I have seen a number of threads of various rpg forums asking about the ethics in gold farming.  Assuming this issue is actually one of concern, I wanted to throw out some possible solutions.  Two, WoW is the game I am riffing off of but discussion of other MMORPGs is okay.

1.  Don't allow people to transfer money to other players.  Any money earned is somehow glued to the character and can only be used in auctions and to buy stuff.  

Pros:  No more direct character transfer of money, hindering gold farmers.

Cons:  Easy to work around, using the auction system to transfer gold and increase in selling of epic items and leveling services.

2.  Increase monitoring of accounts in an effort to catch people.

Pros:  More people are caught and other incidential problems are caught.

Cons:  Increased expense in time and money, increase in "false arrests", not all ppl are caught.

3.  Sell gold at absurdly lows prices by Blizzard, bottoming out the gold farmers.

Pros:  Easy gold means the enterprise is far less profitable, Blizzard makes a bit more money.

Cons:  Hyperinflation takes place in-game economy, raising prices and ticking a huge number of people for various reasons.  Possible losing money due to less subscribers.

4.  Change the game, making it into a barter economy instead of a coin-based one.

Pros:  No gold equals no gold farming.  

Cons:  Game becomes more complex, items are the focus of new sellers.   Additional measures would have to be taken to limit this.

Next, more detailed analysis of each possible method (especially the last one.)

As long as people are willing to spend real money for game resources, there will be a market of bottom feeders taking their money and working the game like a job.


Of all the proposed solutions only two seem remotely viable without redesigning the game from the ground up:

no more character to character transfers of gold

Sell the gold yourself.

Of the two, the second one makes more sense from a business standpoint, by far. It won't eliminate the problems with gold selling in general, but it will dampen the destruction of the in game economy by farmers. Inflation will still be a bitch.  

Point in fact: In WoW, my miner/blacksmith is at a virtual standstill in skill progression because I can not find minerals to mine. I can't compete with the farmers on their flying mounts.  To keep up with the farmers, even 'non-farmers' farm for their own profits.

In Eve, this is less of a problem. Farmers must farm either asteroids (plentiful) or rats (npcs)... also plentiful. In either case, I can shoot them, destroying their operation (temporarily), a popular sport of many players.

This does nothing to stop the flow of 'bought ISK' in Eve, but unlike WoW, I, and other players, are not forced to turn to the Farmers to get the resources we should be able to get on our own... as I am in Wow.

Limit transfers of gold / items between players to members of the same guild.  Make guilds have a relatively low maximum number of members, and make a probationary period during which new guild members can't trade items.

Outlaw charity.

Anytime someone sells something for US$ it appears (from within the context of the game) that they have given away something for nothing. By this metric, the most successful (Eeevil) gold farmers are the ones who give away the most gold. [deepthroat] Follow the charity.

Outlaw charity and you'll end up with a world where the gold farmers can't handle their goods. They might still find work by acting as tour guides (I'll kill everything but you have to pick up the l3wt) or by acting as overseers (I'll clear the way, and my fallguy accounts will handle the goods). But that can be overcome by monitoring kill stealing (if it's a big enough deal)

If you care about what people said on the Big Purple, click on this link.

The hardest part of this is the harming of legit players. I would say this:

Allow in-faction PvP, especially in farmable zones. This effectively lets players be the police force. Also, repairing equipment on farming characters WILL harm the business. Either that...or each faction should allow a couple out of faction guilds in as a police force, players who are dedicated to spending a few hours a week to griefing gold farmers.

Quote from: KrakaJakThe hardest part of this is the harming of legit players. I would say this:

Allow in-faction PvP, especially in farmable zones. This effectively lets players be the police force. Also, repairing equipment on farming characters WILL harm the business. Either that...or each faction should allow a couple out of faction guilds in as a police force, players who are dedicated to spending a few hours a week to griefing gold farmers.

that is more or less legal in Eve, which is why I mentioned it earlier. 'Gold' farmers still exist, but their impact on the game is mitigated compared to WoW in some ways.

You still have players buying 40 billion ISK motherships on Ebay, but they lose the ship within the week typically, so its only impact is to make a joke out of the sucker who spent all that real world money on a game...

Quote from: Malleus ArianorumOutlaw charity.

Anytime someone sells something for US$ it appears (from within the context of the game) that they have given away something for nothing. By this metric, the most successful (Eeevil) gold farmers are the ones who give away the most gold. [deepthroat] Follow the charity.

Outlaw charity and you'll end up with a world where the gold farmers can't handle their goods. They might still find work by acting as tour guides (I'll kill everything but you have to pick up the l3wt) or by acting as overseers (I'll clear the way, and my fallguy accounts will handle the goods). But that can be overcome by monitoring kill stealing (if it's a big enough deal)

This was one of the measures taken in Runescape.

They banned unbalanced trades.  You can't just give someone something anymore, you actually have to trade something of at least somewhat equal value.

though, the way my friend and I play LOTRO, this would really fuck the both of us up, because we do a lot of handing stuff back and forth.

I guess I don't really mind gold farming.  The only downside from my perspective is inflation in the in game economy.  Otherwise I don't really care what other players do with their in game time or their real world money.  

Of course I don't view MMOs as competative, even if they have PvP or RvR combat.  So it really doesn't matter to me if some buys a max level, fully epic'd, character/ship/etc.  

I also don't have any good ideas on how to limit gold farming.  I doubt that the Devs will ever really find a foolproof way to stop it.

Inflation is going to occur in the average MMO regardless of gold farming or not.  There are some seriously involved debates on the Eve Online forums about the roles of 'ISK' sinks and faucets, and how, despite the frequent destruction of goods in the game, there are far more 'faucets' than sinks.

THis is true of most any MMO. Resources spring from nowhere (droped loot, gathering herbs or minerals, mining asteriods) and are rarely completely removed from games at anywhere near the rate they are put in.  Thus, over time, the player base gets inevitably wealthier.

There is a reason high level stuff costs so much more than low level stuff: High level characters accumulate wealth, thus they have more to spend on their toys.

Quote from: SpikeInflation is going to occur in the average MMO regardless of gold farming or not.  There are some seriously involved debates on the Eve Online forums about the roles of 'ISK' sinks and faucets, and how, despite the frequent destruction of goods in the game, there are far more 'faucets' than sinks.

THis is true of most any MMO. Resources spring from nowhere (droped loot, gathering herbs or minerals, mining asteriods) and are rarely completely removed from games at anywhere near the rate they are put in.  Thus, over time, the player base gets inevitably wealthier.

There is a reason high level stuff costs so much more than low level stuff: High level characters accumulate wealth, thus they have more to spend on their toys.

There is an inflation rate in MMOs but the issue here is how resources are gathered.  The farmers are selling virtual resources originating from the game.  They are not, as far as I know, hacking into the servers and making their characters with max gold with a few strokes.

5) Unleash your inner libertarian and let it go as it will.
Pros: people in China get a salary, people in the US get items they don't feel like working too much for. Libertarianism is tested in a safe, inconsequential environment.
Cons: transactions may be exploited by organised crime for money laundering; bleeding hearts will envy the Chinese farmers for their bowlful of rice.

If you pay for something in WoW, you deserve to be playing WoW with Farmers.

I like Melan's proposal.  What about going one step further and using real currency in-game?

Quote from: jrientsI like Melan's proposal.  What about going one step further and using real currency in-game?

It sounds something like second life does...using a virtual currency but allowing people to turn it for real money and vice versa.  I could be wrong here but I believe there are even market changes as far as the exchange rate.