Jayge at attentionallfriends.blogspot.com writes:
Today, I'm talking about gold buying. No, not the $1,000 per ounce commodity that commercials don't shut up about. I'm talking about WoW gold. Guild Wars gold. FFXI gold. Runescape gold. The kind you pay real money for. The fake kind.
To those of you familiar with the Massively Multiplayer Online scene, you should be aware of this process. For those of you who don't, it goes a little something like this:
Player feels a little down. Player decides "hey, lets get a shiny new sword!". Player isn't the wealthiest (insert any MMO) player. Player gets message from (insert Asian gold-farming company here). Player decides "hey, I've got 15 bucks! lets get some gold!". Player buys gold. Another one bites the dust.
This is an unusual pairing but Zillow now offers tours of player housing.
A UK court has ruled that the unauthorized stealing of in-game currency can be legally classified as criminal theft.
IGN is a fraudulent clik bait farm pretending to be a news organization.
"that the unauthorized stealing of"
...You know as opposed to the "authorized steal of" personal data sites like IGN take part in.
But yes it is both IGNorant and morally questionable to imply that there is such a thing as authorized stealing.
IGN isn't a "news organization". it's a magazine/content producer that generates revenue on ads and services. We aren't talking about the AP Wire, Reuters, etc. I suggest you adjust your expectations of what you think you are going to get from an industry content creator. this is entertainment, not geopolitics. furthermore, the story you are commenting on is in fact true and thats not IGNs fault. work out those issues. ;)
IGN is a gaming news site just because it covers entertainment doesn't make them a content creator.
Digital currency should be considered as legitimate as actual money. You buy it with real money, and has an equal exchange. So I fully agree with this and anything else that favours the consumer when it comes to digital currency in games.
Runescape gold cant be bought directly with real money, it is only used to buy items in game, not microtransactions, but there is sort of a time value to it
no it has no actual exchange value, because you can only put money into it. The only actual exchange value it gets is through 3rd party gold seller who attach an amount of dollars to it and they're the only ones who get the luxury of actually being able to "exchange". Unless Jaggex is just selling raw gold, then I'm wrong.
Jagex did add a safe form of gold buying a while ago as you can know buy "bonds" with real money that can be exchanged for 14 days of membership or about 15m gold (current price) in the GE.
The four-part Blizzard Showcase will reveal “what comes next” for each series…
Spambots are killing all the major MMO economies.
Even after Runescape changed its rules I still saw spambots.
Plus now the game barely has any fun factor anymore.
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW WWWWWW!
If you play EVE online you'll see this all too often. ISK (EVE currency) sellers spam the public rooms, send you ingame mail, then send you email. Funny thing is, the people who would likely consider buying the money (inexperienced) are the ones who'd end up blowing it and be broke again right afterwards.
The limiting trial accounts didn't help out at all it seems. I still get multiple PMs a day from gold sellers/power levelers. That and their spamming in major cities. Seriously if you buy gold gtfo.
I'll admit I have bought gold before, back in the days when I used to play WoW. The basic way I justified was actually quite simple. Gold farming is tedious, boring, and in no way fun for me. And back in the day it could take 10 hours to get 100 gold. Some could do it in a shorter amount some took longer but basically it took at least a day. However I could simply work at in a job for an two hours and have enough to buy 200 gold. It's cheating to be sure on my part, to hell if I'm going to send all that time on fake money.