Americans outsource gold farming to chinese

[Helevitia]

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1907136,00.asp?kc=ewnws010305dtx1k0000599

[Jessterw]

I think we'll be outsourcing procreation soon as well. Seriously though, that's just insane on both ends of the practice.

[KvHagedorn]

I think we'll be outsourcing procreation soon as well. Seriously though, that's just insane on both ends of the practice.

We are. Where have you been? Where are all the world's population increases coming from? And we are so damned PC we aim our rhetoric about population control at our own (European descended) people, who already seem to think it is just wrong to bring kids into this world/are too lazy and childish to want to have kids and take care of them/childbirth hurts/it would cut into my WOW time/it's too expensive to have a baby and a new car so bring on the hummer/etc. etc. It's sickening.

[az]

This gold farming is nothing new. Only shows how much people overvalue their status in such online games (which shows there must be something wrong with the real world for them, if they value their game status higher than their real-world status or happiness). To me, the fun about WoW (and I really overdid it, so I quit. I have 80 days of straight playing time on my main character. Yes, I didn't get anything done this past year. Yes, it's sad. So I quit.) was about finding fun new stuff (better items, new, interesting encounters, fun quests), I'd never pay someone to do that for me just to achieve status (Instead I did by playing way too much and knowing more about my character class than my uni course, which I didn't visit very often anymore. It was a flight from the real world for me. Maybe I needed that space to make some decisions. Decisions are made now and once I move out and back to Berlin (next month), I'm working on straightening out my life. I'll never play an MMORPG again, playing Real Life seems much more satisfying to me. Actually, WoW was really cool when I played casually for an hour or so a day. That didn't hurt me and it was also more fun than the stress of keeping up with raid groups to be the first to clear Blackwing Lair or whatever. Blizzards decisions in the recent patches have shown that they care most about the customers that want an always more challenging, more time-consuming, less fun game that really translates into work just to somehow achieve status by getting better items, beating harder bosses or being the "best" at PvP. To achieve the highest PvP rank, you have to play 8 or more hours a day, constantly, for months. You don't notice how sad and sick this is as long as you're part of the community. Once you take a break and a step back though, you (hopefully) realize that this is not a game anymore. Games are supposed to fill some of your free time with fun, not take away all your free time and even time time that wouldn't be free, and fill them with stress. In the beginning, it was really fun, but it quickly became too much for me without me wanting to realize that. I'm glad I quit. </Not quite anonymous wowaholic mode>

[Helevitia]

az,

I don't think you read the article? The outsource the gold farming so they can sell the gold for REAL money.

[az]

I know. It's been done for at least a year, and it was chinese sweatshops back then already. Nobody knew it was chinese sweatshops, of course, until some gaming magazine or website brought a report. IGE are the biggest player in this sector, I believe.

I don't think you understand how important this virtual world is for some people. Have you read my whole post? There are many people at least as addicted to WoW as I was, and some of them don't mind paying real-world money to gain something in the virtual world (Although in WoW, gold isn't worth much, so I understand even less why people would buy it.).

[schmosef]

A few years ago I knew a guy who was addicted to Diablo II. I hated the game so I might be fuzzy on the details but what he told me went something like... it was really hard for him to continue to improve his character (because he had advanced so far) and he was considering buying some upgraded weapons on eBay for hundreds of dollars just so that he could continue to enjoy his character.

When he told me I at first thought that he meant that he could arrange on eBay to trade virtual money for some weapon but then he clarified. I was blown away.

This guy was married and had recently had a kid.

I told him to take a break from the game and focus on the real world for a while.

Then he got fired from the position he had with one of my customers and I lost touch with him.

I've avoided WoW because I can easily get addicted to a good RPG. And a never ending one would kill me. It gets to the point where I don't care if the story is that compelling, I just crave the escapism.

I just finished Jade Empire for the XBox. A lot of people panned it becase it could be beaten in 20 hours. I was THANKFUL!

[az]

WoW is much, much worse than Diablo or Diablo II (because it is a so much better game). There is much more community interaction, the world is a lot larger, there are real quests, all the best items can only be gotten with raid groups of forty people working together with a strategy for a few hours straight (and then five good items drop) - and to get there you have to find a good group to raid with, try strategies, fail dozens of times, improve your equipment on the lesser raid bosses, etc. The group dynamics were quite interesting, though. To manage such a group of forty people, to get them to play together for 4+ hours 3-6 times a week (and you have to play beside that, too, to stock up on potions, etc.), to keep the voice chat tolerable, to keep motivation up when you get killed by the same boss literally a hundred times (with each try taking at least half an hour) over the course of a few weeks really can be hell. And now when I look back at it, it's really ridiculous: All this stress for items that are in essence a few lines of code. It wasn't even fun a lot of the time.

Anyone want to buy a Level 60 female gnome Warlock with very good items on a german PvE server?

WoW is a very cool game when played casually, and I would still play from time to time, but it's like with the alcohol: A beer or a glass of wine with friends is a fine thing, but when you know it'll lead to a bottle of booze every day you just have to stay away. I'm glad I am over my WoW addiction and happy it wasn't alcohol or some other drug.

[Gurm]

childbirth hurts... {snip} It's sickening.

C'mon, say that to Julie's face. G'wan. I DARE YA.

[Gurm]

Julie and I haven't started WoW yet. We have coupons sitting here, courtesy of a gift from my brother... and we're not using them because we know it'd be baaaaaaaad.

[TnT]

This is only in reference to gold farming, not game addiction (which is a different beast):

The problem with those games is that too much value is put into status (ie being level 40) and not on the path to getting there. That's why people are willing to buy high level characters and items.

I think the next innovation in MMORPG has to be making the path travelled the goal and not the end result (which is the same no matter how it is done). Right now all level 40 bards, for example, are pretty much the same, but in real life two poets with the same amount of writing experience aren't the same.

I've only ever played Everquest and Diablo, don't know if they have worked on this with WoW.

[az]

WoW has story and quests, athmospherical density etc., all up to max level 60 (though after level 30 this IMHO suffers a bit). The path to getting 60 is fun, and many people actually never play a character to sixty. But characters aren't too varied. At level 60 begins the grind, the big 40 player dungeon raids for the high-end items. There is one item set for each class (actually, three: one for casual level 60 players, one for "serious" players and one for the hardcore crowd), so eventually, people would all wear the same if blizzard didn't introduce a new, even harder dungeon with even better items that you have to spend even more time on every few patches. Thus the variety only comes from playing time invested into the game: Those that play a lot (and in a good group) will get their Tier 2 epic set before the other ones, but eventually, many people will own it and the only way to keep their status for the hardcore players is to invest even more time to beat the newest dungeon before the rest of the server does. Blizzard does this to keep the level 60s around, because there wouldn't be anything else for them to achieve anymore, but after a while, you realize it's only a treadmill. It's no fun. It was fun up to around midlevel, when there was more atmosphere etc. The only thing I found interesting at level 60 anymore was PvP, but my character was on a PvE server, where free PvP is almost nonexistant, and I didn't want to invest hundreds of hours to get a new char to sixty, besides I liked some of the people on my server and I knew I'd never get items as good as the ones I had again.

Actually, wow is quite a good game if you think of it as a single-player game played together with others. Just don't do the raid stuff, it ruins the game.

[TnT]

Actually, wow is quite a good game if you think of it as a single-player game played together with others. Just don't do the raid stuff, it ruins the game.

Yeah, that's what I figured. I once did a raid for a friend in Everquest because he had some meeting to go to. All I did was run around in circles singing some song (he had a bard) and then wait for an hour for them to give out the loot. It was quite boring but that's what all the high level people had to do to get anything.

As a wannabe game designer I should think more about the issue of uniqueness in avatars being the spotlight of a mass-multiplayer game. Quite interesting.

Actually have you ever heard of A Tale in the Desert? It simulates the building of Ancient Egypt. It's not a hack-and-slash type world, more political. The design is such that everyone has a role and can set out a unique path for themselves by lobbying for specific laws or working on certain types of technology. More akin to real life in that people have to focus on different goals and thus specialize which causes a more diverse crowd of people.

[az]

Yes, uniqueness of avatars is an area where WoW really falls short, both in terms of itemization (because there are item sets and half the server wears them at level 60 - the other half are either not there yet or want items with different stats, which means they look motley - and still all the same, because there are items that are clearly "the best" for that particular slot for the class and playstyle), and characters themselves. The only customization you can make to your body is skin color, all other choices are for face and hair. Female gomes have three or four face choices that don't look horrible, only few hairdos and hair colors. So 50% of female gnomes looked like my Sue (hehe), with big green eyes and two huge pigtails. And the items I had looked like level 30 stuff just because I didn't want the sets (both because of stats and because I didn't want to run around as part of a clone army), absolutely not reflecting the fact that I was the best-equipped warlock on the server.

[az]

I've never heard of A Tale In The Desert, but I'll never play an MMORPG as long as I'm not absolutely sure I won't get addicted again. And when I read your description, I thought "why not devote all this time and energy to change something in your real life instead, where it really matters?".