WoW: Gene's had a bad farm day [Also for non-WoWers]

Games
1

Even though its for non-WoWers also, its not for everybody. Its a story of a part of a day in the life of me, a guildie, some random people and some Chinese Farmers. Its a long story. Enter at your own risk.

Recently I’ve done a lot of farming* in WoW for materials for crafted armor pieces and enchants. These items require many pieces that sell for 10 Gold or more on the Auction House, so I figured I’d just farm them. I had never previously farmed items outside of an instance. This is what happened today.

I needed 7 more pieces of Essence of Water, so off I went to Northeast Felwood to farm the 12 Toxic Horrors for them. I arrive there around 7AM Server Time and find a single Level 55 Mage from the other faction (him Horde, me Alliance) farming. He waves at me, I wave at him.^ My 60 Priest shouldn’t have any problem killing him, but he can be a big disruption if he attacks me while I’m farming out of a desire for revenge or preemptive self-defense. Its easier and more effective if I take 6-7 mobs and leave him the rest in peace.

I get 3 pieces very quickly (within the first 8-10 kills) then a drought hits. A Level 60 Horde Druid comes over and attacks me. I kill him after a fairly tough fight. He attacks me again, this time running me around, extending the length of the fight considerably. I became suspicious that he was distracting me in order for the Mage to get more mob kills. After a bit more farming without attack and gaining my 4th piece, the Druid and the Mage attack me together (it turns out they’re in the same guild) and kill me. They camp my body (reducing their farming efficiency severely). Many deaths later (my rez timer`` eventually getting as high as 4 minutes) a guildie asks for help completing a quest and I leave to help him. This guildie is doing the quest for money, and needs much more money on top of that, so is willing to return with me to Felwood to farm for the high-priced items.

Unfortunately the Horde Druid and Mage are no longer there, and instead an Alliance 60 Mage is farming. I recognize his name as one of the regular farmers on the Alliance-side of the server (based on Auction House frequency) and my guildie says that he has seen him at a prime farming spot in the Eastern Plaguelands. Furthermore he says he is a Chinese farmer, based on him typing in Chinese to other players while farming.

My guildie informs me that his friend/roommate has a 60 Horde Rogue on this server, which he has access to. He then proceeds to begin the rogue on a journey (from the Undercity I think) to Felwood, where the plan is to kill the Mage with the Rogue and enable greater access for us to the mobs.

Meanwhile we’re farming and not having any luck. It takes us a long time to get even a single piece despite a fairly high kill rate. Then the rogue arrives and easily kills the mage. After one more kill the mage leaves and we have the place to ourselves. We get a couple pieces and then the mage returns with a 60 Warrior. My guildie informs me he is also a Chinese farmer. His name is Gene.

Farming favors certain classes over others. Warriors and Paladins are the worst classes for farming because of their melee-orientation and limited ability to tag creatures from range (much of farming is about tagging the mob so that its yours to kill before others do). Hunters and Mages probably are the best. Rogues are good because they are the best class in 1-on-1 PvP (meaning they just kill the farmer THEN kill the mob) and also have a useful Sprint ability. Druids are good but have the weakness of taking a while to kill the mob, thus increasing the time before they can engage another. My guildie, by the way, is a 60 Paladin.

Shortly before the arrival of Gene and re-arrival of the Mage my guildie’s friend comes home and plays his character, making him no longer available to us. Gene is standing by me in one section and my guildie is standing by the mage is another section of the farming spot. Basically its like a wild west quick-draw contest for mobs. A mob appears, we frantically try to tag the mob before the other does. I beat Gene 5 times in a row. My guildie informs me that the mage is lightning quick and has been tagging most of the mobs. Then the Mage comes over and Gene leaves to go stand by my guildie. The Mage and I split our mobs and my guildie informs me that he has beaten Gene nearly every time. Before then and continuing I am making a lot of Chinese farmer jokes. Chinese farmer as WoW employed: “Honey, I’m home…” “How was your day at work?” “Very tough… those Fire Giants hit like bricks!” I concluded that Gene’s family would be eating bread and water tonight and that Gene’s wife would leave him due to his poor selection of class. “You chose WHAT class? You fucking dumbass!” I asked my guildie what he thought Chinese farmers made in dollars… he didn’t know. He noted however that Gene probably didn’t make his quota.

Soon after a couple Horde friends of my guildie show up and killed the two farmers several times. Its just not Gene’s day.

I noticed some interesting things with farming. Often you’d rather have the other farmers be of the opposite faction, so you had the additional option of attacking them. Also, having members of the opposing faction allied with you (or as your own alts) is very valuable since you can just bring them over to fight.

After maybe 25 hours of farming in WoW, I have never except for today by my own guildie seen political collusion between the Alliance and Horde. It seems like collusion would be extremely valuable as a means of controlling key spots on the map, so I’m surprised to have witnessed it so rarely.

  • Farming is the act of camping a location to repeatedly kill mobs (PC or NPC) that have a certain value to you (usually rare or expensive items in the case of NPCs).

^ A signal of non-violent intent between members of opposing faction on a PvP server, usually between level-peers.

`` The time after you reach your corpse before you can resurrect.

2

I suppose this would be pretty rare since you need to be on a PvP server, and have friends in the opposite faction. I would assume most of us would have friends on the same faction on a PvP server.

3

Cross-faction collusion is (supposedly) a bannable offense in DAoC. Maybe there are similar restrictions against it in WoW. I know this story makes me want to trick you into telling me your account and password so I can delete your priest though.

4

Professional Farmers, who play WoW primarily for money and not friendship, have little excuse for not having business partners in the opposite faction, unless they are just trying to avoid the angry glare of Blizzard.

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I’ve heard that the farmers get about $0.05 per gold. If you check IGE, they will buy 300g for $10.80, which is a little more than $0.03 per gold. It wouldn’t surprise me if professional farmers get a higher rate from the gold retailers.

On my server, Frostwolf, the alliance gold farmers have completely taken over Tyr’s Hand and Hearthglen. If you’re a horde player, these areas are shut off to you now.

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$0.05 per 1g ? Sucks to be a farmer - even when you play 24/7.

IGE is currently selling 1000g for $92 on my server. That’s actually pretty cheap.

What about professional Horde gold farmers ? Where do they go on your server ?

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How much is 10USD in china though? How much does it buy opposed to here? Maybe if they can earn 10 USD a day its a lot more then earning whatever wage they make at thier own jobs.

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1 USD is close to 8 RMB.

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$0.05 per 1g ? Sucks to be a farmer - even when you play 24/7.

IGE is currently selling 1000g for $92 on my server. That’s actually pretty cheap.

What about professional Horde gold farmers ? Where do they go on your server ?[/quote]

Most of the farmers seem to be Chinese, so I suspect those sell prices for gold provide for decent wages in China. I think they farm more than 100g per day too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get 200-300g per day.

Not sure where the horde farmers go. I see them, but they seem to ride around a lot and farm thorium. I’ve been messaged in Chinese before by horde farmers who think I’m a farmer too.

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Kind of spoils the game, though.

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Yeah, and its made item prices incredibly overinflated. On Kil’Jaeden (Horde), Glowing Brightwood Staff and Stronghold Gauntlets go for no less than 1100-1300g.

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I suppose at $92 for 1000g, it makes very little financial sense for me to work for my gold, given the few hours a week I play. I’d probably spend way more than that in subscription fees before I could personally obtain such a sum. I wonder if IGE is for working gamers with spare cash who don’t want to spend time on the AH mini-game or farming and focus as much as possible on the non-economic aspects of the game.

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What WoW and other MMOs should do for players like you is offer you the opportunity to buy gold and items with real money and then turn around and donate that money to charity. You’d feel ripped off if Blizzard sold you gold directly, but if you knew they weren’t profiting from the sale and that a charity was it would be easier to swallow.

I sympathize with anyone who wants an epic mount for 860g. For players crimped on time, it would be nice to make a $30 donation to United Way and get your epic mount.

This would also undercut companies like IGE and help diminish the amount of gold farming going on.

I’m still waiting for an MMO publisher to take on the likes of IGE. There must be a way to take them to court.

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I’m still waiting for an MMO publisher to take on the likes of IGE. There must be a way to take them to court.

There are lots of ways but what happens if they lose? I am going to higly doubt that anyone feels they have a strong enough case to win. If they lose though it would be open season.

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Why would the company possibly want to get rid of IGE? Those gold farmers pay subscription fees like everybody else, and the great thing is they are probably violating a terms and conditions clause so whenever you want some money you can just ban all their accounts so they have to rebuy the game.

Buying gold directly from the company is not really where I think we want to go. Buying it from other players is at least keeping everything ingame, if Blizzard sells epic mounts for money why wouldn’t they take the next step and sell really nice unique items for money? Levels for money? Etc. Etc.

That’s a dangerous precedent to wish for, all because people don’t like the chinese making a living playing videogames.

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I’ve been trying to figure out if the farmers are having much impact on the lower tiers of the economy. I’ve noticed the very high-end gear is incredibly expensive on my server (Glowing Brightwood Staff is 800-1100g, Dwarven Hand Cannon is about 700g), but the lower end stuff has dropped in price significantly. Maybe everyone is saving up for the big stuff? I’ve noticed that with enchant pricing. My enchanter can do +9 Intellect to a 2h weapon, and the market for that has pretty much vanished after the +22 Intellect enchant came out. If you are already spending 75g on materials, might as well spend 125.

A couple examples on the lower end. I bought a copy of Witchfury (a level 39 blue 2h sword) for my main a few months ago when he was 39th level, and that cost me 25g as I recall. Witchfury is down to 15-20g now. The polearm Blight (player made item) cost me 15g, now they are 6g. This could be Blizzard borking the economy themselves though. Why bother buying a crafted polearm now, when you can go into Alterac Valley and get yourself a free Ice Barbed Spear that’s better than anything else available?

The farmers seem to hold down the price on some materials through oversupply as well. I can buy Arcane Crystals from farmers in the trade channel for no more than 14g (they are the ones spamming “WTS Arcane Crystal x25”). If I go to the AH and buy from players, they want 16g or more. Someone last night wanted to sell 40 stacks of Thorium Bars. Thorium prices are now lower than Mithril and Steel, since those aren’t a by-product of Arcane Crystal farming. Again the high end is impacted, but the lower tiers are not.

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What WoW and other MMOs should do for players like you is offer you the opportunity to buy gold and items with real money and then turn around and donate that money to charity. You’d feel ripped off if Blizzard sold you gold directly, but if you knew they weren’t profiting from the sale and that a charity was it would be easier to swallow. [/quote]

I think that’s a pretty good idea. It would also discourage professional farming.

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What WoW and other MMOs should do for players like you is offer you the opportunity to buy gold and items with real money and then turn around and donate that money to charity. You’d feel ripped off if Blizzard sold you gold directly, but if you knew they weren’t profiting from the sale and that a charity was it would be easier to swallow. [/quote]

I think that’s a pretty good idea. It would also discourage professional farming.[/quote]

I don’t like the idea of buying gold directly from Blizzard (concerns about inflating the economy and all), but I’d be all over buying an epic mount or tokens that are good only for repairs, etc. I’m in a high-end guild that raids MC, Onyxia, and BWL most nights. I had to stop raiding with them because I simply couldn’t afford to pay for my repairs anymore…the raid would form up as shortly after I got home from work and would continue for several hours; I was forced to choose to either go on the raid or farm for gold. Getting the 900g for an epic mount is completely impossible for someone like me, unless I strike the jackpot and have a Glowing Brightwood Staff or something drop for me.

I would imagine this would also significantly reduce the demand for farmed gold too. I suspect a high percentage of the people who buy gold online do so only once and for the sole purpose of buying an epic mount. As demand goes down, hopefully so too does the number of people farming.

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I already play a game where I trade money for stuff, I call it my real life.

I don’t understand the philosophy of buying stuff in a game and getting enjoyment out of that stuff. I think a good game would give you sufficient rewards for actualy playing it.

If people have to buy stuff to enjoy the game, either the game itself is broken or there are a whole lot of people who don’t enjoy the game aspects of games.

Are the people who would buy epic mounts, levels and equipment the same people who play through FPS games with god mode on?

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Are the people who would buy epic mounts, levels and equipment the same people who play through FPS games with god mode on?

I don’t think so, really. The problem with MMOs, or one of the problems, is that the actual “doing” stuff is often mind-numbingly boring. Farming enough gold to get an epic mount can be like that unless you get lucky enough to find a purple item to sell for a lot of gold at the auction house. You kill scads of critters over and over and over again. Or you take your time and slowly accumulate gold painful piece by piece until you can get your mount–at which point all of your erstwhile friends have had theirs for ages and you’re sick of never being able to keep up with them (literally–while regular mounts give a 60% boost over normal speed, epic mounts are 100% boost).

So yeah, the game itself is the problem. It’s that way in many games, too–it’s not just getting the “stuff” to get it, it’s getting it to facilitate something else (RvR, raiding, group play, end game content, whatever). Because the “normal” way of getting money is often slow, boring, and painful, and because many people don’t have the time or patience to grind grind farm farm repeat (many people in my guild in WoW, for example, are students who seem to have 28 hours each day to do nothing but play WoW), buying gold becomes attractive.

As for me, my mage has maybe 300 gold and probably won’t ever get above that level as I’m not really playing him much. I gave up on an epic mount long ago.