11-28-2005, 05:32 PM
I find myself in general disagreement with most of the responses in this tread. I don't feel my play experience is significantly worse due to the existence of professional farmers.
I just hit 60 with my rogue on Durotan. I'm splitting my time between Silithus (glowing scorpid blood and twilight texts, at the moment), Timbermaw reputation, Cauldron runs, Arathi Basin, and instances. I am not finding that there are characters I can identify as behaving like farmers that are making my gameplay experience in those zones worse. I have occasional competition for spawns in Winterspring, but considering the crap drops the Winterfall give, I doubt they are professional farmers, just other suckers trying to gain reputation like me.
I managed my money well while leveling, and used Auctioneer to suppliment it. I planned my character's purchasable equipment out ahead of time, and I'm already suited out in most of the best non-epic, AH-purchasable equipment available (still missing Spaulders of the Unseen unless I can get the shoulders from BRD or Strat). Any amount of farming that someone else was doing during that time was a help to me, not a hurt, since it would be increasing the supply of the items I wanted to buy and so lowering the prices.
I'm at 277 Enchanting; 8 more points and I'll be able to learn the Icy enchant recipe I have sitting in the bank. I'll need a couple of Essences to use it. I could go farm for them -- check Thottbot out, find the best places to farm, blow a few hours or more -- or I could do something else, hit one of the zones I'm having fun in, do the things I'm having fun doing, and just buy the Essences on the AH. If I think I would have fun farming, well, I'll do that. If there is a group of farmers out there, farming the things I might want every day for hours a day, when I do want the items but don't want to spend the time to get them myself, the farmers make it easier to for me to get those items. I don't see this as a problem.
Now, if you (the generic, not-pointing-at-any-specific-poster-earlier-in-this-thread you) feel that getting all of your own materials is an important part of having fun, that's fine -- you've defined a gameplay experience for yourself in which there are rules that you are imposing on yourself, rather than just the ones that the game provides you, and that is something I can understand. Just don't complain when you run into the fact that sometimes the materials you want happen to be materials most everyone else wants, too. There will always be some resources for which there is high demand and for which the cost to benefit (generally the primary cost in MMORPGS will be time) ratio is better than the rest.
To cry that people shouldn't be allowed to farm high demand, valuable resources means you've decided you don't want people to be able to choose to buy or trade for those items; there is no other way to prevent high demand, valuable resources from being farmed, other than making them less valuable or reducing the demand. No, you feel that since you want to have the option to effectively (read -- with no serious competition) gather those resources yourself, it would be better if everyone else had the rules you are imposing on yourself be imposed on them as well.
I have no interest in playing a game where players are entitled to advancement simply as a function of time invested; strategic choices are a must for me, and those strategic choices tend to go away if there is no reward for farming. There will be farmers where some items have a greater demand than supply compared the average and those items can be found with less investment under some circumstances compared others. The only way I can think of designing an MMORPG with no variation in the rates of demand and supply for items is to make all items BoP and have all items drop from a univeral loot table from mobs, which would also all have to be exactly the same. Any lack of BoP allows for differing degrees of usefulness to produce differing degress of value, and multiple drop tables will always result in any two different mobs with different drop tables having unequal rewards. Any difference in value produced per time unit spent will lead to farming.
Oh, and I see the opportunity to purchase in-game items with real money to be a problem entirely different that that of farming (if it was professional farmers in the lead when it comes to filling the auction houses, it would be some other group, like college students). I don't like the idea of players paying money for in game benefits without those items/players being flagged clearly. I want to be able to compare how well my choices and skill have paid off during the time I have played compared to other people [this is why I think you should be able to see timed /played for other characters, so you can compare how well you are doing to them post 60]. I am a competative person, what can I say.
I just hit 60 with my rogue on Durotan. I'm splitting my time between Silithus (glowing scorpid blood and twilight texts, at the moment), Timbermaw reputation, Cauldron runs, Arathi Basin, and instances. I am not finding that there are characters I can identify as behaving like farmers that are making my gameplay experience in those zones worse. I have occasional competition for spawns in Winterspring, but considering the crap drops the Winterfall give, I doubt they are professional farmers, just other suckers trying to gain reputation like me.
I managed my money well while leveling, and used Auctioneer to suppliment it. I planned my character's purchasable equipment out ahead of time, and I'm already suited out in most of the best non-epic, AH-purchasable equipment available (still missing Spaulders of the Unseen unless I can get the shoulders from BRD or Strat). Any amount of farming that someone else was doing during that time was a help to me, not a hurt, since it would be increasing the supply of the items I wanted to buy and so lowering the prices.
I'm at 277 Enchanting; 8 more points and I'll be able to learn the Icy enchant recipe I have sitting in the bank. I'll need a couple of Essences to use it. I could go farm for them -- check Thottbot out, find the best places to farm, blow a few hours or more -- or I could do something else, hit one of the zones I'm having fun in, do the things I'm having fun doing, and just buy the Essences on the AH. If I think I would have fun farming, well, I'll do that. If there is a group of farmers out there, farming the things I might want every day for hours a day, when I do want the items but don't want to spend the time to get them myself, the farmers make it easier to for me to get those items. I don't see this as a problem.
Now, if you (the generic, not-pointing-at-any-specific-poster-earlier-in-this-thread you) feel that getting all of your own materials is an important part of having fun, that's fine -- you've defined a gameplay experience for yourself in which there are rules that you are imposing on yourself, rather than just the ones that the game provides you, and that is something I can understand. Just don't complain when you run into the fact that sometimes the materials you want happen to be materials most everyone else wants, too. There will always be some resources for which there is high demand and for which the cost to benefit (generally the primary cost in MMORPGS will be time) ratio is better than the rest.
To cry that people shouldn't be allowed to farm high demand, valuable resources means you've decided you don't want people to be able to choose to buy or trade for those items; there is no other way to prevent high demand, valuable resources from being farmed, other than making them less valuable or reducing the demand. No, you feel that since you want to have the option to effectively (read -- with no serious competition) gather those resources yourself, it would be better if everyone else had the rules you are imposing on yourself be imposed on them as well.
I have no interest in playing a game where players are entitled to advancement simply as a function of time invested; strategic choices are a must for me, and those strategic choices tend to go away if there is no reward for farming. There will be farmers where some items have a greater demand than supply compared the average and those items can be found with less investment under some circumstances compared others. The only way I can think of designing an MMORPG with no variation in the rates of demand and supply for items is to make all items BoP and have all items drop from a univeral loot table from mobs, which would also all have to be exactly the same. Any lack of BoP allows for differing degrees of usefulness to produce differing degress of value, and multiple drop tables will always result in any two different mobs with different drop tables having unequal rewards. Any difference in value produced per time unit spent will lead to farming.
Oh, and I see the opportunity to purchase in-game items with real money to be a problem entirely different that that of farming (if it was professional farmers in the lead when it comes to filling the auction houses, it would be some other group, like college students). I don't like the idea of players paying money for in game benefits without those items/players being flagged clearly. I want to be able to compare how well my choices and skill have paid off during the time I have played compared to other people [this is why I think you should be able to see timed /played for other characters, so you can compare how well you are doing to them post 60]. I am a competative person, what can I say.