Simply add to the Terms of Service that if someone submits a log report of you trying to sell gold or power leveling, they can legally charge $x from your credit card.
It wouldn't complete fix it, but it would certainly stop the /tell spamming.
Only a partial solution I'm afraid..... paying by credit card is only one way folks pay for their accounts. Other methods include using game cards (and you can bet gold farmers/buyers would all suddenly switch to them if your solution was implemented) and some games are now going with a cash shop approach, (yes, we'll see more of this model in western MMO's...the lure of easy money has a very strong appeal)
The real solution to the problem is to create a game where the accumulation of wealth is not the over, all important goal, and remove the rule that "he has the most gold, usually wins". (which is how real life seems to work all too often)
Make a game where casual gamers (or even some hardcore) obtain no real benefit from gathering tons of wealth, and more importantly, suffer no loss of competivness if they can't spend the time to farm the hell out of the game to succeed. If you must have farming, make it for strictly cosmetic and "nice to have" items, that way those with the time can do it and get something for it, while the rest of the folks won't be encouraged to find work arounds (cheat if you wil) to circumvent their perceived limitations.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I don't think this will ever stop as it has become a huge money making business. If people stop paying for these services and gold, they will go out of business, simple as that.
I think there are only 3 ways to stop it.. 1. Kill the people selling it. 2. Kill the people buying it. 3. The company sell it themselves.
I found point 3 interesting. What an idea. So the game company charges $50 for the game $15 a month and then if I wanted to start off at a higher level I could just pay extra. For example Joe wants to start the game at level 20 so the company could charge him $200 and give him level 20 bare bones or Bob wants a level 50 so he pays $500 and gets a bare bones level 50 and its provided by the company so no one is breaking the rules. This might actually work.
P.S. This is not a flame it is a seriously interesting idea.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
I think from reading this thread people still don't get the point of the game. It's not to be the biggest or the best, but to have fun as you go along. If your not having fun don't play the game. At the end of the game there isn't much fun to do anyways. Thats the most tedious portion of the game and all you do is try to aquire better equipment doing the same places over and over and over. You have just wasted your money buying money IMO. Generally I never buy anything from other people in MMOs these days and I have a lot more fun. With all the quests and items in games now there isn't really a need to buy gold.
I recently returned to WoW and I'm being barraged by gold spam even though I'm on a low population server. I report every single gold spammer as Verbal Harassment, but this is tedious and disrupts my gameplay.
IMO, the practical solution is twofold:
1) The game must have a strict policy against selling gold and leveling.
2) The game must have built in reporting tools, such as right-clicking the name of a spammer to report them and automatically *copy the whisper or email* in a special message to GM's. This provides immediate proof, and prevents abuse of reporting.
BTW, There is one problem with gold sellers that no one likes to admit -- they buy accounts from which the publisher profits.
I think from reading this thread people still don't get the point of the game. It's not to be the biggest or the best, but to have fun as you go along. If your not having fun don't play the game. At the end of the game there isn't much fun to do anyways. Thats the most tedious portion of the game and all you do is try to aquire better equipment doing the same places over and over and over. You have just wasted your money buying money IMO. Generally I never buy anything from other people in MMOs these days and I have a lot more fun. With all the quests and items in games now there isn't really a need to buy gold.
Maybe some people disagree and think raiding or whatever other end game content is the end all be all?
The simplest way of getting rid of the gold/power lvl service is:
1.) Heavy regulated player economy (hurts the casual players, but it would work)
2.) Craft > loot (this helps to get rid of the gold/item farmers trying to get a loot, and throw up in the AH)
3.) Game companies sells the gold themselves. (by being cheapest than the gold farmers)
There are many other ways that could do it, but then again, it's the gamers' own money. They can spend however they wanted (some would buy gold to keep up or to buy that item they've been eyeing for in the AH or something...)
But one poster said it correctly. It's pretty much because the game isn't fun... half of the time the quests are mundane at best, and bore the heck out of players. Some casual players will not want to do so much questing to compete and play the end-game contents, so they buy powerlevel. Some gamers do not want to spend hours upon hours just to earn enough gold to have fun, so they buy gold.
It's the design of the game that create the problem, and the best way to solve the problem is to getting rid of the designing part of the problem (mundane quests/missions will kill x creatures for $$$/reward, loot > craft, and using a class/lvl system that is just not fun to play<imo>)
I wish that the future MMOs would have the following:
1.) interactive mission/quests, basically what I mean is that the quest/mission objectives are subject to change. Let's say today you are sent to kill someone, but you didn't finish him off, and he gives you a document which changes your objective of the quest. This would make the questing/mission system more fun, and less predictable so you have to think and choose instead of kill x creatures -> return for reward , rinse and repeat.
2.) I rather have craft items > loot items. Many gamers like this aspect of the game, and they build in-game reputations out of it, so you would buy form these players instead of getting loot from goldfarmers. (goldfarmers probably can't do crafting that long, since it gets slow and they are not earning enough out of it)
What are we really talking about here... gold selling itself, or the in-game spamming problem?
I think it's actually the latter. There's nothing more I hate than being spammed in game by gold advertisers.
Solution: No FREE TRIAL accounts.
Hurt their in-game advertising, and you hurt their profits.
A buddy key system like the one LOTRO currently has in place is a decent compromise to the free for all trial account - though it isn't ideal for those who want to try the game out before buying.
Otherwise, free trial accounts should be restricted to a special trial instance of the game, with no ability to /tell or mail other players. Of course, then the real trial players will get spammed by gold sellers, and that might put them off subbing for the game, so it's not a total solution.
But no free trial accounts works pretty well for the in game spam.
Personally? I think game companies should allow it to be lagal, but in the EULA demand a percentage of the earnings as it is property earned from their product. Allow those people to go off and sell the loot and gold, because there is no stopping them anyways. But settle on an agreed ammount to send over to the game company. This would allow for a little extra revenue for the company and keep the farmers happy in their business.
Besides over in korea they get paid about .05 USD an hour while the boss is making around 5k+ a day.. they can afford a % loss.
Should they disobey and not pay the % fee for selling in-game currency and items, they will receive a nice fine to compensate the loss and put the farmers where they're supposed to be.
But maybe thats just me.
Everquest - 2000 - '02 Anarchy Online - '01-'02 Earth and Beyond - '02-'04 Star Wars Galaxies - '03-'06('07) World of Warcraft - '04-'07 Age of Conan - '08 - shelved. -Waiting on- Star Trek Online SW: The Old Republic
ok... 1st i've never seen mmo* without these farmers/service providers and we have to face it... it's us who keep them going on and stop buying services/gold is the only way to stop them... tho i dont give a shit if they are ingame or not. Anyways the point is why to ruin game for just to takeout few farmers while casual/hardcore player suffers from it even more.
btw... should i be killed? i've sold accounts and gold in UO looong time ago even before these farmers...
the ToS legal implications are minimal at best. The ToS/EULA is there so you know what will get you banned.
If a company wants to charge you money, you need to authorize that exact amount before hand. There is nothing they can put in ToS that will give them the ability to charge you what they want after any "investigations".
If they started charging x amount of $ for what they deem an infraction, that would be no different than a fine and a private corporation can't give out fines.
Well they sort of can, like a home owners association can give you a fine if you speed on their private roads, but you're under no obligation to pay. The most they can do is ban you from their property if you don't pay, and they certainly can't charge the fine to your CC without your authorization.
so let's put this into a game scenerio. They put that "we'll charge you x amount of money for selling gold" in the ToS. They catch you selling gold. All they can do is send you a message in game, through email or write up a 'ticket' and mail it to you with the condition that you pay or be banned from the game.
Breaking a TOS and being Illegal are 2 different things. As there are no penalties linked to the TOS beside "termination of your account". It is not gonna work. What I meant is that gold selling be made a criminal activity, punishable with hefty fines or even jail. THEN you would see the disappereance of such services for good. You cannot stop the people from buying gold as you cannot stop the people from using cheat codes, it is built in human nature. It does not matter if the game is super fun or super easy or what not. People WILL cheat.
I dont think it could ever pan out. Legislators have no right, nor bearing to interfere in these types of matters. Nor should they. Ever.
That being said, it is up to the mmorpg game devs to make there be no need to buy gold. This requires something this industry has not seen in quite a while - innovation.
"...and with that cryptic comment, I'm off to bed!"
I think from reading this thread people still don't get the point of the game. It's not to be the biggest or the best, but to have fun as you go along. If your not having fun don't play the game. At the end of the game there isn't much fun to do anyways. Thats the most tedious portion of the game and all you do is try to aquire better equipment doing the same places over and over and over. You have just wasted your money buying money IMO. Generally I never buy anything from other people in MMOs these days and I have a lot more fun. With all the quests and items in games now there isn't really a need to buy gold.
Maybe some people disagree and think raiding or whatever other end game content is the end all be all?
That is true that some people like endgame for whatever reason even though it is the most repetative, time consuming, and boring part of the game generally. I would think if you enjoy raiding then you would have the tolerance to farm solo which is a lot less time consuming then raiding.
You all assume the game company wants to really stop the practice anyway. Frankly they more of less pay lip service to stopping the practice and do little to stop it. Why...because the services keep people playing their game. Causals can buy gold to keep up and keep playing and your do it yourselfers in the game now have to farm more themselves to buy stuff thus they are playing. In both casses it keeps people playing more and more. Why would they want to stop that. There is no real reason for them to want to stop the sellers. You can also see from the amount of companies out there that they are buying accounts to farm the gold thus giving the game company money. This large number of companies tells the game company that there are a lot of people that might find the game unenjoyable the way it currently stands without being able to buy gold.
Either the game system needs to be fixed where they stop using gold as a time sink to get people to play...i.e. WOW 1000 for a flying mount is a time sink...or they need to start selling gold themselves or create a system like SOE where the game company controls the sale of the gold.
Ok, so if the company start selling gold, they are basically creating it out of thin air. It wouldn't have been possible for it to have been introduced into the game economy at that current time. You'll get chunks of people buying this "Fools Gold" increasing the amount in the economy, and this is without introducing extra items, unless the company sells them also. With this items that can only be obtained in game, which would mean the price for said item would slowly increase.
Where before, average Joe, who enjoys playing the game as a game, would, with some effort, would have been able to buy that item. But now that "Fools Gold" has been introduced in the system, Joe would have to work harder into getting that item, which could become obsolete or just as not desirable, that is provided that Joe would have been able to find the item in the market. Joe would then buy a lesser item.
Mr. Moneybags who buys gold from the company, because he just wants to advance faster, which in my opinion, legitimate reason for wanting to, would just sink some real world money into that "Fools Gold" and be able to buy that item that Joe couldn't afford, or because Moneybags can get that money quicker, he will buy it before Joe might ever had a chance.
Basically you would end up seeing to different tiers of people. The first group, the ones who want to enjoy the game, but don't want to sink real money into a virtual and therefore have substandard items. And group two, the ones that just want to advance even if they have to pay real money and therefore are able to afford the top tier items.
Now, not completely condoning money farmers, they don't just introduce gold, that couldn't have been received anyways. The mobs were there for anyone to kill and the farmers took the kill. But along with the money, they are also bringing in the loot that the mobs drop. Honestly, it's quicker, provided it's a set mob that drops a specific item or sets of items that sell for hundreds of gold, than it is to actually get the gold to drop from mobs in gold or vendor loot.
Having the influx of items wouldn't really lower the price of items, especially anymore when almost every game makes items Bind on Equip, but it would give players a better chance of finding the item in the market. Compared to the first system, with the company making "Fools Gold", the farmers way of making money isn't as unbalanced.
Though, I'm not saying that farming won't disrupt the economy of the game, at least to some extent, I feel it's better than a company's magic wand creating gold at whim. Only way I would actually not care if a company created their own gold selling service, is if they had specific servers that allowed it, and dang, the economy on those servers would be screwed royally in no time.
Want to know how to fix the gold farming? Have the developers log into the game every once in a while, watch who the bot farmers are and delete their accounts. Log onto the forums every once and a while, and watch who's selling. Go there, and buy something small. Find out whos selling, and buying and eliminate them. Use a bit of intelligence to fight them....Kinda the same way that the police track drug users. They dont just go and bust the place, they watch it a while, find out who's buying, and whos selling. Then they get them all. Not just the one person.
I mean really. Why dont these developers see this? I could go to ebay RIGHT NOW and buy currency for ANY game. 30 seconds from now, buy it. Ten minutes, we see who logs in with the currency/gold/whatever. Start logging their activity. Compair their online sales through ebay or whatever auction site is out there with who's buying them. Wouldn't the 10 bucks they blew buying the item on ebay be worth keeping the rest of the community happy with the game to stick around longer which = more money....!!
Sorry to sound redundant, but its so simple yet noone does this or does it well enough to make a difference.
IakXastur all the gold in games without fixed amounts of gold economies are using fools gold. Inflation will always exist in these games as the game gets older because gold is always magically created. Year 1 not many people have banks full of gold prices of items level out. Year 2 more people have topped out have massive amounts of gold and are making twinks. They are willing to pay a lot for the best stuff for their twink, Year 3 slow levelers have topped out and are not making their twinks. that is a typical inflation without gold selling in a game bacause gold is not fixed. You do not need gold seller for inflation only time in these games.
Yes, I will admit that their is inflation in any game, even with every game trying to create money sinks. What I was referring to more so, is that the inflation will happen significantly quicker to which normal players won't be able to react and compete without thinking about the need to invest their real money into virtual money. From what I've seen, in the first two years while the economy starts stabilizing, players are finding ways to make more money through normal play.
In WoW for instance, a beginning player that set their trade skills to skinning and mining would be able to make enough money, by selling the resources they gather, to compete against established players. I will admit that I started back playing WoW when my friend started playing it, and since he was on a new server, I joined his server as a newbie. By the time I hit level 40, the level where you can first starting using mounts, I was able to afford 2 mounts for that level. I was also equiped with good items, about four or so blue items and the rest being nicer green items.
That was an example of the ability to gather money at a reasonable rate for starting players. I was able to react to market demands without going to some outside source to gather money. My friend ending up buy a goodly amount of gold from a farmer, and yes, he twinked himself out nicely when he finished buy all he wanted. Remember, that gold was already in the economy initially before he even bought that gold. Both my friend and I were decently competitive with almost anyone else.
Ok, I'm not sure where I was completely going with that....
Inflation happens in any economy through the production of more wealth at constant levels. This happens in real life and in virtual economies, which has been researched by economists (very interesting reads in my opinion). The player base is able to compensate for the normal inflation by finding more lucrative ways of gaining gold and/or by prices of ALL or almost all of items raising, yes, even pelts.
By adding the buying of gold, "Fools Gold", more specific items will go up in price, namely, higher tiered items. The basic items will more slowly rise in price creating a warped economy. Since the selling of more basic items is no longer lucrative as in other cases, the people who don't buy gold, will no longer be able to compete financially. That is, without buying gold themselves.
then the answer to the problem is not eliminating gold buying, but eliminate the need to buy gold. Crime, short cuts, and time sharing (basically what gold buying is) will always exist till the need for it is gone. As law gets tougher the crime gets hard to detect.
Unless everything is done through NPC's, aka no PC to PC trade, there will be some type of currency. Be it ten stacks of Rabbit Guts, for one Axe of Total Mutilation, provided the guts are common drop that is worth something to the NPC or crafting, which is what I assumed they are or something else like that. I'm going to say, for the most part, current society likes the idea of making something have value. People will almost always set an assumed worth for something so that it will have value.
In the case where there is no gold in the system, but rabbit guts instead, "gold" farmers will start selling rabbit guys instead, which doesn't fix the problem of farming in the first place. And without doing away with PC to PC transactions, which gamers wouldn't want to happen in the first place, there will never not be a niche for the "gold" farmers.
what if you created an economic system with a set amount of gold. Not sure how it would work, but something where gold is given to character through completion of quests and sale of items to npc that are part of a npc city system. the amount would have to be hugh, but that way inflation can be controlled by the game makers.
Ideally, having a set amount of gold does sound good, I will admit that.
Here's an example:
Monetary system is: 100cp=10sp=1gp. 1000gp per character into the economic system
Lvl1 Common loot is rat pelt, which sells for 3cp
Max Lvl50 Common loot is Wyrm fang which sells for 50sp
And having a set amount of money earned through quests. Lets set quest money to a quarter total earnable money, usually less in most games
.003rp+.5wf+250=1000
Since everyone has the possibility of getting that 250gp, there is 750gp earnable in the system by anyone per character created. I'd assume that you would be able to loot basic vendor loot constantly. So there are probably going to be certain toons, especially gold farmers or dual boxers or something or other waiting by a merchant with 1500 Wyrm fangs constantly trying to spam selling the fangs, nearly instantly taking out 75%of earnable income of every new player.
Since there is less income in the system, as actual virtual money isn't b each cp of money ends up having an increasing amount of value, this is provided, as in my previous post, that another type of object doesn't replace actually currency. Since gold farmers are the ones that bring in a lot of the new items into the system, they are the ones that get the lion share of money. And due to that other players won't have access to the money relying on gold farmers to sell them money. Overall it actually increases the desire of gold farmers. It games pretty much evolves into something like Second LIfe where in game money has a true exchange rate with real money.
Player run banks with a monthly interest accrued would start to happen. Though if that happened and something negative hit the in game economy, some people would be screwed as the player run banks wouldn't have the finances to pay everyone back. It would almost be too close to real life to make the game fun.
For your information, I am trying to see the most negative things that could happen, as I am a strong believer in Murphy's Law
Comments
The real solution to the problem is to create a game where the accumulation of wealth is not the over, all important goal, and remove the rule that "he has the most gold, usually wins". (which is how real life seems to work all too often)
Make a game where casual gamers (or even some hardcore) obtain no real benefit from gathering tons of wealth, and more importantly, suffer no loss of competivness if they can't spend the time to farm the hell out of the game to succeed. If you must have farming, make it for strictly cosmetic and "nice to have" items, that way those with the time can do it and get something for it, while the rest of the folks won't be encouraged to find work arounds (cheat if you wil) to circumvent their perceived limitations.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I found point 3 interesting. What an idea. So the game company charges $50 for the game $15 a month and then if I wanted to start off at a higher level I could just pay extra. For example Joe wants to start the game at level 20 so the company could charge him $200 and give him level 20 bare bones or Bob wants a level 50 so he pays $500 and gets a bare bones level 50 and its provided by the company so no one is breaking the rules. This might actually work.
P.S. This is not a flame it is a seriously interesting idea.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
IMO, the practical solution is twofold:
1) The game must have a strict policy against selling gold and leveling.
2) The game must have built in reporting tools, such as right-clicking the name of a spammer to report them and automatically *copy the whisper or email* in a special message to GM's. This provides immediate proof, and prevents abuse of reporting.
BTW, There is one problem with gold sellers that no one likes to admit -- they buy accounts from which the publisher profits.
Maybe some people disagree and think raiding or whatever other end game content is the end all be all?
1.) Heavy regulated player economy (hurts the casual players, but it would work)
2.) Craft > loot (this helps to get rid of the gold/item farmers trying to get a loot, and throw up in the AH)
3.) Game companies sells the gold themselves. (by being cheapest than the gold farmers)
There are many other ways that could do it, but then again, it's the gamers' own money. They can spend however they wanted (some would buy gold to keep up or to buy that item they've been eyeing for in the AH or something...)
But one poster said it correctly. It's pretty much because the game isn't fun... half of the time the quests are mundane at best, and bore the heck out of players. Some casual players will not want to do so much questing to compete and play the end-game contents, so they buy powerlevel. Some gamers do not want to spend hours upon hours just to earn enough gold to have fun, so they buy gold.
It's the design of the game that create the problem, and the best way to solve the problem is to getting rid of the designing part of the problem (mundane quests/missions will kill x creatures for $$$/reward, loot > craft, and using a class/lvl system that is just not fun to play<imo>)
I wish that the future MMOs would have the following:
1.) interactive mission/quests, basically what I mean is that the quest/mission objectives are subject to change. Let's say today you are sent to kill someone, but you didn't finish him off, and he gives you a document which changes your objective of the quest. This would make the questing/mission system more fun, and less predictable so you have to think and choose instead of kill x creatures -> return for reward , rinse and repeat.
2.) I rather have craft items > loot items. Many gamers like this aspect of the game, and they build in-game reputations out of it, so you would buy form these players instead of getting loot from goldfarmers. (goldfarmers probably can't do crafting that long, since it gets slow and they are not earning enough out of it)
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
What are we really talking about here... gold selling itself, or the in-game spamming problem?
I think it's actually the latter. There's nothing more I hate than being spammed in game by gold advertisers.
Solution: No FREE TRIAL accounts.
Hurt their in-game advertising, and you hurt their profits.
A buddy key system like the one LOTRO currently has in place is a decent compromise to the free for all trial account - though it isn't ideal for those who want to try the game out before buying.
Otherwise, free trial accounts should be restricted to a special trial instance of the game, with no ability to /tell or mail other players. Of course, then the real trial players will get spammed by gold sellers, and that might put them off subbing for the game, so it's not a total solution.
But no free trial accounts works pretty well for the in game spam.
Besides over in korea they get paid about .05 USD an hour while the boss is making around 5k+ a day.. they can afford a % loss.
Should they disobey and not pay the % fee for selling in-game currency and items, they will receive a nice fine to compensate the loss and put the farmers where they're supposed to be.
But maybe thats just me.
Everquest - 2000 - '02
Anarchy Online - '01-'02
Earth and Beyond - '02-'04
Star Wars Galaxies - '03-'06('07)
World of Warcraft - '04-'07
Age of Conan - '08 - shelved.
-Waiting on-
Star Trek Online
SW: The Old Republic
btw... should i be killed? i've sold accounts and gold in UO looong time ago even before these farmers...
(not only in UO
If a company wants to charge you money, you need to authorize that exact amount before hand. There is nothing they can put in ToS that will give them the ability to charge you what they want after any "investigations".
If they started charging x amount of $ for what they deem an infraction, that would be no different than a fine and a private corporation can't give out fines.
Well they sort of can, like a home owners association can give you a fine if you speed on their private roads, but you're under no obligation to pay. The most they can do is ban you from their property if you don't pay, and they certainly can't charge the fine to your CC without your authorization.
so let's put this into a game scenerio. They put that "we'll charge you x amount of money for selling gold" in the ToS. They catch you selling gold. All they can do is send you a message in game, through email or write up a 'ticket' and mail it to you with the condition that you pay or be banned from the game.
That being said, it is up to the mmorpg game devs to make there be no need to buy gold. This requires something this industry has not seen in quite a while - innovation.
"...and with that cryptic comment, I'm off to bed!"
Maybe some people disagree and think raiding or whatever other end game content is the end all be all?
That is true that some people like endgame for whatever reason even though it is the most repetative, time consuming, and boring part of the game generally. I would think if you enjoy raiding then you would have the tolerance to farm solo which is a lot less time consuming then raiding.
You all assume the game company wants to really stop the practice anyway. Frankly they more of less pay lip service to stopping the practice and do little to stop it. Why...because the services keep people playing their game. Causals can buy gold to keep up and keep playing and your do it yourselfers in the game now have to farm more themselves to buy stuff thus they are playing. In both casses it keeps people playing more and more. Why would they want to stop that. There is no real reason for them to want to stop the sellers. You can also see from the amount of companies out there that they are buying accounts to farm the gold thus giving the game company money. This large number of companies tells the game company that there are a lot of people that might find the game unenjoyable the way it currently stands without being able to buy gold.
Either the game system needs to be fixed where they stop using gold as a time sink to get people to play...i.e. WOW 1000 for a flying mount is a time sink...or they need to start selling gold themselves or create a system like SOE where the game company controls the sale of the gold.
Where before, average Joe, who enjoys playing the game as a game, would, with some effort, would have been able to buy that item. But now that "Fools Gold" has been introduced in the system, Joe would have to work harder into getting that item, which could become obsolete or just as not desirable, that is provided that Joe would have been able to find the item in the market. Joe would then buy a lesser item.
Mr. Moneybags who buys gold from the company, because he just wants to advance faster, which in my opinion, legitimate reason for wanting to, would just sink some real world money into that "Fools Gold" and be able to buy that item that Joe couldn't afford, or because Moneybags can get that money quicker, he will buy it before Joe might ever had a chance.
Basically you would end up seeing to different tiers of people. The first group, the ones who want to enjoy the game, but don't want to sink real money into a virtual and therefore have substandard items. And group two, the ones that just want to advance even if they have to pay real money and therefore are able to afford the top tier items.
Now, not completely condoning money farmers, they don't just introduce gold, that couldn't have been received anyways. The mobs were there for anyone to kill and the farmers took the kill. But along with the money, they are also bringing in the loot that the mobs drop. Honestly, it's quicker, provided it's a set mob that drops a specific item or sets of items that sell for hundreds of gold, than it is to actually get the gold to drop from mobs in gold or vendor loot.
Having the influx of items wouldn't really lower the price of items, especially anymore when almost every game makes items Bind on Equip, but it would give players a better chance of finding the item in the market. Compared to the first system, with the company making "Fools Gold", the farmers way of making money isn't as unbalanced.
Though, I'm not saying that farming won't disrupt the economy of the game, at least to some extent, I feel it's better than a company's magic wand creating gold at whim. Only way I would actually not care if a company created their own gold selling service, is if they had specific servers that allowed it, and dang, the economy on those servers would be screwed royally in no time.
Want to know how to fix the gold farming? Have the developers log into the game every once in a while, watch who the bot farmers are and delete their accounts. Log onto the forums every once and a while, and watch who's selling. Go there, and buy something small. Find out whos selling, and buying and eliminate them. Use a bit of intelligence to fight them....Kinda the same way that the police track drug users. They dont just go and bust the place, they watch it a while, find out who's buying, and whos selling. Then they get them all. Not just the one person.
I mean really. Why dont these developers see this? I could go to ebay RIGHT NOW and buy currency for ANY game. 30 seconds from now, buy it. Ten minutes, we see who logs in with the currency/gold/whatever. Start logging their activity. Compair their online sales through ebay or whatever auction site is out there with who's buying them. Wouldn't the 10 bucks they blew buying the item on ebay be worth keeping the rest of the community happy with the game to stick around longer which = more money....!!
Sorry to sound redundant, but its so simple yet noone does this or does it well enough to make a difference.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
In WoW for instance, a beginning player that set their trade skills to skinning and mining would be able to make enough money, by selling the resources they gather, to compete against established players. I will admit that I started back playing WoW when my friend started playing it, and since he was on a new server, I joined his server as a newbie. By the time I hit level 40, the level where you can first starting using mounts, I was able to afford 2 mounts for that level. I was also equiped with good items, about four or so blue items and the rest being nicer green items.
That was an example of the ability to gather money at a reasonable rate for starting players. I was able to react to market demands without going to some outside source to gather money. My friend ending up buy a goodly amount of gold from a farmer, and yes, he twinked himself out nicely when he finished buy all he wanted. Remember, that gold was already in the economy initially before he even bought that gold. Both my friend and I were decently competitive with almost anyone else.
Ok, I'm not sure where I was completely going with that....
Inflation happens in any economy through the production of more wealth at constant levels. This happens in real life and in virtual economies, which has been researched by economists (very interesting reads in my opinion). The player base is able to compensate for the normal inflation by finding more lucrative ways of gaining gold and/or by prices of ALL or almost all of items raising, yes, even pelts.
By adding the buying of gold, "Fools Gold", more specific items will go up in price, namely, higher tiered items. The basic items will more slowly rise in price creating a warped economy. Since the selling of more basic items is no longer lucrative as in other cases, the people who don't buy gold, will no longer be able to compete financially. That is, without buying gold themselves.
In the case where there is no gold in the system, but rabbit guts instead, "gold" farmers will start selling rabbit guys instead, which doesn't fix the problem of farming in the first place. And without doing away with PC to PC transactions, which gamers wouldn't want to happen in the first place, there will never not be a niche for the "gold" farmers.
Here's an example:
Monetary system is: 100cp=10sp=1gp. 1000gp per character into the economic system
Lvl1 Common loot is rat pelt, which sells for 3cp
Max Lvl50 Common loot is Wyrm fang which sells for 50sp
And having a set amount of money earned through quests. Lets set quest money to a quarter total earnable money, usually less in most games
.003rp+.5wf+250=1000
Since everyone has the possibility of getting that 250gp, there is 750gp earnable in the system by anyone per character created. I'd assume that you would be able to loot basic vendor loot constantly. So there are probably going to be certain toons, especially gold farmers or dual boxers or something or other waiting by a merchant with 1500 Wyrm fangs constantly trying to spam selling the fangs, nearly instantly taking out 75%of earnable income of every new player.
Since there is less income in the system, as actual virtual money isn't b each cp of money ends up having an increasing amount of value, this is provided, as in my previous post, that another type of object doesn't replace actually currency. Since gold farmers are the ones that bring in a lot of the new items into the system, they are the ones that get the lion share of money. And due to that other players won't have access to the money relying on gold farmers to sell them money. Overall it actually increases the desire of gold farmers. It games pretty much evolves into something like Second LIfe where in game money has a true exchange rate with real money.
Player run banks with a monthly interest accrued would start to happen. Though if that happened and something negative hit the in game economy, some people would be screwed as the player run banks wouldn't have the finances to pay everyone back. It would almost be too close to real life to make the game fun.
For your information, I am trying to see the most negative things that could happen, as I am a strong believer in Murphy's Law