No, nor do you have to be stoned to think that all the dictionaries have somehow missed a vital part of the definition of cheating that you’ve picked up on. Just a bit stubborn :).
Daniel
You’re right, getting stoned probably didn’t make him a better skier, but what it DOES do is marginalize the sport and the the Olympics. IMO, one of the most important aspects of what draws fans to the Olympics is it’s “purity”. The athletes become immediate role models, and the IOC doesn’t want to have those sorts of people representing the Olympics.
It’s no different than when the NFL bans people for non-performance enhancing drug use. If the idea that these role models are bad ones became a concensus, the NFL would lose fans. Maintaining an image is invaluable to a sports league, meet, competition, etc.
There are a lot of mistaken assumptions in this thread. First of all its not in any way against the rules or the EULA to farm gold. Blizzard can’t ban “gold farmers” because they are doing absolutely nothing wrong. Every single player gold farms at one point or another so they can’t even consider making it illegal. A lot of gold farmers use “bots” to automate the process of farming, this are the people they go after. The guys sitting at a computer for 12 hours a day are playing entirely by the rules, any regular player could be doing the same thing if they so wished so banning anyone for it would never work.
Secondly the guys farming are not the ones selling the gold, this is another reason why they can’t really do anything about it. Theres really no way to prove a gold transfer is legit or not since the real money transaction happens outside the game but in the end all that happens is one person sends gold to another person and theres really no way to know why that was done.
I just don’t think theres any way Blizzard or anyone else can stop gold farming or selling without impossing some draconian rules that would inconvenience their regular players a whole lot more than the gold farming does. Banning people who play too much? capping the amount of gold one person can earn? disallowing sending gold to other players? it might stop the gold farmers but it would cause complete and total outrage among the player base. The only way i can see a company stopping the underground gold selling bussiness is to set up their own gold for money system, which was already done by everquest 2 i believe.
“You’re only defining the word that way because it supports your argument for the definition of cheating!”
Seriously, this is supposed to be a valid criticism of LHoD’s argument?
You’re right, DigitalC, the farmers are not necessarily the sellers. I realize I’ve been equating the two throughout this thread. I chose to continue doing so because the farmers listed in the original NYT article are still part of the black market industry and are assisting the sellers.
Farming gold, for the purposes of this discussion, refers to gathering gold for the purposes of selling it for real-world cash. That sale for RW cash violates the EULA.
Edit: Terms of Use and EULA
From ToU:
Daniel
But farming gold is not illegal and the guys farming it aren’t the ones selling it.
FTR, there isn’t anything against farming gold. However, when we’ve been saying “Gold Farmers”, we’ve been specifically refering to the concept of earning lots of gold to sell it for real money. If someone has no life and wants to spend 12 hours a day farming gold just to horde it… fine. The moment he starts making a real world profit from it, he IS violating the EULA.
I think you’re over-simplifying the problem. There are less draconian ways to reduce the problem, but you won’t get rid of it without being draconian. As I’ve stated here, and in the other thread, you cannot judge a Gold Farmer by a single attribute, because they don’t all farm and don’t all distribute their gold in the same way. To catch them, you have to use a much larger number of attributes, and then you’re getting into the realm of Datamining and Pattern Recognition, which is a whole different beast.
Either way, I imagine that a well developed and maintained system designed to catch Gold Farmers would probably get +95% of them, and considering that seems to correlate to my experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s precisely how they’re approaching the problem.
They are presumably giving the money to their boss in exchange for a paycheck–in other words, they are selling “items for ‘real’ money or otherwise exchange items for value outside of the Game.”
Daniel
Well, according to the article they are selling it to those who sell it direct to players. The act of farming gold is not in itself against the rules, but selling it is, and in order to get the money to those who sell it to players, the farmers have to sell it to them. They’re just a link in a chain.
Try rereading the first sentence you quoted.
The farmers are sellers, though. They don’t sell directly to other players, just to whoever runs the particular gold-farming operation that employs them. But they’re still gathering gold in-game, in exchange for real-world money.
I could be wrong, here, but I’ve only heard the term “farm” used to describe people who sell gold or other items for real-world money. When legitimate players do this, it’s usually called “grinding.” But I may not have fully grasped the context in which the terms are used, or there may be some variation by region/game/server/whatever.
Not really. You know, some other people seem to be understanding me fairly well. I don’t know what more I can do here. It’s not a reading comprehension thread, and so I guess we’re both frustrated. You do seem to be getting the gist of what I’m saying at various times and/or when it suits you to make a more incisive point, so I think now I’ll just apologize for your confusion and leave it at that. Chalk it up in your win column if it makes you happy.
You said it, mang.
Please read carefully. I’ve been very clear that this is long-term concern and not about today’s Chinese market. How many have it today is only tangential to what I’ve been saying.
I have to cite the approximately two billion people in China? For that matter, how do we even know there IS a China!? Cite that there is a China, please. Cite also that there are people living there, and that they farm gold, and that Marco Polo wasn’t just blowing hot air.
Ok, I guess I didn’t do my legwork because I didn’t break into the Blizzard offices and present their internal memos. Sorry. :rolleyes:
I see someone who is far too invested in that game to think about it objectively, and someone who effectively proves beyond a doubt that Blizzard could get away just about anything. Double-you-tee-eff on the mooncloth, chief.
Cite?! Just kidding, I don’t need an affidavit from Sir Loin, Formerly of the Dwarf Kingdom of Asswald. Your point would have economic merit if there were thousands of people who had quit with gold farmers being the primary reason. Otherwise one or two people getting fed up or not playing at all doesn’t matter financially, because for every one of those there are hundreds of farmers and thousands of addicts who will continue to pay. You haven’t shown net economic loss on Blizzard’s part.
No it isn’t. I’ve been over this. Prevent Asian access to NA/AUS/Euro servers and gold farming is all but done. Blizzard knows this, and doesn’t do it. Some nice person pointed out that Hong Kong ex-pats and whatnot will be sad because they can’t play with their friends, but if gold farming is the scourge you seem to think it is, wouldn’t such a move be for the greater good? And yet Blizzard doesn’t do this.
What are you even talking about? Out of control gold farming? That Blizzard has gold farming in their control is my whole freaking point. Hello?
Now by your own definition, you’re the one blowing hot air. Cite for these numbers? Any of them? Cite for Blizzard’s cost per account? Follow it all with a cite showing that pro gold farmers don’t buy more than five accounts in WoW, and you’ll actually be on your way to supporting the ridiculous proposition that Blizzard is running a net loss on gold farmers. Or better yet, stop demanding cites in a debate that doesn’t have available citations for either side.
Nothing you’ve said convinces me that Blizzard, out of the goodness of their little hearts, isn’t tolerating a certain degree of gold farming in exchange for the money and future market penetration. They’d be walking away from a pile of money why? Because they said they were? Maybe good enough for you, but not me, and definitely not while gold farming continues at a level that continues to be profitable for Blizzard.
Which brings me to step 2 and the other half of this thread, which is why breaking the EULA vis a vis gold farming or buying isn’t cheating. Because if Blizzard has been turning a blind eye to the farmers, it arguably constitutes a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. AKA, they cheated first.
It probably does depend on the game. I’m not familiar with WoW’s use, but in Guild Wars I’ve frequently referred to going out and farming crafting materials, because they drop off monsters and you have to kill quite a lot to get them. Same deal in FFXI.
In the context of this discussion, it means collecting for the purposes of selling, but that connotation need not be there.
Yeah, I’ve definitely heard people talk about farming in a game-legal sense (sample conversation:
That’s pretty clearly not what’s in discussion here, though.
Daniel
Goddammit, Daniel, knock that off!
Do you ever wonder if we have the same fingerprints?
:creepy look
If you’re the Left Hand, then Miller must be…
:eek:
Everytime Blizzard has tried to do something to mitigate the problem of gold farming it has caused the sellers to become more annoying to the regular player. Used to be gold farming and selling was something done in the background that not everyone was even aware off. If someone wanted to buy gold they simply went to Ebay and bought whatever they wanted, sure it hurt the economy but to most players it was simply not an issue they cared or knew much about.
Then they banned ebay sales so the gold sellers had make their own websites, which they started advertising by sending in game emails to players. You’d get maybe one or two of them a week, annoying yeah but not terribly so. Then Blizzard did something to stop the in game emails from throwaway accounts, or to limit the amount they could send at one time. The gold sellers then standing making throw away level 1 characters on trial accounts and mass spamming advertising their gold selling sites. This became EXTREMELY annoying, regular players who before hardly paid any attention to the whole gold buying issue were now getting spammed with offers at a rate that became intorelable.
On the last patch a few weeks ago a lot of contermeasures to deal with the problem went in. You can report spammers to get them banned faster, which puts them automatically on your “ignore” list, and theres some other technical things that prevents them from sending mass spam messages that i didn’t quite understand, but have apparently worked quite well. The problem is now the spammers are sending group invites rather than just messages, to anyone playing wow it will be obvious that getting spammed with group invites is a whole more annoying than simple messages. I am dreading to think what will happen when they find a way to stop those.
To all of you who think Blizzard can simply stop the gold sellers think again. They took what was a minor annoyance and turned it into a huge pain in the ass for their regular customers. I’m not blaming Blizzard for what the spammers are doing, im just trying to point out its simply laughable to think they can stop them when they can’t even stop their spam advertisenments in their own game.
I was wondering why I got two group invites from a level 1 dude in Northshire…