nytimes article on gold farming

On Jun 27, 9:00 am, Brian Trosko wrote:
> lcpltom wrote:
> > If they don't make more than they would by doing a job that doesn't
> > hurt the in game economy (such as working in manufacturing as the
> > article mentioned) then what advantage does this give them?
>
> The chance of getting mangled in a piece of manufacturing machinery is
> pretty much eliminated or getting killed in a mining accident is pretty
> much eliminated?
>
> Gold farming doesn't "hurt" the in-game economy. It is a factor that
> exists as part of the in-game economy.

Well, last night I went to buy mageweave to continue leveling my
tailoring. I went to the AH, found the first stack of mageweave and
started buying. After a while I noticed that all the mageweave I was
buying was coming from the same player. I scrolled through the AH
window and saw that this 1 player had well over 40 full stacks of
mageweave + what I had already bought from him. I scrolled down to
the first stack that was not being sold by him and saw that the
mageweave I was paying 1g per stack for from what had to be a farmer
had severaly undercut the going price that everyone else had been
obviously been paying previously, as the price difference rose sharply
from 1g to 2.5g per stack. These 2.5g per stack had a shorter
duration on them, so they had obviously been around longer than the 1g
per stack I had been buying.

While the gold farmer may have benefitted me, it severaly hurt the
income from actual players. Once I realized this I actually stopped
buying the farmers stuff, knowing full well it would sell anyway, and
started buying the more expensive stuff. I then reported the farmer.
Theres no way 1 character has that much mageweave. I don't think even
a bank alt would have that much mageweave.

I too have felt the sting of having my goods be undercut on the AH by
someone with a seemingly infinite supply. I leveled to 70 with herb/
skinning and every once in a while my skins would not sell on the AH,
and when I went to investigate I would find that 1 person has undercut
my prices by a lot, and has posted an insane ammount of skins that
prevents my skins from even being seen by most people.

So yes it does harm the in game economy. And why wouldn't they want
to hurt the in game economy? The less in game gold people make, the
more likely they are to buy gold from them. They can afford to sell
stuff for less because of the quantity they sell the stuff in. They
still make money, and you're left with the Auction Expired notes in
your mailbox.

You can't tell me that it doesn't hurt the in game economy because I
have seen what it does to the in game economy.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

On Jun 27, 10:12 am, lcpltom wrote:
> On Jun 27, 9:00 am, Brian Trosko wrote:
>
> > lcpltom wrote:
> > > If they don't make more than they would by doing a job that doesn't
> > > hurt the in game economy (such as working in manufacturing as the
> > > article mentioned) then what advantage does this give them?
>
> > The chance of getting mangled in a piece of manufacturing machinery is
> > pretty much eliminated or getting killed in a mining accident is pretty
> > much eliminated?
>
> > Gold farming doesn't "hurt" the in-game economy. It is a factor that
> > exists as part of the in-game economy.
>
> Well, last night I went to buy mageweave to continue leveling my
> tailoring. I went to the AH, found the first stack of mageweave and
> started buying. After a while I noticed that all the mageweave I was
> buying was coming from the same player. I scrolled through the AH
> window and saw that this 1 player had well over 40 full stacks of
> mageweave + what I had already bought from him. I scrolled down to
> the first stack that was not being sold by him and saw that the
> mageweave I was paying 1g per stack for from what had to be a farmer
> had severaly undercut the going price that everyone else had been
> obviously been paying previously, as the price difference rose sharply
> from 1g to 2.5g per stack. These 2.5g per stack had a shorter
> duration on them, so they had obviously been around longer than the 1g
> per stack I had been buying.
>
> While the gold farmer may have benefitted me, it severaly hurt the
> income from actual players. Once I realized this I actually stopped
> buying the farmers stuff, knowing full well it would sell anyway, and
> started buying the more expensive stuff. I then reported the farmer.
> Theres no way 1 character has that much mageweave. I don't think even
> a bank alt would have that much mageweave.
>
> I too have felt the sting of having my goods be undercut on the AH by
> someone with a seemingly infinite supply. I leveled to 70 with herb/
> skinning and every once in a while my skins would not sell on the AH,
> and when I went to investigate I would find that 1 person has undercut
> my prices by a lot, and has posted an insane ammount of skins that
> prevents my skins from even being seen by most people.
>
> So yes it does harm the in game economy. And why wouldn't they want
> to hurt the in game economy? The less in game gold people make, the
> more likely they are to buy gold from them. They can afford to sell
> stuff for less because of the quantity they sell the stuff in. They
> still make money, and you're left with the Auction Expired notes in
> your mailbox.
>

Or, you're a tailor who ends up with a lot of magweave in your mailbox
and a lot more money left in your bank account.

> You can't tell me that it doesn't hurt the in game economy because I
> have seen what it does to the in game economy.

It affects the economy. Whether it hurts or not is a matter of
perception and opinion.

So the farmer sells the mageweave at half the price, which lessens the
income for the regular player who is selling mageweave too. But the
lower cost of mageweave leads to lower prices on products made from
magweave, which leads to the regular players saving money on the
finished products. I mean, if the player sells mageweave for 2g and
buys a magweave bag for 3g or if the player sells magweave for 1g and
buys a mageweave bag for 2g, it sort of evens out.

But one thing it does do is alter the fixed costs and rewards in the
game. On those older servers where newbies can gather copper ore for
3g a stack, the fixed 90g mount price is trivial. On a newer server
where that ore might go for 35s a stack, 90g is a lot harder to save
up. And the same is true for the vendor loot and quest rewards --
they can either be pocket change or a major source of income,
depending on the state of the player economy.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

On Jun 27, 10:30 am, Tim C. wrote:
> Following up to lcpltom :
>
> >So yes it does harm the in game economy. And why wouldn't they want
> >to hurt the in game economy? The less in game gold people make, the
> >more likely they are to buy gold from them.
>
> *Assuming* that selling game gold for real life money actually does hurt
> the economy .... and assuming that this player actually was going to sell
> the gold he/she/it earned from the sales to sell on for real money.
>
> But at least he's providing goods in exchange for the gold you pay, rather
> than "stealing" the gold out from under your nose as he would do if he were
> purely farming for loot gold.
> --
> Tim C.

He may not be directly taking money from me, but he is stealing my
profits.

Knothide leather scraps fell from 2g per stack to 85s per stack last
week. Granted, I dropped skinning recently but I still had about 1.5
stacks worth when I dropped it. When I went to sell it and saw what
the price fell to, it left me in a bit of a situation. I can either
sell what I have now at the low price and lose out on the few extra
gold I could have made, or I can wait and hope the prices rises back
to its previous level. After 5 days, the price has only gone down
more due to more people who I see with many many many stacks of scraps
posting at lower and lower prices. I know scraps are abundant but to
amass that many stacks seems unrealistic unless all you do is kill
mobs and skin them for several hours a day. You wouldn't gather that
many scraps through normal questing, not even through doing
Nesingwary's quests, and I know this because I did these quests with
skinning.

Its happened in the past and sometimes it takes several weeks for
markets to recover and usually they don't recover to the point they
were before the dip. Netherweave cloth used to sell on my server for
5g a stack, then someone posted an inhuman ammount of netherweave for
1.5g. Since then the price has climbed back to about 3.5g. Sure,
this benefits me now that I have tailoring, but previously when I did
not, selling cloth was a big source of income, and having several
weeks of low cloth prices caused me to back up cloth on my bank alt
until the price came back up. And I still didn't make as much as I
would have if the market had stayed the way it was.

So yes, they do steal from me, they steal my profits.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

>
> So the farmer sells the mageweave at half the price, which lessens the
> income for the regular player who is selling mageweave too. But the
> lower cost of mageweave leads to lower prices on products made from
> magweave, which leads to the regular players saving money on the
> finished products. I mean, if the player sells mageweave for 2g and
> buys a magweave bag for 3g or if the player sells magweave for 1g and
> buys a mageweave bag for 2g, it sort of evens out.
>
Except the economy is WoW doesn't work this way, or in real life.

If you can buy the mats cheaper and sell for the same ammount, you end
up making more. If you can buy mageweave for 1g and still sell a
mageweave bag for 3g, why would you lower your price to 2g just
because it cost you less to make the bags? Why not sell it for 3g so
you can get a 2g profit instead of 1?

However, if you drive up the cost of mats, you will also drive up the
cost of the finished product.

So it hurts players who are trying to sell mats, which is the biggest
money maker in the game, and only benefits crafters who can charge the
same ammount while investing less.

Of course, it doesn't work this way in WoW either. Very few crafted
items sell for more than the cost of the mats. When I hit 69 I went
to acquire a riding crop, I asked a leatherworker in the guild for a
list of the mats, and when I compared the prices for the mats to the
cost of the finished product on the AH, the finished product was
cheaper. Granted, I had the skills to go out and farm the mats for
myself, but then I would lose time I could be doing something else.

There are lots of factors that can harm the in game economy (power
leveling a profession for example can flood the market and drive down
prices). But gold farming I can at least do something about, kill the
farmers provided they are alliance. Prevent them from collecting gold
in the first place.

Also, you can view people buying gold as analogous to counterfiet
currency. Its gold that should not exist in the economy and can have
negative effects on it, while only prviding positive effects to those
who use and sell the counterfiet.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

On Jun 27, 11:27 am, Tim C. wrote:
> >He may not be directly taking money from me, but he is stealing my
> >profits.
> >So yes, they do steal from me, they steal my profits.
>
> Steal your /potential/ profit.
>
> I thought you were buying mageweave, not selling.
> That's good business sense, undercut the opposition.
> Don't count your chickens until they're hatched.
> --
> Tim C.

Not always good business sense. If everyone else is selling an item
that you KNOW will sell, such as mats, why bother undercutting
competition. When you do that you only rob yourself of profits.

Yes I was buying mageweave, but lots of other stuff that I sell are
affected by people who undercut the prices simply because they have
more of it to sell and will still make money off of it.

Then you also have to consider what will happen from this guy selling
cheap mageweave in the future. If he really is a gold farmer and he
continues to farm, he will also continue to level. Eventually, he
will be gathering and selling cheap runecloth, and then eventually
cheap netherweave, killing both those markets while mageweave
continues to struggle to recover.

I never undercut other prices on the AH (unless its some rediculous
price for something I know to not be worth that much). I price my
items competitively by matching the Buyout price of other sellers, but
making my starting bid lower. All this does is when someone does a
search for an item I happen to be selling, my item will appear at the
top of the list, increasing the chance it will be sold. And since I
didn't cut the buyout price down, I make as much as the next person.
The only difference is my stuff, being near the top of the list, has a
better chance to sell.

When then someone comes along, posts 100 stacks of that item are a
severely cut buyout price, my item never has the chance to sell.
True, if they followed my AH strategy and kept the same buyout but cut
the starting bid, my item still wouldn't sell. But at least then I
could repost it and still have the chance at making the same ammount
that I could have before. But since they don't do that, my items
don't sell, and when I go to try and sell them again I have to settle
for less profit because they have already killed the market as
everyone tries to match or undercut the farmers buyout price.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

wrote in message

>
> But one thing it does do is alter the fixed costs and rewards in the
> game. On those older servers where newbies can gather copper ore for
> 3g a stack, the fixed 90g mount price is trivial. On a newer server
> where that ore might go for 35s a stack, 90g is a lot harder to save
> up. And the same is true for the vendor loot and quest rewards --
> they can either be pocket change or a major source of income,
> depending on the state of the player economy.

Copper ore has dropped dramatically on my server, which is a relatively new
server. I was going to set up some auctions last evening for ore I'd
gathered. I didn't. There must have been 50 (or more) auctions for copper
ore selling for 30s. Bars, though, were listed higher. Go figure.

But then, there were a few auctions for rough stone that were priced at over
1G (!!!!). I priced my stacks way lower than that. Coarse stone? No
problem. I can easily get around 2g for coarse stone. But rough? Weird.

There were several green items being sold for L5-L7 priced at way over 1g,
too, and I thought that was way too high for the typical L5 to be able to
afford. Is there some reason why it's currently reasonable to expect such
high income from such a low level item? Is disenchanting the reason?

Xymmie
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

lcpltom wrote:

> If they don't make more than they would by doing a job that doesn't
> hurt the in game economy (such as working in manufacturing as the
> article mentioned) then what advantage does this give them?

The chance of getting mangled in a piece of manufacturing machinery is
pretty much eliminated or getting killed in a mining accident is pretty
much eliminated?

Gold farming doesn't "hurt" the in-game economy. It is a factor that
exists as part of the in-game economy.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

lcpltom wrote:
>
> He may not be directly taking money from me, but he is stealing my
> profits.
>

He's not stealing anything. No one has a RIGHT to a profit. You have a
FREEDOM to profit. If the circumstances preclude that profit, then you
are out of luck.

--

Best Online comic: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

lcpltom wrote:
>
> Except the economy is WoW doesn't work this way, or in real life.
>

Someone complaining about their profit being STOLEN is in no position to
give real world economic opinions.

--

Best Online comic: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

"Brian Trosko" wrote in message

> lcpltom wrote:
>
>> If they don't make more than they would by doing a job that doesn't
>> hurt the in game economy (such as working in manufacturing as the
>> article mentioned) then what advantage does this give them?
>
> The chance of getting mangled in a piece of manufacturing machinery is
> pretty much eliminated or getting killed in a mining accident is pretty
> much eliminated?
>
> Gold farming doesn't "hurt" the in-game economy. It is a factor that
> exists as part of the in-game economy.

True, it's been there from day 1 and we are still playing.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

Following up to lcpltom :

>So yes it does harm the in game economy. And why wouldn't they want
>to hurt the in game economy? The less in game gold people make, the
>more likely they are to buy gold from them.


*Assuming* that selling game gold for real life money actually does hurt
the economy .... and assuming that this player actually was going to sell
the gold he/she/it earned from the sales to sell on for real money.

But at least he's providing goods in exchange for the gold you pay, rather
than "stealing" the gold out from under your nose as he would do if he were
purely farming for loot gold.
--
Tim C.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

>He may not be directly taking money from me, but he is stealing my
>profits.

>So yes, they do steal from me, they steal my profits.
Steal your /potential/ profit.

I thought you were buying mageweave, not selling.
That's good business sense, undercut the opposition.
Don't count your chickens until they're hatched.
--
Tim C.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming 

Following up to "Xymmie" :

>But then, there were a few auctions for rough stone that were priced at over
>1G (!!!!). I priced my stacks way lower than that. Coarse stone? No
>problem. I can easily get around 2g for coarse stone. But rough? Weird.

Yes, but did the rough stone actually sell?
--
Tim C.
 >> Stay informed about: nytimes article on gold farming