gold-farming
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Nexon takes Mabinogi offline to combat RMT
Mabinogi fans aren't having the best of weeks, as their MMO of choice has been down for the count since October 4th. ThisIsGame.com reported that Nexon took the free-to-play fantasy title completely offline in order to deal with unauthorized real-money trading and implement new security measures. Players were warned of the downtime approximately one hour before it occurred, and though there's no time table for a restart, Nexon has said that it will compensate customers accordingly. "We have found lots of RMT [resulting] from workers and auto players during the last holiday. So we are working on [an] investigation [...] and proceeding [with] broadscale system maintenance to root it out," the company said.
Gold Capped: The wild west economy of the patch 4.3 PTR
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego -- or offer him instant bargains -- by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. One of my all-time favorite television shows as a child was $ale of the Century. It was a simple question-and-answer game show with a twist: All correct answers only awarded contestants with $5. However, at various points in the show, contestants would be given the chance to buy thousands of dollars worth of prizes for next to nothing -- a new recliner for $8, a trip to Hawaii for $17. It was a special economy all its own. A trip to Hawaii could cost $2,176 in one place while costing $17 in another. It's the same good ol' U.S. currency -- it's just that $17 has a far greater value in one context than $2,176 has in another. Like said game, the patch 4.3 PTR operates by a bizarre set of economic rules all its own, if you can even call them rules. It's the wild west of economies. Anything goes. The fantastic BOE Mekgineer's Chopper is normally valued at 15,000 gold. But today, on Sale of the Azerothian Century, that Chopper can be yours for only ... 1 silver. Or 240,000 gold. Depends on who your seller is.
Gold Capped: Preparing for and making money off of Patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. If the WoW economy operates according to the simple principles of supply and demand, then it should really be no surprise that new patches provide one of the most compelling opportunities for players to make a lot of money quickly. New patches bring previously inactive players back to the game and increase the activity of the rest of us. They increase demand. And increased demand is going to mean an opportunity to rake in cash -- so long as we, as auctioneers, are prepared to meet that demand. The news for patch 4.3 is coming at a fast and furious pace now, which means the actual launch of the patch can't be too far behind. It also means we're at the ideal time to start preparing for the patch 4.3 market -- far out enough that materials are readily (and cheaply) available, but close enough that you won't have to wait forever to get that money back. What should be on your shopping list?
Fallen Earth devs answer your F2P questions
You've got questions about Fallen Earth's free-to-play conversion, and the dev team's got answers. The latest Fallen Earth blog entry spills the beans on everything from what happens to existing subscriptions to character slots to various functionality limitations. Surprisingly, GamersFirst is allowing free-to-play customers to make use of the auction house, mail, and trading systems, but this may change "if gold farmers get totally out of control." There's also good news for pre-existing Fallen Earth subscribers who would like to convert to a free-to-play account but are worried about losing access to their alts. "If you had ever bought the game or paid for a subscription, those character slots were included with your game, so they belong to you regardless of the change in business model," writes Joseph "Linus" Willmon. Head to the official Fallen Earth dev blog for more.
Gold Capped: Four gold making addons for beginners
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. The more information you have at your fingertips, the easier it will be to make money. It's a simple truth, and it explains a lot of why newbies to the Auction House game struggle so much. The heavyweights have the information, and you don't. Part of the problem is the standard Blizzard UI. The money making game would be so much easier if Blizzard simply gave players more information -- information that's readily available elsewhere. "How many stacks of this are listed at this price?" "What will this piece of armor disenchant into?" "Where the hell do I go to find Whiptail?" Those who have more experience than you will always have an inherent advantage. But it's an advantage that even the newest of players can mitigate through the use of addons. Today, I'm going to talk about four simple gold making addons for beginners that do some really powerful things to put newer players on a slightly more equal playing field.
Gold Capped: Selling pets for fun and profit
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. I will admit, I'm a sucker for collecting in-game pets. Maybe it's because I like having someone following me around, even when I'm soloing content. Maybe it's just because of the obsessive-compulsive Pokemon instinct, where I gotta catch em all regardless of the consequences. Maybe it's just because I like tiny animals that depend on me. I'm far from alone -- collecting pets in WoW is serious business. There are achievements involved. Exclusive bonus pets. People have even created websites devoted to the hobby of collecting vanity pets. People love pets. And people will spend lots of money on the things they love, which makes making, buying, and reselling pets a very profitable endeavor indeed.
The Daily Grind: Are you in favor of developer-sanctioned RMT?
The Ottawa Citizen recently did a story on real money trading in MMOs, and it started some interesting conversation here on Massively. There are some who feel that the only way to truly eliminate the problem is to legalize it, so to speak -- cutting down on stolen accounts, shady deals, and ripped-off consumers by creating official channels for everything. Others argue that it won't help and that making real-world cash a part of the player economy is a terrible idea in general. It's a discussion that can be approached from plenty of different directions, so what say you? Should developers create official channels and be done with it, or keep working to eliminate it altogether? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Gold Capped: Is prospecting still worth it?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. The jewelcrafting shuffle used to be an incredibly lucrative way to make money. It was simple: You went to the Auction House, bought out the stock of ore, and then hit your prospecting key as fast as you could. You'd craft what was profitable to craft; you'd vendor the raw gems that weren't otherwise useful. And because the vendor value of the raw gems was almost always more than the value of the Elementium or Obsidium Ore prospected to get those gems, we had a no-lose situation. A jewelcrafter's risk was 0; the profit potential limited only by the amount of time you had to waste doing the "shuffle." Of course, that was prior to patch 4.2. After the patch, each green gem (for example, Zephyrite) saw its vendor value slashed to a mere 50 silver. The days of the jewelcrafting shuffle were over. But still, the days of profitable jewelcrafting still live on. This past week, my Gold Capped tag-team partner Basil opined that patch 4.3 will bring epic gems. He's probably right, but that doesn't mean you have to bide your time, stockpiling Pyrite Ore until patch 4.3 to make some serious money as a JC. Let's take a second look at the old jewelcrafting shuffle and see if we can still find profit hiding in the jewelcrafting profession.
TERA implementing chronoscrolls to combat gold farming
TERA isn't releasing in North America for several months yet, but the folks at En Masse are already taking steps to curb the inevitable tide of gold farmers sure to be washing up on Arborea's beaches in 2012. A new dev blog released over the weekend outlines the introduction of chronoscrolls, and those of you who are familiar with EVE Online's PLEX system will probably see several parallels between the two mechanics. "If you've never purchased gold, and you're wondering why this new chronoscrolls system is a good addition to the game, consider this: Whether chronoscrolls exist or not, other players are buying gold from real-money traders. By creating the opportunity for players who already buy gold to purchase it legitimately, we help eliminate the incentive for real-money traders to target TERA," says producer Patrick Wyatt.
Gold Capped: How to make money from leatherworking
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. Leatherworking has a pretty bad reputation as far as World of Warcraft professions go. Some people say that the biggest problem with leatherworking is that it's a frustratingly difficult profession to level. Others say that the worst part is how hard it is to make money off it, even at 525 skill. I can settle the argument right here: You're all right! Leatherworking is terrible on so many levels! That doesn't mean it's entirely useless -- after all, someone has to craft those i379 epics for druids, rogues, and shaman. And it doesn't mean that it's entirely profitless, either. It's not a profession I'd recommend for raking in the big bucks, but if you're otherwise stuck with it ... we may as well discuss how to squeeze a few pieces of gold out of it.
Gold Capped: Staying ahead of inflation
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. Do you remember the moment you hit 1 gold for the first time? I do. I was killing mobs in Ashenvale, vendoring Light Feathers and other various trash drops. It was an epic moment. That first piece of gold felt like so much money. It wasn't a lot of money, of course -- it just felt like it. But still, it was worth a heck of a lot more than one piece of gold is worth today. The reason: Azeroth suffers from a constant state of hyperinflation. The purchasing power of 1g is always falling, and it's falling quickly. Thankfully, though, you don't have to stand by and be a victim.
Enter at Your Own Rift: How gold farming really hurts the economy
Recently, Trion Worlds CCO and RIFT Executive Producer Scott Hartsman talked to Gamasutra about how gold farming is a much bigger threat than we assume, particularly because of the large amount of credit card fraud. Those who played RIFT at launch probably recall the large wave of hacked accounts early on. According to Hartsman, the hacking attempts were so quick and so intense that the game could have been "denial-of-serviced off the internet" when it launched. As I was browsing the Auctioneer the other day, I was reminded of Scott's statement because gold farming has sucked a lot of the fun out of in-game economies in virtual worlds. Markets early on were lively, unpredictable, exciting, and full of freedom but very vulnerable because of the growing illegal trade of in-game currency for real money. In an effort to combat the rising real-life value of gold, games like RIFT have moved away from gold toward a system of non-tradeable tokens. But while these tokens have helped to curb the value of gold and reduce the demand for third-party RMTs, they've also removed a lot of the freedom from players. After the cut, we'll take a closer look at how exactly that's happened and why it hurts the economy.
TERA integrates technology to combat gold farming for North American launch
When Scott Hartsman made his comments regarding gold selling, it's unlikely he planned it to become such a focal point for so many other companies and games. But it's certainly become a focal point for players, and TERA's development staff has decided to take the war on gold selling a step further. It was announced today that the game's launch will see the integration of the Crisp Platform, an automated service set to monitor in-game behaviors to try and detect cheating, gold farming, and botting before a player has even noticed these things taking place. According to the official release, the platform is based around a steady analysis of player behavior, looking for erratic patterns and unusual behaviors to flag potential abuses. In theory, this will allow En Masse Entertainment's support staff access to easy data at a glance, allowing any attempts at gold farming to be detected and stopped before the point that the money gets put up for sale. How successful that will be is going to depend on the implementation, something we won't know about until the game's launch in spring of next year.
Ask Massively: Go outdoors edition
Here is the salient piece of advice from this week's Ask Massively, right up front and in the intro paragraph -- go outdoors. Right now. Shut down your computer and go for a walk. Take a hike somewhere you've never been. Explore. Take some time to just walk around out in fresh air and sunlight, or heck, enjoy being rained on. But take the time to break from a routine in which you read a whole lot of words on the Internet and just go see what's outside for a few minutes at least. Really, this column will still be here after you're done. It'll wait. I'm hoping that the two or three of you that actually listened to that advice enjoyed your walk. For you (and slightly earlier for everyone who just skipped over that paragraph) we've got questions this week about gold farming and the consistent scourge of site bugs. If you've got a question you'd like to see answered in a future installment, just mail it along to ask@massively.com or leave your question in the comments.
Gold Capped: How the heck do you price a Chaos Orb?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. We're eight months deep into the current expansion, and still, Chaos Orbs remain bind on pickup items available only by running dailies. You can't buy them with valor points. You can't buy them on the auction house. You can't hand them from one player to another. That creates a challenge for someone who's using a trade skill to make an epic piece of gear for someone else. There's no quick and simple way to find the value of a Chaos Orb, but for sure, they do have a definite value. And to get the most money out of your profession, you need to know exactly what that value is.
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!
Scott Hartsman says gold farming hurts our games more than we know
Gold buying is one of those aspects of MMO culture that is seemingly universally denounced, yet enough people partake in the practice to keep the wheels of this grey market activity going. Scott Hartsman may be saying the obvious when he denounced gold farming and selling to Gamasutra, but apparently it is still something we need to hear. The Trion Worlds general manager shared a glimpse of just how hard these activities hit games, and how concerned he and other studio execs are about the proliferation of credit card fraud that results: "It's those kinds of things where people laugh and go, 'Oh, that never happens.' No. It happens. It happens a s**tload. To the point where, over the last three or four years, I would dare anybody to ask an exec at a gaming company how much they've had to pay in MasterCard and Visa fines, because of fraud. It happens a lot." According to Hartsman, the more these events take place, the more money studios spend on paying fines and dealing with them instead of reinvesting funds into the games themselves -- all because of the "jerks" perpetuating the crimes.
Gold Capped: How to earn money from tailoring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Capitalism is the best, and communism is for dirty, Soviet-sympathizing hippies. If you disagree, email Fox or tweet him @foxvanallen so you can be added to the CIA's "list." When I was leveling my first-ever shadow priest, I instinctively took the tailoring as one of my two main professions. I did it because I was leveling a cloth-wearing class and thought it'd be easier if I could make my gear. It never really occurred to me that I could actually make money through tailoring. Of course, after exploring the auction house and learning more about my server's economy, I realized that I could make money with tailoring -- and in a number of different ways, to boot. It wasn't easy money, to be sure; tailoring had a lot of weird quirks that made making a lot of money challenging. It doesn't help that there are plenty of tailoring items being listed on the auction house at a price well below the material cost, either.
Gold Capped: How to make money while leveling
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Disclaimer: Their expertise only extends to making in-game currency, because if they knew how to make millions in real-world money, they wouldn't be spending their time writing about WoW gold. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him or tweeting him at @foxvanallen. There are hundreds of different strategies for making money once you've hit level 85, right? Max-level professions tend to be strong money-makers in the right hands, because they allow you to sell the latest and greatest items. It's a bit of a different story while leveling, however. There are gathering professions, of course, and some can provide fledgling characters with a solid chunk of cash. There are crafting professions too, but often times low-level gear and items sell for less than the materials it takes to make them. Making money while leveling isn't typically at the forefront of your mind when you're making your fifth alt on your home server -- after all, you can make more money running dailies at 85 than you can farming Wool Cloth. But if you're just starting out in World of Warcraft or are starting fresh on a new server without any of your main character's bank ... well, finding a way to make money while leveling is exceptionally important, especially so you can buy the much-needed conveniences that rich players take for granted, such as Flight Master's License and Expert Riding.
Gold Capped: How patch 4.2 broke the auction house
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Capitalism is the best, and communism is for dirty, Soviet-sympathizing hippies. If you disagree, Email Fox or twitter him @foxvanallen so you can be added to the CIA's "list." On June 24, 2010, I woke up at 4 a.m. I grabbed some coffee, got into my car with my roommates, and went to the Cambridgeside Galleria mall to stand in a ridiculously long line. The goal: to get an Apple iPhone 4. It was the latest and greatest thing, and we all had to have it. A very similar dynamic is happening right now in the World of Warcraft. There are a slew of new-for-patch-4.2 items currently available on the auction house. New BOE gear from Firelands. New tailoring and leatherworking patterns. New blacksmithing plans. Living Embers. New PVP gear. They're all -- at least in theory -- high-demand items. After all, given players' insatiable lust for better gear, customers should be lining up around the (virtual) block to be buying all this stuff. But on many servers, they're not. The demand is clearly there, but markets are struggling to function. What happened? Why did the market break? What are players doing wrong? And how exactly are you supposed to play the market with these new-for-4.2 items?
