Planet Sillicon

Gold Farming: Part 2

By blog on May. 16, 2009.

Now that I have clearly outlined what Gold Farming is, I will go into my own personal opinion on the matter.

Firstly, an anecdote. When I was new to the world of MMOs, I tried Everquest II. I got into it, for a while, and was a member of a guild. I saw advertisements for buying gold, and being new to the whole thing, had no idea that this was an illegal in-game practice. So I paid to have 10 gold sent to me in game. With my new pile of gold burning a hole in my pocket, I bought a rather awesome set of armor off the Auction House.

One evening, I sat with my Guild members at a meeting. We sat, laughing, chatting, exchanging jokes and humorous anecdotes, when suddenly, my awesome armour started disappearing, piece by piece. A person sitting near me uttered the words “Oh no! You’ve been hacked!” and before I could log off, all my armour was gone. That same person from the guild gave me some spare armour, but it wasn’t nearly as good as my previous set.

A few hours later I received a letter in the in-game post. It was from one of the game moderators, in it they told me that I had been caught in the illegal practice of gold buying, and that everything that I had purchased with the illegal gold had been removed from my account. I was warned that if I did it again, I would face further, more serious, action.

This stunned me, I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know that buying gold was illegal, I couldn’t believe that the website I had purchased the gold from didn’t mention anywhere that this was an illegal practice. I felt as if I had done something wrong, but I had had no idea.

As I said, I was new to MMOs then, and now know much better. Some say that the effect to the in-game economy is exaggerated by game developers to try to deter the general game populace from buying gold, but I don’t particularly care for that argument. I believe that if this practice has any ill effects on the game, then I don’t want it going on. I feel that you are missing something of the game when you are buy gold. What do you play for if not to build up your character? If you find this too boring, then maybe you should alter your play style? Maybe you should alter your mental approach to the game?

As for the Gold Farmers themselves, I feel a minor sense of irritation when bombarded with their spamming advertisements, but little more than that. It is so easy in LOTRO to report and ignore them, so they don’t bother me all that much. I don’t want them to be there, I don’t encourage their illegal practice, but they don’t aggravate me most of the time.