Have you ever bought in-game currency from the MMO secondary market?

[Dyvim]

I buy a few k gold every few months or so. For someone like me with a well-paying full-time job, it just makes absolutely no fucking sense to spend my entire saturday farming up the amount of gold I need to sustain myself for a couple of weeks, when instead I could go to work for an hour and buy three times the amount I farmed.

[Menoz]

Originally Posted by Makata

Explain why grinding a couple horus PER WEEK is an unreasonable task. Obviously you don't like it or enjoy it. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be forced.

OK, let's say it's finals week and you've got 6 finals in two days. All your finals are hard but won't be that bad if you put in hours and hours of studying and memorization. 4 of the finals are in superfluous liberal arts classes that mean nothing toward your degree or even interest you in the slightest.

Now let's say you get this offer:

Since you have so much gold, someone offers to take the 4 bullshit liberal arts finals for you, for 1% of your gold. The chance of you getting caught is so minimal that you know there's no chance in hell you'll be found out.

Think hard about that. Yeah, you could take all 6 finals but do you want to study 18 hours a day for 10 days straight when you could take the small bills out of your wallet and reduce that to 6 hours a day?

This is what it's like for those with busy lives, every week. They have way more money than they have time.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by Makata

Blah blah blah

Nothing in life is fair, deal with it. I'm certainly not going to feel bad because some pissant college kid looks down on me for spending money on a hobby. Have fun rejoicing in your unsullied, pristine gaming experience.

[Penalty]

yes, I bought everquest plat when I started over.. 50$ for 300k I believe...

i feel the same way about it as everyone else who has done it...

my time at work for 2 hours is worth weeks and weeks of farming plat.. GG obvious choice.

[Deathwing]

I've been considering this for repairs and finishing up CC rep. Wouldn't be so bad if Silithus wasn't camped the fuck out. I want my Earthstrike damnit.

For everyone use the work time is more valuable arguement...are you all on wages? Putting an extra hour or two at work doesn't get me anything unless the boss comes around and sees I'm a hard-working mofo and decides to give me a bonus/raise. I certainly understand the free time arguement, one I've had to grapple with constantly since graduating last year. But I'm also a cheap-ass, so spending money on unecessary stuff is something I don't like to do.

And makata, please shutup. Yes, we all understand that MMO's require time. However, most people don't have problems with timesinks because the time is being spent improving your character. Repair money farming is time spent not improving you character, but time spent just keeping him functional. I think that's where the big beef comes from.

[Venjenz]

I haven't bought any yet, but I am considering it for EQ2. The mechanics of the game, how you play, and your money:free time ratio all play a huge part in things.

For stuff like spell upgrades, containers, horses/flying carpets, and better food/drink, I can see spending the $$ for stuff that is nothing more than convenience. It really isn't game breaking, and the time I save is far better served actually grouping and raiding than it would be harvesting rocks for the 50,000th time trying to get a rare metal for a spell upgrade.

For example:

right now I need palladium to make tier 3 Adept III spells. My alchemist can make the inks, I just need the metal. So far, I have harvested 279 rocks in Nektulos Forest and have yet to see a palladium drop. Each harvest is 3 drops of some material on that object's loot table, so I am rolling up on 1,000 drops without a single rare drop. My necromancer has 87g earned straight up, and each palladium costs about 40g. I have 12 spells to upgrade, and at 40g per, I can farm my arse off for the next month, or I can go buy 20plat and be done with it. The result is the same. In this case, I have done nothing extraordinary, as I could continue solo farming rocks in Nektulos with no problems forever.

Where I think buying goes afoul is when you can purchase raid items. This means you circumvent not only a time requirement, but a manpower requirement as well. Getting soloable gear and items faster doesn't seem game breaking to me.

With a full time job, a fiancee and all the wedding prep, a tutoring gig at the local community college, and various household duties, I get maybe two or three nights a week to even log in. I hate to say it, but paying Xiangxzu $$ for them to save me hours upon hours of plat farming seems like a worthwhile investment.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Menoz

OK, let's say it's finals week and you've got 6 finals in two days. All your finals are hard but won't be that bad if you put in hours and hours of studying and memorization. 4 of the finals are in superfluous liberal arts classes that mean nothing toward your degree or even interest you in the slightest.

Now let's say you get this offer:

Since you have so much gold, someone offers to take the 4 bullshit liberal arts finals for you, for 1% of your gold. The chance of you getting caught is so minimal that you know there's no chance in hell you'll be found out.

Think hard about that. Yeah, you could take all 6 finals but do you want to study 18 hours a day for 10 days straight when you could take the small bills out of your wallet and reduce that to 6 hours a day?

This is what it's like for those with busy lives, every week. They have way more money than they have time.

I go to college to get an education. Paying someone else to take the final is kind of fucking pointless. Why go to college if you're not going to put effort into it. Same with warcraft. I fail to see why you play if you put such little time into it. People who cheat (and admittedly, are caught) in college get insane punishments. In a perfect world, all cheaters would be caught. Also in this perfect world, retards who think epic mounts should be handed to them or repairs shouldn't have to be farmed would get their accounts permanently banned. I must admit I think I'd soil myself in delight if I woke up tomorrow to find Blizzard had deleted every account in the game who has bought or sold gold.

[Menoz]

Originally Posted by Makata

I go to college to get an education. Paying someone else to take the final is kind of fucking pointless. Why go to college if you're not going to put effort into it. Same with warcraft. I fail to see why you play if you put such little time into it. People who cheat (and admittedly, are caught) in college get insane punishments. In a perfect world, all cheaters would be caught. Also in this perfect world, retards who think epic mounts should be handed to them or repairs shouldn't have to be farmed would get their accounts permanently banned. I must admit I think I'd soil myself in delight if I woke up tomorrow to find Blizzard had deleted every account in the game who has bought or sold gold.

My example was completely hypothetical. You'll understand this predicament better once you too graduate.

[Cad]

Yea I don't agree with the "take your finals for you" analogy.

It's more like paying someone to change the oil in your car and rotate the tires so that your car will still run and take you to the finals. You're a busy guy, and these services are cheap, why not? Imagine changing the oil and rotating the tires took 10-12 hours/week instead of 1 hour/month and the analogy fits alot closer.

[Venjenz]

Makata, you keep blasting away about unfairness and all that, but why is it unfair? When I quit EQ, I took my necro, enchanter and mage to the Bazaar and sold off all my goodies. I took the profits and just straight up gave the money to my buddy who was going to keep playing. Was that unfair?

If you say yes, why is giving money to a friend unfair?

If you say no, why is receiving money from a friend ok, but paying someone to be your friend so they give you money is not? The end transaction is the same after all, it just had two different lead motivations.

The point is that it isn't unfair. IGE and PlayerAuctions do not discriminate on who purchases their gold. Because you choose not to buy it and others do does not render the process unfair. If IGE had a rule that forbid gold being sold to Makata, but allowed it for everyone else, then it would indeed be unfair. But Makata is the only one stopping Makata from doing as the Romans when in Rome.

It may not be your cup of tea to do so, but it ain't unfair.

[Deathwing]

Originally Posted by Makata

I go to college to get an education. Paying someone else to take the final is kind of fucking pointless. Why go to college if you're not going to put effort into it. Same with warcraft. I fail to see why you play if you put such little time into it. People who cheat (and admittedly, are caught) in college get insane punishments. In a perfect world, all cheaters would be caught. Also in this perfect world, retards who think epic mounts should be handed to them or repairs shouldn't have to be farmed would get their accounts permanently banned. I must admit I think I'd soil myself in delight if I woke up tomorrow to find Blizzard had deleted every account in the game who has bought or sold gold.

The link between college finals and farming is a bit weak, primarily because people go to college knowing there will be bullshit courses. Did anyone predict you would be bitching about repair costs when you started playing WoW?

There's something wrong in the game when I'm considering switching to a rogue just so I can make an event trigger in item rack that vanishes and de-equips all my durability gear automatically at a certan life %.

[Eomer]

It's unfair that I work 60 hours a week and bang super models all weekend long, while Makata has time to play video games 100 hours a week. I demand reparations!

[Venjenz]

The analogy to final exams is logically absurd.

In WoW, most people purchase gold for mundane shit that makes their time more meaningful, which would relate to all the times a college student spends money to maximize their time. A better parallel, if we must go down this road, would be:

You are a college student. Instead of using a computer and a word processing program to write your papers, you choose to use a circa 1953 typewriter with no correction ability. Instead of using a mechanical pencil, you choose to use a circa 1850s pencil that you sharpen with a straight razor. Instead of a pen, you use a quill and inkwell. Instead of using the Internet for assisting you in your research, you are a die hard adherent to the card catalog (if any still exist) and reading through library books. And when you are taking your physics or engineering final, instead of using a calculator to crunch numbers, you do all the math and arithmetic by hand with your 1850s pencil.

A player in WoW who paid real $$ for their epic mount rides that epic mount to BWL or AQ40 and then dismounts and enters the instance where their final exam takes place. Xiangtao the gold farmer isn't there to raid for them, he just farmed the gold that paid for the convenience of getting there faster. And when the raid is over and the repair bill is tallied, instead of sharpening the pencil with a straight razor, you just click the mechanical pencil.

Buying gold is a timesaver. The player still plays the game, they just maximize their useful time. As others have said, when you are no longer in college, and you have a job, wife, home, children, etc, then you'll see that free time becomes a far more valuable commodity than your "MMO honor" and saving 20 hours per week of mundane and, quite frankly, useless farming of maintenance coin will take on a whole new light.

When you have 80 hours of free time per week to devote to MMO play, then farming is no big deal. When that free time drops to about 20 hours per week, then farming Scholomance and Stratholme for the 4,000th time will seem really, really pointless.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Venjenz

If you say no, why is receiving money from a friend ok, but paying someone to be your friend so they give you money is not? The end transaction is the same after all, it just had two different lead motivations.

Because (I assume) your friend earned that money in some way. He farmed it, or sold something he looted, etc. Back in EQ I was definately jealous of the people who inherited fortunes and I might have mumbled something under my breath but I don't honestly think they should be punished or anything. Also, you can't just always find a friend to give you piles of gold. It's the exception to the rule.

With IGE and the like, you didn't just get lucky because your friend quit. Your motivation is completely different. You BOUGHT the gold, you didn't just have it given to you. If you're walking along and find $10,000 sitting in the middle of a sidewalk and there isn't a soul in sight .. well it's your fucking lucky day .. no one can fault you of any wrong. But if you steal 10 grand (no I'm not saying IGE = stealing) someone CAN accuse you of a wrong.

Guys .. attitude is the problem. You finish a raid, go to a light armor merchant and she asks you for 13g 54s to repair your only slightly dented armor. You're upset. I can understand that. I hate repairing too. But then instead of actually accepting repairs and other gold / time funnels as a price you pay for the content you enjoy you go, "Fuck this shit. I make $300,000 a year and god dammit I'm better than this. I'd rather go fuck my wife than farm gold. My stink doesn't shit, I shouldn't have to spend time online farming." and then give Yantis a ring and give some rang rang a bowl of rice for supper. It's the attitude that pisses me off. IGE, etc thrives off people .. people who probably aren't lazy, as they do alot of other things in their lives .. but off of people who think that because they can afford to buy their way out of the only thing that comes remotely close to risk, they don't have to go through the effort.

If you only have 10 hours a week you can devote to warcraft, that's okay. That doesn't make you worse than a person who can devote 30, or 60. But it DOES mean you shouldn't be able to accomplish what they can in the same time frame. If you can only play 1/3 as much, it should take you 3 times longer to get an epic mount. 3 times longer to get full tier 1. 3 times longer to hit High Warlord (okay .. haha .. I got a chuckle from that one, too). Etc.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by Makata

It's the attitude that pisses me off. IGE, etc thrives off people .. people who probably aren't lazy, as they do alot of other things in their lives .. but off of people who think that because they can afford to buy their way out of the only thing that comes remotely close to risk, they don't have to go through the effort.

How is this different from any other facet of life? Money enables you to free up resources to be spent on leisure, that's the whole point of getting a good job.

For instance, I pay a kid down the street to mow my lawn, because I'd rather have the 2-3 hours free time on the weekend than the $20 I pay him. How is that any different?