-22-2008, 07:09 AM

Money isnt an issue, im sure we could all buy as much gold as we wanted and whatnot.

Im not sure i see the point of playing a game and paying someone else to level your char's through the content, and then pay to get your char outfitted with all the best of the best gear.

Maybe to me the day you think about paying for your chars's to be levelled up and have gold posted to, is the day you should prolly stop playing, as it is no longer a game.

There are two different games in WoW: The leveling game and the max level game.

I've done the leveling game a few times, and it's not fun. It wasn't fun the first time and it wasn't fun the last time. The max level game, on the other hand, can be quite a bit of fun. I'd rather spend 75 cents an hour to take more real-world work, go to the gym, or hit the beach than sit in front of the PC doing something I don't like and don't get paid for.

As for outfitting the character, that's really not how it works. You can't really buy equipment with gold, just things like enchantments, flasks, potions and repairs. Paying for those things just takes time. Back when I was buying gold, it took a LOT of time, because they didn't have things like daily quests yet.

I'm not sure I see the point of spending hours every week farming and grinding if you don't enjoy it and can easily avoid it with less than an hour's worth of your real world wages. To put it another way, even if we assume that I was spending $15 every week on gold (I wasn't), it was still a much better money to time to fun investment than going to the movies and spending 8 dollars for a ticket, 7.50 for a hot dog, and 6 dollars for a goddamn pepsi.

beloved one

08-22-2008, 07:13 AM

Im not sure i see the point of playing a game ... and then pay to get your char outfitted with all the best of the best gear.

Maybe to me the day you think about paying for your chars's to be levelled up and have gold posted to, is the day you should prolly stop playing, as it is no longer a game.

The flip side of this, is that you are implying the fun of the game is collecting the gear... but gear collection (from earned gold) is a mindless and fully automatable pursuit. If that is the whole game for you... well it's a sadder statement than paying for gold to be honest. I mean, harvesting 100s of thousands of mine nodes is not exactly mentally or physically stimulating, but it will get you anything bought gold can get you.

Because there are group dynamics, interesting instances, competitive and cooperative player interaction in general, there IS more to the game than simply collecting gear. If you really think there isn't, then frankly you are the one that should stop playing.

RichardC

08-22-2008, 07:15 AM

Maybe to me the day you think about paying for your chars's to be levelled up and have gold posted to, is the day you should prolly stop playing, as it is no longer a game.

More usually, it's "I don't want to do all the shit that gets in the way of me playing the bit of the game I like," which might be getting geared up for Karazhan, or might be playing the exact same quests yet again because your guild desperately needs a second healer.

It's rarely individual characters that have problems, as I've seen them. It's the gulf between Blizzard designing for one-character-per-person (in terms of time needed, resources required etc) and how a lot of people play. I'm currently levelling up an alt in preparation for Licking, and you can bet your ass the first thing I did was shoot her over a full set of Netherweave bags and a hundred gold as spending money. I don't really see a whole hell of a lot of difference between that, and the gold farming thing. The economy of WoW at the point it actually starts to matter a damn is built around the availability of certain resources for high-level crafting, BOP items, and things like the Badges, not how much gold you've got. It's why Blizzard puts in so many silly gold-sinks for people, like the Gigantique bag, or the 'Of The Shattered Sun' title that costs 1000g.

As a personal example, I don't necessarily mind saving up the 5000 for swift flight on my mage, as a one-off cool thing to work towards. Assuming you're just doing the dailies, which is already a good hour of your time minimum on my server due to the PvP thing, you're talking 100g a day. That's hell of a lot of time. I don't want to have to do it again on an alt just so I'm not left behind every time an in-game friend says "Hey, let's go to XYZ...", or stuck playing the solo game because nobody else wants to do the early dungeons to gear up, and my things aren't good enough for WotLK's heroic level Whadevadafuk runs.

Skipper

08-22-2008, 07:31 AM

intruder

08-22-2008, 07:34 AM

As a practical example, I don't necessarily mind saving up the 5000 for swift flight on my mage, as a one-off thing to work towards. Assuming you're just doing the dailies, which is already a good hour of your time minimum on my server due to the PvP thing, you're talking 100g a day. That's hell of a lot of time. I seriously don't want to have to do it again on an alt just so I'm not left behind every time an in-game friend says "Hey, let's go to XYZ...", or stuck playing the solo game because nobody else wants to do the early dungeons to gear up, and my things aren't good enough for WotLK's heroic level Whadevadafuk runs.

Sunwell daily quests netted me over 250g without any drops. Unless the massively nerfed the gold I call your 100g bullshit.
2x 1 hour to do those quests on a carebear PVE server could net me 500g A DAY. That means 3500g per week.
I think the daily quest limited was not reached with those quests so you could do some Ogri'la and those Windrider or whatever quests to net even more (oh and those free epic dragon mount quests on that island as well).

People that have a 70 in BC and don't manage to make profit per day are fucking retards and better should stop playing.
Only exception: Massive raiding with consumables while learning new bosses. That's the only real money sink unless you chose "blacksmithing" or "engineering" as professions.

I agree with the people that stated that they can't understand why someone would pay for ingame-gold with real money.
I would never do that although I could easily finance it.
I play for my personal entertainment nothing else.

Heck I mean it's the same bullshit than those applets that tell you "instead of having wasted x days in WoW you could have made $x US in that time."
Hello fuckhead! If I wouldn't have "wasted" that time in WoW I would have "wasted" that time in TF2 or whatever or in front of the tv.
I don't intend to work 16 hours a day thank you very much!

McBain

08-22-2008, 07:36 AM

To the gentleman above me, the Isle daily quests net about 110g per day -- if you do the ones that are on Isle of Quel'Danas. If you decide to do all of the other Dailies, including the ones that have you flying from fucking Shadowmoon Valley to Blade's Edge, then you can make over 200g, yeah. That takes a lot longer than an hour, though.

I don't really think there is a way to fight this stuff effectively. They always find a way to sell. People might hate me for saying this but I still think a game developer that somehow embraces in-game selling or somehow makes in game currency obsolete will quite possibly turn this current trend around.

I just don't see an easy way to do either of those though.

They've already struck a blow to the powerleveling services with the recruit-a-friend thing. It's now really easy to level up alts at triple speed.

But let me say one word to you, just one word:

Microtransactions.

"Falling behind your friends? Catch up for just $1.99 per level!"

intruder

08-22-2008, 07:43 AM

On-topic:

http://kotaku.com/5040313/why-grind-when-theres-tales-of-vesperia-dlc

This time around, the company is offering more than weapons and armor. Instead of grinding through to level up, the game's DLC will let players buy their leveling up. Need extra gald in-game currency? Buy that, too! Here's a short sample:
LV Up +10 (1) 300 Microsoft Points
LV Up +5 (1) 200 Microsoft Points
300,000 Gald (1) 300 Microsoft Points
Skill sets 80 Microsoft Points
HP Recovery Cuisine Recipe Set 100 Microsoft Points
Get our your wallets lazy players!

I'm speechless...

Aeon221

08-22-2008, 07:46 AM

What is happening here? First, never mind the high-concept work, some basic, reliable facts and figures would help – pay, working conditions, worker demographics, locations, ownership, and all the hundred other fundamental elements found in Section A and throughout the paper – could get a boost from just a few weeks of fieldwork in China.

I went and checked out the paper. He freely admits to not having done any fieldwork in China, where the goldfarmers actually are. So far, his research has consisted of playing WoW and citing articles found online. And he's a sociologist.

One final point. Credible analysis of gold farming can only be undertaken by researchers who play the games, and have engaged in real-money trading. With that, back to Azeroth for some more "research time".

There are a lot of other problems with the work, most notably how he arrived at his employment figure (averaging between found estimates) using a process I like to call asstimation. He also admits on page 18 in a footnote that his guess at the industry earnings are based on data from several years ago, most notably prior to eBay's delisting of game items, and also do not include monies earned from powerlevelling.

Most damning is that all information about goldfarmer salaries and company incomes comes to the paper third hand (at best) and only from hearsay. Also, gold farming should apparently be dead:

Exchange rates between real-world and virtual currencies impact neither regular players nor game companies in subscription-based games. They do, though, impact gold farmers. Calculations from available data on leading games show that in-game currencies, on average, devalued against the US dollar29 by roughly 75% between June 2005 and June 2008 (see Appendix 2).

In theory – as indicated from the figures in Table 5 – this devaluation should have a devastating effect on the economic viability of gold farming, causing even a low-wage labour model to collapse and driving gold farmers out of business.

Rumors of my demise and all that. He suggests that "productivity increases" and the Burning Crusade quests are what keeps them alive, but he isn't all that sure because he has no hard data.

The best I can say is that the author freely admits faults in his paper.

Check it out for yourselves here: http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/di_wp32.htm

RobotPants

08-22-2008, 07:54 AM

Don't take this as me supporting gold sellers, but the reason they exist is because people give them money. If it wasn't profitable, there wouldn't be so many out there. And in WoW specifically, buying gold becomes attractive to some people because of all the things in the game that they'd otherwise have to spend hours doing instead of playing and enjoying themselves.

Gathering materials for crafting feels like work. It's not fun at all and it takes a lot of time away from the other fun parts of the game. And besides that, the actual crafting isn't even useful until the high levels, which makes the whole thing a drag. So yeah, I can see someone thinking it's worth their real money to bypass all the tedious bullshit to get to the good parts. Still, I'd rather just not deal with any of it if the only choices are lots of grinding or paying my real money. But I can certainly understand someone else thinking a few bucks is worth it. Blame Blizzard for making the professions completely worthless for most of the game.

Rollory

08-22-2008, 08:33 AM

Just think, that's $500 million worth of value that the game companies _aren't_ getting a cut of, because they can't be arsed to design the proper systems for it.

extarbags

08-22-2008, 08:57 AM

On-topic:

http://kotaku.com/5040313/why-grind-when-theres-tales-of-vesperia-dlc

I'm speechless...

If there was a real MMO for the 360, this would actually not be a bad idea. In a single-player game, though? Laughable.

Gordon Cameron

08-22-2008, 09:06 AM

Someone wanted to sell me a bag with 18 slots the other day. For 45 gold. Seriously, what the fuck?

I don't think this is such an abnormal price for an 18 slotter. Imbued netherweave bags sell in the 30-40g range from what I've seen, though I'm not sure what the value of the mats generally is.

To a 70, 45 gold is an amount that can be acquired in a half hour's worth of daily quests or so, so it's not a big deal.

tim edwards

08-22-2008, 09:26 AM

RichardC

08-22-2008, 09:32 AM

Decided not to in the end. I made two bits, but then found myself switching back to Frost, so it would have meant basically starting again. Put the bits I'd made into the bank and made the Shadowcloth shoulders before deciding to do a wait and see.

My guild's too rubbish to do the high-level content anyway, and that this close to the expansion, I may as well see what Licking would offer before sinking the time into making the rest. I can always build a snazzy set later on.

jpinard

08-22-2008, 09:47 AM

Reading stuff like this about MMORGS ruins the whole idea of the game for me. It brings real life crap into the MMORG, and the whole reason I play is to escape this reality.

RobotPants

08-22-2008, 09:51 AM

But you're not in the game while you're here.

Kael

08-22-2008, 10:59 AM

Ive always wanted to setup an MMO charity. Take Unicef for example. Create an online presence for them (get blizzards approval) and the system goes like this:

1. People can donate digital goods/gold to Unicef in WoW.
2. Unicef sells those goods to other players for real life money.
3. The real life money goes to Unicef for the medical needs of children in 3rd world countries.

People feel good that their digital dontation and purchase is going to a good cause, and somehwere in the world someone's life is getting better because you farmed peter weasels for 2 hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Jafisob

08-22-2008, 11:04 AM

A good question is, 'If the market is really this large why don't the MMO companies get on board and sell gold themselves?' . I suspect the answer is that it will cost more revenues due to loss of susbscribers as their game economy is hosed. Didn't EQ2 add servers where you could buy gold directly from Sony?

I knew a 15-year-old who charged his parents' credit card for $1,000 to buy WoW gold. It's a good thing I wasn't his father.

Anyone who buys ingame gold with RL money shouldn't be playing the game in the first place in my opinion.

Good thing I wasn't his father because I would have denied the credit card charges. Try to convince my cc company that the charge for a non-corporeal, difficult to track/confirm, and 'grey' market transacation is legit.

Cal

08-22-2008, 11:06 AM

Well it seems maybe im in the minority about not spending real life money, in MMOg's. Maybe it's because i only play them casually i.e 5 hours a week max, and prefer to just quest and PvP. I guess if you spend 5 hours per evening raiding i can see why you would want the best gear, but for me i prefer earning stuff, part of the fun for me i suppose. I can see some online games getting bloody expensive in the future tho!

Maybe in 5 years time all mmog's will have built in ATM's in the banks you just plug your credit details into and get what you need?

Alan Au

08-22-2008, 11:19 AM

Why don't casinos have problems with chip farmers? Oh, that's right, casinos are money sinks, not money generators. I mean, it would be silly if casinos were to start charging a monthly fee for unlimited slot-machine usage and then offered payouts in chips/corporate scrip, etc. In this case, MMO gold is the liquid currency surrogate. I don't know, maybe impose a transaction tax on player-player interactions?

Alternately, maybe the payment structure needs to switch to a microtransaction model, or a pay-per-hour model, maybe via a declining balance account that would come out to roughly the same as a monthly fee for an average player. Casual players don't spend as much, and 24/7 gold farming accounts pay more. Basically, it ties the in-game money to revenues.

Okay, so I'm just babbling here, and I might be missing some big factor that makes this whole thing fall apart, but I was sort of wondering why this doesn't happen in real life. Well, okay, maybe it does, but in service of a $500M industry?

- Alan

rossm

08-22-2008, 11:29 AM

The reason I don't look down on real money trade is because the gold is earned through normal means, like any other player could. You're just trading time outside of the game for somebody else's time inside of it. The economy isn't affected adversely. Overall gold input might go up, because people are deciding (for reasons outside of the game) that they want gold more. But increased production isn't a bad thing, and it's uncontrollable.

This of course assumes farmers aren't using hacks or something to farm, which again any player could use. That's not really a fault of real money trade anyway.

Also, the charity thing is a really neat idea. I like it.

Kael

08-22-2008, 11:40 AM

Okay, so I'm just babbling here, and I might be missing some big factor that makes this whole thing fall apart, but I was sort of wondering why this doesn't happen in real life. Well, okay, maybe it does, but in service of a $500M industry?

- Alan

Its as easy to consider ticket speculators (those that purchase blocks of tickets immediatly on release in the hopes that they will be able to resell them for more money later) as ticket farmers. They are also monopolizing a limited resource to attempt to turn it into profit.

No different than people going through old buildings (legally or illegally) to pull out copper to sell.

The difference isnt in the behavior, its been around forever. But that its being applied to digital content. Digital content is theoretically unlimited so it isnt worth anything to attempt to monopolize a resource. Or building an industry to make gaining a resource easier isnt usually that benificial since the technology changes and improves itself so quickly. Its only in the creation of an artifical constraint (Blizzard making it difficult to get the resource) that creates the business opportunity.

wigglestick

08-22-2008, 11:43 AM

I don't really think there is a way to fight this stuff effectively. They always find a way to sell. People might hate me for saying this but I still think a game developer that somehow embraces in-game selling or somehow makes in game currency obsolete will quite possibly turn this current trend around.

I just don't see an easy way to do either of those though.

I'd think embracing in-game selling may well work. What do you mean by "makes in game currency obsolete?" I don't think this will ever be really viable; you get situations like the old D2 SoJ economy, or the current D2 Realms economy which is based mostly on Pgems and runes.

If there's no explicit in-game economy, one will develop anyway, and it may be one that's much more of a hassle.

intruder

08-22-2008, 12:11 PM

Reldan

08-22-2008, 12:30 PM

It boils down the idea that in a game as complex as an MMORPG everybody who plays it is getting something different out of the experience.

Blizzard has designed the game to require that SOMEBODY go through their timesinks in order to access premium content - a carrot/stick approach almost universally used in these games. Some people don't mind the timesinks - many may even find them fun. Others hate "wasting" their time on such repetitive activity - their fun is from new content or social interaction.

What's gets me is when the do-it-yourself players start bashing on the other group, as if they were threatened in some way by the different approach others take to the game. It's like the guy without a DVR getting pissed that the guy who bought a TIVO no longer has to let the TV control his life if he just wants to watch his favorite shows.

Reldan

08-22-2008, 12:32 PM

It would be unsavory for Blizzard to directly sell gold or in-game items.

However, I'm surprised they don't have a premium subscription plan that decreases item wear or something along those lines - something that's equivalent to gold that they could spin as being "for-their-dedicated-players".

Mark Crump

08-22-2008, 12:45 PM

extarbags

08-22-2008, 01:17 PM

It would be unsavory for Blizzard to directly sell gold or in-game items.

How so?

roboczar

08-22-2008, 01:33 PM

I think the main beef people have with the gold buying model is essentially based on 'class'. If you allow people to buy their way around the game, it goes against the assumption that anyone, if they work hard enough, can have the best items.

MMORPGs are sold on a mildly competitive 'you are your own man' model that so far is pretty egalitarian. You invest the time, the risk, and the work, you get the reward. When you start sanctioning money-for-privilege it throws the whole dynamic out of whack, and you have the upper tier players who buy in and go right to the 'fun' content, and the lower tier of people who grind it out and permanently settle for 2nd best.

In a situation like that, you run into the microtransaction MMO issue of extremely low retention of the 2nd tier, which over time fritters away your 1st tier player base. Some of the very first F2P microtransaction games are ghost-towns these days, and some of the new-wave ones (Rappelz, etc) are running into troubled waters.

The reason why WoW is so popular is because they captured the 'work for reward' dynamic so well and tied it up with easy gameplay. It's hard to honest-to-god lose in WoW, and sometimes losing is still winning (like in BGs). People like that, almost universally, because it makes them feel good.

Lorini

08-22-2008, 01:36 PM

As soon as the game becomes a money pit, I'm outta there. The reason I'm able to play is because I can contain costs, but if it works out that I have to spend some unspecified amount to remain 'in the game', then I'm done.

extarbags

08-22-2008, 01:58 PM

You guys are acting like there's no middle ground between the current system and "ok, from now on, if you want a good weapon you have to pay cold hard cash for it." What if Blizzard started selling items with the following provisions in place:

1. Aside from being available for purchase, gold will remain exactly as hard to come by as it is now.
2. Aside from being available for purchase, items will be obtained through the same avenues that they currently are.
3. All items made available for purchase will be items that are also attainable through conventional means.

What's wrong with that? If you put the work in, you can still get the best equipment without spending money on it; it's the same system that's currently in place. The only difference is that if you, like, work a job and have a life, maybe a spouse, maybe a kid or two, and time is at a premium, you can skip the part you're not interested and just buy the items/gold if it has value to you.

I think the main beef people have with the gold buying model is essentially based on 'class'. If you allow people to buy their way around the game, it goes against the assumption that anyone, if they work hard enough, can have the best items.

As written above, it doesn't have to. It only goes against the assumption that hard (in-game) work is the only way to get the best items, but honestly, this is a game we're talking about, so why should that hold true?

On the subject of class, I have to disagree. MMO's are really pretty inexpensive in terms of dollars per hour of entertainment, and in MMO worlds, real-world class systems are largely replaced by alternative class systems in which time, not real-world wealth, is the differentiator. Think about it: those who have the most time to sink into these games level the fastest, get the best stuff, and have the best characters. Introducing item purchases for real-world currency would actually help narrow the class gap in MMO's.

Edit: the point being, it might take me twenty in-game hours to make 500 gold, but at my job, I can earn enough after taxes to buy it from IGE in just one hour. What's fundamentally wrong with that, if it doesn't confer any advantage that I couldn't have gotten if I had spent the time instead? What's wrong with that money going to Blizzard instead of a third party?

RobotPants

08-22-2008, 02:00 PM

Gold buying is pretty much a non-issue in WoW in terms of how it affects the economy now. When you consider how lots of players who have been sitting at level 70 doing dailies for a while accumulating literally tens of thousands of gold by just playing the game, people spending real money would have to spend quite a bit just to catch up. Even casual players who have been 70 for a bit have long since purchased their epic flying mounts and now complain about having nothing to spend their gold on.

roboczar

08-22-2008, 02:05 PM

As written above, it doesn't have to. It only goes against the assumption that hard (in-game) work is the only way to get the best items, but honestly, this is a game we're talking about, so why should that hold true?

On the subject of class, I have to disagree. MMO's are really pretty inexpensive in terms of dollars per hour of entertainment, and in MMO worlds, real-world class systems are largely replaced by alternative class systems in which time, not real-world wealth, is the differentiator. Think about it: those who have the most time to sink into these games level the fastest, get the best stuff, and have the best characters. Introducing item purchases for real-world currency would actually help narrow the class gap in MMO's.

You're arguing about a different thing than I'm talking about. I don't have a problem with gold-buying under that model, which is why I don't have a problem with it in WoW, since that's essentially how it works.

What I am against is special privilege for the well-monied that is unavailable otherwise. This was mentioned earlier in the thread as an ancillary to the original topic. It is very bad for the game and why F2P micro games flounder and disappear so often.

Also keep in mind what is cheap for you is not necessarily so for others, and regardless of how much a thing costs, it still breeds ill-will and demotivation.

extarbags

08-22-2008, 02:17 PM

You're arguing about a different thing than I'm talking about. I don't have a problem with gold-buying under that model, which is why I don't have a problem with it in WoW, since that's essentially how it works.

What I am against is special privilege for the well-monied that is unavailable otherwise. This was mentioned earlier in the thread as an ancillary to the original topic. It is very bad for the game and why F2P micro games flounder and disappear so often.

Oh. Well yeah, who's in favor of that model? Although I'd say that most of the reason those games flounder and disappear so often is that they're mainly WoW knockoffs with poor production values and almost no character customization.

Also keep in mind what is cheap for you is not necessarily so for others, and regardless of how much a thing costs, it still breeds ill-will and demotivation.

Well, what's cheap for some people isn't necessarily so for me; namely, time. If they suffer from ill will, that's kind of their problem, right?

roboczar

08-22-2008, 02:23 PM

Well, what's cheap for some people isn't necessarily so for me; namely, time. If they suffer from ill will, that's kind of their problem, right?

No, it becomes the developer's problem. Unlike real life, when you are angry or frustrated in an MMO, you can just opt out. Lost revenue due to frustration and chronically unmet expectations is the death of any MMO.

I point to the F2P micro turnover as the outstanding example in support of that position. I make it my hobby to check them out and explore the community, and as far as I've been able to tell by being involved in about a half dozen of them is that people much prefer the P2P model because it generally has some guarantee of a level playing field. Many people I played with in those games were there because they were waiting in the wings after leaving P2P for financial reasons. Very few had any intention of paying, and generally had nothing good to say about those who would pump money into the game. It demotivated them and they would do things like entirely opt out of PvP or competitive PvE because of skewed itemization.

Once the troubles they were having were over, it was back to P2P, because the game developers have to work harder to maintain their revenue stream and 'play fair'.

extarbags

08-22-2008, 02:27 PM

No, it becomes the developer's problem. Unlike real life, when you are angry or frustrated in an MMO, you can just opt out. Lost revenue due to frustration and chronically unmet expectations is the death of any MMO.

Where would the chronically unmet expectations come from? Again, nothing would change for people who weren't interested in buying items.

I point to the F2P micro turnover as the outstanding example in support of that position.

Again, lots and lots of other, better reasons for those games to fail.

roboczar

08-22-2008, 02:29 PM

Sorry, I edited the post after I accidentally hit 'post'.

roboczar

08-22-2008, 02:30 PM

Where would the chronically unmet expectations come from? Again, nothing would change for people who weren't interested in buying items.

Again, I am not talking about that model. I'm addressing the 'premium accounts' and the games that supply an advantage to those who pay.

idrisz

08-22-2008, 02:39 PM

Again, I am not talking about that model. I'm addressing the 'premium accounts' and the games that supply an advantage to those who pay.

you mean like almost every major mmo that's recently release or coming out with pre-order bonus item or Collector item?

roboczar

08-22-2008, 02:42 PM

you mean like almost every major mmo that's recently release or coming out with pre-order bonus item or Collector item?

Even if it's reality I don't have to automatically like it. :p

And in most cases the collector-bonus item is of minimal importance at best. In fact, I can't even think of a collector item for any recent MMO that people point to and say 'oh man, that's coming with me all the way to the ENDGAME'...

idrisz

08-22-2008, 03:09 PM

And in most cases the collector-bonus item is of minimal importance at best. In fact, I can't even think of a collector item for any recent MMO that people point to and say 'oh man, that's coming with me all the way to the ENDGAME'...

Recall Totem for AOC, allowing you to recall once a day to your racial capital(not bind point).

the bow you get from pre-order from amazon is really good too, not end game good but good for lvl 20+

roboczar

08-22-2008, 03:44 PM

Haven't tried AoC, but you see my point, then.

Reldan

08-22-2008, 04:16 PM

Haven't tried AoC, but you see my point, then.

Actually I think his point was providing an example of why your point is wrong, as opposed to him agreeing with you in any way.

Telefrog

08-22-2008, 04:24 PM

Doesn't SOE already have an in-game item for real money auction system that skims a percentage off the top right now?

roboczar

08-22-2008, 07:18 PM

Actually I think his point was providing an example of why your point is wrong, as opposed to him agreeing with you in any way.

OK then. I guess I'm mystified.

shift6

08-22-2008, 07:55 PM

From the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7575902.stm
Prof Heeks said very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector were hard to come by but his work suggested that in 2008 it employs 400,000 people who earn an average of $145 (£77) per month creating a global market worth about $500m.
My multiplication tables are a bit rusty, but 400K x $145 = about $60m. Is there $440m in raw profit going to the Sino-Indian slum lord of the gold farming sweatshop or something?

One of my pen-and-paper DMs had a good way to control the economy in his games, which might translate to MMOs. When you level up, you spend 1000 gold times the new level, for instance 8000gp to "train" for eighth level. This could of course be scaled to whatever is needful for the economy. This money then essentially vanishes, helping to ease inflation.

I also thought of an interesting idea while reading this thread. I credit some of my own thoughts about Viva Pinata and tim edwards' post above. You could create a simple set of incentives for those who do not buy things, but rather craft or build or acquire or grind or whatever them.

Let's say you have an item which requires ten magickal stones from the Scorchy Plain, and you string them together to craft a Stone Necklace of Scorchiness. Well, perhaps one guy buys the stones and just builds the necklace (or buys the finished item); it operates normally. But then another guy grinds and plays and loots and raids and all that, finding the ten stones on his own. He then crafts on his own the necklace and keeps it; it operates as normal but has an "attuning" bonus to its powers of 20% or whatever. Or perhaps you want scrolls. You can buy them from others and they work normally, or you can learn to write them yourself, and by being so intimately familiar with them you get a bonus (damage, heal, whatever). In fact, offering skills like this outside of general class norms (an Orc barbarian writing magical scrolls?) you offer another way to sink money out of the economy as the players pay for each skill point there as well.

Here's another idea. The developer hosts a PvP Games which costs so-many-gold per person to enter and offers unique items for winners. Prizes can range from things like a custom designed armor (same stats just a unique look), player buffs (permanent +5 to whatever), or even creatively unique items (property with a keep, a kingdom wide announcement posted in every town and hamlet about the mighty victory of so-and-so, some kind of unique pet/familiar, etc). Or even offer cash prizes where the pot is say half of the entry money.

Some shit like that. Have any MMOs done something like this?

Aeon221

08-22-2008, 07:59 PM

shift6, I linked the actual paper in my post somewhere upthread, and went into some detail criticizing it. The author does a hypothetical breakdown of the expenses and earnings of a gold farming company based on fourth hand information. Basically, he creates a hypothetical out of a hypothetical. But it's a tad more complicated than 400k * 145$.

shift6

08-22-2008, 08:12 PM

Ah so you did. Sorry I missed it, I only read the article in the OP. I'll check your link out tonight, thanks.

Matthew Bramblet

08-23-2008, 05:23 AM

As mentioned, gold farming/selling is really a non-issue for anyone regularly playing WoW, assuming they've gotten at least one character to 70 (and Blizzard is going out of their way to try to get people leveled up there, these days.)

It's trivial for any level 70 to spend 5 minutes doing 3 daily Isle quests, while waiting for a battleground queue, to get ~35 gold; that's enough for daily repair bills, which are pretty much the only constant money sink. Blizzard's main strategy for counterbalancing this easy gold influx seems to be making a few very high priced items (currently the Gigantique Bag (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=38082) for 1500 gold, and new rings (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?npc=28721) in the next expansion that cost over 6000 gold.)

It's interesting to imagine various "pay to play" game designs, and some online games have done well with that concept. However, that idea doesn't seem to mesh as well with a standard MMORPG where people are already paying ~15$ a month for the ability to play. SOE is doing it with their special EverQuest 2 servers, but that hasn't expanded their playerbase substantially, so it's hard to make the case that it's worth it from a business standpoint.