New book about MMORPG cheaters!

Squeek

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There's a new book out that's all about how cheaters are winning at online games like WOW. Read about it here.

Sometimes you can just ignore the cheating and have fun anyway. Sometimes not. Ultimately, this is the reason I stopped playing multiplayer games (at least for now).
 
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Well, what can I say... there was a time when MMORPGs were fun. Nowadays they have become the moneymaker nr. 1 in the games business. I hate cheaters, but then again - how can you blame these guys if the games industry itself is tolerating a secondary market that is aiming at making money by selling virtual gold, items, characters, and other services?
 
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Money = shit = flies.

'nuff said :biggrin:
 
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Selling and buying virtual currency is actually not very popular in Western MMO'ers. However, a minority of people do it anyway. In Eastern countries its normal but Western gamers do not generally do it. It will never go away, but at least most people frown on it. Gold farmers in WoW are spat on, yelled at, and /rude. lol. Also everyone /reports them to Blizzard and Blizz bans their accounts.
 
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Selling and buying virtual currency is actually not very popular in Western MMO'ers. However, a minority of people do it anyway. In Eastern countries its normal but Western gamers do not generally do it. It will never go away, but at least most people frown on it. Gold farmers in WoW are spat on, yelled at, and /rude. lol. Also everyone /reports them to Blizzard and Blizz bans their accounts.
Mate... think... the fact that everyone yells or spits at gold farmers means nothing. While of course not everyone buys virtual gold an increasing number of players does it - no matter what they are saying... guess there is simply quite a bit of hypocrisy involved here. Why do you think there are so many websites that sell gold or other services (leveling, honor, etc...)? Because our Asian friends have nothing better to do in their spare time?
There is a lot of money to make in the secondary market. If really just a few WoW players are buying virtual gold then please explain to me the abundance of gold sellers...
 
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Now, however, most gold seller advertisements and gold farmers are GONE from World of Warcraft in-game, because Blizzard stepped it up kicking them out and giving legit players ways to fight them, such as a mail spam reporting tool in the mail box, also you can right click on a person's name and there is a "report spammer" option. Easy ways to combat it were implemented so that players can report them, and the majority used those tools. Thats why gold farmers are pretty much dried up and gone in WoW.
 
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What Blizzard stopped, and I freely admit that, is most of the in-game advertisement. What they certainly did not stop is gold farming, and other services. Meanwhile a secondray market has been established that does not need in-game advertisement anymore. Everyone knows that this market exists, and everyone knows how to find the websites where you can buy gold. Basically you only need to visit a so called fansite that has remotely to do with mmos and you'll find a banner advertising virtual gold.
I'm playing WoW myself - and from my experience I simply cannot say that gold farmers are "dried up and gone in WoW".
 
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I mean their presence isnt noticed nearly as much as before.

I dont like gold sellers and I report any I see. But until players stop buying shit like this, it isnt going to go away. I hate it, but I have to accept its presence so that it doesnt drive me crazy thinking about it.

There is a new game called Fury that I am going to buy. When I heard its developers are going to sell in-game gold for real money, at first I was angry and made a fast decision to not buy the game... But after a few days I realized that it doesnt matter if the developers sell it or if the chinese sell it: it will be there anyway. So I have just figured that it doesnt matter much to me. I am not buying the gold, no matter who sells it. So I am gonna play Fury but I wont buy their gold. I will just kinda ignore the fact that its there. Also, its never gonna go away, so I might as well live with it.

However, if a game outright requires me to buy in-game items with real money in order to be competitive, I am not gonna play it, simple as that. Price for the box and monthly subscription price should fucking be enough.
 
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It wasn't so much the spamming of in-game advertisers in WoW that ruined my enjoyment, but the effects of people buying gold, items, characters and such that had the worst impact. Spam comes and goes, but the results of people buying money had a very bad impact on the game economy. It was already damaged enough from twinking and general bankrolling of alts, which in turn does drive people to buy gold, so the ill effects just continued to compound.
The spam being largely gone doesn't mean the effects are gone. It's a shame that a good model is ruined by idiots. WoW has so much going for it, but so many people just totally ruin it all.
 
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where there's a market, there's a way.

It could be solved by very drastic measures, such as wiping the economy completely out, not having currency at all. Not having trade, not having the marketplace itself. That would make my day if Blizzard did something like that, and I dont even play WoW anymore!
 
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I kinda just ignore the bad effects if it doesnt personally affect my characters. Having inflated prices on auction house actually helps me sometimes since I can sell crap I find on drops for more money than I could usually. However, fighting against Horde that obviously are twinked way lot kinda affects me, in the sense that I dont win, but I dont care about that much, since Alliance usually sucks in BGs anyway.
 
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I kinda just ignore the bad effects if it doesnt personally affect my characters. Having inflated prices on auction house actually helps me sometimes since I can sell crap I find on drops for more money than I could usually. However, fighting against Horde that obviously are twinked way lot kinda affects me, in the sense that I dont win, but I dont care about that much, since Alliance usually sucks in BGs anyway.

True that the inflated auction house prices can have a positive effect for anyone selling stuff in a way, but at the same time whether you sell something for 20gp or 100gp doesn't matter much when what you want to buy is 75gp when it should only be 5 or so. The only advantage the inflation has for everyone is that it can help you save up for a mount quicker.

Wasn't Blizzard supposed to put in some gear matching feature for battlegrounds, so non-twinks didn't have to fight twinks?
And as for Alliance sucking in battlegrounds, I assure you that if I played any of my Horde characters in a BG, I'd suck just as bad, if not worse, than the worst Alliance player!
 
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Yeah, they put purples as Battlegrounds rewards. You spend honor points to get them. There isnt a very large selection of them, though. They are relatively easy to get if you put in enough time.

And I guess Alliance just seem bad because I'm on their side, hehe. Horde does seem to be more organized, though.
 
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Oh and I am not sure about the gear-matching BG thing...
 
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It wasn't so much the spamming of in-game advertisers in WoW that ruined my enjoyment, but the effects of people buying gold, items, characters and such that had the worst impact. Spam comes and goes, but the results of people buying money had a very bad impact on the game economy.

This was basically Olnigg's own opinion (how he saw it) why Vanguard more or less "failed" (it was sold, eventually).
 
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Yeees, 50% of the population in WoW has time to farm 5000 gold for 300 flying skill (fastest flying mounts). Of course they do. They didn't buy that gold illegaly, nooo. I'd say maybe 25% of the players you see on fast flying mounts have actually farmed all the gold legally, the rest bought it.

I have to admit, I do get less whispers about gold, and there is less spam in general. I don't think buying has gone down though.
 
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Hmm, I don't know how many buys gold, I do believe it is fewer than people think though. I have never heard or had suspicion to anyone for buying gold. And I personally have never needed it myself. I currently have an epic flying mount for 1 of my 2 lvl 70s, and around 5k gold in between those.
I think the making of the dayly quests in WoW has helped some against gold farmers/sellers. As it is easier for people to make money themself.

About the influence on the economic situation on the servers. I have only played WoW for a year or so, and I assume gold farmers was there at that time aswell, so I have never seen a server without the influence of gold farmers. So what I see now is just normal to me.
 
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Well enough people buy gold to make the sale of it worth the time of many seller outfits. If so few actually use those "services", then there'd be no reason for their existence, so large enough numbers of players must make use of them at one point or another.

I stopped playing my level 70 before I'd even considered farming gold for a flying mount, I just didn't care. I didn't care to get one when they were first introduced and I cared even less about getting one when I was at the appropriate level. I actually had the money to buy an epic mount for ages before I finally got around to getting one. I think nearly 10 levels worth of time.
I was just never driven to acquire stuff in WoW, be it mounts, gear, whatever.
 
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I think I finally bought my ground epic mount after two years since WoW released when everybody already had it for ages. :) Actually, I don't really care that there are gold sellers. It doesn't affect me, at all. I don't care about the economy, never made good use of the AH, anyway. And now I transferred to a PvE realm, so I don't get ganked by twinked out characters neither. ;)
 
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