News
Who is Winning the Goldselling Battle?
17th Apr 2008 03:13 PM GMT | Leord | 6 comments
There has been a lot of fuzz in the last few months with hacked UI mods (latest one was WoWAce), and databases such as WoWHead, Thottbot (very ironic), etc, spreading keyloggers to WoW-users. It seems no-one is safe, not even the people supporting gold selling.
PlayNoEvil, a technology blog site that focuses on how companies tackle cheats, exploits, hacks and RMT (Real Money Trading, ie: gold selling) has asked one of the gold selling promotional sites for an insight in gold prices. An increase in prices would indicate a high demand, while a lowering of prices would indicate either heavy inflation, Developer action against it, or "higher moral standards" of the players. WoW apparently has a "very volatile" price on gold. If that is due to Blizzard's efforts or other influences is hard to know, so no direct answer can be said if it's Blizzard that is winning, or the gold selling companies.
What really would have been interesting to see is the gold-sellers' profit margins, which of course isn't something they would give out. Still, if you are at least a tad curious of how your recently hacked gold is selling on the net, go check it out.
It seems EU either have higher morals with buying gold, or perhaps a lot worse, with higher competition.
Comments
30 days ago
Its hard to make any solid conclusions based on the above numbers in my opinion. There are just to many ways it can be read. Most would hope it is going down, but I have yet to see any really effective measures beeing set into place. For now I get my daily dozen of goldspam whispers and goldspammers at every major bank on the server. Thusfar I am not really seeing any change in that would indicate improvement.
Beeing the timeconsuming game that wow can be I understand those that want to buy gold to be able to play. The dedicated arena servers help in that regard even though the average skill level somewhat up there. The other side is clear as well: if everyone can buy gold it becomes useless thus ruining the gameing experience for others. I remember the impact of cheatcodes in games and the impact they can have on your own gameing experience. Its fun the first few minutes but it becomes quite boring beeing unkillable pretty fast.
Beeing the timeconsuming game that wow can be I understand those that want to buy gold to be able to play. The dedicated arena servers help in that regard even though the average skill level somewhat up there. The other side is clear as well: if everyone can buy gold it becomes useless thus ruining the gameing experience for others. I remember the impact of cheatcodes in games and the impact they can have on your own gameing experience. Its fun the first few minutes but it becomes quite boring beeing unkillable pretty fast.
29 days ago
I don’t think that says anything about morals... That’s a wholly different propaganda. The data looks more like there are just that many more noobs in America willing to dish out $50 for measly 300g.
29 days ago
Perhaps they could combat gold spamming by making it a setting for people's clients instead: You can choose to ignore trial account characters of lvl 1-10 or something. That would at least make them do 10 levels before running in to the cities, once for each character. I wouldn't mind blocking trial accounts completely tbh. It would of course be handy to have a setting in which you can hear people you put on friends list, so any new buddies you make try out the game can still chat with you.
I'm relatively sceptical about the whole trial account thing tbh. On the other hand, as I mention in this article, there is the problem of chargebacks for Blizzard if they stop using trial accounts. Letting players block trial accounts manually would be ok, and that new players might have a harder time talking to people might be worth it.
I'm relatively sceptical about the whole trial account thing tbh. On the other hand, as I mention in this article, there is the problem of chargebacks for Blizzard if they stop using trial accounts. Letting players block trial accounts manually would be ok, and that new players might have a harder time talking to people might be worth it.
29 days ago
Only one winning is blizzards hand. you realy think there going to let all the cash go without getting any themselfs?
29 days ago
To me RMT is simply a relation to how boring is a game. The more gold is sold/bought, the more it is boring. After all, who would pay someone else to play on his behalf if playing is fun ?
I think it would be interesting to relate those kind of stats to particular moments in WoW: when new content was released, when farming for mats was at its max, when the new epic flying mounts were introduced and everybody was farming to get some gold, when a new instance is released and so on.
Eventually, stats would tell that I'm utterly right in my opinion. Or not. As always happens with stats.
Anyway, it's just my opinion but I stick with it: gold selling and buying is simply an indicator of the boringness of a game. The more gold is bought, the more is likely that is so boring that you prefer to pay someone else (on top of your subscription) to skip the boring part of the game...
I think it would be interesting to relate those kind of stats to particular moments in WoW: when new content was released, when farming for mats was at its max, when the new epic flying mounts were introduced and everybody was farming to get some gold, when a new instance is released and so on.
Eventually, stats would tell that I'm utterly right in my opinion. Or not. As always happens with stats.
Anyway, it's just my opinion but I stick with it: gold selling and buying is simply an indicator of the boringness of a game. The more gold is bought, the more is likely that is so boring that you prefer to pay someone else (on top of your subscription) to skip the boring part of the game...
29 days ago
Actually I do think so^^. The warcraft series is too much a trademark and cash cow with subscriptions that Blizzard doesn't need to cash in quickly with shady deals. If at any point it turned out a company that runs a game is also affiliated with activities that they claim illegal themselves, it might quickly kill the game, consumer's trust and an entire company.
