Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
--"The Emperor of Ice-Cream", by Wallace Stevens
Before they moved en masse to Atiesh, one guildie knew of my aversion to doing dailies and used to tweak it from time to time, using the promise of gold as a lure.
"Think of all the gold you're missing out on," I was told more than once.
"If I wanted gold fast," I retorted, "I'd spend a few bucks and simply buy it."
"And risk getting banned? No thanks."
That particular exchange stuck with me, because I happened to know people back in the heyday of Naxx who actually did buy gold just so they could keep up with the potion and flask demands. And I also remembered a conversation with a guildie from what was then the #2 raiding guild on Myzrael, who informed me about the insane gold requirements to keep up with the equally demanding raid schedule.
Given that I could put two and two together, I realized that there were likely a lot more people who were like those friends who bought gold. After all, somebody has to be buying the gold the bots were all farming.
***
So, I grew curious, and when that happens, ol' Red tends to get himself in trouble.
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| Yes, these sites do exist and are easily found. |
I guess there's no real surprise that these sites are right out in the open, easily found with a simple search. Back in the day, when I was once whispered at for seeing if I needed gold when I was passing through Ratchet, I presumed that these sites were on the Dark Web or something. Maybe they were back then, but they certainly aren't now. Blizz must have given up policing these sites at about the same time they decided they wanted a cut of the action and brought forth the WoW Token.
For what it's worth, I checked a site or two. No, I didn't click on any of the options. My Spidey Sense kicked in and I thankfully didn't click any of the links, AV tool or not.
So.... It looks like between $30-$40 US dollars for 3000 in-game gold.
My boast about just buying gold for immediate gratification isn't too far off the mark. And with these sites operating out in the open like this, it's very likely there's no repercussions in game either.
This all boils down to a player leveling to max level on a megaserver such as Atiesh or Pagle, going out and buying 6000 gold for $60-$70, and jumping right into GDKPs to get geared. No grinding needed. Hell, that second site even sells boosting, so you could use the L58 boost before it vanishes, buy a boosting service, and probably pull all of this off for less than $100.*
Sure, this all defeats the purpose of the game, but when an MMO is basically saying "the game begins at endgame", you're letting basic economics (and the black market) dictate how you get to endgame. And what you do once you get there.
***
To be perfectly honest, all this makes me want to puke.
Subverting the intent of the game like this is disheartening, but not surprising. After all, the entire intent of GDKP runs is to be a raid for "high rollers", who have a lot of gold available to bid on gear. But even then, the intent is subverted by the ability to buy gold so easily and without repercussions. And Blizz can't ban GDKP raids either, because bidding gold for gear is allowed in game. Even it was explicitly banned, Blizz can't stop the transfer of gold between players without wrecking the in-game economy. And let's face it, Blizz wants the money from subscriptions, else they'd be more aggressive in their enforcement of bans.
But I can't decide what's worse: that players feel that the only way to get geared up is to enter into GDKP runs (buying gold to do it), or that the game's timeline is accelerated enough so that players feel the pressure to get geared to catch up with everyone else. The entry to GDKP is the new GearScore, but one that's easily rectified by opening up your wallet and pulling out your credit card.
Yes, you can say --and I definitely would-- that you cheated the system if you took part in buying gold for these purposes, but my opinions don't matter here. In game morality and ethics are only present in a game when the players create it and enforce it. And when they don't --or won't-- it evaporates under the weight of money.
Yes, you can say --and I definitely would-- that you cheated the system if you took part in buying gold for these purposes, but my opinions don't matter here. In game morality and ethics are only present in a game when the players create it and enforce it. And when they don't --or won't-- it evaporates under the weight of money.
#Blaugust2022
*Hell, you could probably find people to run the raids for you, just so you can stand around in Dalaran and look cool with your Tier gear.
That’s all disheartening but all my characters are spammed by in game mail all day long. I report every one but the same one pops right back. Nobody is minding the store. I realize the whole gold seller bot thing is old as anything, but what a pain they are. Atheren
ReplyDeleteAt least I felt that back in Wrath and Cata (at least) Blizz was trying to fix things, but somewhere along the way they just gave up.
DeleteAfter I mentioned in this post how disheartened I'd felt at the start of BC when a brand-new player swept in and power-levelled double crafting professions past all the other crafters by just buying out the auction house, a former guild officer whispered me to confirm what I'd always suspected: that this new guy was a known gold buyer. Supposedly this officer wanted to make it clear that the guild had a zero tolerance policy for ToS violations, but it turned out that one of the officers themselves (!) was habitually buying gold so they kept quiet. It really is everywhere, people just don't talk about it openly.
ReplyDeleteI like that there isn't any gold buying or botting on era as far as I can tell - fortunately it's not worth it when gold itself can't buy you a lot!
Yeah, it's ironic how quiet people get when they find out one of their own is actually violating the ToS. But that's the thing: if Blizz held people to the ToS more often, there'd be a lot less gold buying going on. I also think that the accelerated TBC Classic schedule would have been scaled back quite a bit if people weren't buying gold to feed their habit of keeping up with the Joneses.
DeleteBut yeah, I noticed that whenever I login to Classic Era Cardwyn there's absolutely no spam mail at all. Imagine that!
I don't get many game mails for gold, probably because Old Blanchy is not one of the high population realms. (Somewhat low pop, I think.) A hidden benefit of not playing on a megaserver!
ReplyDeleteYes, I have noticed that my couple of Atiesh toons get far more spam mail than my toons still on Myzrael. Low pop server denizens, unite!!!
DeleteMy server is so low population I don't hear any chat about anything. If I'm in SW OR Oribos I never see anyone from Fenris just the server we merged with. I kinda miss it now. Or just any conversation from my server. The best was waaaaaay back when I spent forever answering this person who kept saying BUT YOU'RE a real girl? Serious, come on, seriously? IRL?
ReplyDeleteGetting on a toon on Ysera was a bit of a shock to the system. I knew it was small in population, but I doubt I saw a single toon with @Ysera on the name when I was out and about.
DeleteIf that person was flummoxed by the concept that you were a woman, can you imagine how his mind would have blew apart into tiny chunks if he found out your age??
I often feel as though I'm living in a parallel universe when I read people's experiences both online and irl. For example, age and gender; my first guild in DAOC in 2000/1 was led by a woman in her 60s. Mrs Bhagpuss was in a ne EQ guild before that whose female leader was older. My main EQ guild for the early 2000s was mostly people in their 30s to 50s, with the guildleader and several of the officers being women.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that it was mainly "young" people who played these games has never fit my personal experience - the reverse has generally been true. We used to make a big thing about anyone we met who was still in full-time education, including college, because it seemed so unusual.
It seems to me the age demographic for mmorpgs has dropped massively in recent years. People playing seem to be much younger. But then, I'm much older. It's entirely likely the people I'm listening to in chat that sound fifteen to me are actually in their thirties!
As for buying gold, I think the "this is how the game has to be played" ship sailed a decade and a half ago. Companies should either design the games so there's literally no means of transferring funds, which means abandoniong the idea of in-game economies, or they should sell gold directly. The current situation is almost exactly analagous to the infamously stupid and counterproductive War on Drugs, where none of the preventative mechanisms work, no-one believes the messaging and the only people at a disadvantage are those who stick to the rules.
On a much happier subject, thanks for the Wallace Stevens link. I read the poem and then the excellent guide to it that's linked from the link. I never studied Stevens at university so I've never read him. About time I started.
From an IT security standpoint, I prefer just about anything than the current situation, even the draconian measure of ripping out the transfer of gold entirely from MMOs. Elder Scrolls Online had one innovative idea, where the only way you could create an auction house was within the auspices of guild membership, so only guild members could trade among each other. This limited the Auction Houses, but it also meant that --theoretically-- you were going to trade between people you knew. The risk involved in making transactions involving credit in a grey area of the internet isn't frequently worth the allure, but I realize that in the spur of the moment people don't think of the security risks.
DeleteI do have a hard time trying to figure out how to fix the WoW economy in its current state without changing something fundamental about the in-game economy, but it may have to happen if Blizzard wants to stop the gold farmers. Of course, that means my acquaintance really is right about dailies being a quick way to make gold, despite how much it can suck.
Oh! I didn't realize that Wallace Stevens' poem wasn't as well known. I encountered it my sophomore year in high school, when our Engish teacher passed it out in class and asked us to perform a critical exegesis on it. Looking back on it now, we were sorely unprepared to figure out what he was thinking of when he wrote the poem, because items such as mass produced ice cream made certain aspects of the poem hard to fathom. Still, the poem --like T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock-- stuck with me.
My questing buddy has an English degree, so once in a while she pulls out a Robert Frost quote (or something similar) and gets us to talking literature and poetry. In the middle of Azeroth, no less.