Blizzard enables gold farmers

Pricy mounts support goldsellers
from WOW Insider by Mike Schramm
http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/10/09/pricy-mounts-support-goldsellers/

We talked about this a little bit on the podcast the other day while
speaking about the mail delay now built into the game. I asked what
goldsellers were even selling gold for anymore (because there's so
much of it to be found in Azeroth, and both Turpster and Robin
answered me with: "epic mount."

Yes, there is no bigger drain on the funds than the epic mount price
of a whopping 5,000g, and Bornakk says that isn't changing any time
soon. I completely agree that having an epic flying mount is
definitely an epic achievement, and if Blizzard doesn't want to lower
the price, that's their business. But as Captnclaw notes, the refusal
to change the way epic flying mounts are obtained is almost
singlehandedly keeping goldsellers alive.

There are lots of ways to give out epic mounts and keep them epic--
one we mentioned on the show was daily quests (which is what you're
doing anyway, if you're trying to raise 5k gold legally), but anything
in that vein would work-- a reputation grind, an item turn-in, an epic
questline, or a combination of all of these. Making one of the best,
most wanted items in the game simply cost a chunk of gold is more or
less creating a market for goldsellers. And refusing to lower the
price (or, better yet, take the whole process out of the gold market
entirely) is leaving the door wide open for gold sellers to continue
hawking their wares.

On Oct 10, 2:13 pm, " " wrote:
> Pricy mounts support goldsellers
> from WOW Insider by Mike Schrammhttp://www.wowinsider.com/2007/10/09/pricy-mounts-support-goldsellers/
>
> We talked about this a little bit on the podcast the other day while
> speaking about the mail delay now built into the game. I asked what
> goldsellers were even selling gold for anymore (because there's so
> much of it to be found in Azeroth, and both Turpster and Robin
> answered me with: "epic mount."
>
> Yes, there is no bigger drain on the funds than the epic mount price
> of a whopping 5,000g, and Bornakk says that isn't changing any time
> soon. I completely agree that having an epic flying mount is
> definitely an epic achievement, and if Blizzard doesn't want to lower
> the price, that's their business. But as Captnclaw notes, the refusal
> to change the way epic flying mounts are obtained is almost
> singlehandedly keeping goldsellers alive.
>
> There are lots of ways to give out epic mounts and keep them epic--
> one we mentioned on the show was daily quests (which is what you're
> doing anyway, if you're trying to raise 5k gold legally), but anything
> in that vein would work-- a reputation grind, an item turn-in, an epic
> questline, or a combination of all of these. Making one of the best,
> most wanted items in the game simply cost a chunk of gold is more or
> less creating a market for goldsellers. And refusing to lower the
> price (or, better yet, take the whole process out of the gold market
> entirely) is leaving the door wide open for gold sellers to continue
> hawking their wares.

I read this article too.

Except it ignores the concept of power levelers, who might sell
services to help people do the reputation grind to get the epic mount
should the training for it be turned into a quest or rep grind or
whatever.

In fact, gold sellers could potentially make more real world cash in
that manner. If someone is willing to pay real world cash for play
money to buy 300 flying skill, they'll most likely pay for someone to
help them grind rep or do quests. Gold sellers did experiment with
this a while back. They formed 39-man teams, leveled them to 60,
geared them up, and started running raids. They would then charge
people to fill the 40th spot, have them tag along, and if the item
they were after dropped, the 39 would pass and the 1 person who paid
to be there gets the item they were after. They found it wasn't worth
it because of raid timers and such, only being able to sell the loot
from 1 boss per week, as well as possibly having to run it for several
weeks before the item the person requested actually drops.

But a rep grind or a quest chain is easier to sell help on. Make the
grind or the chain long enough and there will be people out there
willing to pay for someone else to do it for them.

And I like how people like to try to pass off the blame on to someone
else. The only reason gold farmers stay in business is because people
buy gold from them. It doesn't matter how high the price of a skill
or piece of armor is, the blame comes down to the people willing to
pay real world money for play money, without them there would be no
gold farmers.