"Gold Farmers Need To Be Embraced"

Redbedlam's founder says that the mistake a lot of MMOs are making is that they are fighting gold farmers instead of embracing them.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Kerry Fraser-Robinson, founder of virtual worlds developer RedBedlam, has said that given the presence of gold farmers (people who sell online credits for real money) in any virtual economy is inevitable, the wisest course of action is to tailor the game's economic structure to compensate for them.

"It's going to happen whether you like it or not," he said. "People will always find the path of least resistance, if you stop them buying your gold then they'll buy that gold from somebody else who is gold farming."

Many MMOs, like Everquest or World of Warcraft, are active in their purging of accounts that are found to be hoarding vast amounts of in game currency or camping rare spawns in the hope of acquiring a powerful in-game item. Fraser-Robinson believes such methods of policing gold farmers are an exercise in futility, however.

"If you don't build that into your system then you're not going to be able to compete with the gold farmers and that will ruin your in-game economy, which will in turn ruin your game. At the very least having the recognition that virtual economics is a discipline and is a very important integral part to being a virtual world," he added.

Fraser-Robinson went on to say that MMO developers should take on board the advice of economists and that in the future this would be a necessary step.

"I think that's absolutely essential going forward... because wherever humans are in communities and whenever they are bartering there is a market and there is going to be a market place. If you let that go with no regulation and no recognition then very, very crazy things will happen," he said.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz
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Maybe it's just the two cups of coffee and a busy day back at work at a four-and-a-half-day break, but what I got from that article was "let the gold farmers gold farm because they are going to anyway."

That's about as logical as "real criminals will find a way to get guns, so let's not restrict anybody from getting guns because it's an exercise in futility."

Gold farmers break the game, pure and simple. Real money transactions are a slap in the face of those who actually, you know, earn their loot. You can't buy better golf skills; you shouldn't be able to buy better loot.

This man doesn't know what he's talking about. I think the above poster's example says it all, really.

^ Agreed. The above poster does say it all, which is why I'm gonna add a load more, pretty much saying the same thing.

The reason WOW etc remove farmers and advertisers from the game is so we're not flooded by them, it'd be far worse if they just quit trying. Then everyone gets sick of it, quits playing, no-one playing = no-one buying gold, and it'll stop. I guess that's one way, and in a way, as gold farmers are already wrecking part of the game for people, it'd be apt for them to destroy themselves eventually.

Again, agreeing with the above guy, just because you can't eliminate everything, doesn't mean you quit trying. there's people laundering money and forging banknotes now, should we just accept anything on paper that says 'ten dollars' on it? no, because it devalues the money already in the system.

From my perspective, (and here's where someone can shout 'racism' as it seems half the forum is about that right now), I wonder who's looking at the gold ads and thinking "hmm, yes, I think I'll entrust my credit card details to a bunch of people who can't even spell 'gold' right in their ads in game...".

This is pretty much like saying that criminals are going to break the law anyway so why don't we just let them steal shit and then tax them so at least we are getting money out of the process.

If you had ever played Silkroad Online you would know gold farmers are the scourge of existance. The people who make the bots for them deserve to be shot execution style, and the in town gold website advert bot owners deserve to be hung from a clothesline over a pool of man eating chiuauas snapping at their goulies with electric shocking teeth.

If game developers want to embrace gold farming they'll just have to sell gold and stuff to the players themselves. Hey, some MMO games have that instead of subscription fees and look how well they do! They're actually doing a lot better than your average pay-to-play games. Most players apparently will pay any amount of money in order to look cool without making any effort to play a game. I sense a grand future for online games where billions of people stand around in vast virtual worlds showing off really big swords and developers swimming in salt water seas of money.

If they're developers who're enthusiastic about videogames they'll probably also be making those, and the rest of us will be playing them.

He's not saying "let them gold farm" he's saying that if the MMOs want to stop gold farming they need to sell the gold and items themselves.

Jenny Creed:
If game developers want to embrace gold farming they'll just have to sell gold to the players themselves. Hey, some MMO games have that instead of subscription fees and look how well they do! They're actually doing a lot better than your average pay-to-play games.

No, they don't do well. They all are full of shit. Pardon my french, of course.

Gold farmers defy the very purpose of the game:

1. Either get a good equipment, good character and be a powergamer - you can buy all that from a gold farmer...

2. Fun from getting a character to a high level and enjoying it - Well, I find nothing fun in playing a level 90 character I've never played before. Not to mention, you probably will suck at it if you bought it.

Warhammer Online did it right - banhammer hitting hundreds of gold farmers every week.

Already 15k banned and it keeps on going. Of course, it was a lot more, but people began to notice how stupid it is - buy a game, then get banned after 15 minutes of advertising.

xitel:
He's not saying "let them gold farm" he's saying that if the MMOs want to stop gold farming they need to sell the gold and items themselves.

What kind of self-respecting developers would do that?

Ok, so everyone is wrong, first off gold farmers dont ruin the economy. where your average gamer is a obsessive compulsive packrat who will create a veritable legion of alts to hoard away every last bit of gear that "might" be useful someday, gold farmers actually have an incentive to get those massive piles of loot out of their inventory and converted into gold. that need to sell NOW drives the market, keeps items in stock and prices down via competition. your regular player will stop running whatever instance once he is all epiced out, lured back into it only to do favors for their friends, while the gold farmer works tirelessly day in and day out to keep the market brimming with anything that can be sold.

bots and scams are wrong, but selling gold in itself is not.

BUT imagine if in game profits were taxed, even if you didnt sell anything for money, IRS would be hounding you. take eve, some of the ships are worth $10,000 if you were to take ebays word for it. what about international borders? theres an opportunity to tariff you there too. imagine the burden added to game companies which would have to turn over their databases to be audited and supply each gamer with a W2 for the years profits.

no, the way things are, are just fine, the kiddies that feel so super leet making $20,000 in a year eventually realize that its goat piss compared to the $80,000 they could be making by putting that much effort into a real job in the tech sector.

"What kind of self-respecting developers would do that?"
plenty, its a perfectly legitimate and well accepted business model.

Abedeus:

Jenny Creed:
If game developers want to embrace gold farming they'll just have to sell gold to the players themselves. Hey, some MMO games have that instead of subscription fees and look how well they do! They're actually doing a lot better than your average pay-to-play games.

No, they don't do well. They all are full of shit. Pardon my french, of course.

They are commercial products that are successful. They make a lot of money. Are you suggesting there's anything more important than short-term profit to someone trying to run a business?

Anyway, I'm thinking you didn't read all of my post. ^_^

Jenny Creed:

Abedeus:

Jenny Creed:
If game developers want to embrace gold farming they'll just have to sell gold to the players themselves. Hey, some MMO games have that instead of subscription fees and look how well they do! They're actually doing a lot better than your average pay-to-play games.

No, they don't do well. They all are full of shit. Pardon my french, of course.

They are commercial products that are successful. They make a lot of money. Are you suggesting there's anything more important than short-term profit to someone trying to run a business?

Anyway, I'm thinking you didn't read all of my post. ^_^

They are not better than P2P MMOs.

There is no F2P that has even 500k people. Even if every one of them bought something for $15 a month, they are earning less cash than Lineage 2, UO, WoW or probably WAR. And you don't get a good customer support you'd get with P2P.

plenty, its a perfectly legitimate and well accepted business model.

Well, it's legitimate if developers agree.

It's not if it says so in EULA. Which usually gold farmers DO broke. That alone is more than enough to ban them all.

yes, but is exchanging in game items for out of game goods and services a good reason for a game company to use the EULA to deny themselves a highly active, paying customer? sure, if theyre causing a disturbance, spamming off their site or conning people, but selling gold in itself?

Look at how many those free to play games are. See how little it takes to succeed with them. Compare how many games with monthly subscriptions have failed. Or just look up the profit reports of Runescape, Gaia Online, Ragnarok Online and Second Life and be amazed. Not to get into things that we don't normally think of when we say videogames but have popularity that WoW can only dream of, like online poker.

And you don't get a good customer support you'd get with P2P.

See, that's one way they save money. GO has apparently 92 employees total, I bet at least one of them mans the phones. . .

To all the people suggesting micro-transactions:

Yes, they are legitimate and a welcome alternative to the subscription business model. But what happens when the micro-transactions extend beyond cosmetic upgrades and into the game itself?

You want to sell me a cool-looking hat or sword, fine. Even if you want to offer legitimately better items (armor with +100 to all resistances, for example) as a micro-transaction, fine. But what's to stop publishers from charging for quests, or to access more areas of the in-game map? What's to stop a publisher from saying "This game is free to play until level 20, but if you want to reach the cap you've got to pay for it?"

I see nothing wrong with either business model, but I say "Keep it fair" either way. If you are going to offer your game as free-to-play, offer the full game. Offer some sweet loot up for a price if you want, but don't restrict me just because I don't want to pay for a game that you--as the publisher--are telling me I can play for free. If you want me to pay for it, then charge me outright--with a subscription fee.

What do you all think about a subscription model similar to cell phones, where you buy packets of minutes and other features? Do you think a tiered subscription model is in the future of MMORPGs? I do.

I believe that a different business model show be in place (for most games out now at least). There are a few games, though, that do it right.

Guild Wars has no subscription fee, sure you have to buy the game, but nothing else after that. Gold and item farming is allowed, and the game is managed along that line. Loot is scaled if you farm a place time after time. This is a way to disencourage gold farmers to a point of not making it lucrative. People still sell gold outside the game, but the admins are effective at finding out who the farmers are, namely by scanning the servers and instances for patterns.

When it comes to F2P MMOs, on the other hand, it is managed differently (at least the ones i played). There is normally a marketplace, where some premium items and game gold is traded. Rohan: Blood Feud, for example, has an internal player-based marketplace, where players are allowed to trade game gold for premium currency, RP, which in itself allows to buy premium items or other player-earned items for sale.

As a conclusion, I wouldn't mind if gold mining was allowed, if there is a careful policy around it. Town Spammers and Botters are the scourge, not the miners.

Nethack quote: "The DevTeam has arranged an automatic and savage punishment for pudding farming. It's called pudding farming."

If someone wants to sit around all day and farm gold, should it really be considered a bad thing? They're investing *that much* time in $COMPANY software subscriptions (or in the case of Guild Wars are getting auto-punished for it anyway as everything scales away). Personally I don't think we should embrace them, but banning/purging accounts because they're gold farming seems a bit over the top for me.

I don't have the patience for pudding farming in nethack, but I love it when I come across a bones file of someone who does!

"Gold Farmers Need To Be Embraced"

...tightly by tentacles of the largest cephelapod we can summon forth from the vasty deep. And then dragged down.

Sorry, gold farming (or microtransaction-driven play bonuses in general) would entirely kill my interest in a title. There will always be those willing to pay to win... and I don't want to be playing with them, I'd rather be playing with people who want to play the game.

-- Steve

Gitsnik:
Nethack quote: "The DevTeam has arranged an automatic and savage punishment for pudding farming. It's called pudding farming."

If someone wants to sit around all day and farm gold, should it really be considered a bad thing? They're investing *that much* time in $COMPANY software subscriptions (or in the case of Guild Wars are getting auto-punished for it anyway as everything scales away). Personally I don't think we should embrace them, but banning/purging accounts because they're gold farming seems a bit over the top for me.

I don't have the patience for pudding farming in nethack, but I love it when I come across a bones file of someone who does!

The problem is not the actual practice, but the impact it has in the big picture of curious virtual economies. The "it's their time, let them do what they want with it" idea loses a bit of steam when said individuals are also making a profit, too.

The ability to purchase gold and inject imbalance into the in-game market has been plenty an issue. While virtual economies are certainly not as serious business as the actual economy the ability for a game to have a healthy market for goods and items is part of its appeal.

As for "gold farmers need a hug", simply because MMO companies can't stop them, well, it's only true in that they can't ever stop gold farming spam, or the actual persistence of gold farming in general. What they can do is adjust the economy to make gold farming services irrelevant or not worthwhile, with some success. I'm with a bunch of folks in the thread - saying they're gonna do it anyway is tantamount to saying you shouldn't have restrictions on conduct in an online game because "this is the Internet" and douchebags are going to be around no matter what. But somewhere, someone has to set some kind of bar or standard, and not allowing people to buy their way to success in an MMO (as opposed to having an equal chance of it) is part of setting that up.

Besides, my sympathy for gold farming companies dips quite a bit when you see that they have a business model that is lucrative. They aren't hurting.

"purchase gold and inject imbalance into the in-game market has been plenty an issue"

how so? I already explained why I think gold farming makes a market more healthy, do you have any counter to my points? any other issues to bring up on the subject?

I don't see why online games have a system that works like gold sellers to make the gold sellers out of business.

Death to all Gold Farmers, pure and simple. Screw them. Of course they would say "Embrace us". They have a lot of cash to make. Anyone would say the same thing. Crack dealers say the same thing. Screw Gold Farmers.

Anyone want to guess why Gold Farming REALLY SUCKS? Because it unbalances the game for the players. There are some players, like me, who cannot and would not spend more cash on a game than what we all ready have. Which is about $50 for a brand new PC MMO plus the monthly fee's. That is no small chuck of change.

Then there are the dicks who have all the money in the world and don't care. They can buy gold and items all the time. They don't have to spend time to work at getting gold and items. They unbalance the game and that ruins the fun factor for everyone. They like Gold Farmers and their ilk game go piss off.

Murmur95:
I don't see why online games have a system that works like gold sellers to make the gold sellers out of business.

That's the system he's suggesting. A strong economic system would force gold farmers away from hoarding as the economy would crash out; similar to the credit crunch in RL.
Eve does similar.

I agree with the contents of the OPs article.
Stamping out gold farmers would cost a lot of mmporgs both user numbers and a steady income, So long as they find a way to stop it from crashing the game economy.

WAR is a good example of handling it, the game gives out so much gold that there's no reason to buy it.

"blizzard is far too ethical to resort to having to promote or sell things for in-game rewards. because gold-farmers would ruin the game for the players who do the right thing, etc"

Three words:

Spectral Tiger Mount
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33225#comments

sure, it's not 'in-game' currency, but the TCG rewards and the rewards from events like blizzcon and 'recruit-a-friend' are still very profitable for blizzard, just like that money made by farming gold 'legitmately' or 'not-so-legitimately' and then selling it.

it's a morality lesson that beguiles people who aren't exposed to the obnoxious fashion in which blizzard casually, but regularly advertises RM t-shirts, mice, card games, mousepads, events, vs. the way goldfarmers advertise their services.

MMO's selling IGE for profit, either come down 'our standards are so tough because we have at least two of them' or they don't have the means or the numbers to 'skim' politely off the top of customers, and rather, do so more aggressively or restrict users who are not paying to play the game.

eve online at least has the temerity to offer RW/IG exchange of money as a profitable resource, web games like travian and others offer donation/upkeep bonuses, etc. which are honestly tame compared to direct item-sales of balance-breaking weapons or bonuses that unbalance the game for those not paying their way ahead.

the problem is that the IGE is based upon several hundred people also trying to make money exploiting the resources of the game's economic system, for personal acquisition, or systematic gains, i.e. to buy more items to gain better gear to gain more items, etc.

given the number of people and players who already game the economic system already, introducing RM bonuses for levelling i.e. recruit-a-friend, introducing RM rewards, plus, in addition, they are already seeking to undermine the economic system in several ways to try to curb various inadequacies of the principles of any economic system, i.e. where does one spend money on consuming goods, if one has no need for goods beyond the means to trade money.

giant bags. exclusive jewellery. motorcycles. and mounts. RM/IGM consumerism.

i could be wrong, it might not be blizzard falling into a slippery slope of inducing people to buy goods, services, in-game-rewards, etc. but that's the point of small changes, you typically don't notice it until it's too late to change or interfere.

I know that the acquisition of currency in MMO's is what makes me loathe them with such a passion, because they take up nine-tenths of the time I should be devoting to fun with grinding and work. The sooner developers can find a place for gold farmers in their heart, the sooner I can get back onto the MMOG scene and not hate myself for it. Though, I would have to admit I'd regret seeing Mythic's truly entertaining way of dealing with gold farmers in WAR fly by.

ward.:
I agree with the contents of the OPs article.
Stamping out gold farmers would cost a lot of mmporgs both user numbers and a steady income, So long as they find a way to stop it from crashing the game economy.

WAR is a good example of handling it, the game gives out so much gold that there's no reason to buy it.

Better yet, it even rewards those who hand the scum in.

Apparently noone here plays RuneScape. In RS, gold farmers (henceforth referred to as Real World Traders) had been ruining the economy for YEARS. It was almost impossible to make decent money out of skilling, as depletable resources (yew and magic trees, runite rocks etc) were always being farmed by up to 10 generic-appearance bots at a time, and with non-depleatable resources (fishing spots for sharks, rune essence mine) there was simply a massive supply of those resources. Also, because of millions of bots casting High-level Alchemy on BILLIONS of yew longbows, and the money brought into the economy by this, the inflation in RS was quite massive.

Recently, JaGex (makers of RS) have completely KILLED RWTing. I haven't seen a bot in about a year, and the only way to buy gold is to pay someone AND give them your account details (!!!) and HOPE against hope that they: one) use it to make gold for you. 2) give it back 3) don't sell your years of hard work you have put into your character. If they don't, you can't recover your account details (oh yes, let's just ask the company who ban people who buy as well as sell gold to get our account back, that we lost by breaking their own rules!)

Tl;dr is Gold farmers are bad for both economies and people who want to make money in the game legitimately, and exercise in futility my big hairy ass.

SirSchmoopy:
The guy is clueless to what hes talking about. Many players in online games consider the idea of buying gold cheating to begin with. If you make an MMO that supports the idea of the guy with the biggest wallet out of game wins then good luck getting subscribers who can't spend more then 15 bucks a month on your game.

Clueless.

There is a game promoting gold farming, it's called Gaia Online.

And we all know what a turd-fest that game is.