You don't understand, Melan. Those darkies - or natives, if they're not actually dark-skinned - are meant to know their place.

We can steal from them (they wouldn't have $150 a month pay if we didn't demand $5 t-shirts) but they can't steal from us, that would be wrong. Their proper place is beneath us, giving us cheap manufactured products, and maybe cleaning our toilets.

They're not meant to be interfering with such a vitally important part of the Western economy as World of Warcraft! Some geek with not enough friends for an proper rpg session could LOSE TWENTY BUCKS OR SO. I mean, these are important issues we're dealing with, Melan! It's a CRISIS, it says so in the thread title. A CRISIS.

No-one has ever hacked into my kitchen table. Have a shower, step out of your parents' basement, and go and play a real rpg.

Man, this thread has become the purest example I've ever seen of textbook trolling.  It's like a Platonic form.

Stop making these games such a dull grind and you'll cut off the need.

Indeed (#34).

The difficulty with cutting off the grind, as you say, is finding a way to keep people involved for long stretches of time.  A first time WoW player, with lots of free time (summer time students, unemployed people, bored housewives...whatever) can still take upwards of five or six months to hit level 60 (or 70 now...) the first time, and that without grinding. Trying to get cool items can take several more months, even for expirenced players.

Even a full time player with lots of expirence takes a month or more to fully level up (for example, professional character sellers...).

Time, to MMORPG providers, is money.  

If leveling was fast, people would grow bored faster and quit. If grinding cool stuff was fast and easy, everyone would have the cool shit, and they'd get bored and quit.

The only way to prevent that is to keep providing lots of new content, feeding the beast. Only: Providing new content is time and money intensive, and the payoff is relatively minor.  Making the game a grind, or rather a large selection of different possible grinds, means that you don't have to provide new content nearly as often, nor in quantity to retain all those money providing monkey's paying the beast. MMO's are cheap to run compared to the money they bring in.

The real solution, to my mind, is to change cultural values where people don't want to spend real money in status displays in a virtual world instead of doing something useful with it. But since I'm not in the habit of telling people how to live their lives or whatever, I'll leave it to you more outraged posters to fight that losing battle.

I watched a cash for gold transaction the other day and, if the way it went down is evidence, I'd say that Blizzard is working pretty hard to attack this problem through the tried and true (lol) methods of the Drug War (tm)! I say this because the defenses used in the transaction were identical to those used in a drug transaction.

1. It took place out of the way. In fact the Contact was hiding behind barrels around the side of an inn in an obscure town.

2. The contact did not carry the goods. They made contact and then a second toon, the Runner, appeared with the gold. I was watching for the runner and I note that he did not originate the gold.

3. The runner got the gold from the Stash, a higher level character that could reasonably have large amounts of gold. The Stash was not hidden, whereas the Runner and Contact were.

4. Once the Runner handed off the gold, a Supervisor contacted the buyer some time later to verify that the gold transaction was correctly completed.

I think this is about the funniest thing I have ever seen come out of the Internet.

As I wrote, the social dynamics behind MMORPGs are endlessly fascinating. Bizarre meme wars, economic models, group building... and a gold mine of entertaining human stupidity.

Quote from: HalfjackI watched a cash for gold transaction the other day and, if the way it went down is evidence, I'd say that Blizzard is working pretty hard to attack this problem through the tried and true (lol) methods of the Drug War (tm)! I say this because the defenses used in the transaction were identical to those used in a drug transaction.

1. It took place out of the way. In fact the Contact was hiding behind barrels around the side of an inn in an obscure town.

2. The contact did not carry the goods. They made contact and then a second toon, the Runner, appeared with the gold. I was watching for the runner and I note that he did not originate the gold.

3. The runner got the gold from the Stash, a higher level character that could reasonably have large amounts of gold. The Stash was not hidden, whereas the Runner and Contact were.

4. Once the Runner handed off the gold, a Supervisor contacted the buyer some time later to verify that the gold transaction was correctly completed.

I think this is about the funniest thing I have ever seen come out of the Internet.

How do you know they were doing this? My understanding is thusly limited though I am intrigued.

Quote from: signoftheserpentHow do you know they were doing this? My understanding is thusly limited though I am intrigued.

I was watching over the shoulder of someone buying the gold.