"why do you abuse its rules and harm the player base to make a profit?"

You answered your own question, profit.

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What he's doing is not "illegal gold selling." There's no law governing gold farming.

Is it against TOS? Yes, but the TOS says the penalty for violating them is account suspension/ban. So, problem solved. Gold farmer located, banned. End of story.

We appreciate your work on producing such a viewpoint neutral and dispassionate article.

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I am curious as to why people think the farmers are "skewing economies". Since they focus mainly on farming outside areas for items like motes, leather, etc. it seems to me that they are driving prices down as they compete with each other on the AH. Then again, I'd not be surprised if they mainly just vendor lots of items and sell the gold.

Increased gold supply + increased trade good supply = lower prices, but since I like to actually play the endgame and rather enjoy low prices, why should I be convinced this is a bad thing? If noone was doing this we'd see much higher prices on the AH for very simple items...much like in the early days of WoW.

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Screw you guys we've had the econimic debate of how gold sellers and gold buyers affect the World of Warcraft economy. I agree to disagree with what I don't agree with and agree to agree with what I agree with. What's better is I know what it is I do and don't agree with and I'm okay with NOT telling everyone or attempting to FORCE my opinion on others.

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I've never noticed any prices coming down in the AH with the greater supply of trade goods thay gold farmers are supposed to supply. I've just noticed the prices going up and up. People are greedy, doesn't matter if one is a gold farmer or not.

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Watch Wall Street...

Its all about greed.

There is HUGE amount of money to be made. Even if 1/10th of 1% of the WoW player bought gold (Thats only 8,000 players. I think its much more than that) for an average of $100 a person, that's $800,000! If that carried on that way every months, that's insane amount of cash potential.

For that much money, I'd consider doing it... (I wouldn't but you'd have to be crazy not to have the thought cross your mind)

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@6 ....

Money rules the world.

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@3:

Perhaps the skewing is a result of a movement more towards an oligopoly or monopoly. Without bots, you'd have many individuals farming the same motes, but all competing with each other on the open market. For the sake of argument, let's assume a goldfarmer operates 10 bots in an area. Those 10 bots are all gathering for one person, in this argument. The 10 bots prevent 10 different individuals from gathering the same number of motes they otherwise would. So, in effect, the goldfarmer is cornering the market on motes because they're able to constrict supply. The demand is the same, if not increasing, so the price only goes up.

Just a way to think about it, perhaps.

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So this guy repeatedly breaks the TOS by selling gold and botting and i'm supposed to feel sorry for him just because he chose not to "get an office job". Last I heard there was a whole array of jobs that do not require you to work in an office. I think that's a flimsy excuse for his current business venture. I hope the mass bans continue and at least some of the gold-selling companies go out of business.

His reasoning sounds more like, "I think I can make more money by breaking the TOS and selling gold than I can at any job that I am qualified to get right now."

It's not that he hates office jobs SO MUCH, but that he wants other people to empathise with him. I'm sure a lot of those office-job people don't like their jobs either. It's not about what job you DO NOT LIKE, but what job you CHOOSE.

I have no sympathy for this guy for being out the $50,000 he gained by breaking the game's TOS. He knew the risks going into it.

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WoW is a pretty controlled economy. If it was more open and free you'd have a choice of people go to for your epic mount training - and maybe avoid having to shell out 5000g.

Maybe thats why people buy gold? Blizzard wants to control how many people have epic mounts (for some reason) so the artificially set the prices high on these items which drives demand for more gold to be in the real market.

There's other controls in place too - cooldown periods for tailors, alchemy, etc.

At best all gold farmers do is set the price of goods to their lowest possible value - which means less profit for those of us trying to "make it" in the virtual WoW economy.

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@Iazbel and Sleepyeyes

If you don't want other people's opinions, you may want to do yourself a favor and stop reading blogs and/or forums. Just an FYI, but thats pretty much what they are there for, to share opinions. In the same way that your posting a comment is in itself, sharing your opinion with the rest of us.

Back on topic, gold farming my not be illegal by federal laws, but its still against the TOS and horrible for the in game economy. The way it destroys the economy is a simple effect called Inflation. The more gold that exists in the virtual world on one specific server, the less gold, as a currency, is worth. Take an extreme case where, lets say, every player had incredible Scrooge McDuck amounts of gold. Well, now people selling things in the AH can ask for higher prices because, hell, they know the players have the money and there is so much currency circulating around that an individual gold coin isn't worth so much. You end up with normal every day items going for insane amounts (WTS Minor Healing Potion 1500g PST) and it would take literally destroying the excess gold in order to get things back in line.

Anyway, thats my 2 cents on the topic... (and yes, at one point 2 cents was worth something...)

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this kindda makes me chuckle. Play lineage 2 for a couple months before you talk about farmers ruining an economy, the pressence of farmers on wow is nearly completly unnoticeable, most oh which farm greys and greens to vendor, providing gold for sale with a minimal effect on the economy. Aside from the occational raid inv/spam this is very-closly a non-issue in wow.

@ ppl whining about their living conditions, you ever been to china? they are lucky to work somewhere with free room & board with spending money on top. so much so companys that operate there can be selective about who they hire. and with the exchange rate 100 USD is enough for a small family to live off of, about equal to 1000 USD in the US.

ppl that buy gold are just lame, its so easy to make gold in wow its ridiculous.

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The Gold farmers don't skew the economy as badly as the Gold buyers.

If players can afford the items that are outrageously priced then they will continue to be outrageously priced.

If nobody had the Gold to buy those overpriced items the prices would drop.

Giving a bunch of epic-hungry people a 1000 Gold at a time is going to have an effect on the market.

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#2-- actually, the goldselling companies agree, when they click "agree" to the TOS, that the gold doesn't belong to them. They then sell it.

Selling things you don't own is fraud.

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It is very naïve to think that buying gold will ‘ruin’ the economy as people are already able to buy the gold or farm the gold. The ability to ‘ruin the economy’ is based on the premise that there is a limited amount of gold. There is not. Simple supply/demand curves will show that giving people the ‘legal’ option of buying gold will not impact the economy in the long term as those people that would buy the gold are either farming for things now, buying the gold illegally, or are doing without. If EVERYONE had tons of cheap gold, all items would be priced hirer and we would be back where we started. Blizzard gives you an option of legal making the gold (via farming/questing/crafting). If this were enough for everyone, there would be NO gold farmers and BOTS (outside of leveling). Since Blizzard restricts gold buying in the United States (check the prices for gold outside the US for a shock on how cheap/available it is) this creates a black market for gold.

The economies on EU servers do NOT suffer from the prevalence of gold and either people in Europe do not buy gold (ha!) or Blizzard does not actively crack down on it there. I am sure there are other factors but the point is that the economies on EU servers do not suffer from the ability for people to buy gold.

The simple way around this is to have Blizzard sell gold. Peg the gold price based on the supply of gold collected from vendors on 'repairs' and AH taxes. That gold just goes into the void right now. People that have the time to farm/acquire gold without buying it will still have that option. People that want to ‘buy gold’ will have that option as well. The in-currency pool will be about the same and everyone wins. This would significantly reduce the number of BOTS and would make in game currency available to people that want it.

There are a ton of economic studies out there about game currency and they are significantly more articulate and thorough then my few words here. Go read up before you spout out the ‘it ruins the economy’ or ‘people that buy gold suck’ junk…

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Blizzard maintains that items in WoW have no real world value. If that were really true, nobody would be buying and selling this stuff. Account bannings aren't going to work -- Blizzard has been trying that since the servers first opened, and the situation has only gotten worse.

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I find it odd that WOW Insider claims to have such a rigid stance against abuse of the TOS, yet the writers continue to publish articles sympathizing with them. If I promise to stop clicking on the links to such articles, will you promise to stop publishing them?

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Blizzard probably loves gold farmers, everytime they ban an account that person has to go and buy another one if they want to keep farming gold

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"#2-- actually, the goldselling companies agree, when they click "agree" to the TOS, that the gold doesn't belong to them. They then sell it.

Selling things you don't own is fraud."

I think they get around this by technically selling the time spent to farm the gold, which is legal (albeit against the ToS).

Anyways, people will hate me for saying this, but I have great respect for the gold farmers/sellers. They've seen a potential gap in the market, learned to exploit it, and weighed the risks and discovered that getting a few accounts closed every few months is worth the setback for being able to make a ton of cash from little work. They're entrepaneurs and I sort of wish I'd thought of it first. I lose a lot of this respect when the spam me in game: unsolicited advertising is not big or clever in any venue, and deserves our derision.

But despite all this I don't think the exchange of real money for gold is a good thing. I think it's abborhent, the game is meant to be fun, and if you can't have fun without spending a load more cash on it, you're better off with another hobby. How do I reconcile that with respect for the gold sellers? What I said earlier: they spotted and exploited a market. And those are the people I reserve my hatred for: the market that leads it to exist. Not the gold sellers, the gold buyers. If no-one bought gold, the entire thing would die out overnight, and honestly they're the people Blizzard should be clamping down on.

If Blizzard investigate and find genuine proof that a large amount of Nihilum members were buying gold, and ban them all with a high profile news story, the amount of gold buying would drop drastically, as the buyers realised it wasn't worth the risk.
Same reason we prosecute people for possesion of illigal drugs, even if it's only for personal use and isn't hurting anyone else: it drives down demand and makes people think twice about buying it themselves.

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19- The argument that they're selling the time would only fit if they sold it on the buy hour basis, and is shaky unless they go out and spend the time *after* getting the money/signing the contract.

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