If you can't beat the gold farmer, make everyone's life miserable
I'm able to roll with the changes. I can accept I can't bring more than 3oz. of water through a security checkpoint because an over-eager Homeland exec thought 24 was a documentary. We live in Changed Times. At least that's what the TSA guy said as he instructed me to bend over and I heard the snap of a latex glove. But this delay on receiving gold from auctions may have pushed me to take action. I'd write my Senator, but since his claim to fame is driving a good-looking woman off a bridge in Chappaquiddick (a family record his nephew beat when he flew two good looking women into the ocean off Martha's Vineyard), I don't see where he's going to help.
We all know why this was added. Those wily gold resellers came up with a fun way to get around the delay-in-mailing-gold problem by having you sell spare ribs for 5k gold. I don't know about you, but when I heard that I laughed my arse off. Talk about a way to game the system.
Changes like this make me think Blizzard hired that guy that forced NyQuil to now have the potency of children's aspirin. Really, whom do they think they are kidding here? If someone is going buy the gold to get their epic flyer it's unlikely they are going to hover their mouse over the checkout button and go: Ya know, I'd really like to just buy the 5k gold and not have to farm motes for the next five days, but, now that I think about it with the hour delay in the AH, I'll just go farm it.
My AH needs are modest. Once I've got a backpack full of whatever I'll send it off to my mule before I go to bed. Over the next few days I'm likely to wonder where the heck that backpack full of motes and skins went. Then I slap myself upside the head, log on the mule and hit the auction house. I'll then forget about the mule for a few days again. I don't think that my usage is all that different than most folks, and even if it's not, the delay in getting your gold isn't a big enough issue to force Bono to hold a benefit concert. Really, the only people I see this affecting are day traders. If you're one of those people sitting there going, "Gordon, I heard Blizzard is going to change the drop rates on Clefthoof Leather by -.94384384%, It's going for 50 gold a stack right now, but tomorrow it'll be going for 52. BUY BUY BUY!" well, you're playing a whole different game than I am.
Blizzard isn't going to stop gold farming by putting in delays to the mail and auction house. You want to stop gold farming? The answer is simple: make radical design changes that eliminate the need for gold and barter-able items. Because if it isn't a Reselling Gold Farmer stealing all the good-dropping mobs it's someone just farming gold to get their own mount. While people liken gold reselling to supporting terrorism, the harsh truth is that gold is entering the game largely through legal means. People buying gold are just outsourcing the farming they themselves would be required to do to get items.
Before the cries of "Heretic! Heretic! Burn him!" ensue in the comments I want to make sure the point of this isn't lost: in order to truly eliminate gold reselling, the reason why people feel the need to purchase gold has to be addressed. And that's likely to result in changes none of us want to deal with.
For those of you not buying pitchforks and torches in the AH, what say you: How much pain and suffering are you willing to put up if the result is the elimination of third-party reselling?
