http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam
WoW, that is just surreal.
It would be cool if they punished convicted spammers that way.
This is the first instance I’ve ever heard of where something that people do for fun and something that people do because the prison guards make them is the same thing and doesn’t involve a penis.
Interesting spin. Since the prisoners are in China, the western media complains that it’s some kind of human rights violation – whereas, if these were American prisoners, the media would likely complain that convicts are having fun instead of paying their debt to society. Hmm.
Y’know, I’m having a hard time getting worked up over this… Yeah, at the gold-farming level, it’s boring, monotonous, and not fun at all, but on the other hand, who said that prison should be fun? And unlike many other sorts of work prisoners might be forced to do, it’s not dangerous or physically painful. Now, if the guards are enforcing quotas by beating prisoners, that’s a problem, but they’d probably do that for the mining work, too (which has all sorts of other occupational hazards).
Wait–didn’t the article say that the money earned enriched the guards personally? I would definitely have a problem with that, for all kinds of reasons.
Takin’ out big mobs on a chain gang.
Killin’ mobs and servin’ my time.
Takin’ out big mobs on a chain gang.
Cause I’ve been convicted of crime.
Grab my sword and run up there and hit it.
There I reckon that oughta get it.
Been grindin’, and grindin’,
But I still got so terrible long to go.
Cory Doctorow’s book, For The Win seems relevant. And since it’s free to download and a great book…
There’s something fundamentally wrong with a video game if people are paying other people to play it for them.
This is not limited to one game. It’s more of a genre-wide thing. Gold farming happens in…well…almost every mmorg I’ve ever head of, in one form or another. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry with a worldwide market. Many of these games feature various kinds of virtual rewards that are highly desirable, but are also very difficult to get, requiring hours of effort…or a few dollars on a credit card bill.
I support public floggings for gold farmers, sellers AND buyers, but some say I’m a little harsh.
It’s not paying other people to play it for them, not as such. Buying gold in MMOs can be seen either as a) converting real world money into game world money or b) activating a cheat code. Say the magic word (that is written on your credit card) and bam you have the best gear in the game. Now you’re free to go forth and pwn n00bz, without having to go through all the time and work necessary to get that gear/money in the first place. Some people just don’t see that particular leg of the journey as interesting (and generally end up with high level, highly geared characters they have no idea how the fuck to play, rant rant rant).
So it’s not paying people to play the game, more like paying for a shortcut to enjoy other parts of the game more.
It’s also a complete rubbish practice and has been known to ruin entire games, but that’s another story.
No rant needed. It’s all the more fun when you meet one of these folks who doesn’t know how to play their über-twinked character to pwn them with an honest character, often lower level.
Yeah, sure…lots of fun for pvpers, but these players learn quickly to stay the Hell out of pvp. Instead, they que for random dungeons and do things like burn tree form as a resto druid to “do better dps”.
I really wish there was an “idiot” voting option where you could quietly vote “idiot” versus “decent” for various characters, and have that affect how quickly they get a spot in the queue.
I’m not sure what you’re saying, there… Is this an ad-hoc party formed automatically by the game, such that you get stuck with one of these idiots as a teammate? I’m afraid I’m not too familiar with the details of WoW.
Pretty much. WOW has a feature that allows players to sign up for dungeon adventures. The game will then automatically match the player with others of similar level, and also with appropriate classes, then randomly place them in a dungeon group. Each group is 5 players, each in a particular role–1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 damage dealers. It’s a great feature, really makes it a lot easier to find a group for level appropriate content, especially for those without guilds. The down side is anybody…including idiots…can use the feature. These random groups can go smoothly, or can turn into a gaming nightmare. Most are somewhere in between…a decent group, but nobody knows anybody, so things go a little slower, and sometimes challenging content turns out to be more than such a group can handle. It is unfortunately all too common to get idiots in such a group. One dumbass can drag the whole group down…though in easier content 4 decent players can carry a non-performer sometimes.
WoW players are in no position to start calling other players bad (even other WoW players.)
I’m not a WoW or a MMORPG player at all and I’m not sure I understand the concept at work here. How exactly are they converting virtual gold into real money, and how exactly is Blizzard powerless to stop it? It’s their game isn’t it?
The way it works is the gold farmers hire people to “play” the game doing repetitive tasks that earn virtual coin. Virtual coin is transferable between players on the same server, so a buyer calls up one of the companies, places an order and pays for same outside of the game, and then logs on to accept delivery.
As a further illustration, one of my WoW characters has a motorcycle for a mount. It’s a pretty cool mount, and can be built by certain characters–such as mine. I had to spend about 12K gold (virtual coin) on parts to build it. I spent many hours doing things online to earn the gold I needed to buy the parts to build the bike. Someone else could get the same bike in about 30 minutes by buying the virtual coin with real money.
Aha. So… why doesn’t Blizzard just make in-game money non-transferable between players, directly at least? I understand that there is an in-game market for certain goods and services, but why does Blizzard allow the players to operate their own unregulated market? I mean, couldn’t they instantly eliminate gold farming by simply regulating all in-game transactions, and why don’t they? Too much work?