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Posts Tagged “

Gold Farming

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only in china

Chengdu Police Arrest Two Gold Farmers

Steve at PlayNoEvil noted this little news story, which involves two Chinese gold farmers who have pulled in over $200K USD being arrested in China. Why? How, exactly? Well, it would appear that one of the pair felt they were being swindled out of profits and reported his partner to the police:

Chengdu's Shuangliu county has arrested two virtual item and currency traders, surnamed Li and Zhang, focused on tapping out The9's (Nasdaq: NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), reports Chengdu Evening News. Police arrested the pair after Li reported Zhang for unfair revenue distribution. Going into business last August, the gold miners accumulated more than 20 employees with 20 computers to generate RMB 1.6 million in seven months of dealing.

Oopsies. I'll be nosing around for more on this story (like exactly what the pair was arrested for), but if any intrepid readers come across anything, send it my way. As Steve at PlayNoEvil notes, "Turn up the Irony Meter to 11. After all, with all of the complaints in the US about gold farming, it takes the Chinese to stand up and do something about it."

WoW Gold Miner Offers Himself Up To Police [Pacific Epoch via PlayNoEvil

12:30 PM on Sun May 11 2008
By Maggie Greene
5,908 views, 23 comments

gold farming

Who's Winning the Gold Farming War?

Steve at PlayNoEvil has some interesting analysis up on the current state of gold farming in MMORPGs (though he does admit that since hard stats are difficult to come by, "any analysis is more akin to reading tea leaves"); using data provided by mmobux, he looks at the pricing trends to try and divine what might be going on in the wild world of selling gold:

If anti-gold farming initiatives were effective, gold prices should go up as the cost of business increases for gold farmers. (NOTE: This assumes that demand is fairly constant. If game companies could actually convince their players not to buy gold, than prices would drop with a glut of gold on the market and no one to buy it. I've not been able to get volume data from any gold sellers, but my sense is that their customers are not going away.)

The answer seems to be a stalemate, more or less — something we can look forward to for years to come?

The Gold Farming War - Who's winning? [PlayNoEvil]

12:30 PM on Sat Apr 19 2008
By Maggie Greene
3,138 views, 45 comments

Latest by NeVeRMoRe666: @SmilingPolitely: lol..I know what you mean. The world is full of hypocrites. more »

crime

Goodbye Gold Farmers, Hello Gold Frauders

And you thought gold farming was bad. Steve at PlayNoEvil has an interesting analysis up of the next wave of things MMO operators and players will have to worry about: gold frauders. The number of stolen credit cards being used to pay for WoW accounts has led to the UK bank Halifax to block payments to Blizzard, among a few other industry moves to try and deal with the ever-increasing problem of stolen credit cards, illicit RMT transactions, and other money-related issues. What is the problem - and why? More »

11:30 AM on Sun Feb 24 2008
By Maggie Greene
4,841 views, 38 comments

Latest by RawSteelUT: @TheResolver: Unfortunately there is no real system against an employee selling off credit card numbers. Only thing I could see is tying everything to the user biometrically, and I'm not quite sure where that's easy to do at the more »

only in china

Zhengtu: Where RMT, Gold Farming and Gambling Reign Supreme

I was thrilled to come across a most glorious article on Chinese MMORPGs (specifically, the wildly popular Zhengtu Online), translated to English from the original that appeared in the Southern Weekly. As Steve at PlayNoEvil sums it up, "While wimpy Americans can whine about "cheating" in online games, quibble about Real Money Transactions (RMT), complain about gold farming, gripe about power-leveling, and otherwise aspire to a mythical "purity" of game play, the most popular game in China, ZT Online, from Giant Interactive has embraced all of these things.. and online gambling to boot." More »

10:00 AM on Sun Dec 30 2007
By Maggie Greene
5,997 views, 24 comments

Latest by n/a: The pictures look like an online casino? Could you give an example? The reason why I ask is because casino stuff is, most of the time cool to look at because it is top of the line stuff. I don't more »

crime and punishment

'Spectacular and Arbitrary' Punishment the Answer To Gold Farming?

There are some interesting thoughts at PlayNoEvil regarding gold farmers and buyers, and how best to deal with them. One potential solution? Visibly, spectacularly, and seemingly randomly punish people buying gold - to hopefully discourage people from buying, disrupt the flow of gold from farmers to consumers, and make repercussions for buying gold random, retroactive, public, and aimed at damaging the whole system (not just an account (or thousands)): More »

2:30 PM on Sat Sep 22 2007
By Maggie Greene
3,781 views, 38 comments

only in china

Chinese Editorial Calls for RMT Ban

A "rather sensationalized editorial" (as Worlds In Motion describes it) by Ma Jun in the Shanghai Daily suggests that the government should step in an add another level of control to the Chinese MMO industry: banning the sale of virtual goods for real money. While the author takes a dim view of the conditions gold farmers and their ilk work in, they take a really dim view of the people who make their living stealing account passwords and equipment from virtual avatars: More »

1:00 PM on Sun Sep 2 2007
By Maggie Greene
2,723 views, 21 comments

Latest by Soldrak: @hehahohee: But you're assuming a totally free market is desirable or is best for society. Did you even play Bioshock? Oh I see how it is "At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to me is more »

big money

Joel Johnson's Guide To WoW Wealth

Don't hand your credit card over to some shady, overseas gold farming fly-by-night company. If you need gold and need it now, invest in Joel Johnson. His handy gold making tips can turn any World of Warcraft noob into an Auction House expert. In just four simple steps (give or take) and ten minutes a day, you'll go from a 5 gold piece pittance to a 100 gold per week fortune. More »

7:40 PM on Tue Jul 24 2007
By Michael McWhertor
5,008 views, 35 comments

rain o'er me

Gnomes Rain Down Upon Azeroth, Die For Advertising

World of Warcraft players were treated to an uncommon occurrence recently when hundreds of gnomes fell from the sky, perishing upon impact. Their corpses were arranged in sequence to advertise the web site of WowMine.com, a third-party service dealing in in-game gold sales. The corpse storm was triggered by a client-side hack, according to a post on blogger Raph Koster's site, and were arranged in text form just outside the server's bank and auction house. More »

6:20 PM on Thu Jul 5 2007
By Michael McWhertor
11,912 views, 54 comments

Latest by milkfilk: @HAGGLEGAGGLE: Yeah! That's what I was looking for! Good phrasing. *takes note* Btw, isn't it more of a Murgle-Murgle, or maybe your handle isn't Murloc related? more »

gold farming

'To Catch A Farmer'

A gold farmer, that is - it's another Sunday, and that means yet another issue of The Escapist, and this week's is all about MMOGs. And what is a discussion about MMOGs without at least a little bit about that topic that just won't go away, gold farming? Darius Kazemi explains what goes into catching gold farmers, namely a lot of analyzing data and looking for anomalies in patterns (you mean 'Abcdef' isn't a popular name choice for 'normal' players? Who knew?). More »

11:30 AM on Sun Jul 1 2007
By Maggie Greene
3,249 views, 15 comments

Latest by Dark_Cheetah: @aestheticity: Though I'm not into MMO's I don't see the difference in someone paying for virtual gold and someone paying a monthly fee for a virtual game. more »

china

The New York Times Tackles Gold Farming

In an article I somehow managed to miss out of last week's NYT Magazine, Julian Dibbell takes a not entirely new look at "The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer," though it does focus a bit more on the life (or lack thereof) and less on the gold farming. More »

1:30 PM on Sat Jun 23 2007
By Maggie Greene
1,295 views, 12 comments

gold farming

Another Look at 'Gold Farmers'

Via CNET Asia, another look at the documentary Gold Farmers (we covered it last year), directed/produced by Ge Jin, and still a work in progress. More »

1:30 PM on Sat May 19 2007
By Maggie Greene
2,840 views, 39 comments

world events

NPR Covers Gold Farming


NPR covered Gold Farming as a story on today's Morning Edition. Anyone who has read articles on this topic and are still confused about the working conditions or even how the work gets paid to these gamers, can listen to Louisa Lim interview which compares gold farmers to low-paid workers making Nike shoes. It also covers the social issues that Gold Farming has impacted in the real world such as anti-Chinese sentiment from American players. Instead of just focusing in on the gaming culture, the broadcast focuses on the money aspect, which is probably why this has actually become a story in other media outlets. Although it's another negative story on gaming, it's at least articulate and doesn't have a certain you-know-who from a certain southern state. Kim Phu More »

2:40 PM on Mon May 14 2007
By Kim Phu
1,068 views, 20 comments

Latest by kftgr: If it's just people playing their own accounts for gold, then no problem. But when botting comes into play, that's when the line is crossed. There's just too many games that I've quit because of all the bots...it's more »

korea

South Korea Bans Virtual 'Unfair' Asset Trading

In an apparently vaguely worded and of questionable enforceability announcement, the South Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that - starting next week - "the government will prohibit the trading of cyber items by 'unfair' and 'illegal' ways from next week to 'promote' the healthy growth of the game industry." Terra Nova has a post up that has parts of the new law excerpted, and explains: "The word 'abnormal play' is surely relating to some workshop whrere BOT program facilitated .... In the sphere of MMOs, RMTing of game money etc earned by normal play remains out of govermental regulation(except the possibility of taxing)." More »

1:30 PM on Sat May 12 2007
By Maggie Greene
593 views, 6 comments

Latest by Max Freak: @hahnchen: I'm not sure what you mean ... Making something illegal doesn't make it exactly tax-able. It makes it illegal. more »

microsoft

Microsft Cracks Down on Achievement Cheats

Is Achievement cheating the new gold farming? There are quite a few websites out there offering ways to up your Xbox Live Achievement scores through cheating (I could tell you what they are but that would be unethical), mostly dealing with the uploading and sharing of saved games. More »

6:20 PM on Sun Nov 5 2006
By fdemarco
3,204 views, 14 comments

ige

Gold Farmers Buy Allakhazam

Allakhazam — that perennial haunt of MMORPG enthusiasts, the forums of which are often flaming with bitter theses on the loose morals of Chinese gold-farming zombie players — has been bought out by gold-selling scumbag company IGE. More »

11:40 AM on Thu May 4 2006
By brownlee
2,663 views, 10 comments

mmog

NPR Looks Hard at MMO Economics

An NPR piece takes a look at how MMO economies are threatened by power leveling, gold buying and account purchasing. The writer infuses a little of his own situation when he asks if the time it's going to take him to make 90g for his level 40 mount is worth more or less than the amount of real life money he could spend to purchase the gold for the mount. However, the headline is a little misleading as you can't really "win" MMOs, you can clear what they have to offer, but there is always something to do, some obstacle implemented - and if not, one is probably coming a future patch. More »

1:45 PM on Thu Dec 1 2005
By lsmith
161 views, Comment

world of warcraft

Enjoy WoW, Let the Ladies Help You

The stigma around gold farming in MMOs isn't glamorous. Gamecloud has an interview up with "Christine" of Enjoy WoW that tries to change that. Aside from being a farming group composed entirely of women (according to "Christine"), Enjoy WoW allows gamers to get more than just gold, they'll run Upper Blackrock Spire for your BoP Blue chest piece until their faces match your new breastplate. More »

7:40 AM on Mon Oct 24 2005
By lsmith
172 views, Comment

mmog

The Secret Lives of Gold Farmers

Game Guides Online has a piece looking at the lives of farmers in and out of game. There's a lengthy segment on farmers making money and trying to hide the gold from their bosses, storing it on the characters of in-game friends and then asking them to sell it and paypal the farmer the proceeds. The Black Black Market. More »

3:37 PM on Tue Oct 18 2005
By lsmith
133 views, 1 comment