Gold farmers form trade association
This is embarrassing — the gold farmer and RMT companies in Korea, such as ItemBay and Item PlayForum, have formed an industry association in order to have more leverage with the Korean government, given its recent moves towards regulating digital asset trading. This means, I think, that they beat the actual game companies to it. It’s called the “Digital Asset Distribution Promotion Association,” and the CEO of ItemBay will be its first head.
Of course, it’s not hard to see why they might need this sort of legitimacy, when articles are coming out with titles like “Online Gamers Turn Tricks for Cash: The profitable world of Korean gold farming.” Never mind that the guy in the article who actually turned tricks for cash was based in Philadelphia…
Perhaps the most unique use of a “female character” was by Rob Conzelman of Philadelphia who wrote of his own experiences as a “cyber whore” for Dragonfire magazine. He explained that he tried his hand at “gold farming” but was frustrated by the amount of game time needed to acquire even a small amount of game cash. Plundering and pillaging dungeons and cities was not enough to get him the money he needed so instead he resorted to the world’s oldest profession — prostitution. He went to the largest cities in the World of Warcraft where he stripped off all of his female character’s clothing and positioned her in front of the cities’ inns and propositioned players to have a good time upstairs. It is surprising how many players actually took him, excuse me, her, up on her proposition, and she soon made much more money than she could have done tramping through dungeons.
Conzelman summed up his experience as: “I was earning zilch when I played legitimately, but cyber-whoring paid off in virtual dividends. Instantly I earned the equivalent of 80 cents and boosted my wage to a near real-life $4 an hour wage. That’s way better than those Chinese gold farmers, assuming I could maintain a rate of 12 clients an hour.”
raph, along with the strange weather i can safely agree
we broke it.
How is cyber-whoring (for virtual payment) an illegitimate activity? That’s emergent gameplay.
mean time to cyborz, anyone?
I’ve seen cyber-prostitution before, but this reinforces my claims that those who did it were actually guys. Thanks Raph.
The very first player-run business in UO was a hooker.
“I was earning zilch when I played legitimately, but cyber-whoring paid off in virtual dividends. Instantly I earned the equivalent of 80 cents and boosted my wage to a near real-life $4 an hour wage. That’s way better than those Chinese gold farmers, assuming I could maintain a rate of 12 clients an hour.”
That’s not a better way to earn money than Chinese gold farmers! As a cyber-whore you’d need some writing skills to provide adequate service to your clients, which is a lot more taxing to your brain than repetitive button-mashing. Anything that requires brainwork should pay more than manual labour.
Also, gold farmers who work in organised sweatshops probably have more efficient ways to farm money than an average player who just wants to have a go at it.
Plus, Conzelman could earn that only if he maintained a rate of 12 clients an hour. Unless he programmed a chatterbot to do his bidding, I don’t see how cyber-whoring is a more efficient way of earning money than gold farming where online games are concerned.
funny thing is you can only rape opposite faction
I remember that in SWG we even had slave auctions. Players willingly became slaves for a set amount of time and got a cut of the sales while the organisers used the money to finance their city.
Yes, but those slave auctions weren’t for sex, they were for fun. People would go bid on their friends and have a fun time. I was sold for 2 mil :p
A few questions come to mind:
Can you min/max this?
Is there a WOW addOn for this: “Please note in the latest WOW patch the XXX button may not work….
What are all those BE female avatars doing outside the UC inn?
Legitimacy is the name of the game here. I suspect that there are american counterparts involved with this as well. Future games will either embrace and design for RMT activity as an integral function, or legal teams will soon be earning their keep.
And the mice voted to bell the Cat
Slightly off-topic, but the neatest summary for/against “gold farming” I’ve found is here:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1776327
The “against” argument comes first, then the “for”.