Yi-Shan-Guan; 21st centaury racism vs Chinese MMO players

Name any famous basketball star and I can guarantee you he earns more than the US President. Who contributes more to society?

Obcession said:

Name any famous basketball star and I can guarantee you he earns more than the US President. Who contributes more to society?

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Well, the president (Bush) only contributes to make society worse. :roll:

People enjoy watching basketball players (or they used to at least), but no one finds watching people farm gold is enjoyable.

And after reading through that site, I cannot see how the anti-goldfarming sentiment among WoW players thats is portrayed in that site bears any resemblance to how real WoW players think and act. Either that site is 100% BS or it cites only the most extreme examples. I'd like to point out that on EVERY professional WoW forum there is, users making racist comments have their posts deleted are are banned immediately.

Trust me. Every community has the people they dislike. Online is no exception. Being an FPS player, I can assure you that a good portion of the community I play with is something close to being completely mornic. You have l33t gamers, the ones that cheat, campers, rocket-whores, etc. etc.

But Gold Farming? Yich. That is one of the surest signs that the people doing this sort of thing have totaly lost their social lives and their minds. Its rather pathetic when someone can post something as ludicrise as this, then have people stupid enough to pay REAL money for FAKE money. Personaly, I would rather just work hard for it. Or overfish or something (Like I used to do on Animal Crossing...I love that game). Though I have never really played these games, it seems absolutely ridiculous.

Though I apologize if by not being a member of the WoW community, I miss out entirely on something...

FuManChu said:

That may be the case, but I believe that they are breaking the law. I know that for other games similar to WoW the companies in question retain all rights over their in-game items. Just because there is a demand for something does not make supplying it right. As FRNS said, farmers spoil games for other people by driving prices up. I'm not so sure that this is any different from DVD/music piracy.

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It's not illegal to gold farm, you actually think they should get arrested or executed by the government for playing a virtual game? At the most it violates the game's EULA, which means they should get their accounts cancelled.

Well....you must also realize that the only way that a person can afford a Pentium 4 computer, a whole day of electricity, and an envirement to use it all is in a developed country right? Unless theres some kind of factory in a third world country with a gang of children gold farming WoW all day long....

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Well I've read in an article that some entrepreneurs in China set up LAN's in old warehouses and employ people to play these games. They then sell off the items and characters to people who have the money but don't want to spend hours and hours lvl'ing up characters. Of course they're not exactly proud of what they're doing but it gets them by in the meantime.

Spike said:

Well I've read in an article that some entrepreneurs in China set up LAN's in old warehouses and employ people to play these games. They then sell off the items and characters to people who have the money but don't want to spend hours and hours lvl'ing up characters. Of course they're not exactly proud of what they're doing but it gets them by in the meantime.

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Getting by making a buck is all fine and good but this kind of 'work' could be a very inefficient allocation of resources with minimal returns to the individual and society. It's relatively expensive to get a PC with the specs and setup needed to play WoW in some developing country like China and for people who are tech savvy enough to be farmers on WoW, they could be learning and doing a lot more with that PC than earning a few bucks farming in some game. Hopefully this is more of an inspiration and opportunity for these workers to learn and do more productive things with computers than just earning a few extra bucks.

Spike said:

It's not illegal to gold farm, you actually think they should get arrested or executed by the government for playing a virtual game? At the most it violates the game's EULA, which means they should get their accounts cancelled.

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There's nothing wrong with farming - it's selling those in-game items in the real world that's wrong.

They then sell off the items and characters to people who have the money but don't want to spend hours and hours lvl'ing up characters. Of course they're not exactly proud of what they're doing but it gets them by in the meantime.

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And it spoils the game for everyone else because little kiddies who pinch their parents' credit cards (or spend all of their allowance) can buy infinite amounts of money. I remember someone talking about this (on another forum) and his experiences playing another game called Guild Wars. When a patch was released that made farming more challenging, all the prices for things dropped heavily because the farmers that sell their gold on ebay couldn't make enough money.