farmers
Latest
In-Depth Article on Gold Farming
One of my favorite new WoW sites, Metroblogging Azeroth, has a great article today that goes deep into the controversial world of gold-farming. Author Jonas Luster details the many ways that buying gold outside of the game impacts players, developers, and the gameworld itself, with a knowledge of the game that makes his observations all the more relevant.There are plenty of things that the average gold buyer (who is almost certainly not some intrinsically evil person) probably never takes into account when they purchase gold from a farmer, aside from what shiny new armor it will buy them; they could care less what it does to the economy of the game. Then, there are those who actually believe the practice of gold farming is healthy for a virtual economy, and for people coming from that school of thought, Luster makes a convincing case why, in the end, everyone suffers from the actions of those few. Not to mention the connection he makes between the largest network of online gold-selling sites, and a trio of convicted child molesters. It's good readin'. Check it out here. Thanks to Sean for the link.
Gold Farmers Sending Out Press Releases?
As you might imagine, part of my job (aside from crime-fighting) involves poring through the latest WoW-related news items on the web & deciding which are worth pointing out. Sometimes there are some questionable items out there, but today I came across a story on PRWEB, apparently out of Halifax, Nova Scotia (Trailer Park Boys rule!), that is essentially nothing more than a big PR release for a gold farming/powerleveling site, no doubt trying to further bleed our beloved virtual economy dry. I won't mention the actual site in question, as I don't want them to recieve any traffic thanks to us, but I do think that this is A: a pretty ballsy move by the company in question (although they claim not to sell gold or powerleveling, only to rate other sites that do), and B: a pretty telling comment on the state of the virtual goods market; if these businesses are making enough money to have their own community of peer-reviewed sites, then it's obviously getting to be a bigger issue than anybody intended...most of all Blizzard.
Breakfast Topic: Fun with campers
The humble camper is a life-form frequently encountered amongst the many zones -- often found in great numbers throughout high-level areas in particular. By sticking to one particular spot based on a number of factors -- primarily aiming to harvest particular drops for fun and profit -- campers cause high-level questers a lot of trouble. I've had numerous encounters with level 60 campers who decide that pulling every mob in the area, all at once, is a good tactic to maximise drops -- indeed it is, but when there are other players there waiting to complete a quest, it's not a particularly nice tactic. Of course, on PvP servers you can add ganking into the equation, making it often more fun for the would-be quester to give up rather than waste several hours on one quest.Have you had bad camping experiences? Any tips to deal with those who just refuse to budge? Or are you a camper, and willing to defend your stance?Asking politely is one way to deal with campers, but it only gets you so far -- nowhere, when it comes to the opposite faction. Irritating them so that they'll give up is another tactic that I've seen employed, but can't bring myself to try. Ultimately, there isn't much you can do to stop people camping, especially when they ignore you -- but don't dismiss them all as gold farmers without a second glance. Some may be questers just like you.
Hacking Dire Maul
On my server, aces for the Darkmoon Faire decks tend to sell on the auction house for between 150 and 200 gold. That is, except for the ace of warlords, which seems to have bottomed out at 4 gold or so - and there tend to be ten of them on the auction house at any given time. The drop rate of the ace isn't high enough to make getting these quantities easily, which does make one wonder where they're coming from. The usual answer - farmers with teleport hacks, which allow them to jump directly to King Gordok in Dire Maul, kill him, and collect their loot. This video, which recently showed up on Google Video, shows us what might actually be happening here.
Fun with farmers
No, not that sort of farmer. Nick Yee over at the Daedalus Project is collecting "interesting social phenomena", and this tale of pitchforks and violence is among the exhibits. Members of the "Farmers Unite" raid regularly hang out in Redridge, dressed in overalls and straw hats, bashing lowbies with an assortment of weaponry from brooms to fishing poles. If you've been on the wrong end of a shovel with fiery enchant, you may have little sympathy for these players, but it sounds like a hilarious way to spend an afternoon.Got a guild that does something even stranger? You can always let us know via our tips form.[via Wonderland]
Snowballs vs. Farmers
Few WoW players like the professional gold and item farmers in the game. The rise of the underground economy for selling gold and rare items outside the Auction House has lead to farmers--most of whom hail from Asia and don't speak English well--repeatedly spamming the general chat channel with WTS messages. Some players have resorted to using snowballs, which were added last week as part of WoW's holiday content, as a way to manage an annoying gold farmer/spammer. Witnesses have seen one spammer get pelted with hundreds of snowballs in Ironforge, enough to cause her to flee the city. This is a great example of the community finding a solution to a problem instead of relying on a technical solution. Technical solutions can usually be overcome easily by the system exploiters (gold farmers), but solutions like this not so much. The truth of the problem is that it's as simple as Economics 101. As long as there are people willing to buy illicit gold instead of earning it, there will be people willing to farm the gold to sell to them...where there are buyers, there will be sellers. Until Blizzard can figure out a way (if they can figure out a way) to effectively block goldfarming and selling, I think I'll enjoy the snowballs while we have them.
