

Gold Farming - raganwald
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming

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potatolicious
Flagged. What is it about gold farming you want us to know? Where's the news,
opinion, or discussion?

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raganwald
I found it interesting that there is a massive industry in the third world,
entire factories of people "farming" gold and selling it for hard currency to
people in the first world, complete with middlemen.

This industry has been created out of thin air. It seems like a giant hack to
me. Now that I think about it, what about "gold farming" _isn't_ hacker news?
Possibly the "news" part, I don't play MMORGs, so while I know that there is a
big business selling virtual goods for hard currency, the idea of
industrializing it is news to me but might be old hat to you.

So it's news to me.

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potatolicious
Forgive the flag then :) I thought gold farming was widely known and didn't
really need a crash course on its fundamentals. I stand corrected.

It's interesting to note that gold farming has brought up similar concerns as
sweatshop labour in these same countries.

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raganwald
It probably _is_ widely known. To give an example of my naïvite, I saw a
banner ad for some MMORG featuring a scantily clad woman. I was sure this
portented evil doings, and I was curious as to whether clicking it would lead
to Windows Malware, a scam dating site, what... So I googled the name of the
game and sure enough Wikipedia had an article full of innuendo about their
advertising and blogspam practices.

I then read that they had been connected with a large Chinese gold farming
operation, which led me to wonder whether their business model was to give the
game away for free but make money on farming gold out to new players, thus an
emphasis on attracting newcomers rather than retaining experienced gamers.

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potatolicious
Ah yes, you are probably talking about Evony, the armpit of MMORPGs :P Fine
purveyors of questionability.

It's not just shady Chinese MMOs though, even Sony is now getting into the
game of cheap-or-free subscription with a focus on farming virtual items out
for hard cash. This seems to have been the direction that the industry has
been moving in, though the phenomenon so far has been limited to MMOs of
questionable quality to begin with :)

Blizzard/WoW is also in on this, but in a far less shady way - they're selling
items that are largely cosmetic, the online game equivalent of vanity plates
basically. The impact on gameplay and other players is fairly limited -
whereas free purchase of game currency does Bad Things(tm) like drive
hyperinflation.

