Gold Selling/powerleveling

[Hungkung]

wow Sigard, good 101 teach of economics: (not being snarky, nobody really understands how ecomonies work and summing it up so wisely actually takes skill)

prediction: the next generation of MMO's the game companies will sell gold.
14.95 gets you the basic membership
20.95 gets you the basic membership + 200g a month
29.99 gets you the basic membership +400g a month + 10 extra free bank slots (don't drool)

all the way to the "bring a buddy payback system" where you bring X friends into the game and you get X game gold...think about all them 2nd, 3rd accounts the addicts have, all which got them X amount of gold...yummy yummy for the shareholders. heck set it up like a pyrimid, every buddy you bring in you get Xgold per month they keep the account + % of what membership plan they take.

and in the end the everybody will still be broke all the time, and the money will be in the hands of 1% of the hardcore kid players who can do the deepest dungeons who sell thier uberloot for gold since they can't afford (mommie is puninishing them) the upgraded membership plans.

the tax cuts, everybody is still broke, but boy did circut city make a killing and all of our happy returned tax dollars ended up in japanesse banks earning 20% (not being racist, the asian markets are the ones who are selling the highest % of low end electronics) so instead of funding oh say, vetrans health benifits or improving the infrasctructure, or um, oh yeah that pesky health care thingie we bought off-shore goods and are now borrowing the same money back at 25% interest rather than looking at the tax cuts. sorry folsk went off on my own thing there.

[Siul]

Impressive Sigard.

Your post on economics actually answers the comments from "horribly anti-social" Naiya. reading her post I would agree. I don't care the fun others are loosing from getting others to get them stuff. I don't care if they have more money or this and that. But I DO care if because of these ppl in game economy goes up the roof into very nicely put entropy (total chaos) and then I can't buy anything because prices are so inflated.

My personal opinion is it would ruin the game when such stage of entropy is achieved. I play because I enjoy playing and I take my pace. Even adopting a kid to play when I'm at work (has put by Aen) would make me loose the fun of playing the game. Honestly, why in the world would you get someone else to play for you? So one can boast I' the best.... bs

[Bludtung]

Gold farming affects everyone. For the reasons given above. You play a lot of hours to enjoy a game that could be ruined by a few folks selling/paying for gold. I saw it happen in EQ. I saw it happen in WoW. I don't know how to stop it from happening to vanguard, but i'll do my part to help petition spammers etc.

[Ruffie]

I'm neither pro gold selling nor against gold selling. What I am against in gold selling is the destruction of the "economy", but then I am not certain that gold selling does destroy the economy.

Most MMOs I have played had their economys destroyed by dupes or "bugs" where vast amounts of in-game gold could be made by a few in a very short time. Those that capitalize on the dupe/bug are likely to be gold sellers, however many non gold sellers capitalize on the dupe/bug as well.

It is usually not until a few of these dupes/bugs are "exploited" that people really start looking for the gold to buy. Usually what happens is the economy gets so far out of sync with game play that new players are hamstrung by an economy that has nothing to do with game "reality". When a level 1 baby sword of fly swatting is selling for more than a character will make in their first 20 levels of adventuring, these people tend to gravitate to the gold sellers.

The best defense against the gold sellers is to ensure that these dupes/bugs do not get in the game. As a backup, for when these do get in the game, Sigil must have a method to remove the duped/bugged gold as quickly as possible. Rollbacks are not the answer!

[Ysharros]

The duping issue is definitely very serious, but gold-selling does also have very direct effects on game economies, as Sigurd pointed out above -- simply because larger than normal amounts of cash are being generated and then circulated.

In most cases "standard" players farming for cash (for a mount, a house, whatever) will do it for a while, get what they think they need, and stop. Cash-farming for the secondary market, however, goes on pretty much 24/7 and creates more money than "should" be in the game at most people's usual pace of cash-generation. More money = inflation and so on.

I'm not even going to touch duping issues more than I just did, because they drive me nuts. I was brought up not to cheat, and though that may make me a sap, seeing people exloit stuff either because they can or because they think it's clever tends to make me froth at the mouth -- not even counting the detrimental effect it has on the game.

Gold-selling (and its attendant 24/7 farming), duping and other exploits are NOT victimless crimes. Actually, I'm not sure there is such a thing - but that's another discussion.

[Robilard]

Another Side of Gold Selling that no one really notices is that usually in the end approx 80% of the gold sold by gold sellers ends up back in there coffers.

This is because the larger Gold Selling companies make a lot of there in game money selling the items that all players want or need for there classes. These items are usually perma-camped and no regular players can access them with out extreme luck. This in the end becomes a vicious cycle as the Gold Sellers will often control the primary market value of these items further inflating the economy.

While I played FFXI this was very prevalent and obvious when you sat down and looked at which chars were selling what items and at what prices. That all came to a head when the FFXI GM's banned and deleted some 300 accounts across all servers that had a combined cash flow of approx 500 Million in game money, and the Gold Sellers hardly flinched. If Gold Sellers aren't kept in check quickly and decisively VG will become a game where if you haven't been playing since the first few months then you can't afford to start.

[Hungkung]

LOL Robi, brillant just brillant. I had thought about that a long time ago but never really gone back to get on a high horse about it. I'm glad you brought it up, it is kinda like going to the doctor's to cure a cold and you come back with the flu, so you go back to the doc's and come home with a rash....

I do tend to be in Ysa's camp here, that gold selling/buying makes it incredibly unrewarding for the honest crafter. It's like competing against walmart or the mob, and this form of cheating kills games in the end. So far Sigil has pretty high marks from me on keeping things in check, and figuring out everything else they are fixing/putting up with that is pretty impressive.

[sorkvir]

THANK YOU ROBI!

You hit my concern right on its head

Yes, the gold sellers are the problem, but I'm SERIOUSLY hoping that sigil goes for the coffers of the farmers. I would like to see them actually ban the bank accounts, not the lvl1 buddy key alts.

[Fraya]

Even banning the coffers wont help though.

Having a surplus of currency actually does harm to the gold sellers because they have to lower prices to get rid of the excess.

So long as they have the production capacity (the level 50 bots to farm with) they can just make a new coffer alt and sell it as they make it for no change in price.

If you want to hurt them you have to keep banning their farming bots. Those take weeks to rebuild rather than minutes like the spam and coffer bots.

[Uln'Xeresy]

As long as people want to buy gold or level, It will never go away. I personaly would never let someone else play my toon, for it is my own addition to the world.

But i will not slam someone for doing it since, that is what they want, they buy the game and pay monthly to play how they want...