Global Chat: Broke and richer for it edition
Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat!
This week we're looking at all things money: Who has it, who doesn't, and why it makes the world go 'round. Naturally, Massively writers are richer than seven kings of Arabia combined and aren't concerned with such petty matters, but it seems to weigh heavily upon some of your heads. Hit the jump and let's see what the buzz was like in the comments section this past week!
We don't know whether to laugh or cry -- or both -- at Das' conundrum when the Star Wars: The Old Republic pre-order went live:
I just went to the page and bought the most expensive one I could find just because it's Star Wars and I don't even have an income right now. Thanks Visa!
Please note that the above comment is not fiscally responsible, even for Sith lords.
Gold farming, buying and selling was a surprisingly huge point of discussion a few days ago when Scott Hartsman shared with the community why it hurts MMOs and those who play them. Discussion raged back and forth over whether he was overblowing the situation or understating it, and reader SnarlingWolf had some strong words about these practices:
I've been saying this for years, but no matter how much you say it or point out all the ways it hurts people, the buyers insist it doesn't affect anyone else.
I've talked to many people who admit to buying gold in just about every MMO they play and they truly don't get how it negatively affects every single person in the game. From hacked accounts, from ruining content, from causing rapid in game inflation which in turn causes even more people to feel they need to buy gold... they always insist it doesn't have any bad effects.
People are just greedy and don't care. Every game I've been in, both MMOs and regular online multiplayer games, people will break the rules and even flat-out exploit and cheat. They don't think ahead of what happens if it gets so bad that the no one plays the game anymore and as a result they lose their fun. All they focus on is the short term gains and how great they are.
If I ran an MMO, I would put tracking in place on gold and when I found sellers and banned them, I would permaban everyone who directly got gold from them and then temporarily ban their guild and any people who ended up with some of the gold. By doing this you cause enough pain to enough people that everyone starts self policing the problem.
Finally, while WyattEarp89 cares not one whit about gold, he is pretty bananas over Star Trek Online's latest update:
I am really enjoying my time in Star Trek Online! The new combat update is awesome and just feels a whole lot better. The nice thing is that Cryptic did not do away with the old way of doing ground combat which is called RPG mode. So for those that like that better than the new "shooter mode" can still play the ground combat like they have been.
The new Qo'nos First City looks great and feels more Klingon than the original city did. The Borg now being able to adapt to your weapon is awesome and feels more like I am fighting a Borg instead of just another enemy.
I have the graphics maxed out and I can see a difference to the way the graphics look after this update. It does look a lot better.
There is just to much to list on what I love about this update. And I agree with everything you have posted. Star Trek Online has come a long way and Cryptic has done a great job with the updates and communicating with the playerbase.
So, how wisely do you invest your money into MMOs, and what do you think about these discussions?
