WoW GF Arrested

[giaokei]

WoW Gold Farmers Arrested (http://news.mmosite.com/content/2008-05-09/20080509003204494.shtml)
Is it necessary to arrest? What's the big deal with buying gold? I pay and I get enough for my epic mount without having to countless hours on farming gold. it's ok for both of side. Why stop? What need to stop is that the dev should stop to make the game grind, a time killer a life killer.

[Fiery Diamond]

Besides the fact that the creators/sellers/etc. of the game don't want you to (which for some reason you don't care about), it gives unfair advantage to those with lots of real-world money.

[Khanderas]

Besides the fact that the creators/sellers/etc. of the game don't want you to (which for some reason you don't care about), it gives unfair advantage to those with lots of real-world money.
The World gives unfair advantages to those with lots of money, just a thing to accept.
The real reason is problebly because it is against the contract of sorts you verify when you press accept.


WoW Gold Farmers Arrested (http://news.mmosite.com/content/2008-05-09/20080509003204494.shtml)
Is it necessary to arrest? What's the big deal with buying gold? I pay and I get enough for my epic mount without having to countless hours on farming gold. it's ok for both of side. Why stop? What need to stop is that the dev should stop to make the game grind, a time killer a life killer.
If the game didnt have time wasters, it would last a month or two for a substantial amount of subscribers, perhaps a million or two. Major money not going into Blizzard pocket... I mean to improving the game. Can't read your link since I am work, but arrests seems like a logical choice when just kicking their accounts isnt working (seems they are making enough money to buy new accounts for advertising themselves already) or just hack others accounts (or trick ppl into giving it to them for gold farming / levelling purposes, that will make ppl angry at the game, themselves and the goldcompanies and stop playing WoW).

[NikkTheTrick]

I am sure there is a copyright violation in case of gold farming...

That said, grind is the reason why I stay away from MMORPGs. I just don't have time to grind to compete... And I would not pay money to the third party out of principle. RO all the way: nothing like a WWII shooter where life expectancy of an average soldier is one and half minutes (3 if it is a tank-only map. 5 if it is Bondarevo and you are a Russian in T-34)... Ahh, the memories of bayonet charging and gtting slaughtered. good times, good times :smallbiggrin:

[Tengu]

I bet ten bucks and a stepladder that it's a generated message written by someone on whatever forum can he find. Still thanks for the information, though - it feels me with joy.

On a side note, the amount of grinding in WoW is miniscule when compared to many other MMOs. And with the way dailies are, you have to be a complete idiot or fail at this game (which also means you're an idiot) to buy gold.

[Khanderas]

I bet ten bucks and a stepladder that it's a generated message written by someone on whatever forum can he find.

On a side note, the amount of grinding in WoW is miniscule when compared to many other MMOs.
I certainly agree with you there. Dailys = easy 200 gold a day (by a day I mean 1½-2 hours). Sure its for level 70's only but only then do you need money anyway. Atleast so for me. I had to wait to level 43 for my first mount on my first character, but since then I always had more money then I needed.

[Behold_the_Void]

I'd like to point out that the gold farming operation in question was Chinese, and those have a rather nasty reputation to say the least.

[Kizara]

Diction on the article was fairly bad. That aside, meh...

I find it amusing how at the end they say:


However, completely getting rid of them is nearly impossible, is there any good idea to deal with it? feel free to leave a comment.

...

Um, how about arresting them? Seems to be a good way to me.

Although the little bit about one partner reporting the other to the authorities might be hard to duplicate generally. Might have to actually do some investigative and enforcement work.

[The Orange Zergling]

Basically you're stealing Blizzard's property and re-selling it*. Also it's cheating because people with lots of actual money also get lots of in-game money.

*This is assuming the traditional 'keylog-strip account-mail gold to alt' method is used. Even if it isn't, the second point still stands.

Also, it's Blizzard's game. Don't like the rules? Don't play it.

[Maxymiuk]

I thought the GF in the title stood for "girlfriend" and expected to see something about bizarre/creepy net romances. Alas, a requiem for dashed hopes.

/tangent

To answer the OP question:

As Fiery Diamond said, it's an unfair advantage to those who can afford to spend more than the subscription fee on the game. Gold selling causes inflation in the game economy, over time reaching the point where you practically have to buy gold to afford that top tier item, or else prepare to do hundreds of hours of farming yourself (something I'm sure every golf farmer dreams of).
As to why the game's developers would crack down on it, think about it this way - there's always going to be far more people who won't be able to afford to buy gold than those who will. The former will be unhappy with the economical imbalance and, possibly, leave. This means their subscription goes away too, and thus does the developer's income. Which, depending on how it goes, may well develop into a snowball effect - for example if you look at a company like McDonalds, their marketing says every client they lose really means losing 5-8 people: family, friends, anyone they complain to.
Therefore, it's in Blizzard's best interest to stop anything that makes the majority (and we're talking the vast majority here) of their player base unhappy.

As to the complaint about the grind - OK, I'm going to borrow a page from Yahtzee's book here and ask: really, what is the major appeal in MMO's aside from the grind? Any that I played (and there were several) revolved around killing things in order to get better score/stats/stuff/bragging rights (like the epic mount you've mentioned). And from further experience, it mostly comes down to bragging rights and strutting about in your "leet lootz" making new players feel jealous. So not only is it being a bit of a jerk, if you bought your gold, it means that you're paying for it. So it's a bit like showing up to your high-school reunion with a lady you hired from an escort service to pretend that she's your beautiful wife. Only in this case the wife is (judging by the photo in the link) a malnourished teenager from Taiwan. Who performed the same service for countless other people just like you.

And I'm going to stop here before I strain this metaphor any further. :smallamused:

[Tengu]

Maxymiuk: You know, 99% of good gear in WoW comes from PvP or killing raid bosses, and you spend gold on other things. The rest of the point is good, though.

[poleboy]

I thought the GF in the title stood for "girlfriend" and expected to see something about bizarre/creepy net romances. Alas, a requiem for dashed hopes.

Me too. Needless to say, I was very disappointed.

By the way, am I the only who thinks it smells a bit like troll in here? New user, no avatar, posts controversial topic then never replies? :smallconfused:

[Premier]

The World gives unfair advantages to those with lots of money, just a thing to accept.

What you seem to be missing is that World of Warcraft is a game, and games, unlike the real world, are supposed to be fair, so no, it's not "just a thing to accept".

Would you play Chess if your opponent was allowed to start with more pieces because they're richer? Would you play Settlers of Catan if instead of rolling the dice the richest guy had the privilege to just call out what the numbers are? Would you please football if the richer team started with more players on the field and an automatic three goals?

[Psychosomatic]

Maxymiuk: You know, 99% of good gear in WoW comes from PvP or killing raid bosses, and you spend gold on other things. The rest of the point is good, though.Indeed, for a lot of the people the fun is in arenas and raiding and not in the endless grind, which is why they buy gold - by doing so they bypass the repetitive content and are afforded more time to spend on the portion they enjoy.

[Fri]

It's not a thread about creepy net romance?

*scurry away from the thread*

[Triaxx]

Gold Farming could kill WoW? In that case, GO Gold Farmers!

[Holammer]

If I felt I had to buy gold to be able to play a game, I'd cancel the account and do something else. It's not like it's rocket science to make money, I made 14k in less than two weeks purely by "playing the AH" with enchanting materials.
You'd be surprised how well buying cheap and selling for a profit works.

As for gold sellers, kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out. In fact, they should punish the buyers too. Give 'em a flag that changes the helm graphics for a dunce cap for a month.

[Tengu]

Indeed, for a lot of the people the fun is in arenas and raiding and not in the endless grind, which is why they buy gold - by doing so they bypass the repetitive content and are afforded more time to spend on the portion they enjoy.

Have you even played this game? You don't need to farm anything to enjoy raiding or pvp. Fail.

[Were-Sandwich]

"Cheaters never prosper"

[Destro_Yersul]

You know, I've never understood the WoW gold industry. You pay to play the game, then you pay someone else to play the game for you. This seems counterintuitive.

[Carne]

As I recall reading about this from another source, they weren't arrested because they were violating Blizzard's ToS - that's not an arrestable offense.

They were arrested because Chinese authorities were concerned about distribution of $200k of prifots made between the two owners who were fighting over it.

The arrests, therefore, were not because of gold farming, but because of China's take on capitalism (or lack thereof).

[Samiam303]

In a lot of cases, gold farming accounts pay for their game subscriptions using stolen credit card information, therefore meaning a huge expense in the end for the game company.

[Illiterate Scribe]

I think that people who farm WBL in D&D 4e should be arrested.

[Psychosomatic]

Have you even played this game? You don't need to farm anything to enjoy raiding or pvp. Fail.Why yes, as a matter of fact I have, have you? Or is your idea of "raiding" a 3-night kara clear?

Here's an idea of my weekly expenses in a 4-night-a-week raiding guild:
2x Flask of Relentless Assault per night, 40-50g each
10x Roasted Clefthoof per night, 5g total
4x Adamantite Weightstone per night, 2.5g each
5-10x Super Mana Potion per night, 7g per stack
repairs, 20-30g per night minimum

Which gives us a per-night total of 130+ gold per night if I were to simply buy everything off the auctionhouse, weekly that would be 520g. I don't spend raw gold on everything, but whenever I farm for mats I'm investing my time towards reducing these gold costs.

That isn't even including things like the Shadow Resist sets my guild is currently farming for in preparation for Mother Shahraz. Each set requires 9 hearts of darkness, 5 void crystals, 13 primal life, 18 primal shadow, and miscellaneous other mats. We need one set per person for the fight, which is quite a big farming endeavor.

For arenas/pvp repair costs are much lower, but in both raiding and pvp there is a constant cost of enchanting and gemming new gear, which can be very expensive. Uncut blue-quality gems can run upwards of 30-40g each, and epic-quality gems can run in the 300g range. Enchants such as Mongoose and Executioner can run over 1,000g depending on the availability of the mats.

So yeah, given the gold cost of playing this game, I can certainly understand why a lot of people turn to gold sellers. As it stands, I spend a lot of my time hitting SSO dailies for gold or farming primals to sell, and it eats into the amount of time I have outside of raids. I know a couple of people in my guild have already bought some gold to help offset their costs, so it's not as uncommon as you might think.

[Carne]

Why yes, as a matter of fact I have, have you? Or is your idea of "raiding" a 3-night kara clear?

Here's an idea of my weekly expenses in a 4-night-a-week raiding guild:
2x Flask of Relentless Assault per night, 40-50g each
10x Roasted Clefthoof per night, 5g total
4x Adamantite Weightstone per night, 2.5g each
5-10x Super Mana Potion per night, 7g per stack
repairs, 20-30g per night minimum

2 flasks = 4 hours of buff. 4 nights a week = 16+ hours raiding during said week.




So yeah, given the gold cost of playing this game, I can certainly understand why a lot of people turn to gold sellers. As it stands, I spend a lot of my time hitting SSO dailies for gold or farming primals to sell, and it eats into the amount of time I have outside of raids. I know a couple of people in my guild have already bought some gold to help offset their costs, so it's not as uncommon as you might think.

So given that you raid 16 hours a week (maybe more), surely your quote should read "So yeah, given the gold cost of playing this game in the way that I choose, I can certainly understand why a lot of people turn to gold sellers."

Not to put a downer on your fun or anything, or to imply that you fall into this particular situation, but if you only have 16-20 hours a week to play the game and you spend 80-100% of it raiding, you still can't use that to justify buying gold. Maybe you should just... raid less, and have more time for the support activities?

[Psychosomatic]

So given that you raid 16 hours a week (maybe more), surely your quote should read "So yeah, given the gold cost of playing this game in the way that I choose, I can certainly understand why a lot of people turn to gold sellers."Yes, that's a fair cop. However, I don't find my choice of playstyle to be all that rare in terms of players; I have yet to find a raiding guild that runs fewer than three nights a week, and the four top guilds on my server run five or six weekly. That kind of schedule goes hand-in-hand with the raiding playstyle (note where the response I quoted was stating that neither raiding nor pvping required external farming).


Not to put a downer on your fun or anything, or to imply that you fall into this particular situation, but if you only have 16-20 hours a week to play the game and you spend 80-100% of it raiding, you still can't use that to justify buying gold. Maybe you should just... raid less, and have more time for the support activities?I already sit one night a week to farm for my own expenses and to help build our supply of materials for the resistance sets, though I would much prefer to be in the raid for all four nights. Our officers, main tank, and raid leader don't have that liberty and consequently have to spend additional time for their own expenses. Or, in at least one case, buy the equivalent of that time in gold to continue to raid within their schedules.

[TheThan]

I thought this was a creepy Internet romance thread as well, how disappointing.

[Tengu]

Why yes, as a matter of fact I have, have you? Or is your idea of "raiding" a 3-night kara clear?

Here's an idea of my weekly expenses in a 4-night-a-week raiding guild:
2x Flask of Relentless Assault per night, 40-50g each
10x Roasted Clefthoof per night, 5g total
4x Adamantite Weightstone per night, 2.5g each
5-10x Super Mana Potion per night, 7g per stack
repairs, 20-30g per night minimum

Which gives us a per-night total of 130+ gold per night if I were to simply buy everything off the auctionhouse, weekly that would be 520g.

Easily affordable by doing dailies, which is maybe an hour each day. And you can further lower the cost by asking the people in your raidgroup to make stuff for you in exchange for mats.

[EvilElitest]

"Cheaters never prosper"

then why do i keep getting so much money from poker?
from
EE

[Zherog]

Easily affordable by doing dailies, which is maybe an hour each day.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't get anywhere near that after an hour of doing dailies. My regular rotation involves picking up the Nagrand SSO daily, the mana cell SSO daily, the sunfury attack plans SSO daily, and the nether residue SSO daily. I can accomplish the Nagrand-Mana Cell-Sunfury trio in about 45 minutes, on average; I've finished them in as fast as 37 minutes, and it's taken as long as 1:15 once. If I'm lucky, I also manage to find 8 nether residues while mining during the trip. However, most of the time I'm not lucky, and that means I only get to turn in the nether residue quest every other day.

So, I get 10g each from Nagrand, Mana Cell, and Sunfury, for a total of 30g. I also get a green item that sells for somewhere in the 6g range on the AH, for another 18g. That's a total of 48g, assuming the items sell quickly on the AH. In addition to that, ever other day I get 16g and a potion I can sell for about 50s. So that's another 8g per day, on average.

That brings my 1 hour-ish daily run to a grand total of 56g per day after considering what I'll make on the AH for the green items. Last I checked, 56 gold isn't even close to the 130+ Psychosomatic needs to fund his raiding.

[Carne]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't get anywhere near that after an hour of doing dailies. My regular rotation involves picking up the Nagrand SSO daily, the mana cell SSO daily, the sunfury attack plans SSO daily, and the nether residue SSO daily. I can accomplish the Nagrand-Mana Cell-Sunfury trio in about 45 minutes, on average; I've finished them in as fast as 37 minutes, and it's taken as long as 1:15 once. If I'm lucky, I also manage to find 8 nether residues while mining during the trip. However, most of the time I'm not lucky, and that means I only get to turn in the nether residue quest every other day.

So, I get 10g each from Nagrand, Mana Cell, and Sunfury, for a total of 30g. I also get a green item that sells for somewhere in the 6g range on the AH, for another 18g. That's a total of 48g, assuming the items sell quickly on the AH. In addition to that, ever other day I get 16g and a potion I can sell for about 50s. So that's another 8g per day, on average.

That brings my 1 hour-ish daily run to a grand total of 56g per day after considering what I'll make on the AH for the green items. Last I checked, 56 gold isn't even close to the 130+ Psychosomatic needs to fund his raiding.

You are doing it wrong :)

Mana Cell is rife with ninjas waiting to steal your mana cells. Even if you're ninja free, it takes time to farm up the phase device, phase out, kill worms, loot cells. That one's a time sink, and only worth doing if your server hasn't opened the portal.

Sunfury Attack Plans can drop in 3 kills... or 30. Another time sink, avoid it.

Nether Residue... argh. The biggest time-sink of the lot, especially for mining :smallbiggrin:

In all the three above, travel time is a giant time sink. Avoid them is time is of the essence.

Nagrand is way quick and worth doing. Takes 5 minutes.

The IoQD SSO dailies are much better return on time invested.

Bombing run: 6 minutes, and nerfed so you can do it in one shot.
Knowing Your Ley Lines: worth doing for the scroll, with an epic ground mount, another 5 minutes.
Converting the arcane robot one: 5 battles, 5 minutes (approx.)
Emmisary of Hate: 5 minutes.


Other dailies you might enjoy: Fishing (very quick and lucrative, 5 minutes), Booterang (if you have an epic flyer and have done the Netherwing pre-reqs, 10 minutes), Skettis bombing (an old favorite, though the new Kaliri ability to chase you in three dimensions kinda bites, 5 minutes), Ogri'la bombing and Ogri'la Emanations (5-10 minutes each).

That's ten dailies that'll get you more gold in the same time as you're getting now (taking about 50-60 minutes, not including travel time).

If you have time left over the Throne of Kil'Jaeden ones are sort of quick (5-10 each).

That'll net you between 70-90g if my calcs are correct, not including other quest rewards, green drops, SSO Supply rewards, Fishing bag contents or motes picked up along the way.

(Some of the depends on what SSO phase your server is on, fishing skill, or unlocking daily pre-requisites like Ogri'la and Netherwing. Also, no, this won't finance a 130g per day raiding habit, but is maybe a better use of your limited 1 hour per day for dailies. And it may contradict earlier advice I may have given regarding what is worthwhile and what isn't.. :smallsmile:)

[Zherog]

Interestingly, my last two times doing the sunfury attack plans, it dropped on the first kill. Mana cells, also, hasn't been bad at all. The first time I did it, it totally sucked. But since then I've had almost no problem at all with ninjas. My server seems to have a gentleman's agreement not to swipe a mana cell from somebody fighting a mana worm nearby.

I do the three as one big loop. Grab the quests, then head to Nagrand; I don't quite fly straight in Nagrand -- I bop around to a spot or two where I expect a windy cloud to appear. Once I have the SSO quest done, I fly up through Zangar (hoping to spot a cloud or two on the way), and into BEM. I land just outside Bash'ir Landing, apply poison to my blades, and get to work. The worst part of mana cells seems to be getting the phase device to drop. Once I have that, it doesn't seem to take too long to gather up 10 mana cells. Then it's off to Netherstorm to kill elves, before flying back to Shat to turn everything in.

And nether residue does, in fact, suck for a miner. I don't try to finish it; I just collect residue as I come across mining nodes. I'm going to mine anyway, so I might as well get the residue for the extra 16g. :smallgrin:

I've not done anything in Ogri'la or Netherwing previously; I've also had much worse luck with ninjas during the Skettis bombing than I've never had with mana cells. And, um... this character's fishing isn't high enough to do the fishing daily, despite my regularly claiming fishing is great for making money. :smallblush: I also don't have an epic ground mount... Heh.

[TheEmerged]

Mana Cells has three strikes against it -- time-consuming location, random drop (for the first part), and subject to ninja looting (for the second part).

Sunfury Attack Plans has two strikes against it for most people (time-consuming location & random drop). As a mage, however, I'm hearthed to Netherstorm instead of Shat so it is part of my regular rotation.

Nagrand Rift quest is so easy and quick they're nerfing it in the next patch (may or may not be tomorrow). The two in HFP aren't bad either.

But the easiest & quickest dailies are the ones on the island itself. 5-6 dailies I can sometimes get done in under half an hour.

You should also keep on eye on the cooking & fishing dailies. Depending on your skills and where you're going for other quests these can be easy money for 5-10 extra minutes. It's possible to score the Nagrand Hat Trick (cooking & fishing daily both out of Nagrand, with the daily you do there to boot), too.

[Cubey]

The worst part about this quest selection is the travel time - it's slow with an epic flying mount. With a normal one, it takes AGES. Which one do you have?

The best place for dailies is undoubtedly Quel'Danas - you get ~10+ of them, all in one small location. The only problem is that there's a lot of other players too, so the competition is big.

[Psychosomatic]

I don't bother with dailies, personally... I average better gold/hour collecting and reselling motes/primals than I do farming dailies. But yeah, it's possible to get a night's worth of raid expenses covered in about an hour and a half with dailies (sometimes more if the other faction is particularly nasty that day). Of course, given that estimated time of completion for dailies, that's an extra 6 hours per week that I would have to spend farming the same content. (I can usually make due with 4 hours a week farming primals, so long as I don't have to gem/enchant new gear)

[Project_Mayhem]

then why do i keep getting so much money from poker?

The greasy varmints dealing from the bottom of the deck - BLAM BLAM

*cleans brain off cards*

yeah, I thought this was gonna be some twisted love thing too.

[psycojester]

My Daily Farming route is:

Sunwell to pick up the discovering your roots quest and do the teleport quest to get back.

Over to Nagrand for the daily

Up to bash'ir camp for that one

over to netherstorm for the plans

down to Hellfire for the blast the gateway

onto the ridge for the roots daily

and back to shattrath for my money.

Easy cash quick, probably helps that i'm a well geared warlock and that the kill quests for me consist of instant cast dots and running off to grab the next mob while the first chases me around hitting me ineffectually. The mana-cell daily is a lot easier these days, traffic on my server has really dropped off and i always get the phase device within the first 5 kills, which take me the same amount of time as most people killing 1, also the primal mana motes from the worms really pile up.

[Zherog]

Interesting rotation, Jester. I may have to give that a try tonight.

[giaokei]

GF has arrested how about gold seller? ige.com the biggest gold seller still there doing big business.

[Tengu]

See, told ya.

[Rutee]

Huh. Chinese laws make it possible to arrest Gold Sellers? That must be new.

[Khanderas]

Huh. Chinese laws make it possible to arrest Gold Sellers? That must be new.
Selling goods that doesn't physically exist is Capitalist Corruption at its worst, comrade ! :smalltongue:

Seriously though, I don't wish chineese jails on anyone, certainly not for something as pitiful as goldfarmers.
Apparently buissness isnt as good nowadays for them. People in the game detect a hint of desperation from the sellers.

[poleboy]

Psycho, I also wonder why your guild doesn't have some system set up to distribute mats and potions between the people who really need them. If you raid as much as you do, you could benefit from making your own items and sharing them instead of buying them off the AH individually. Even just buying mats off the AH can save quite a bit. But I assume you know this.

[Tengu]

Dailies make getting fat stacks of cash so easy only pitiful people buy gold these days. Okay, more pitiful than in the past - buying gold was always pitiful.

Now "pitiful" no longer sounds like a word to me.

[Tirian]

Huh. Chinese laws make it possible to arrest Gold Sellers? That must be new.

Read the article again. One of the partners had the other arrested for "unfair revenue distribution." That's embezzlement. A gold farmer was arrested, but that's different from saying that someone was arrested for farming gold.

Blizzard can ban a gold farmer. If they wanted to go really crazy-go-nuts they could try suing one (for the actual theft of service/virtual property), although that is uncharted legal territory. But violating ToS is not a criminal act even (or perhaps especially) in China, so it is pretty hard to imagine someone being arrested for it.

[Khanderas]

The worst part about this quest selection is the travel time - it's slow with an epic flying mount. With a normal one, it takes AGES. Which one do you have?

The best place for dailies is undoubtedly Quel'Danas - you get ~10+ of them, all in one small location. The only problem is that there's a lot of other players too, so the competition is big.
Best place yes. Competition a problem ? Nope. All the quests there, with the exception of the one to kill BloodElf Zombies (recharging the wards) and collect keys for ore on the coast (and that one is alot more fun to do as a group, for speed and PvP protection. This one is the biggest timesink here anyway, the first to be dropped if you want your gold/hour at peak), all the other quests are shared. As in when you bomb stuff, it counts for both of you.
So go to the island, hook up with someone else (anyone really, healers and other dps deficient ppl appriciates this) and get it done in half the time, with twice the fun. 2 or 3 are problebly the best amount in such a group and you can problebly make all the quests in a half-hour, if the droprates are good (and you skip the ore quest). That makes 8 quests x 10 gold or so in 0.5 hours = 160gold / hour rate (plus scryer rep rings/books, free trip back to shattrah and perhaps a green drop).

[The Orange Zergling]

I regularly do ALL (except Discovering Your Roots and Ata'mal Armaments; those are the only ones not worth the trouble, IMO) of the SSO dailies in about 2 hours, every day. I got enough gold for my epic flight training AND exalted with SSO in a couple weeks, for very little hassle. I'm even on a pvp realm.

150g+ for the quests alone, not including the silver (up to and including 25s per mob) and loot (sometimes including greens) from the mobs, and the greens from the Supply Packages (sometimes it even comes with a Badge of Justice). All in all I'd say about 200g from SSO related stuff, per day. Add in Mote/Primal farming and such, and you can easily make 500g every single day.

Money isn't hard to make anymore, really.

EDIT: Also, I sense a thread-lock impending due to there already being a WoW thread... ah well.

[Hairb]

No doubt I'm not alone when I say that my first thoughts on the title of this thread were: They've done it. They've finally done it.

Also, I doubt I'm alone in being disappointed that GF stands for Gold Farmer and not Girl Friend.

CHALLENGE: The first GITP forum user to provide prima facie evidence that their WoW girlfriend has in fact been arrested wins...something. A sigatar, perhaps. Tiebreakers to be decided by length of time spent in custody and/or severity of charges laid. Who's with me on this?

[North]

Im glad to see breakers of the game being punished. Chinese jail being a lil extreme, but still am glad to see it happen. As an old time WoWer buying gold broke the game. If you could just buy yourself past the grind whats the point? When you had to earn your 60 (now 70) it meant something, but now its worthless its a burn to all the people who spent the time leveling the hard way. Since everything is a bunch more easy now. :smallsigh: Im glad I finally managed to quit it.

[Quincunx]

Bleh, WoW, sure, pick an MMORPG where I couldn't scrounge up something. On second thought, I can't quite fulfill the request. What I've heard of so far:


You Quit My Guild, I'm Calling the Cops
Your Online Girlfriend Went Offline Because She Was in Jail
Your Wife Cheated on You at the Fan Faire, Here's Pics
You Posted RL Threats on My Game Board, I'm Calling the Cops
You Posted RL Threats on My Game Board, I Called the Cops


That leaves aside the mundane instances of cheating on RL in-game, on in-game in RL, all permutations thereof, account stealing by RL GF, account stealing by in-game GF, all permutations thereof. . .

[Rutee]

Blizzard can ban a gold farmer. If they wanted to go really crazy-go-nuts they could try suing one (for the actual theft of service/virtual property), although that is uncharted legal territory. But violating ToS is not a criminal act even (or perhaps especially) in China, so it is pretty hard to imagine someone being arrested for it.

Yeah, I know. That was why I was surprised :P

[stainboy]

Here's an idea of my weekly expenses in a 4-night-a-week raiding guild:
2x Flask of Relentless Assault per night, 40-50g each
10x Roasted Clefthoof per night, 5g total
4x Adamantite Weightstone per night, 2.5g each
5-10x Super Mana Potion per night, 7g per stack
repairs, 20-30g per night minimum


Psychosomatic, what class/spec do you play? I'm assuming feral druid or ret paladin?

[Tom_Violence]

This thread is balls-out terrifying. Never did I think I'd actually see people admitting to having to put in hours of work in order to play a damn game. Out of curiousity, I wonder what the prices of gold are compared to how long it actually takes one to 'earn' that much honestly. If it works out cheaper to just buy it off farmers, then more fool you those that slog at the game.

[Cubey]

The daily quests, especially now that we have Quel'Danas, provide many opportunities for earning gold - opportunities that are easy, and despite being repetetive, quite fun too. You have to be a fool to use a gold farmer's services, or a total inept noob to need them.
Also, best stuff is bind-on-pickup and therefore not buyable by gold anyway.

[Psychosomatic]

Psychosomatic, what class/spec do you play? I'm assuming feral druid or ret paladin?Ret Pally, aye.

[Carne]

This thread is balls-out terrifying. Never did I think I'd actually see people admitting to having to put in hours of work in order to play a damn game.

Have to? No. But they get value out of the game in certain ways they consider commensurate with the amount of work put into it.

You could say the same thing about all sorts of "fun" activities people do that require a certain amount of preparation and work. Sports comes immediately to mind. You can play it for fun, or you can make it serious. Serious requires more commitment and effort.

And, keep in mind that the majority of the "work" put into high-end WoW raiding is pointing and clicking. Not really what you'd call work, but it really is a time-consuming grind though. And that's really only for a certain non-mandatory playstyle. I don't do half of that kind of crap, and still manage to enjoy the game. It really depends on your goals (and to a certain extent the people you find yourself sharing the game with).



Out of curiousity, I wonder what the prices of gold are compared to how long it actually takes one to 'earn' that much honestly. If it works out cheaper to just buy it off farmers, then more fool you those that slog at the game.

It takes me about an hour RL work to earn enough cash to buy about 3k gold. But given that the goal of WoW is not to earn gold (gold facilitates certain things, sure, but it's not the main objective) and that in large part enjoyment of the game is the journey rather than the destination, this is fine by me.

If I really wanted to "win", I'd find a stable private server where I could magic up free gold and gear and one-shot kill all the bosses. But what fun would that be? Buying gold on a public server is just the first step along this slippery slope. If you bypass even one of the rules, you haven't achieved anything. In the end, the only person you're competing against when playing a computer game is yourself.

I bet that I could win Monopoly by grabbing all the 500's out of the bank at the start, too. But that'd make me just as much of a cheating scumbag, and I'm sure that my opponents who are left to "slog at the game" wouldn't be terribly happy about it. I guess some people have a more highly developed sense of fair play than you do.

[Breltar]

I bet that I could win Monopoly by grabbing all the 500's out of the bank at the start, too. But that'd make me just as much of a cheating scumbag, and I'm sure that my opponents who are left to "slog at the game" wouldn't be terribly happy about it. I guess some people have a more highly developed sense of fair play than you do.

I dont think his point was that you should buy gold as much as the point that he doesnt see the point at slogging away for hours to get the required stuff needed for raids etc.

I used to play MMOs fairly religiously like that but then didnt see the point either compared to other things going on. Parts of MMOs are fun, but the other part is them making it as time consuming as possible for you to do anything so they get their monthly fees.

[Quincunx]

Farming gold for supplies for raid endeavors, or other MMORPG prep work like organizing a cross-continental naked gnome race, would be like homebrewing your own modules for D&D. You get a more in-depth experience for your playing time if you do the legwork beforehand; if you don't want to do the legwork, you pay someone else to do it for you*. This arrest would be like WotC vs. some independent homebrewer, suing one another over fair use of the module one party created.

*The organizers of naked gnome races accept some. . .peculiar items in compensation for their time.