It wasn’t that long ago when the bloggerverse went batty over one of our members admitting to buying gold. I’m not trying to revisit that discussion exactly but a recent discussion on one of the message boards I frequent really got me thinking about the issue. As players we try to shoehorn gold buying into the black and white of “right and wrong.” I don’t believe that is it at all. In fact I’d say the reason players feel compelled to buy gold are development decisions. That is where we should be focusing.
Why buy gold?
Most of the anti-gold buying crowd will simply say that players buy gold because they are amoral and/or lazy rich kids. In my eyes that doesn’t actually answer the question of why. The motivations are far more complex then that. I see gold buying as a product of the industry and human nature. Let’s focus first on the main source of “blame.” How could the industry possibly be responsible for gold buying?
Coin has always been a part of MMORPGs but it hasn’t always been as important as it is now. In early EverQuest coin had little value. Most items were bartered and not sold. There were simply not very many uses for coin in game and that ended up devaluing it. Many players thought that this was bad but in actuality it might have been an excellent design feature even if it wasn’t planned.
MMORPG designers have reacted to the original “no value in currency” system by putting in more avenues by which to spend it. Coin is also not a finite resource. It will always enter the system as long as players play. As a reaction to this the developers started to put in money sinks. These are things that you don’t actually need but are used to take coin back out of the economy. The unfortunate side effect of a money sink is that you now need more coin to pay for them. As developers add more coin based transactions to the game the value of the commodity will rise. With all of the mounts, repair bills, consumables, and any other object you can think of being sold on NPCs the balance eventually tips from too much coin going into the economy to too much coming out.
Instead of players earning enough coin to do what they need based on their usual course of play they now have to work a job to get the things they want. This leads to design atrocities like daily quests. For you to play the MMORPG you now have to be sure that each day you do your job to get your wage. These activities are usually tedious. More often then not they are not fun, possibly make you more likely to quit the game, and, most important of all, they consume time. Time is a very finite resource. Nothing anyone does can get it back once it is spent or get you more of it. At some point you spend your last second and then that is that. These factors quickly add up and even a “moral” person has to start questioning whether or not it is cost effective or not to buy gold. That brings me to the next point.
It is human nature to view all of our resources together and not compartmentalize them. I always make a connection between work time, leisure time, and money. If I volunteer to work over time I lose leisure time but increase money. If I want my house cleaned I can do it myself or hire someone to do it for me. If I hire someone I increase leisure time but reduce money. Buying gold is no different. Saying it is amoral is like saying it is amoral to pay someone to clean your house. Gold buying is nothing more than outsourcing money farming to someone else.
Unfair advantage!
Numerous players will also point out that those people that buy gold will have an unfair advantage in game. To that I have to say, “what is an advantage?” In case we haven’t noticed but in general MMORPGs stopped being competitive a LONG time ago. You can solo your way to max, dungeons are instanced and raid mobs are available to everyone capable of killing them. You do not have to compete with other players for loot or resources. You only have to compete with time and NPCs. This is the very reason that dungeons have lock out timers now. In the past you had to compete with other players for finite resources. Now developers have to artificially stop you from getting what you want “too soon.”
This is another reason why people buy epics and gold. You can’t use the time advantage to continuously remain in a dungeon until you get what you want. You only get one chance a day or week. If the item doesn’t drop or you lose your roll you’re out of luck. Your time has been spent. Once more this all arises from developer decisions. When a player buys an epic they’re actually exchanging their money for your time. You’re doing a job that they can’t do or did do but weren’t rewarded for. This is why I have zero issue with selling loot in game. They aren’t competing with you for it so who cares if you want to sell it to them. You have to be in competition to have an advantage.
Do those with money have an unfair advantage? Certainly so. Does it effect your play experience in any way, shape or form? No, it doesn’t unless you’re into PvP, competitive raiding, or a game offers contested content. That doesn’t reflect the majority of MMORPG players in any way.
How to stop it?
If we as a community and industry want to stop players from buying gold we’re going to have to change our tactics. Simply saying it is against the EULA and calling them names isn’t going to do it. This is especially true since the problem has been artificially recreated by MMORPG developers and the solution to it is common human nature. Only developers can solve this problem.
The biggest way to put a dent into gold farming is to exchange one resource for another. Remove all of the money sinks. Yes, all of them. I know most developers who read this will go, “Haha, arm chair developer. You can’t do that!” I say, why not? My bet is most of the guys and gals who still do this stuff don’t even remember why their predecessors started it. They’re simply perpetuating the system of, “We’ve always done it this way.” It happens in every industry, so I’m not just picking on them! Seriously though, why do we need cash sinks? If too much coin is coming in but it is barely used for anything who cares?
Start by reducing the amount of coin that monsters drop and get rid of the trash loot that clutters your bag. You just sell that to merchants anyway. Make time the commodity that is more important. When characters die give them experience debt instead of armor damage. If a player wants a mount have them do quests for it that yield non-tradable progression tokens. These are just examples to illustrate the point of exchanging resources.
The next step is to decriminalize gold buying. Everyone knows it is happening but we like to pretend we don’t. That has consequences of course and we’ll cover that too. SOE created a system by which players could safely trade items for real money and everyone hit the wall. It was a little before its time but I think we need to dust it off. The MMORPG companies should facilitate RMTs and, more importantly, sell gold themselves. Yes, I’m serious but hear me out. Few people realize it but Eve Online developer CCP sells ISK. They do it in a brilliant way too. They allow you to purchase a one month play pass and then take it into the game as an item. You may then sell it on the open market. Eve Online hasn’t burst into flames so I think it is safe to say this wouldn’t end creation as we know it. If every developer did this it would actually solve two problems.
First developers would be able to influence the value of gold on the open market. If your game is $15 a month and the player market dictated that it was acceptable to pay 15,000 gold for a month pass you now know that $1 is equal to 1000 gold. Any business outside of the company that tries to mess with that value will not succeed. If they cannot meet that price point they will have to fold up shop and move on. In short, a game’s developer can directly influence whether or not a third party can succeed at gold selling. That is price fixing at its best!
The second and more important benefit is that this is literally a resource redistribution. We’re talking straight socialism here. A player who is time poor but money rich can purchase an extra month and sell it in game. He saves time farming gold and expends a resource he that is more comfortable for him. A time rich but money poor player can then use their recourse to farm gold and buy time. In this instance everyone wins. Supply and demand will keep this all in check and may devalue gold more. After all, who would go out and buy gold from a questionable site when you know you can get 15,000 for $15 safely through the company? I wouldn’t.
Lets also be honest here and recognize that the MMORPG companies are already doing this. They sell you in game items for money as it is. It isn’t too long before those items start to have actual in game effects. Every time they raise the threshold to see if we’ll freak out and quit we don’t. If you think it is okay to pay $25 for a Sparklepony or Cash Cat I don’t get how you’d be upset if the company just sold you 25,000 gold for $25 which also happened to be the price in game for that same pony. Somehow though I’m sure someone will try to make a point that those two things are different. They both look like ducks to me.
The Consequences
If we still lived in a time where regular EverQuest players farmed the occasional item and put it on ebay I would be more staunch in defending all gold selling. The reason I cannot do so is because I know where that coin comes from. Some of it is legitimately earned by Asian laborers grinding endlessly. Far more of it comes from stealing accounts and liquidating them. That is where people make the connection between gold buying and bad behavior. They, like many ignorant government officials, try to tell anyone that buys a controlled substance that they are directly supporting terrorism. If they just stopped terrorism would stop! The blame is being placed on the wrong party.
Developers are the ones responsible and it confuses me that they haven’t taken more drastic actions than they have. Punishing players who buy gold just doesn’t make sense. It is easier than accepting responsibility I suppose. Stolen accounts and hunting spammers costs a lot of money so why this situation hasn’t budged yet I don’t know. Probably because we as players also just prefer to blame each other. We will make demands on our developers to solve the problem but light torches when they try to do the right thing. Look at SOEs attempt at RMTs. They ended up backing off and only allowing them on a select few servers. I don’t even know if they still even do it. Genius wasted.
We would rather risk accounts being compromised than let developers overtly sell us gold. We even let them sell us gold as it is but we ask them to package it so that it doesn’t look like it. Essentially we’re all politicians calling the Sparklepony “lobbying” instead of what it really is: a bribe. We clearly want to pay to not have our time taken away. I say we come clean about it!
Be the solution
If you want to stop gold spelling stop carelessly throwing around blame and take real action. Tell your developers that you don’t want to do inane tasks anymore. They actually do listen to feedback. Accept that you might have to give up some instant gratification by actually interacting with another human being and trading items! Tell the companies that make MMORPGs that it is okay if they want to sell gold and make it safe for you to do so too. Realize that sometimes they have to do things you don’t like to solve things you really don’t like. As much as you want to have everything and get it both ways you just can’t. You’re going to be paying in time or in money. Which one you want to do is up to you but don’t attack the people who choose the other option.
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“Instead of players earning enough coin to do what they need based on their usual course of play they now have to work a job to get the things they want.”
I don’t like the way that is phrased. It implies that they game isn’t giving them enough coin when an equally likely problem is the player wanting more than his play yields.
I would hold that if you play a game and find it’s mechanics lacking in providing what you want from it, you don’t fix it by purchasing more resources, you cancel and search for a game with a design closer to your desires.
I’m willing to say that in the normal course of play IE: leveling to max and then doing fun things like quests, dungeons, and raids, players do not get enough coin.
I’m basing that on the fact that if you want to keep up your gear, buy consumables, and the like you have to do dailies.
That’s just it though… I played WoW from 1 to 60 a number of times, every time on a different server with no sugar daddies, and I never had a problem of not having enough money. But then I played with what I got. I looted gear, occasionally sold it in the auction house if I couldn’t wear it, or to vendors if it was AH-worthless. I really think it has to do with expectations… I played with empty item slots and “sub par” gear because I hadn’t found better, but I know people who spent too much time on Thottbot and other sites mapping and planning their gear, min/maxing their stats, and they NEVER had enough money.
I can accept that but would you say you represent the “average player?” My guess is probably not. The average player is going to want to get better items and probably things like epic flying mounts. If everyone was okay with only wearing what they’ve gotten in game you’d basically solve the problem right there!
I may not be the average player, but I should be. Too many people focus on beating the game (which really makes me laugh when it comes to games that don’t end) and not on really playing it.
Amen to that!
I have a friend who did that with EVE and I thought it was a great idea. Someone was able to get some game time out of their in game money and he was able to enjoy the game in a new way (specifically, by buying a battleship). In EVE, the cash actually can advance your character alot quicker than in other games, so they have every reason not to do this. Yet, the system seems to work very well for all parties involved.
Yes, I think it works better when the company ties the money to a specific item versus actually just selling gold. There is a good balance that way.
I dont see any difference between buying gold and forking up RL cash for a pony. I am a HC raider, my sparkling pony are my HM boss kills. If I buy gold, I am exchanging RL currency for in game stuff – same as those buying ponies. I have a 10 hr/day job and a kid. So I choose to spend time very wisely. I do farm all consumables for my raids and make a bit of extra cash for gems and such(about 1hr/week, 2 if I get unlucky). Since I am on progression fights, I run about 200-210g/night of raiding, 4 days a week. 10K gold is slightly more than $25 (very similar to a pony). This gives me farm/AH/dailies free time for about 6 months. To earn the same amount I would need 48 hours of /played time (around half an hour a day min.) and $25 for 48 hours of time to do other stuff is a steal. So financially, it makes a lot of sense to buy gold.
“A player who is time poor but money rich can purchase an extra month and sell it in game.”
Sell it for what, the in-game gold that we’ve just finished devaluing? What’s he going to do with that gold, now that death penalties are assessed in playing time (exp = time) and progression is obtained via bound tokens? Money ceases to be useful if nothing worth having can be purchased.
The only niche you’d have left at that point would be to go the EVE route of having tradeable in-game time cards, and basically allow the rich guy to pay the poor guys’ subscriptions in exchange for them farming up epics or whatever.
It wouldn’t have much value if someone took every route I made. If you were at that point you wouldn’t have to worry about gold selling. Doing every suggestion I made would certainly be extreme. The Eve route is basically exactly what I was going for. There you have a game that is as successful as most MMOs on the market and it hasn’t imploded by selling ISK.
Several games base the value of gold upon the people who play the game as much as possible. In other words, the hardcore crowd.
The problem of basing the value of gold on the casual playerbase is that the hardcore crowd will be able to acquire vast quaintities of it and trivialise the currency in their own circle.
I say who cares about trivialising currency. Why do we need money sinks? It’s just another crutch for the developers. Not only do you need time to progress through content, you need money. I’m fine with time, the more you play the more powerful you are. Why would you want to factor in currency? The answer is to slow down the progression by limiting it by the time spent in-game. As the poster stated, only the players have the power to change this.
Anyway, just deluded rambling. Good post.
I don’t support the buying of gold for a lot of reasons. I can *somewhat* understand the “I don’t have time to grind” excuse, but, really, buying your way to success (ie, buying the gold to buy the items to get into raids), is pretty much cheating. The idea of an equal playing field is still relevant in today’s games by virtue of the rules. If Joe can break the rules and get the gear, Paul should be able to too. All the while, the value of raiding (and more) as a whole is being cut back because people are bypassing parts of the game implemented as a requisite to the experience.
I’m not a raider, nor do I claim to believe that exclusive content for the most hardcore is the best way to run a successful MMO. Still, cheating should not be allowed, and buying currency is only second to buying a whole account in the realm of cheating.
Fodder for a Multiverse debate, I think
I’ll go one step further: why have currency in the first place? If you want to de-emphasize money, then just take it out of the picture. Selling gold really only works because gold exists. If everything is barter, then it’s harder for the gold sellers.
A really smart guy I know, Randy Farmer, tried to eliminate gold trading from games with a proposal called KidTrade. As the name implies, it was mostly intended for kid-focused games. It puts a lot of restrictions on how trade can happen.
As for the morality of gold buying (and I think you mean immortal, not amoral in the first part of your post), I think that ultimately you are correct. There are sound economic reasons for buying gold, and unless you get rid of the usefulness of currency, those won’t go away. The big problem is the unpleasant nature of a lot of gold “farmers” who hack accounts as the easiest way to satisfy demand. Or, to a lesser extent, the farmers who monopolize areas of the game to maximize effort. That’s what really hurts the game. “Cheating” seems less of an issue if the game isn’t competitive, as Ferrel points out.
I think buying gold is cheating to Achievers just as sites like Thottbot are cheating to Explorers.
My thoughts.