gold-spamming
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Mark Jacobs: 'I've never been against F2P'
In a brief interview today with MMORPG.com, Mark Jacobs, now president and creative director of City State Entertainment, discussed his thoughts on the F2P model and real-money trading. Jacobs is best known to gamers for his previous roles with Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts on such games as Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, and his opinions on the subject of gold-farming are infamous, possibly even extreme. We can't be the only ones who remember the early days of WAR when a crusading, irony-immune Jacobs spammed players' screens with popups whenever gold-spammers were banned. But in this interview, Jacobs aimed to set the record straight: He's against gold-farming specifically and how gold-farming hurts legitimate players, not the free-to-play model. I've never been against F2P. What I was and still remain strongly opposed to is gold farming in games, especially MMOs that weren't designed from the beginning to handle those kind of transactions, and also to the groups that seek to profit from such transactions. What I really dislike isn't so much the gold farming/selling itself, but certain behaviors that occur in games where this happens. He goes on to suggest that the F2P model has surged to prominence due to the weak economy and "a lack of really interesting MMOs," noting that we're due for a shift in the market but that the success of Star Wars: The Old Republic (and its "license to print money" IP) will determine the viability of the subscription model in the future. Jacobs has plenty more to say in the full interview over at MMORPG.com.
EVE Online devblog discusses account security
Every MMO suffers the horrors of gold spammers and EVE Online is no different. The RMT (Real Money Trading) industry is massive and EVE's developers CCP have waged a constant war against it in recent years. The PLEX initiative gave players a way to safely buy ISK for cash while at the same time helping players who couldn't afford their subscriptions pay with ISK. The result was a dramatic hit to the RMT market, who had to drop their prices to compete with a legitimate service replacing their own. As part of Operation Unholy Rage in August of last year, EVE GMs also banned over 6200 accounts belonging to farmers known to be supplying the RMT industry. The effect on the market was instant, with the population in farmed mission systems like Ingunn disappearing overnight. Almost immediately, the farmers reacted with a spate of account hackings to claw back some ISK.
Keeping the gold farmers at bay: An interview with Fallen Earth's Colin Dwan
Gold farming and gold spamming is a very real problem in our current MMOs. While some games are spending a good chunk of their resources to battle the farmers and save their game's economy, other games are enjoying a relatively spam-free existence. One such game is Fallen Earth. So what's their secret? Have they designed an actual farm-proof game, or is it just that they're doing an amazing job of clean-up behind the scenes? We talked with Project Manager Colin Dwan for some insight into their proven methods. Follow along after the cut below for the complete interview.
Blizzard warns against buying gold
If it wasn't already obvious, Blizzard put together a page on their official website making clear their stance towards buying in-game gold, and have just recently given it another big push. To put it simply: don't. The page outlines what we at WoW.com have known for quite some time (hence our collective stance against buying gold) -- that gold buying harms other players. The site doesn't go into specifics other than to say that gold selling companies often acquire their gold through unscrupulous means. They sum up their statement by saying that "players who buy gold are supporting spamming, botting, and keylogging." Basically, if you're a gold buyer, you're part of the problem. No, seriously. Gold sellers acquire gold by hacking into other players' accounts, taking their gold, selling all their items, and sometimes maliciously deleting their characters. That gold you think some Asian spent hours farming in Nagrand or something is more likely to be some other player's hard-earned gold and the seller is just as likely to be some dude from Jersey. As tempting as buying gold may seem -- and I've read many arguments towards why people buy them -- the bottom line is that it is harmful to the game and you're not doing yourself any favors in the long run. Blizzard says that it "diminish(es) the gameplay experience," but that's putting it nicely. Gold selling and power leveling are against the EULA, anyway, so anybody who patronizes these services are in danger of getting banned. And if you don't believe in buying gold (go you!), protect yourself by getting an authenticator or reading up on account security.
'Gold Trading Exposed' a look at multi-billion dollar grey market in MMOs
If there are any massively multiplayer online games on the market (with virtual economies) that *aren't* overrun at times with gold spammers that multiply like cockroaches, we have yet to hear about it. While the various MMO developers and operators have their own approaches to the problem, ranging from public humiliation of spammers to an anti-RMT strike force that exists to root them out and eliminate them, a key (*the* key) part of this equation for grief is the playerbase itself. "Gold Trading Exposed" is the first in a series of articles tackling the issues surrounding RMT written for Eurogamer by Nick Ryan. Over time, Ryan will look at the multi-billion dollar trade in virtual gold through the eyes of all parties involved -- the gold traders, the developers, and of course the players themselves (many of whom deny they buy gold). Ryan points out there there's no small amount of hypocrisy from MMO playerbases which profess a hatred for the gold selling trade since, after all, there must be a reason that gold sellers thrive and multiply.
Third largest gold selling site sells for $10M
Gold selling has always been a lucrative business, but the recent acquisition of the My MMO shop website proves that it's recession-proof as well. As reported by recent financial records, the third largest MMO gold selling site in the industry just sold for $10 million to a company established in 2008 for the sole purpose of buying the site. This makes me wonder what the top two would sell for., but I digress!"MyMMOShop.com appealed to us because of its strong reputation for providing optimal customer service," says Hunter Crowell, My MMO Inc.'s Media Relations Agent. "That focus will continue with our purchase." Wait, am I wrong in pointing out that this business goes against the EULAs of every major MMO out there? We're not talking about simple company-backed RMT here, we're talking about gold farming and gold spamming. Yet, despite the "illegal" nature of the business, it seems to only be growing in popularity, ironically more as the economy sinks deeper. "This is a risky time for any kind of traditional investing," says Crowell. "People are staying home more and choosing less expensive forms of entertainment, like playing video games."
PotBS devlog discusses the gold-spammer issue
"Do you annoy not afford new ship?" Anyone that has played Pirates of the Burning Sea since launch will have received countless private messages similar to the above, soliciting the sale of in-game currency. The latest devlog from the official PotBS site talks about how they are working to combat the spamming -- well, they tell us what they can, because if we can read it, so can the spammers.Some extremely good news is that a new command is on the way that will make reporting spammers a breeze. Currently players have to leave the game or alt-tab out to condemn these nuisances, but those days will soon be over. The process for Flying Lab Software to actually receive and act on these reports is being streamlined as well. Behind the scenes, they say that they are looking at better ways to catch the spammers before they even get to spam, but as per the above reason, don't expect these methods to be made public. FLS has attemped to deal with this problem from the very start, and it looks like the beginning of round two is on the horizon.
Gnome corpse advertisement in WoW by gold farmers
Looks like Blizzard's latest World of Warcraft patch which had a spam filtering component to fight gold sellers is working since gold farmers are now resorting to sacrificial gnome death for advertising. The gold farmers are forced to stick to the creative since their free advertising power was diminished. As Raph Koster reports, "using the age-old client-side memory hack," farmers dropped Gnome bodies from the sky to spell out their website's name in front of the Ironforge bank.Blizzard was aware of the incident and sent in their team to repair and wipe clean the matrix. Blizzard rep. Auryk wrote on the boards, "I ask that any player that witnesses these to report them strait [sic] away. If you feel so inclined, you can also post the realm name, and zone here and I can see what can be done about getting them handled that way. Please, once they are reported, leave the bodies alone, and do not linger around, or huddle near the bodies." Yeah, don't poke the dead Gnomes with sticks and what not.[Via SecretLair]
