Re: Changing the face of MMORPG - was Who sells gold the cheapest

In article <57iod197sc3mtl5djh7vtiau2sq8la2tke@xxxxxxx>,
Jack Hollis <xsleeper@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 10:28:44 +0100, "Ninja" <here@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> >Would you want to see this happening in WoW?...personally I wouldn't, I've
> >seen what over inflated prices do to a servers economy, those with the
> >ability to buy lots will raise the prices for those who play for fun and for
> >the reward of 'completing that quest for the extra 20 silver'.
>
> There's nothing much you can do about it. If people find out that
> they can make real money by selling game currency, they will do it. If
> you lived in rural China and had to work in the fields for 12 hours to
> earn $1 and had the chance to earn five times that farming money in
> WoW, what would you do?

LOL, I love the "Work in the rice paddies or farm WOW" comments, they're
so far from reality, you have to laugh.

I spoke to an old friend about this issue, who spends half the year in
Hong Kong and China for his job. He had no clue about video game
farmers, but laughed at the idea of Chinese people being forced to
choose between video game farming and starvation - and said that
probably had more to do with the typical American's ignorance about
China, and maybe some bigotry as well. China has been industrialized for
quite a while now, are going through a huge, huge economic and social
boom, the majority of their workforce is in factories, private and
public sector work, the military, and infrastucture (police, etc...). He
said actual hands in the dirt farming is no more a choice for the
average Chinese than it is for Americans - and that, like Americans,
most of the city-dwelling Chinese have probably never SEEN a farm,
except maybe in movies or on TV.

($1 a day? You have cites for that, and you know what one US $ will buy
in China? You do know that they have a different economy than we do, and
money we'd turn our noses up at would be plenty for them?)

China is a HUGE country, with a vast, rich culture (they have their own
institutional racism, talk to a Mandarin sometime about non-Mandarins),
to view them all as day laborers is...amazing, to me. It says to me you
havent traveled outside of your own country - or pay attention to
anything in our media about countries outside of your own.

China has problems, like any other country, sure, but the reality is,
their culture and their society is far more westernized than you think,
if you beleive Chinese men are making a choice between working in the
fields or working at a WOW farming operation. The REALITY is, Chinese
men and women have as many employment choices that the average American
does (according to my friend) - or they can go to higher education at
the Universities - and the fact is the game farming studios are the
direct equivelant there of the cold-calling companies here that hock
magazine subscriptions or long distance phone services.

Actually, that's not even correct, because the farming studios have
waiting lists to get in, they're popular in the teen circles in the
cities, according to the articles I've read recently.

The people that work at the studios are kids or young adults. They live
in cities like Bejing or Hong Kong, live a fairly good lifestyle (for
them, it's not as good as us lazy, spoiled Americans), generally attend
college or school, and farm to make easy money sitting on their butts in
air conditioned rooms, listening to music, drinking soda and eating junk
food, gossiping with each other, just like any American teen or young
adult. They are not forced to work there, in fact it's not easy to get a
job there, as it's a popular jobs with the kids (the latest article by a
gaming mag posted here recently said as much), and nobody, I repeat
nobody is choosing between manual field labor and farming WOW.

Famring WOW is NOT, I repeat NOT, a life and death proposition for
ANYONE in China. It's a job I'd bet most adult Chinese would laugh at
the idea of taking, when they can become doctors, lawyers, work for
businesses, become a mechanic, just like we can. With the reformations
the Chinese Government has allowed for free markets and capitalism, the
idea of farm laborers being pulled from the fields in coolie hats and
being shown how to use a mouse is utterly laughable, and points out your
(and everyone else's) ignorance of the reality of China, and the reality
of the situation.

The gold farmers exist because they CAN, and because lazy American (and
European) players are willing to BUY the gold and items. I'll bet the
Chinese people who work for teh farmers laugh their butts off that they
can make easy money because some couch potato in Detroit wants UberGear,
and will pay real money for it!

It's like strippers. Nobody forces them to take off their clothes, and
nobody forces the guys to throw dollar bills at them. If they can get
the money, more power to them.

And, like strippers, gold famers are bottom feeders, they feed off
selfishness and greed and laziness. It's HARD to get a beautiful woman
naked by personality alone, much easier to throw a dollar at her. It's
HARD to raid for mount money, much easier to throw the cost of an
average game at the problem, viola, new mount. But, if someone is stupid
enough to pay for what they can get on their own, more power to the
people selling it to them, like Barnum said, "There's a new sucker born
every minute".

I hate the effing farmers in the game as much as everyone else. But
they're kids and young adults, just like you and me, and they are NOT on
the brink of starvation or doomed to pulling weeds if they lose their
farming gig.

Trust me, if the farm studios could be run in central Los Angles, New
York, or Miami, they would be, but being offshore in Hong Kong outside
of US law and treaties, makes more sense, THAT'S why Blizzard can't
touch them, it would take more money and time than it's worth to try and
sue them in the Chinese courts, especially since Chinese courts tend to
side with Chinese companies when it comes to this kind of thing - talk
to Mirosoft about pirate copies of XP.

We have just as many school and college aged kids who would LEAP at the
chance to make money farming WOW. And, just like chinese kids, it
would'nt be a choice between doing manual labor and WOW farming, it
would be a way to avoid taking on a real job or career, and would fund
them being able to play video games all day and night.
.