Gold Farmers - make real life money, kill the economy

(Disclaimer: Chat logs edited to remove lines not relevant to the topic being discussed here. If a line is quoted, it's quoted in full though, no user's message has been edited.)


Last night's chat on channel 6 included discussion of "gold farmers". (For once it wasn't the usual politics crap that makes me and a dozen others turn the channel off! Woohoo!)

Gold Farmers being people who collect gc in various ways, typically by selling harvestables, only to turn around and sell that gc for real life dollars.

Two issues were brought up concerning them:
1) They cause less sales in the EL shop, sales of which support the game.
2) They are ruining in-game economy with their actions.

More to say on the second one, so let's look at #1 first.

1) Less EL Shop sales

According to Radu, sales in the EL shop are down a lot. While the (real world) economy can factor into that, it is also due to people spending their money buying gc from the Gold Farmers instead of supporting the game by buying from the shop.

Ideas brought up to counter this included selling plain old gc in the shop, at a rate that would screw the Gold Farmers completely. I get the feeling it wasn't something he wanted to do, but just might if the situation keeps up.



2) In-game economy getting ruined by Gold Farmers

(discussion started about hoarding or scarcity of rare items)
[01:51:49] [radu @ 6]: also, people didn't buy much from the store lately
[01:51:56] [radu @ 6]: maybe it's the economy
[01:51:58] [conavar @ 6]: gold farmers
[01:51:59] [asgnny @ 6]: if there were no scarcity, there would be no reason to save up items
[01:52:05] [jaclaw @ 6]: what asgnny said
[01:52:06] [Aislar @ 6]: that's probably b/c of the gc->$$ ratio
[01:52:06] [AltariA @ 6]: broke :((
[01:52:13] [Aislar @ 6]: its better for buyers than it used to be
[01:52:30] [radu @ 6]: well, keep buying from farmers then
[01:52:34] [radu @ 6]: and the efe will be 50K
[01:52:39] [Aislar @ 6]: lulz
[01:52:49] [AltariA @ 6]: nuuuuu
[01:52:56] [Smurf @ 6]: \o/
[01:53:15] [asgnny @ 6]: I'll sell 50 :)
[01:53:17] [conavar @ 6]: now everyone will hoard efe's :p
[01:55:04] [radu @ 6]: lol
[01:55:10] [conavar @ 6]: but most of the ppl i would imagine who buy gc for $ from farmers, dont care about the cost of efe's etc
[01:55:13] [radu @ 6]: thing is, if you buy from farmers, you cause inflation
[01:55:28] [radu @ 6]: because you encourage them to produce more gold
[01:55:41] [radu @ 6]: so in the end, you still pay the same in USD for EFEs and stuff
[01:55:54] [radu @ 6]: with the added bonus that you cause ingame inflation
[01:56:02] [radu @ 6]: so you fuck up the economy too
[01:56:28] [asgnny @ 6]: if the rate keeps going like this, the only people it screws over are normal players who don't buy gc.
[01:56:35] [asgnny @ 6]: is that really the goal?
[01:56:42] [conavar @ 6]: im not sure they actually care about that aslong as they getting 8k+ for a $
[01:56:42] [radu @ 6]: well, I can't make gold farming illegal


And it went on like that. Lots of lame ideas brought up to kill off the Gold Farmers without directly banning it, but every single one ended up screwing the normal player in some way.



Basically put, Gold Farmers have no care whatsoever about your in-game play, or care about the game in the least bit. Their only goal is real-life greed, attempting to make real-life cash off the game that they don't deserve, and to hell with how it ruins the economy and in turn ruins EL.

By buying gc from these Gold Farmers, you are contributing to the ruining of the in-game economy, making the prices of items go up, so you end up having to spend more, so you have to buy more...


More of the chat, including (in not my words) how you can help stop the economic ruin of the game:

[01:58:23] [Epitaph @ 6]: technically you lose shop sales because of gc buyers :P
[01:58:35] [Epitaph @ 6]: a lot of people just buy gc instead of shop items, because it's cheaper
[01:58:40] [asgnny @ 6]: without a doubt
[01:58:43] [radu @ 6]: yes, I lose shop sales, but if it keeps going this way, I will sell gold too
[01:59:00] [radu @ 6]: because otherwise it's simply not worth developing the game
[01:59:14] [Epitaph @ 6]: i wouldn't mind that :o you could set a flat rate,, and i'd rather buy from you, no risk
[01:59:34] [radu @ 6]: the thing is, I didn't want to cause inflation
[01:59:40] [radu @ 6]: but the gold farmers are causing it anyway


[02:05:35] [radu @ 6]: ok, well, then it seems i have to do something about the harvest farming

[02:25:22] [radu @ 6]: at worst, i am going yo sell gc at 1 usd for 10K
[02:25:28] [radu @ 6]: and then see if anyone beats my rate
[02:25:39] [Sqwurl @ 6]: rate atm is $1 for 8k :p
[02:25:43] [radu @ 6]: yes
[02:25:48] [radu @ 6]: so I am going to sell 10
[02:25:51] [radu @ 6]: just to piss them off


[02:30:56] [radu @ 6]: or, free market ftw
[02:31:22] [radu @ 6]: in the end, you fuck yourself by buying from farmers
[02:31:27] [radu @ 6]: let me give you an example
[02:31:33] [radu @ 6]: you want to buy some EFEs
[02:31:46] [radu @ 6]: then you think: cheaper to buy gold from farmers then buy the EFEs from bots
[02:31:48] [Quesar @ 6]: this is not the real world though. it is too small market for the normal balancing forces
[02:31:53] [bkc56 @ 6]: is free market valid when you have supply/demand OUTside of the environment? It throws off any supply/demand balance.
[02:31:56] [Sqwurl @ 6]: i need them sometimes to keep having fun
[02:32:00] [Quesar @ 6]: a few people abusing the system can screw up everything
[02:32:25] [radu @ 6]: not afew people
[02:32:32] [radu @ 6]: lots of people buy from them
[02:32:37] [Quesar @ 6]: ok, exaggerated, but you get the idea
[02:32:46] [radu @ 6]: same like IRL
[02:32:55] [radu @ 6]: if many people don't care, a society gets fucked
[02:33:17] [conavar @ 6]: but more ppl dont buy from them than do...so its the few fucking the many if nothing is done
[02:33:33] [Quesar @ 6]: exactly con
[02:33:34] [Usl @ 6]: consider though that there is nothing those who care can do, to stop those that don't. This is not like RL
[02:33:41] [radu @ 6]: well, the ostracize those that do
[02:33:51] [Quesar @ 6]: how can the majority of players that AREN'T doing the gc buying/selling fix things/
[02:34:00] [radu @ 6]: simple
[02:34:06] [radu @ 6]: don't sell anything to thsoe who do
[02:34:15] [radu @ 6]: ban them from your bots
[02:34:15] [Randall @ 6]: gonna post a list?
[02:34:17] [Kiwi06 @ 6]: Could you set up stings? ;P
[02:34:20] [Quesar @ 6]: give us some way to even know who they are?
[02:34:30] [radu @ 6]: well, I am sure you can find out







So what do you do?

1) Don't buy/sell/trade with any known gold farmers.
2) Don't buy gc with real-life money from these gold farmers. (Spend your money in the official EL Shop instead, support the game not greedy scumbags who are trying to ruin it.)
3) Know the gold farmers' bots as well, and don't use them.

(And btw, when a gold farmer is intentionally trying to artificially hike the in-game price of harvestable items, solely for the purpose of them getting gc to sell for real-life money faster, don't friggin' support them!)



As for who the farmers are, simply put if you see someone who does nothing but harv a certain item all day every day, they are questionable. I have not put names here because I only personally know of one farmer, and would rather have a list than pointing out just one person. If you know of a farmer and have some way to prove their actions, by all means PM me in-game, and perhaps we can get a list of gold farmers put together for this.