Yeah, I found that an odd word choice. It’s kind of a grey area, and even the meaning of ‘cheat’ in MMOs (apart from outright hacking) is tricky to pin down…
But then, when I read pretty much anything about games in the mainstream press, I have to repress a deep cri de coeur of ‘you just don’t get it, man!’
Timex
4827
Gold farmers are a terrible thing.
Nesrie
4828
I don’ think it’s a stretch to call gold farmers themselves and the people who buy from them cheaters. Screw both those groups. They not only short-cut their way to the top but they make it miserable for everyone else.
KevinC
4830
By fucking up the entire economy of games? By destroying competitive balance via real world cash? By forcing developers to implement all kinds of systems to control the behavior, which oftentimes impacts the play experience of innocent players?
Nesrie
4831
How so? You stand in any MMO town and you have to constantly turn off chat or try and ban these jerks who just chain post their sales pitches in their naked level 1 characters. Then they screw up the entire economy. They’re a plague on the gaming community.
KevinC
4832
And lets not forget the “miserable experiences” they create outside the game: a bunch of their gold/assets they sell come from stolen credit cards, compromised accounts, etc. The rampant account hacking that ravaged WoW for years was caused by gold sellers pillaging accounts to sell their gold.
Thraeg
4833
Yep, I banned many a gold farmer from WoW back in the day. They are parasites, pure and simple. Nothing against the grunts just trying to make a living, but the companies behind them can rot in hell.
And as annoying as actual gold farmers were, most of the gold sold on ostensible “gold farming” sites was actually stolen from regular players by getting access to their account through keyloggers.
Nesrie
4834
You’ve got to wonder how much time and resources developers and moderators have to waste on these low life pieces of shit that could have been better used elsewhere.
Buying gold and/or items is absolutely cheating. How is that even up for debate?
General chat in most mmos is awash with spam/barrens-talk even if you take away all the spammers. When playing WOW there were several companies that delivered time-services that I never once saw chat spam from. Are you blaming all goldsellers for the actions of a few rogue actors?
Certainly some of the gold some of these companies retail comes from accounts that either exercised poor security or had their DKP site hacked (like my guild), but again, only some of the companies that would involve in that, although, the hackers would most likely be third parties who could sell the gold the obtained to these companies, which would then sell them to others. Much like a lot of other legitimate companies are abused by criminals. Not fair to tarnish all companies and their suppliers/customers for the actions of other parties.
How you feel about the WOW Tokens being sold now then, or the EVE Plex thing they had in the past?
I think Warhammer Online solved it pretty easily by having a game that rewarded the players with enough money through normal play that they never felt a need for “more money”, or there was just nothing worth buying. Can not recall any episodes in Warhammer where I felt I needed money to buy something, or much (if any) in terms of goldseller spam there, but I am sure it existed.
Question: If the gold is obtained through in-game means through normal game mechanics? If the answer to this is yes, how is it cheating by giving the gold to another player for a fee, or facilitating this process?
If you are talking about item duping, hacking players (or just trying passwords that a lot of people use) to get their valuables, then obviously that is cheating and for some of the rogue actors, that would be a part of the process in obtaining gold to then sell to other players for money, but that doesn’t mean everyone are involved in this, so how are those people and their customers/suppliers cheaters - because player 1 saves time by having player 2 spend his?
I don’t think we have any sort of common basis for having a discussion if you are asking that.
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Ah, the nostalgia, it flows…
I rather enjoyed those. “She’s with me. Don’t tell Mankirk.”
KevinC
4840
That’s not a solution for games that have a semblance of an economy. Warhammer Online didn’t get around the problem, there just wasn’t anything worthwhile to base an economy off of. Basically, no one bought gold because no one gave enough of a shit. Not exactly a shining star that I would hold up as example of doing it right. I mean I guess EVE could just allow you to miracle titans out of your ass whenever you felt like it to get around “gold sellers”, but it’d destroy the entire basis of the game.
Timex
4841
Yeah, the solution to economy problems isn’t to just remove the economy.
Skipper
4842
I think @instant0 and I have played more MMOs (or wannabes) than some of you folks. It’s actually built in to some games, weather via F2P with upgrades, PLEX ala Eve, etc. I mean, at that point, is it cheating?
WoW was not all online games. I’m not defending shitty companies exploiting users (or game systems,) but let’s not be so cut and dry with buying currency or items as the illegal part, it’s not, at least not for EVERY online game.
Fair enough, but pretty sure that wasn’t the context here (though I’m making an assumption) But yeah, if the game was designed around that sort of economy, it’s a lot harder to criticize. On a side note, I thought the way Guild Wars 2 handled this, with a shifting scale based on demand, was interesting.
Timex
4844
It’s not cheating if it’s built into the game, although at points it’s a poor mechanic. such as the case in MWO where paying money gave you a massive advantage over non paying players. But even there, not cheating… just a poorly designed game.
