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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| Spiderweb: View from the Bottom #4 @ RPG Vault |
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Indie cRPG developer Jeff Vogel has turned his attention to supporting gold farming in World of Warcraft (etc) for his latest <a href="http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/711/711593p1.html" target="_blank">View from the Bottom</a> article at RPG Vault. It's a topic for MMORPGDot but I'll post it at RPGDot as well because I'm sure some of you are interested in his point of view. Here's my favourite quote for quite some time:<blockquote><em>Third, gold farmers have a reputation for being obnoxious and cutthroat. In some cases, this is true. But spend a little time around the regular people you find hanging around in the game, and you will see that this is only because people are, in general, obnoxious and cutthroat. My God, but World of Warcraft and EverQuest are full of the idiot children of married cousins. Gold farmers aren't even close to having a monopoly on cretinous behavior.</em></blockquote> |
Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:50 pm |
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roqua1
Guest
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My wife would beat the crap out of me if i wasted real money on fake money, but if I could I would. I agree with Jeff yet again. |
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Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:51 pm |
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txa1265
Magister of the Light
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 390
Location: Marlborough, MA USA |
I don't care about MMO's but I love reading his thoughts ... very interesting perspective on grinding and gold.
Mike
_________________
Dopelar effect (n.) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Check out my blog. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:25 am |
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niteshade
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 100
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Hmm....once again I have to strongly disagree with Vogal on this. He may be correct that there are a lot of obnoxious people on MMORPGs, but they don't hold a candle to the gold farmers. The gold farmers have no sense of ethics or courtesy in the game, and will attempt to do whatever they can to ruin your fun if you happen to be doing anything that remotely competes with them. While it's true that there may be the occasional regular player who does that as well, they are far less likely to impact your quality of gameplay then gold farmers are.
Finally his attempts to blame blizzard for making it take awhile to get gold are rather clueless and show little understanding of the workings of MMORPGs. If Blizzard made it so you could get all the gold you would ever need within a few hours of play there would be far more complaints about the game then those caused by gold farmers. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:47 am |
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Guest
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As a game designer, he must know transparent tricks for the designers to "motivate" people to keep paying monthly fee. One of them is to make "beneficial" items hard to "earn." Spending money on such things besides the monthly fee? He seems to despise the other players but I have no idea how he should manage not to despise himself. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:16 am |
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niteshade
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 100
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Well MMORPGs are designed to be played over the course of several years, so that wouldn't exactly work if everything were handed to you on a silver platter. It's actually a far greater problem when a game gives you all the gold you need too easily. Before long in game currency becomes completely valueless.
Anyway I can understand how not everyone is into this type of game. But to play this type of game and say you enjoy it, and then complain about the type of thing that keeps it going is pretty silly. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:40 am |
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roqua1
Guest
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I think you guys miss his point. If you have very restricted liesure time you want to skip what kids with plenty of time take for granted and get right to the good stuff. The good stuff is probably different depending on the person; some like pvp, some like 5-man instances, some like raids, some like soloing quests, some like playing the auction house, some like crafting, some like socializing, etc.
For instance, when I played wow I was a leatherworking and a rogue. I picked elemental and then suffered through the next 8 billion times polaying trying to get the super rare drops I neeeded to get elemental. If I could of skipped that farming and paid actual money to get the crap I would have in a second. I think this is a view expressed by most people with greatly restricted time. I can't keep up with kids or people that can play when and how long they want. The kids and people without demanding lives can get gold the regular way and have time to get in the activities they want.
Wow could stop gold farming and selling, as could SOE. They choose not to because they want people that can only play 3 or 4 hours a week to play their games still. And these people tent to be the ones subsidizing all the gold farming.
You would figure since I am not allowed to enjoy the benefits the gold farmers give my demographic I would be anti-gold famer, but why would I be so greedy to want others like me not to be able to play mmorpgs? |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:40 pm |
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Guest
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As long as MMORPG is not trying to reward players with game-play itself rather than with "privileges," this kind of thing will be continuing. Because of this reason, I have kept an eye on Pirates of the Burning Sea for a while. However, basically, I am skeptic of MMORPG, especially "Massive" part. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:41 pm |
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GhanBuriGhan
Noble Knight
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 208
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quote:
Originally posted by roqua1
I think you guys miss his point. If you have very restricted liesure time you want to skip what kids with plenty of time take for granted and get right to the good stuff. The good stuff is probably different depending on the person; some like pvp, some like 5-man instances, some like raids, some like soloing quests, some like playing the auction house, some like crafting, some like socializing, etc.
For instance, when I played wow I was a leatherworking and a rogue. I picked elemental and then suffered through the next 8 billion times polaying trying to get the super rare drops I neeeded to get elemental. If I could of skipped that farming and paid actual money to get the crap I would have in a second. I think this is a view expressed by most people with greatly restricted time. I can't keep up with kids or people that can play when and how long they want. The kids and people without demanding lives can get gold the regular way and have time to get in the activities they want.
Wow could stop gold farming and selling, as could SOE. They choose not to because they want people that can only play 3 or 4 hours a week to play their games still. And these people tent to be the ones subsidizing all the gold farming.
You would figure since I am not allowed to enjoy the benefits the gold farmers give my demographic I would be anti-gold famer, but why would I be so greedy to want others like me not to be able to play mmorpgs?
Isn't what you describe rather an example of a) bad game design (if fun is so "spaced apart" that a player on limited time can not get to it or b) bad choice of game by the player (i.e. get an instant gratification game like Oblivion instead)?
Gold farming from what I read, seems a poor solution for the actual problem. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:59 pm |
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Roqua
High Emperor
Joined: 02 Sep 2003
Posts: 897
Location: rump |
What if the problem is one of time? A large time in mmorpgs is acquiring wealth or gear (keep in mind wealth gets gear). Gear keeps you competitive and allows you to do or engage in the activities you want to engage in.
Wow only interests me until 60, when raids take over. I have no interest in raids or raiding and therefore will never get the best gear and will never be as able to compete as well in the activities I do enjoy as those who do have the time and or ability to want to do raids.
Mmorpgs have to have time sinks, can’t throw wealth around, and have to do cater to the powergamers to people like me. I don’t suck up bandwidth, I don’t post on their forums annoying everyone, and I don’t do anything but barely play and pay them my subscription fee. I am a dream customer, as are probably most of the people who use the services of goldfarmers.
If I could have used the service of goldfarmers I would have played totally different and had a lot more fun. I could have used the crap I made at a lvl it would have helped me at. I could have bought crap at the AH. I could have had potions other than the ones I once and a while found in chests. I could have had a ram before lvl 52. I could of done everything I like in the game, such as pvping.
And the crutch of your argument assumes everyone is the same and has the same tastes. Does everyone like pvp? Does everyone like raids? Does everyone like rp’ing? Does everyone like instances? Does everyone like farming for the 2 hours they have to play since they don’t have enough time to even get a party together to get into an instance, never mind do an instance?
Take guilds. I hate them, or at least the big fancy ones with people that are wicked into the game in them. That hurts me bad in mmorpgs. But, if the game removed this feature that I think sucks and is stupid, as well as non-pvp areas or rules, how many people would be happy?
The bottom line is mmorpgs could easily shut down farmers, but don’t. Why? Because it keeps the quietest, least resource intensive, best paying customers happy and has a multiplier effect of having more accounts created for farmers to feed them. Everyone else from teenagers with too much free time to powergamers will continue to play the game, all while moaning. That population always moans. If the meat of their subscription base is only going to cry, but still pay, and still cry about something else if gold farming was closed down, what incentive does any company have to shut down a win-win situation for themselves?
_________________
Vegitarian is the Indian word for lousey hunter. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:26 pm |
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niteshade
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 100
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Well it's also worth noting that really very few of the things people spend gold on are in any way a necesity for playing or enjoying the game. Yes you can spend gold to buy a shiny new magic sword, but having that sword is not required to play and do well by any stretch. In most cases there are actually far better swords available through actual questing and dungeon exploration then the one people are buying. Almost any item bought with gold tends to be a luxury rather then a necesity. And it's easy to get enough gold for the necesities (and a few luxuries) just over the course of normal game play.
The author also fails to mention in his article one of the worst things about gold farmers is that they do whatever they can to cheat and hack the game. Granted the game is not easy to hack, and they usually get caught eventually but before they get caught their actions often have long term consequences on the game world. For example a certain very rare magic sword was not too long ago made very common because of all the farmers who would cheat to get it, and then sell it. Not only did this screw with the power level of the game, but it also had a very bad effect on the economy as nobody would ever buy the weapons sold by non cheating/gold farming players when the swords sold by the cheating players were so easy to get. Luckily Blizzard did fix this problem before it got too out of hand. |
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Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:30 pm |
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Guest
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Rewarding players with "powerful" items is very old, easy, childish and careless way of mastering. This is bad for game-balance and attracts likely minded players (you cannot expect mentally mature people). More careful masters may tease these players with gradually offering powerful items but still it doesn't change the nature of this style of the game-play. Not surprisingly, many people quite "role-playing games" at a certain age. Some PnP role-playing games shifted their focus to complex mechanics, interesting themes and experimental or historical world settings.
Like PnP games having cultivated other types of game-plays, I hope multi-player online role-playing games will try to shift the game-play focus on more interesting things even for mature players. I only know this works for small groups, though. Probably, for massive multi-player online role-playing games, there should be carefully planned systems which divide players into groups depending on their preference of game-play experience. The reason why Pirates of the Burning Sea caught my attention is that it gives me an impression that at least the designers are making some efforts in this direction. |
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Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:14 am |
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