Gold and Vanguard and Olnigg

Hello, everyone.

Do you remember me reporting Olnigg's praise of Vanguard ?

Well, now it's gone. His newest installment of his site tells a bitter tale - the tale of Vanguard seemingly breaking down.

I don't know in how far his "report" (please be cautious, because *normally* his "reports" are highly satirical, although in this newest text this might even *not* be the case), is reliable, but since I expect him to have played Vanguard for quite some time now, I believe he might be correct in some things he reports.

Without translating everything, he write a time line (in the form of a table) that links the advertisements of gold-traders directly to the "Fall" and the selling of Vanguard towards SOE.

In his report, gold-traders did so much damage to the whole MMORPG, that Vanguard suffered so much it almost died, - and was eventually sold to SOE, because the developers might've seen no way to get it corrected again (both bugs, which were seemingly used for exploits, and the impact of the gold traders themselves).

According to his "report", gold-traders simply crashed the game, by destroying the whole virtual economy.

If that is true, then this is the very first case of a game that was completely crashed by gold traders. And sold after that.
("Crash" means in my definition here "to put into so much disorder that this disorder is seemingly almost irreparable".)

I would be grateful if someone of the whole RPGWatch staff could shed some more light on this, because I'm not familiar with MMORPGs.

You can read the whole article/"report" here : http://olnigg.de/jahr2007/olg138.htm
It's in German language, though.

Alrik

If that's so, gold traders have less business sense than I thought.

Well, I'm not someone of the staff, but I'll throw in my 2 coppers anyway since I like MMORPGs.

In my opinion gold is not the problem. Because the amount of gold that is in the market is only one side of the coin. The other side is the rarity of items. The amount of gold in the market and the rarity of an item determines the price of the item (assuming that there is a demand for that item). Rare items however are usually out of reach for Chinese goldfarmers. They usually make money by grinding small stuff. The trouble begins when people begin to exploit and duplicate rare items. And as far as I can see it this is what happens in the case of Vanguard. Duping however is not directly connected with gold buyers or sellers.

That doesn't mean that buying or selling virtual gold is a nice thing to do - actually I think it's pretty bad since you fuck up the game for those people who try to be honest, but I don't think flooding the market with gold can entirely destroy an economy.

I think this is yet another way to shift the blame from the developers themselves to gold sellers. Seriously, gold sellers didnt destroy the damned game, get a grip. What destroyed Vanguard was terrible game design and it was not finished even in beta.

Seanfar11, I have one request. Get lost, die, then go to Hell. Thanks.

Youre a gold farmer. You advertise for gold farmers in your sig. You are likely Chinese. Eat shit.

Dont talk to me.