Professional Farmers

[kandrathe]

...
But the basic effect of gold farmers should be the same as introducing a large number of normal players who have somewhat different motivations for play.  In the general sense, the fact that people can buy gold is irrelevant to the WoW economy.
...
[right][snapback]95658[/snapback][/right]

No, not quite.

The gold farmer stays in one place day after day, and has no motivation other than produce his daily gold quota which is converted into real world $. Think of it this way; What if some real farmers in the your country could produce 10x more product than any other *normal* farmer. The price of the commodity plummets making it an unprofitable for the "normal" farmer driving them to find other means to sustain themselves, and in the worst case going into debt (ie. buying WOW gold with a credit card) to pay for the things they want or need.

In the game, the effect is that RTV's are harder to mine by players, but Thorium/ Gems / and Arcane crystals become plentiful and cheap, Essence of Fire/Water/Earth/Air are harder for the *real* player to obtain outside the AH, but at the AH the value is dropping. Enchanting now depends on obtaining enchants that are impossible for farmers to obtain. But, Shards, Essences, and Dust constantly drop in value due to the huge volumes flooding the market making disenchanting more and more meaningless. Your cloth, leather, herbs, and basic gathering professions are becoming increasingly unprofitable.

The economy becomes driven by the farmers, and what should otherwise be profitable professions become frustrating and meaningless within the game. I suspect that in most cases the gold purchased by credit card is not re-infused into the player economy, it is spent most likely buying more things that are farmed to pay for things like Thorium Brotherhood faction, or Epic mounts. Epic BOE's used to have some novelty, but now you go the the AH and see 3 Krol Blades being sold by the same gold farmer. You don't like the price at 300 gold (They used to be 3-5x higher)? Wait a week, the same farmer will have three more for sale at an even more reduced price. Say you were lucky or dedicated enough to find your own Stockade Pauldrons, or Krol Blade. Big woopity-de-doo, everybody's got one. Who's to know how it was obtained. Epic? My hairy behind.

Look at the difference in availability of farmable PVE materials, versus those things that are only obtainable within an instance like Molten Core, or Zul'Garub. If you go get a group together to mine Soulderite in Zul'Garub, you have a commodity that is rare and valuable.

The result is that in order to make the game meaningful to the *player*, all the meaningful content must be shielded from the professional farmer. This means removing chests, nerfing drops, making more items and crafted items bind on pickup, or moving neccesary crafting materials into instances. In other words, if you are not a part of a cohesive group that will help you progress, you are hosed, good game, cancel your account.