What is Digg?153 Comments
- inactive, on 06/30/2009, -4/+112China will ban China soon..
- sockpuppets, on 06/30/2009, -0/+107and use tupperware instead?
- puppyoneb, on 06/30/2009, -0/+105And thus Jamaican Gold Farms were born.
It's gold, mon! - cnot3, on 06/30/2009, -0/+90WoW gold really must be a threat to Chinese currency stability...
- CaptZomborg, on 06/30/2009, -10/+55I would have much preferred them regulating the industry and giving the workers rights, rather than banning it all together. As much as I hate gold farming, this isn't going to stop most of it. They'll just be illegal sweatshops instead of legal ones.
However, if it does work, I'd love to see WoW lose about 25% of it's subscribers. If China eventually bans MMOs all together, I would imagine that would be at least 50% subscription loss. - gakkan, on 06/30/2009, -0/+33"I kill two dwarves in da morning, I kill two dwarves at night,
I kill two dwarves in the afternoon, and then I feel alright.
I kill two dwarves in time of peace and two in time of war,
I kill two dwarves before I kill two dwarves, and then I kill two more." - chriscim, on 06/30/2009, -1/+32I doubt this will kill gold farming in China outright, but it will seriously kill the supply of gold on most servers and increase demand (and prices).
Last year, I went through a marital separation, moved into a new place with roommates, and was laid off from my job within the same week. It took me a month, but I eventually found a full-time job, and a weekend job. The damage had been done though, I was behind on bills and struggling to keep up.
I had a WoW subscription going and was considering cancelling it, but the through of selling gold occurred to me as a way to help make ends meet while I wasn't work at either job. So, in order to help get out of debt and pay the bills, I started selling gold to individuals just through word of mouth, and to gold farmers when there wasn't a demand from the people I knew. Let me tell you, it was not very fun at all and really killed the game for me. For those not familiar with the game, you can do up to a certain number of "daily quests" (quests that are repeatable every 24 hours). I would do the maximum allowed and use my tradeskills (both gathering skills) and sell the goods for in-game gold, then turn around and sell the gold to whoever would buy it. I was playing probably 5 hours a day, just farming. I could make around 5-7k gold per week (Before the Lich King) and sell the gold for $10-20 per 1K. Typically I made between $3-500 per month from playing a video game.
I bought the Lich King (expansion), leveled my character to level 80 and started gearing him up to farm efficiently at that level, but I was so burned out from playing every day (and finally out of debt). that I no longer saw a reason to play and cancelled my subscription.
It sure as hell helped pay the bills, but the constant headaches from farming for hours at a time, killing my social life, and sucking up all my free time to do meaningful things, killed the drive to play the game. I can't imagine gold farmers (who play far more hours than I did ) enjoy this at all. It's not as bad as working in a sweat shop and/or doing real labor, but it's kind of rough and really wears on you after awhile. Even so, I don't see why their government would outright ban the buying and selling of game currency. You have to wonder what their motivation behind this decision is...is it that big a deal?
I almost want to start playing again to fill in that gold farming need so I can get some extra cash for home renovation projects. - gforce051, on 06/30/2009, -1/+30www.instantrimshot.com
- fungusmonkey, on 06/30/2009, -0/+20Haha - yup. The rates will be something like this "Level 1-80 in a week or so... maybe more, mon. You nevah know. Could be longah. We'll get 'round to it. [odd gurgling inhalation sound]"
:) - puppyoneb, on 06/30/2009, -1/+20Here all week by any chance?
- iDoraemon, on 06/30/2009, -0/+16Aww...then no one will get this comic in the future:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/02/16/ - d4rkspike, on 06/30/2009, -7/+23u giev soj?
- senae, on 06/30/2009, -0/+13This seems like a really strange move to me, economically. I understand China not wanting it's people on the consumer side of RMT, but gold farming was basically free money for china, and less money for the Western world.
- bigp3rm, on 06/30/2009, -4/+16Ni Hao!
- danr2c2, on 06/30/2009, -1/+11Queue video of some Chinese kid shoving a remote up his @$$.
- iticu, on 06/30/2009, -0/+101432109582% !
- inactive, on 06/30/2009, -1/+10"Time is money friend"
- miket, on 06/30/2009, -0/+8no, with the ban in place, they "could lose" 25% (made up number) but if they implement a complete ban on MMOs, wow might lose 50%
- wolfing, on 06/30/2009, -0/+8they'll be vietnamese instead
- pauleric, on 06/30/2009, -0/+8I'm amazed you could make that much (I've never played WoW), that works out to 2 to 4 $/hour. Although somebody above said only $5.65 for 1000gold. You could make a lot more working at a gas station. But can you play 2 characters at once and double your money? Can you set something up and walk away for half an hour? Can you script your mouse & keyboard to play automatically? I guess that at the very least you can sit around eating and watching tv.
- DeRFmAn, on 06/30/2009, -0/+7Actually, if you read it properly, it has the proper title.
- Rassa, on 06/30/2009, -1/+8This will be interesting to see the effects this has. I really don't see them stopping it. I bet for awhile prices for gold will shoot up. This story got me curious on the prices for gold for wow. $5.65 for 1000, I find that very cheap but I'm not one that buys gold.
- orangefly, on 06/30/2009, -2/+9what is this world of warcraft of which you speak....???....
- tastybeard, on 06/30/2009, -2/+9You mean I won't be hit up by chinese farmers to make them food anymore?
badass - PandaBearShenyu, on 06/30/2009, -1/+8Yes, because a gold farmer will work his way up the Chinese gov't food chain so one day he can get his great uncle the chairman to allow him to gold farm...
you ***** retard. - nwoolls, on 06/30/2009, -0/+6This is the first time I checked a link actually expecting to see an Onion article and it wasn't, rather than the other way around.
- brisketplease, on 06/30/2009, -4/+10as long as they don't ban peking duck, i'm good.
- aladrin, on 06/30/2009, -0/+6My first thought was also 'you could get a real job', but how many jobs let you work the exact hours you want while chatting with your friends? Sure, the job would pay more, but the freedom is worth something, too.
Also, the 'multiple characters' question is good... But I'm not sure how much more money you'd make that way. - SilasTomorrow, on 06/30/2009, -0/+6Interesting story. Thanks, Chris.
- vintagegeek, on 06/30/2009, -0/+5YES! Susan is out of work! FINALLY!!!
- rheaume, on 06/30/2009, -4/+9Ruh oh
- NoamChimpsky, on 06/30/2009, -0/+5Dear Sir-
I represent the Virtual Central Bank of Nigeria. I have a virtual deposit of 10,000,000 WoW gold in your name. I just need a few thousand of your WoW gold to cover taxes and other expenses.
In short, please send me all of your virtual gold, and I shall send you all of mine.
Yours,
Kawami Umbaba - morningmatters, on 06/30/2009, -0/+5Gold farming will just be outsourced to another country.
If game makers really want to stop gold farming they can do one thing: sell game assets/gold themselves. Buying assets in videogames is not much different than buying real life items. After all, there will always be gamers who like to be powerful but don't have much time to play because they have actual jobs. - Zomgondo, on 06/30/2009, -12/+17You forgot to mention "Ron Paul = The Second Coming of Christ" in your post.
- Crozz, on 07/01/2009, -0/+5I remember buying 80 sojs off ebay.
I don't regret it. - Grolsch, on 06/30/2009, -2/+6kekeke ^_^
- LinuxPerson, on 06/30/2009, -0/+4It's a place where people go to wither away and die.
- sirellyn, on 06/30/2009, -0/+4I have no idea how they would pull this off realistically. This may be a law on the books and used to trap people from time to time. I can't see how they'd enforce this though.
- TroyPDX, on 06/30/2009, -3/+7In related news the Chinese are considering banning trading in another virtual currency, backed by nothing tangible... the US Dollar
- sirellyn, on 06/30/2009, -1/+5And you forgot to mention "The more people screw up, the more likely I am to believe them."
- chriscim, on 06/30/2009, -0/+4IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?!?
- Llanowar, on 06/30/2009, -0/+4I don't mind the banning of gold farmers in games where the developers make this illegal as well.
But the banning of the selling of items by developers is just stupid.
A lot of games have the micro transaction formula. Now those would have to find a new source of income.
That will mean optional premium (in most cases non premium would simply suck).
Or they'll make the games p2p.
Or they'll die. - wickedlogic, on 06/30/2009, -0/+4Does this cover fiat currencies? they are just as virtual...
- DrReaper, on 06/30/2009, -0/+4The interesting thing here isn't the effect on Wow but the fact that people in China cannot participate in any virtual currencies.
- rmxz, on 06/30/2009, -8/+12Makes me wonder if all the governments's central banks are embarrassed that in-game economies seem to be better managed than the just-as-phony in-game-currency that the ETrade and Schwab and Wells Fargo and Bank Of America online games use.
At least the WoW gold used to be backed by man-hours-of-sweatshop-workers. Seems the USD gets created on the whims of rich banks who want to get richer. - Scopitone, on 06/30/2009, -1/+5On one hand you're sad that people in China are going to lose jobs and hoping Americans lose jobs with the other?
Class act. - outlines, on 06/30/2009, -5/+8hopefully they don't ban powerleveling services too..that would mean alex albrecht would actually have to play the game
- chriscim, on 06/30/2009, -0/+3I did have a real job...a full time job making a pretty decent wage in the field I want to be in. Plus a weekend job delivering food. I just wanted the extra cash to get out of debt faster so I could start saving for a house, which I did.
When you do the math, the wages are awful, but I was doing this in my spare time when I wasn't working either of my jobs. So I figured I could at least play a video game and talk to friends while I made some money.
As for multiple characters and automation, I suppose I could have done that, but back then I was semi-interesting in the gameplay. Looking back, I should have done that.
Gold prices have also dropped a ton since the release of the expansion. With every expansion, gold is easier and easier to obtain great quantities of, thus the drop in price. I stopped playing at about the point it started dropping drastically. - Demener, on 06/30/2009, -0/+3He said strict rules.
That's funny.
Sure the real world economy has rules, but they aren't really followed, more like loose guidelines. - acknotSW, on 06/30/2009, -0/+3I don't play wow, how long would it take a single character to get that much legitimately ingame?
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