30 Million Gold

[Angry Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

For each account cancelled in that manner, a GM must investigate the circumstances involved. That's alot of manpower you're talking about, because if you wrongfully ban even one Joe farming gold for his niece to buy a pony, that's a possible lawsuit right there, not to mention bad press across the Intarnet.

Right, but Joe who is farming for gold will not trade said gold to ten different people. Nor will he automatically acquire gold from someone who consistently gives away large amounts of gold (as it would appear in game, for free).

The only catch I can forsee would be what does Joe do once the gold he received from the farmer poofs.

[Digits]

I so purely agree that farming would be less painful if it wasn't a solo affair. Hell, if they made it a 2-4 person affair it would solve two of my major problems with the game. First is the farming, but second is the fact that nothing exists to do that doesn't rest inside an intance. I got bored one night so a friend and I farming that Scourge village up the mountain near Light Hopes chapel and fuck me if it wasn't alot of fun. If that place provided a much better avenue for gold than soloing I'd be more than happy to shoot the shit there instead of Orgrimmar roof bank.

Eh, shame farmers would ruin any spot like that instantly. I say it with all sincerity that I hate farmers more than I do alliance, and I hate that Blizzard is in the impossible situation to design content around them. What I hate even more is that I don't see them even trying.

[Etadanik]

Right, but Joe who is farming for gold will not trade said gold to ten different people. Nor will he automatically acquire gold from someone who consistently gives away large amounts of gold (as it would appear in game, for free).

The only catch I can forsee would be what does Joe do once the gold he received from the farmer poofs.

Yes, but you would need *proof* that the gold was being used in a manner that violates the EULA. Transferrence of gold, however condemning, is not against the EULA, and arbitrary bannings based on suspicion will quickly ruin player confidence in the game. Therefore, an investigation would be necessary in *each* circumstance, regardless.

That's not even accounting for what a smart farmer can do to mask his activities - such as transferring via items (that one person then sells en masse in AH), instead of via raw gold. You'd have a hard time distinguishing between such a mass seller and a guild banker.

EDIT: My thoughts on dealing with farmers are akin to my thoughts on dealing with pirates. The goal should not be the elimination of farming/piracy, because that's impossible - there will always be farmers and pirates smarter than whoever you have hunting them. The goal should be, rather, to *limit* the farming/piracy - to make it out of reach for the average joe by taking out the most egregious suspects. That means going after the *distributors*, rather than the *producers*.

[Angry Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

Yes, but you would need *proof* that the gold was being used in a manner that violates the EULA. Transferrence of gold, however condemning, is not against the EULA, and arbitrary bannings based on suspicion will quickly ruin player confidence in the game. Therefore, an investigation would be necessary in *each* circumstance, regardless.

That's not even accounting for what a smart farmer can do to mask his activities - such as transferring via items (that one person then sells en masse in AH), instead of via raw gold. You'd have a hard time distinguishing between such a mass seller and a guild banker.

Sure, but allocate a larger portion of resources to do the investigation. Hell, make a small team devoted to it. I know there isn't much gained from pumping money into preventing farming, but at the very least it will increase retention some small amount due to people being able to harvest their own vanadium clusters.

About the arbitrary bannings; ensure that the player base is well aware that any mysterious transactions where you give 20 different people sizeable amounts of gold for no apparent reason, if you are unguilded, is a guaranteed way to get your account inspected and possibly banned.

Because really, why would you give away 1,000 gold for nothing in return, unless you were a bank bot?

Also, there should be a way to track time spent in one zone doing activities like farming clusters versus time spent in game questing, fighting mobs, and socializing. And this could be a simple algorithm where if there is a combination of you spending 90% game time in a certain zone, harvesting 98% of the time, and subsequently giving away the entire amount of gold received from the sale of your clusters, creates an indefinite banning.

[Dyscord]

Do you shoot yourself in the foot and marginalize solo play, thus marginalize a large percent of your player base, but stamps down on the farmers and lose their money too? Or do you make a small percentage of your vocal raid population happy?

The best way to deal with the farmers is to put the highly desirable tradeskill items into dungeons that require groups to get. Or at least make it so that these items are so rare outside of the instance and so common inside, as to make outside farming at best not worth the time.

But again, this creates the problem above. You lose subs from the soloers, and you lose subs from the farmers, just to make a bunch of the tiny high end population happy. Just isn't gonna happen.

[Etadanik]

Also, there should be a way to track time spent in one zone doing activities like farming clusters versus time spent in game questing, fighting mobs, and socializing. And this could be a simple algorithm where if there is a combination of you spending 90% game time in a certain zone, harvesting 98% of the time, and subsequently giving away the entire amount of gold received from the sale of your clusters, creates an indefinite banning.

The question you gotta ask, as always, is whether it's worthwhile to maintain all these sorts of statistics, which will have to be kept in the actual game's databases across hundreds of servers, therefore affecting (significantly) both performance and storage, in order to appease what is likely a minority of the player base that actually despises farmers.

Most people aren't like you, after all. They'd rather buy the vanadium than harvest for them. This is called the instant gratification attitude - if it didn't exist, neither would the market for farming.

Moreover, I'm fairly sure most people don't read the EULA. Having a clause in there banning players for doing certain activities in the game is a recipe for a huge amount of customer service work.

[Angry Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Etadanik

The question you gotta ask, as always, is whether it's worthwhile to maintain all these sorts of statistics, which will have to be kept in the actual game's databases across hundreds of servers, therefore affecting (significantly) both performance and storage, in order to appease what is likely a minority of the player base that actually despises farmers.

Most people aren't like you, after all. They'd rather buy the vanadium than harvest for them. This is called the instant gratification attitude - if it didn't exist, neither would the market for farming.

Moreover, I'm fairly sure most people don't read the EULA. Having a clause in there banning players for doing certain activities in the game is a recipe for a huge amount of customer service work.

That's true, but again it's a question of allocating resources vs. retention. If it's a simple collection algorithm and it's storing the data serverside, I don't think it would interfere that much as long as it was at set intervals (i.e. every 2 hours /loc update, every 1 hour "% xp gain" update, every 1 hour "traded x gold / platinum" update). For each person, it would be a part of their account and not just a single character, to help prevent the possible transfer of goods from one character to another, and also cross-account transfers for the sake of "hiding" the money.

Since the amount of information transmitted is minimal (per character account, mind you), I'd be hard pressed to believe that it would take much to add to an already set up a database that contains information about the players' account.

[Etadanik]

Okay. Assuming that what you propse works, how do you warn players against doing those activities in the EULA? It will have to be a rather narrow definition, since restricting player freedom is generally frowned upon, so it can't be something as simple as "don't farm for extended periods of time and then transfer that gold to someone else." Players have legitimate reasons for doing that (ie if I'm using a AH mule).

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

I strongly disagree with this. What you say is true for the actual executive staff of these games, but Developers have all the power they need to minimize this. WoW turned into IGE playground because, as a guildmate of mine put it recently, WoW raiding = 10% raiding 90% soloing.
From my perspective I see this is true. All those potions, Flasks, repair bills and now item fees I have to farm really require me to put out either a huge amount of gold or many hours to farm all of this. We know that plat purchases were unknown among EQ highend, yet WOW was designed in a way that actually promotes an "Ebay or quit" mentality among those that don't have 40 hours a week to play. If Blizzard at least had the common sense and gave us a meaningful way to GROUP for these materials (this is a MMORPG after all, yet farming = soloing and I absolutly loathe that) there'd be a lot less pro-Farming going on.

I agree with what you're saying, but I don't see it as diametrically opposed to what I was saying. I was talking about what a game company can do once hacking has already become endemic to gameplay and is a "fact of life." If I understand you correctly, you are talking about what a company can do in terms of preventive design and gameplay, in order to minimize the need for hacking in the first place. Our points are not mutually exclusive.

Perhaps I used the word "developers" too loosely, when a term like "staff" would have been a better choice. So I apologize for mixing terminology there.

Naturally I agree that building a better game -- i.e., planning out ways to minimize hacking (and the need for hacking/farming) when designing a game is always the best strategy for controlling hacking. But hindsight is 20/20 in cases like this. Developers don't always know what the consequences of their designs will be. In a way, it's too easy, and somewhat unfair, to blame them for making poor choices based simply on the outcomes of those choices. Sometimes the outcomes are impossible to tell until the product is released, and has been in play long enough for the in-game economy to mature.

Look at it this way: do you make every single decision in your life based on all possible effects that decision will have 2, 3, or 4 years down the line? Do you actively calculate what will happen to your body 5 years from now if you drink a can of Coke today? No one does that in their daily lives, and yet we expect game developers to be able to think that way, flawlessly, 100% of the time. It's asking the impossible in some respects.

Yes, developers can always be better about these things. But they can't always be perfect. They're only human.

Let's play devil's advocate for a second, and assume that the Blizzard development guys didn't realize that the way they designed their solo game would result in this much need for exploitation (i.e., hacking, farming, eBay, etc). They're faced with two options now: a) redesign their entire game from the ground up, while it's already a live product; b) crack down on hackers as best they can. Choice A is the better choice in theory, but it is impractical at best. Choice B isn't flawless, and in many ways is akin to putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. But for now, it's the easier and more practical action.

The best-case scenario is that Blizzard learns from these mistakes, and builds a better mousetrap when they go about designing WoW 2.

[razazi1]

Originally Posted by Angry Amadeus

[B

Also, there should be a way to track time spent in one zone doing activities like farming clusters versus time spent in game questing, fighting mobs, and socializing. And this could be a simple algorithm where if there is a combination of you spending 90% game time in a certain zone, harvesting 98% of the time, and subsequently giving away the entire amount of gold received from the sale of your clusters, creates an indefinite banning.[/b]

What if a player got 2 characters. 1 that is his main, lets say a raiding priest. And one is a rogue that always farm to collect gold for the priest (and lets say, others in the guild). The only thing the rogoue would be doing is to farm, wouldnt that look supiscios if they used that system?

[Hal2005]

One of the key things world of warcraft failed to develop (however it was hinted in early press release documents iirc) was a suitable player driven economy that could compete with the soloist game.

All warcraft games start with resource gathering, and the consistent growth of your resource base to build bigger and better toys.

A form of minigame with appreciating payouts, or a method for guilds to repair their own gear (without the money loss to the personel) would have been a nice feature.

To elaborate on the minigame, it could have been as simple as every town having a mine and a forest nearby, where you could go run over 'mine' and then run back. Your level being equivlant to a scaling 'wage'. Or the resources you generate are turned into non tradable 'tokens' for the player to return to the town and repair or purchase vendorable consumables (like those Major Mana potions).

[Lusiphur]

The base problem that drives farmers is twofold ..

1) Repair costs scaling higher for raiders
2) Tradeskill items needed for everything (eg Arcane Crystals) in contested nodes.

Number one has been debated to death. Personally I would like to see an 'in-raid' method of mitigating these costs (note mitigating .. not removing) but that's another thread.

The 'chase a node' mini game is not fun .. for anyone. I would prefer to see a mechanism a'la SWG allowing a certain amount of offline 'automated' resource gathering. If we all don't have to buy our Arcanite from Xinghaohoarhgthgh then we you cut into their margins a million times more effectively than any account bans.

Alternatively just stick billions of large Thorium Veins in raid instances and make all the mobs drop felcoth etc and have done with it.

[Flinch]

Originally Posted by razazi1

What if a player got 2 characters. 1 that is his main, lets say a raiding priest. And one is a rogue that always farm to collect gold for the priest (and lets say, others in the guild). The only thing the rogoue would be doing is to farm, wouldnt that look supiscios if they used that system?

No, because I doubt the average Rang Rang is a member of his local server's raiding guild.

[Digo]

To elaborate on the minigame, it could have been as simple as every town having a mine and a forest nearby, where you could go run over 'mine' and then run back. Your level being equivlant to a scaling 'wage'. Or the resources you generate are turned into non tradable 'tokens' for the player to return to the town and repair or purchase vendorable consumables (like those Major Mana potions).

This is fun or an improvement on current farming how?

[theawddone]

My guild doesn't make our members pay for anything, we just have 2 of our members play the economy every once and awhile to support the bank, who've made probably 200+k by themselves w/o Ebay. All these people saying "you have to Ebay to raid" are just bullshitting themselves, I worked 35hrs a week and went to school more than that when I wasn't raiding on WoW (lol) and didn't have to farm for repair costs...