What is Digg?72 Comments
- DarkDays, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20" ``It's easier than making shoes,'' said Wang Xin "
I don't know how to respond to that... - Tochi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14The article doesn't say anything about child slave labor. In fact one of the quoted employers stated "...some of them are high school graduates who haven't found a job yet. " Just because it's in China doesn't mean it's automatically child slave labor.
- SPARTACVS, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10So you're saying that you buy WoW-gold from the chinese?
- Jelloman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Personally I went thru and modded almost every comment here up or down, mostly down, because this is one of those topics where people seem to feel the need to post totally unoriginal and uninformative comments.
For the record, I don't think it's cheating at all; I think it's an unstoppable phenomenon, though the most egregious farmers and bot drivers can be policed; I think it's awesome that people in China can feed their families by playing WoW; and I'm continually surprised that more MMO operators aren't cashing in on this themselves.
One thing that bugs me about the whines on this topic is the implication that all online games must be FAIR to be FUN. Look at WoW - 90% of it is really just a single-player game. Why get your panties in a bunch that someone else levels to 60 faster than you? You're paying through the nose every month to play the game - try enjoying it. :) - canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7that was the most telling line of the article for me. if it gets somebody a job and a good standard of living and isn't evil, then i'm all for it. and no, allowing some people to get their hands on what effectively is a cheat code isn't evil.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@statix
if theres a demand for it, there will always be someone who will try to make some money out of it
for these people, it just seems like an easy way for them to make some money - radu79, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I can't blame them.
We do the same thing (we as in the owners of an indie MMO), only that for us it's official. We sell ingame items on our website, which allows us to keep the game free, without any ads or advertising.
Only about 1-2% of the players buy stuff from us, but it's enough to keep us floating.
And isn't Sony doing the same with EQ? - WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8It's called real money trade (RMT). been around since MMO's. how bad it is depends on the game. in FFXI, it caused prices to rise so high legit player's couldn't buy nice things :|
Square has recently (semi recently) taken action and banned a ton of accounts and removed billions of suspect gil. Money is worth spending again :) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9First off, although it's a heated subject, I don't think gold farming is wrong.. at all. In fact, the main reason why our capitalist economy survives is because we consume products that we do not have the time to procure ourselves, for example, toilet paper. Imagine if you had to spend all that time cutting down the trees and processing the paper... you'd probably ***** your pants before you had any paper to wipe with... So before you judge both the farmers and the consumers of farmed gold, please think of toilet paper.
- NinjAlt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If D2 is any example, after they stop being able to sell real items they'll move onto hacking the hell out of it.
- toppgun, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7how else do you think they pay for their monthly subscriptions?
- UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -10/+13If you think about it, it's no different than paying for a Game Genie or Game Shark, devices that cost a bit of money that allow you to dishonestly gain an advantage in a video game back in the day. Similar principle, different technology.
- BTime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Isn't this a redundant headline? MMORPG farming has been in the news (yep, even print media) off and on for the past year or two. Though I guess if you hadn't paid attention before it would be news to you.
Seems to be the one thing I'm not digging about Digg is the story redundancy. - shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5just wait until china lets its currency rise against the US dollar (or inflation sets in).... then they wont be able to do this anymore..
- radu79, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You can check my user details, it links to my blog which is mainly a development log for our little game. I don't want to post the URL just like that, because people will accuse me of spamming.
Usually I don't mention my game, but since it's on topic, why not? - friendlymonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Another quick point on the topic...
There's an old saying: "Time is money." While this isn't universally true all of the time, it does have some relevance to the gold farming phenomenon. People often don't recognize that being able to commit to playing an MMO "hard core" is itself a form of privilege. If you think consider the stereotype of the teenage player who plays incessantly for a moment (and no, this isn't to say that everyone who plays "hard core" is a teen), you have some one whose lifestyle is being subsidized by some one else's money. Having some one feed you, clean for you, put a roof over your head and take care of your needs so that you can concentrate on playing WoW is much more of an advantage than some one using their credit card to buy some gold and skip a few hours of farming. - poturta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I agree with BlakeEM.
I used to play FFXI but stopped because I couldn't do anything without having stupid amount of gil (FFXI currency). If i wanted to try and get an item my self i would have to sit around for at least an hour waiting for a monster to spawn. I am fine with this you have to put a little work in to get stuff but when there are 4-5 people there also who are "always" there as in 24/7 it becomes rather annoying to say the least throw in the fact that items drop rates aren't very high and you can spend about 3-4 days with out seeing the item =/ - mc7winkie, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6How about a Facist society where Maddox is the Supreme Head of State?
- radu79, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5No, IRS didn't want to do that. An analyst suspected they might in the future.
- rwheeler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3While not playing games myself, some people don't have the insane amounts of time I've seen former roommates throw into these things. Were I to play the game with him, I would need to do this to if I were to have any hope of keeping up.
- JoeyDeacon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sometime very soon it will be US gimps farming for their rich chinese WOW playing overlords.
- friendlymonkey, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8I've never purchased any gold, but in principle it doesn't strike me as any more of a "waste" than spending money to see a live game of football/baseball/basketball/hockey/soccer instead of watching it on TV, or shelling out to play a "prestigious" golf course instead of the local public one. These games are fairly serious hobbies in terms of time commitment, and people pay a lot more for what are, ultimately, transitive experiences in more mainstream hobbies. Other than play games, I do stuff like lift weights (costs: gym membership, supplements), cycle (gear, maintenance) and snowboard (gear, lift tickets), and all three of those cost more than WoW (even if you were buying gold). Of course, the aspect of "cheating" is a whole question.
- dustedbunny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In the game Guild Wars I know a lot of people who farm gold/weapons and sell them for actual money. Check Ebay. Im going to be getting into college soon. And honestly. I'm contemplating doing this as geeky as it sounds. But I know a few people who make really good money from it.
just my two cents. - BlakeEM, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Well not really... there will be more gold in the market and this makes prices on things go up. I have seen it in Everquest. Not to mention there will be high level people with no skill at all because they are spending less time playing and more time paying their way.
I simply despise people that pay for gold or items on games. It’s very unfair to everyone else playing, period. - Hearshot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yea i've noticed it too. the actions do make a difference in ffxi. But i'm still seeing many of these gilseller groups around. Actually it seems to be a single person controlling multiple accounts. Many times, he sets up a bot on each one to perform a task in one place. Combine that with several competing gilseller teams and it gets pretty crappy.
- Hearshot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1in ffxi we call have "noob farming" its called using our high-lvl jobs to be mercenaries for younger lvl characters who need difficult missions beaten.
While you aren't necessarily a noob for being lower lvl, we still call it farming for noobs lol. - Jowitz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Didn't the IRS want to tax game gold a while back? I think there was an article on the possibility of that happening a while back, and the reasoning behind taxing it is explained in this article. People farm it and make money off of it, or people trade it and make real money off of it, and it is not taxed as a good that can be traded. I wonder if China taxes it.
- fuzzytoad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1At first I thought this was just yet another old-ass article being dugg. This has been going on for years. How is this "news"?
Agreeing with BTime here. Redundant articles are quickly ruining Digg. - Tochi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I imagine if blizzard decided to sell their own gold and items in their game they could keep a handle on the in-game economies while at the same time tackling the problem with cheating and also turn a giant profit.
- radu79, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Blizzard makes a lot of money from the subscribers, I don't think they have to sell ingame items too.
However, I also feel that they should not punish the gold farmers. If they don't like farming, they should implement some limits in the gameplay. - dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@beachside... Um, you DID bring up child slave labour, read your comment...
And further, game genies were probably put together using "slave labour", and to be honest, when compared to the job of putting one of those machines together, even with a robots help, I'd prefer to be playing World of Warcraft and selling everything I get for REAL MONEY (particularly since you COULD sell things that your character doesn't really need anymore, as you continue through the game, making it not THAT dissimilar to playing it for fun) - lunatech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Some of the quotes here are hilarious. People don't buy game currency to spite other players. They do so because time is a limitation for them or they want to improve their gaming experience. Spiteful emotions stem from jealousy of the gear of players that do purchase game currency with real money.
These markets of course lead to inflation to the game economy, but if you think this will stop, you're deluding yourself. Don't blame human nature for wants and desires, blame the game creator for not putting systems in place to prevent farmers from capitalizing on the dependency of game currency.
All the complainers really need to stop. This is just the dynamics of economy. - cquilliam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Yeah, I applaud you not spamming your game for free clicks, but I, as well, would be interested in checking it out, so please post a link. Thanks :)
- SpaceDreamer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2that's what happens when you make a game where gamers have to litteraly "work" their way up the levels,
rather than just play and enjoy. - LiThiuMElectro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1well the fact is no if you make good money or not, its all about the game play.
sure you will do good money iguess.. but you will ruin other peoples "fun" to play. - Farodek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i used to play Lineage 2, and that is swamped with farmers. it was horrible, especially since it was open pvp so the farmers in an area would farm you if you tried to kill what they were camping, and they camped entire areas, not just a few mobs.
- Farodek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0normaly, i don't have anything good to say about SOE because of what they did to SWG, but when it comes to Everquest 2, i think they got it right, especially how they lowered the market for foreign farmers by opening up a few servers where you can buy and sell everything, including your character.
- wbeck85, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2and what mmo is this?, radu? sounds interesting.
- fjvwing, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2They payed for the game because they wanted a certain experience, not because they wanted a CD or cartridge in the house -- blank ones would have been far cheaper. Now some pay more to access extra content faster. It is not so much different from just paying more for an 'enhanced' game cartridge or CD of the same game. It is just the cost of participating at the level you want to.
- BeachSide, on 10/12/2007, -10/+10"If you think about it, it's no different than paying for a Game Genie or Game Shark, devices that cost a bit of money that allow you to dishonestly gain an advantage in a video game back in the day. Similar principle, different technology."
Are you kidding me???
That is like saying Hiring child slave labor and working them in sweatshops is just like the using the robots in auto factories! - Sakumi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Sadly, this type of service has ruined the MMORPG I play. The Chinese farmers have taken hold of the economy, and make things SO expensive, you can't buy them w/o assistance from their services.
They are a bad thing for our games, and against the ToS/EULA for all major MMORPGs. If you need any other reason to say they're bad: read the Terms of Service for ANY online game; It's directly prohibited.
Players who farm to sell, use 3rd party programs to cheat their way to success, ruin the game for REAL gamers who can actually do the grinding themselves. - DaFox, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Ni Hao
Since theres so many of them you actually have to even start learning chinese to play games like World of Warcraft. - strujillo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1this isn't new. how do u think I won in the CAL CS open.
- kTuck, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I used to play an On-Line called Eve Online until about a month ago, the game was fun, but it required so much time to acquire currency (the sole driving force of the game), that I simply wasn't able to play enough to make it a fun experience, my real life took priority,as it does and should with almost everyone. So I know where liquid edge is coming from, I haven't played "WoW", but I'm sure it's much the same. These companies offer "gold" at a price that's negligible when compared to the monthly fees. It is indeed a tempting offer.
Sorry to be ranting, but the working conditions in China are pretty terrible in the rural regions like those described in the article. I don't think it's suffering compared to other jobs, we might equate it to the monotony of bagging in a supermarket. - BeachSide, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2@Tochi
No one ever said anything about child slave labor in regard to the aritcle. My comment was in response to the person above me (his comment is quoted in my comment) - trampish, on 10/12/2007, -14/+13Is it just me... or does this creep anyone else out? People pay Chinese workers to skip the boring parts of a game. That scares and disgusts me.
- Mystikal, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1What about n00b farming?
- tiredguy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"And isn't Sony doing the same with EQ?"
They keep it on a separate server, so as not to disrupt the economies on normal servers. - radu79, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3I think this is one of the few Digg stories where most of the comments are modded down. Such negativity :D
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