Buying Gold in MMOs
Buying gold in MMOs such as World of Warcraft has been a hot topic for years. It's all over the forums on www.worldofwarcraft.com right now. One side thinks "I've worked so hard to earn my gold, why should someone with real-life money get to buy it?" The other side thinks, "I have a job and can't play 15 hours per day. Why should kiddies with more free time get to mindlessly grind gold? They have more time, but it's worth it to me to spend $1 to get over 10 gold, so I do." Neither side can seem to understand the other.
I'm not sure why one side sees grinding gold as some amazing accomplishment that they earned. Farming gold is just as retarded as buying it on ebay, really. A lot of these complaints are coming from the angle that buying gold makes the playfield uneven in the competitive game of World of Warcraft. Newsflash: World of Warcraft is not a real competitive game. I think I've covered that one. There is no beginning, middle and end to a game (except in CTF matches), and people don't come to the table with the same resources the way they do in chess or Street Fighter or tennis.
This is the part where some of you write me mail about how people don't come to the table with the same resources in those games either because some people bring skill and others don't. Or maybe you'll say some people have more time to practice tennis so they get to bring more skill. Surely you know how bankrupt those comments are. The whole point of competitive games is that skill is the one uneven thing you are allowed to bring into and otherwise even match. Some people need lots of time to develop skill, and others don't. But no one buys skill (directly).
Also don't write me about how tennis gear or Magic cards cost money, so people bring different things to the table based on money in those games. No they don't. If you are a real Magic tournament player, you can get any card you want by trading or buying. A certain amount of cash or connections is needed to even play for real. Similarly, tournament tennis matches don't happen between people with $9 gear and people with $9,000 gear. Tournament tennis players have access to reasonably similar amount of gear and get ot compete based on a combination of skill, strategy and stamina.
MMOs are inherently uneven playfields. Unemployed kiddies grinding for gold vs. wealthy professionals buying it only highlights this issue; it doesn't create it. I guess I'm saying you can't really complain about people bringing different amounts of resources into a game that's entirely based on uneven playfields in the first place.
You know who the real loser is? Blizzard. Why aren't they finding a way to make money off this? Sony is. They have new servers for EverQuest that are flat out labeled as 'gold buying' servers. You know going in that you can trade real money for in-game money, and so can everyone else. If you don't like it, go on another server (where it happens anyway, btw), but at least Sony gets to make some money off it.
If you're still upset over this issue, maybe take up a real competitive game such as chess, Street Fighter, counter-strike, Magic: The Gathering, or...I don't know...Scrabble. No one will ever trade US dollars for extra letter tiles against you.
--Sirlin
September 3rd, 2005 at 11:37 am
how is an mmo an uneven playing field, just because people without jobs can spend more time there? is a golf course (or a tennis court for that matter) an uneven playing field by the same measure?
September 3rd, 2005 at 11:24 pm
First, Wow is competitive in the pvp aspect of the game, from one on one matches to duels to grp pvp, secondly, if you have EVER !!!!! played magic at a competitive level then you would know that your comment about tradeing was a load of crap, it takes ass loads of money to stay in that game, since the new great cards, you have to have are changing every three months, and everyone who want to go to nationals is going to have them. And you say that in tennis everyone is on the same level except for skill, well that is what people are complaining about here with wow. Skill aside they are all in the same game, and some have pro tennis rackets and some are useing the $9 ones. Then you talk about street fighter, where the game is all skill, and it doesnt matter if your a kid or rich as hell, if u can play street fighter your going to lose. The are complaning cause this is what they want outa WOW, they want a level playing field between the kids with tons of free time and the rich people with money to blow, where it just comes down to skill. You however just say that wow is a game wher skill isnt a factor…..where are you getting that idea ?
September 14th, 2005 at 2:58 am
Is farming illegal? You can leveling just by questing, you can buy your mount without farming gold? NO! There’s no absolutely fair in this world.
September 26th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Ugh! I have no idea what you guys are trying to say. Learn to write, please.
November 9th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
No, Sirlin is right about Magic. In Vintage and to a much lesser degree Extended, buying the cards you need for top-level play can be an impediment to play - however in Type 2, the most played format, anyone can build the deck they want for a 12 month period with at most a $100-200 investment, and people who have trading skills can usually get by with much less - I took 14th place out of 140+ people at my local Regionals with a deck that cost me nothing in cash and perhaps $25-30 in trade value. Magic has elements of luck in what you draw and what matchups you get, but skill is the biggest factor, especially over several tournaments.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
Finally, somebody who is not violently against real money trade.
I’m curious though. The argument I hear the most about RMT is that it can ruin a server’s economy when so-called “Chinese” gold farmers monopolize resources 24/7 to yield a shitton of gold/platinum/gil etc. and sell it all for real money. I honestly don’t see such a state ever happening in the first place, but could nonstop farming actually cause major inflation to a server economy?
January 11th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Indeed, the problem with real money trading is not so much the “buying” of the money rather than the “selling” of it: in other words, how it encourages gold farming as a profitable occupation. While WoW has very strong anti-inflation measures (AKA money sinks :P), everything has a limit.
Sirlin does bring up a point in the sense that buying gold is perhaps not a much more legitimate way to earn it than farming it. But I think two wrongs don’t make a right, and the focus should be on creating a game design that doesn’t encourage farming, not one that allows ANOTHER non-competitive way to reach the same end. Of course, farming is, to an extent, too convenient a scheme for artificially stretching content (AKA timesink :P) to not use in a MMORPG.
March 21st, 2006 at 7:29 am
Weltall Zero, are you the same Weltall level 49 twink on Kil’Jaeden?
July 25th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
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July 30th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
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July 30th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Great write-up, I agree with all the points in it.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
In MMOs, taking the gold sellers out causes massive swings in the server’s economy, too. At least in FFXI, gold sellers (or Gil sellers) caused major inflation to raw materials. Because of that, newbies had the opportunity to make quick, decent money while keeping the costs of low-level equipment low enough to make it so they didn’t have to grind entirely for the cost of a new cuirass (until they hit level 30, or so).
But what would you say about Pokemon, Sirlin? Pokemon’s a competitive game with the Wi-Fi battling in Diamond and Pearl. The thing is, to make a really good team, you end up needing to spend hours and hours breeding a pokemon (who have mainly-randomized statistics called IVs, that determine their growth in different statistics, so you need to breed one that has good IVs in certain stats), and then you need to repeatedly battle certain pokemon and trainers in order to force up those certain stats (beating certain pokemon will help with a specific stat, so if you wanted a really fast pokemon, you’d need to fight a lot of zubats).
In addition, you have to spend even more time getting the correct equip item and the TMs to get the right moves.
But, unlike Wow, the game is heavily based on fighting against other players. And, similarly to WoW, you can spend alot of time breeding and training these pokemon…OR you can simply buy a Gameshark/Action Replay and hack yourself an optimal pokemon.
So, what is your take on this?
July 30th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
To #2;
- Firstly, lol.
- Secondly, gear (amongst other things) ? Dipshit -.-