Professional Farmers

[Little Faith]

I thought this one might be intersting for the crowd here.

http://www.gameguidesonline.com/guides/art...ctober05_01.asp


It tries to cut through some of the myths regarding those who make a living off the MMORPG economy.

[Rinnhart]

I thought this one might be intersting for the crowd here.

http://www.gameguidesonline.com/guides/art...ctober05_01.asp
It tries to cut through some of the myths regarding those who make a living off the MMORPG economy.
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I don't care who you are or why you farm; you're ruining my game and I hate you for it.

[Little Faith]

I think you are assuming too much. I don't even play WoW, so I could care less. I merely thought the article would be of interest to the crowd here.

[Sabra]

I think that was meant as a general statement, not something directed at you. And yeah, we all feel pretty much that way.

Interesting article, IMO. Explained a lot to me about the toxic horror Hordie farmer in Felwood, who in the evening is this sweet guy who dances with me and waves and keeps others away from me and shares territory but by day is an absolute grinding machine.

[lfd]

I think you are assuming too much. I don't even play WoW, so I could care less.

I think you are, too. I don't think Rinnhart was assuming you were a farmer, more indicating that he doesn't care what justifications farmers come up with. Assume he's addressing a farmer, rather than yourself, with his use of "you".

And it's "couldn't care less".

I merely thought the article would be of interest to the crowd here.
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The crowd here are, I suspect, strongly inclined towards Rinnhart's point of view.

[kandrathe]

I thought this one might be intersting for the crowd here.

http://www.gameguidesonline.com/guides/art...ctober05_01.asp
It tries to cut through some of the myths regarding those who make a living off the MMORPG economy.
[right][snapback]95584[/snapback][/right]

The article is BS. Gold farmers have a negative effect on the MMORPG game experience and game economy and here's how;

Let's take one item as an example: Essence of Water. I need 2 Essence of water to get a +15 agility enchant on one of my weapons, so I go to the known place where I can find this item. There are 10 others also there, and some are like me, needing a few. But increasingly there are 6 or so who are there to farm these coveted items which require alot of effort to acquire, and they sell them on the AH for gold.

First point: They make what would be a difficult for a normal player to obtain, 10x harder, and often turn a 1 hour project into a many day project.


Now, consider what happens to items. They consistently undercut the price on the AH, because they must have a constant stream of sales to turn into Real Life $.

Second point: They devalue items that should have more value by flooding the market with those items.


Sure, we all could go to the AH and buy our items from gold farmers, and we could all go use our credit cards and purchase 1000's of gold. But, then why play? I could hire the boy next door to play WOW for me and tell me how much fun HE is having.

Third point: They encourage through supporting trading RL$ for game gold, trivializing the game and allowing anyone with RL$ to buy what others have invested effort to obtain.


A *real* player is now disincented two ways from competing with the professional farmer, first due to added difficulty in getting the item due to an unnatural flood of toons vying for mob drops, and second due to the devalued price he can get for his efforts.

Fourth Point: Fewer opportunities for *real* players to earn game gold.


My experiences in Winterspring aiding Mirajj with his Epic cat quests showed me how much of an obstacle professional farmers can be and how detrimental they are to the his questing experience. Luckily there were few enough so that their interference while a drag, could be overcome. In the end, Mirajj organized all the people who were pursuing that quest into a collective to work together against the farmers.

Fifth Point: Professonal farmers interfere with players game quests.


There are many players who refuse to buy anything at the AH, due to the prevelence of professional gold farmers. I am one who refuses to contribute to leeching scum, like IGE, that exploit an entertainment past time such as a MMORPG to earn money at the expense to the experience of those who play the game.

Sixth Point: Co-opting the AH as a means to exploit the game, making bidding suspect to *real* players.


Increasingly I've been getting in game advertising for gold selling sites while in the game. Spamming me with group invites, duel spamming me to keep me from getting the next mob, etc. This is a direct violation of the TOS, ANNOYING, and I am compelled to report each incedent to a GM which is a waste of my and the GM's time.

Seventh Point: Disregard for TOS, spamming me repeatedly, and wasting my time in reporting them to a GM.

By their professionally dedicated effort converting farmed items into gold, they devalue gold making fixed price game items cheaper. Buying that Epic mount for 900g is not as big an obstacle anymore when gold is devalued. But, conversely since everyone has (esp. those with credit cards) vast sums of gold then the prices on very rare items become even more astronomical. It would have been been inconceivable for someone to ask 15000 gold for an item six months ago, and in another six months we can expect to see 30000 gold price tags on items.

Eighth Point: Detrimental effect on the WOW economy.


I view professional gold farmers as leeches sucking the fun out of my game experience. I will do everything in my power to make their *job* as hard as possible, and I will never knowingly buy any item from any professional gold farmer, nor knowingly contribute to scum bag enterprises like IGE.

Digging deeper with whois.net and gameguidesonline.com and the "motives" of the articles author "Paul" (who I suspect is the user Enerate on their forum) reveals some shady Brandon, FL connections to various exploitation websites run by "Brian Mackay", "Josh Young" and a front non-website business Illicon.com. Inside gameguidesonlines forum, primarily a single user describes hundreds of ways to exploit the game and raise gold easy. I also see a pattern around the net of various recently joined "users" on forums (probably the Brandon folks generating traffic) referring to the article on gameguidesonline.com as "an interesting read".

[Mirajj]

And on top of all that, from the recent patch notes...

- Chests in Maraudon have been disabled for good.

The first direct patch change for the sole purpose of cutting out farming activity. This is where it begins, where will it end?

Farmers have now negatively impacted the PvE experience in a permanent way, and it's only starting.

[Kevin]

And on top of all that, from the recent patch notes...
The first direct patch change for the sole purpose of cutting out farming activity. This is where it begins, where will it end?

Farmers have now negatively impacted the PvE experience in a permanent way, and it's only starting.
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I've never seen a chest in Maraudon. So I don't think this was a farming issue change.

[Treesh]

And on top of all that, from the recent patch notes...
The first direct patch change for the sole purpose of cutting out farming activity. This is where it begins, where will it end?

Farmers have now negatively impacted the PvE experience in a permanent way, and it's only starting.
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I still can't recall seeing a single chest in Maraudon ever.

[Quark]

I've never seen a chest in Maraudon.  So I don't think this was a farming issue change.
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I believe this chests were disabled awhile back, actually, to prevent farming. Back when it happened, Blizzard said it was a "temporary fix" to stability problems.

[Concillian]

Farmers have now negatively impacted the PvE experience in a permanent way, and it's only starting.
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Just now starting?

What about Hippogriff feathers, electro-lanterns, nerfing prices of SM BOP drops, etc...

It started almost a year ago.
It's a downwards spiral that rewards farmers and exploiters.

Farmers find item of best return for least effort
Blizzard nerfs item prices
Farmers find next best return for least effort.
Blizzard nerfs item prices
etc...

Farmers are rewarded for finding the best return for least effort by being able to exploit it until the next patch. The patch affects future drops from there, but the farmers already benefitted.

Casual players lose out here, because it gets more and more difficult to raise money without going to extreme measures, yet economy inflation continues because of the moeny generation of farmers and the $$ --> WoW gold services.

[TheWesson]

[...]
By their professionally dedicated effort converting farmed items into gold, they devalue gold making fixed price game items cheaper. Buying that Epic mount for 900g is not as big an obstacle anymore when gold is devalued. But, conversely since everyone has (esp. those with credit cards) vast sums of gold then the prices on very rare items become even more astronomical. It would have been been inconceivable for someone to ask 15000 gold for an item six months ago, and in another six months we can expect to see 30000 gold price tags on items.

Eighth Point: Detrimental effect on the WOW economy.
[...]

I probably agree with the rest of the Numbered Points, but I've always wondered about the effect on the economy.

Gold farmers should introduce both gold AND items into the economy, thus leaving it pretty much as before. Consider Noob Ebayer. Noob buys a bunch of gold (from farming company) and then SPENDS a bunch of gold on items that gold farmers have found. This gold is then sold (for real world money) to Othernoob Ebayer -- and so on.

Selling a lot of blue/purple items created by farming should make YOUR prices lower - your gold more valuable. On the other hand, introducing the extra gold from mob drops or vendor sales should make a bigger gold supply, and make your gold worth less - your items worth more. These effects should approximately balance. In other words, the gold farmers are producing both gold and gold-sinks.

There may exist some specific cases where this isn't true, where some epic [or other item] which is not farmed or farmable goes up in price due to people being able to buy gold ... perhaps that is what the Eighth Point is really about. Then, your (expensive) labor playing WoW is competing against cheap labor and being outbid -- buying the product of cheap labor is more efficient than applying your own expensive labor in WoW to produce the product. (This wouldn't apply where the item itself could be farmed.)

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.

I would still like to see gold farmers gone, though, just because it does destroy the context.

[TheWesson]

I was about to say that gold farmers might be responsible for some distortions like a stack of copper ore being 1-2g or more, since gold farmers will get gold but will never get copper ore.

But I think the more likely reason is that people are funneling gold to alts; in other words that the copper ore is being priced at what a lvl-60 would pay, not what a lvl-15 (the common consumer of copper ore) would actually pay.

So this part of the economy is distorted by the fact that things tend to get priced in terms of what the labor of a typical lvl-60 char is worth - 5g/hr or so.

Would you rather pay 2.5 gold for it or spend an hour mining 20 copper ore? The answer to that question depends on whether your time is valued at lvl-60 rates or lvl-15 rates.

Makes it kind of tough on new alts-less characters.

[Treesh]

I believe this chests were disabled awhile back, actually, to prevent farming.  Back when it happened, Blizzard said it was a "temporary fix" to stability problems.
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Yes, but even before that change I hadn't seen a chest in Maraudon.

[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.
...
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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.

[fractaled]

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.
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Did that already :)

[Dozer]

All this makes me glad I'm on the low-population side of one of the lowest population servers around - I can go the burning steppes, ungoro, and winterspring, and find RTVs waiting for me. Krol blades are a super-rarity. The ninjas and the known farmers/AH milkers are well known and widely blacklisted.


No crowd to dissappear into, no crowd to get lost in. :)

[Guest]

Electo-lanterns are a bad example.

Casual players were earning gold for horses with them just as much a "ebay/chinese" farmers were trying to earn gold to sell. The problem with the laterns was that they were way to valuable for the ease with which you could get them.

There is a bit bit of sematics issue with simply using the word "farmer'.
A guy earning gold every day to resell is a very different animal than a guy spending his afternoons for a week killing easy stuff so he can buy a new sword or a horse.
Both could be called a farmer but one is impacting the the game world in a persistant manner directed by out of game forces(money) while the other is simply playing the game - but both could be called a farmer.

[Guest]

Time = money. On an "old" server level doesnt matter all that matters is the demand for the product.

This happens in every MMO that has a level cap. Once the majority of players have a maxed out toon any product that is desirable to high levels has a value relative to its rarity is essentially the same as how long it takes to obtain.

[Drasca]

Farmers hasten a pre-existing and seemingly inevitable problem inherent to mmorpgs: Oversupply. It happens, gold farming or not, items will be devalued from the sheer number of people farming them. Inflation skyrockets with the sheer number of people and buying power bidding on scarce resources. Yes, gold farming makes it worse, but its really the underbelly of a bigger problem that anyone with experience with these games (mmorpgs, diablo 2, everquest, UO, etc) should see coming from miles away.

While I don't like ebay gold farming, I realize its a mmorpg with few steady money sinks (repair, reagents, ammo and alchemy are the only ones I can spot off the bat, and alchemy's optional). Whether you have farmers for gold, or farmers for epic mounts, there's a lot of people out there competing for the same resources. Gold farmers do not require morals and seem less, communicable, and accountable. That is a problem, but the underlying system is a bigger one. High populations with high supplies will devalue your individual gold and items, and make certain things easier to obtain to an extent.

Farmers, however despicable in their methods, are a symptom of a bigger problem. I see many of the complaints made against farming as inevitable.

This happens in every MMO that has a level cap. Once the majority of players have a maxed out toon any product that is desirable to high levels has a value relative to its rarity is essentially the same as how long it takes to obtain.

Demand for older gear is limited by the rate of incoming new toons. You'll have an oversupply whether from older toons, or farmers. Inflation will occur for the rarer gear by the richer older toons. Do I blame farmers for this? Nope, it'd happen whether they existed or not. They're an easy scapegoat for WoW's economical problem, especially since many are foreigners. Hate for farmers tends to bleed into racism. I don't like either forms of hate, especially when they're the symptom, not the disease.

Big woopity-de-doo, everybody's got one

Inevitable. End game raids are on 'farm' status by many guilds too. Once the challenge threshold has been crossed, there is no return.

economy inflation continues because of the money generation of farmers

Inflation for the rarer items, overly abundant item prices actually drop due to oversupply. Still, this is what happens in a high-pop traditional mmorpg with or without farmers. Someone else will mine "your" RTV, grind on "your" monsters, and generally deny you access from certain items, while oversupplying on other items.