Gold Farming

I read a book in elementary school I thought was called "The Adventures of Monte Carlo" (though I can't find it online anywhere) about a boy named Carlo Monte, who with the help of some identify confusion (the school grading system originally had his name as "Monte Carlo" but when it was fixed the original student file was never erased) plots to complete high school in two years instead of four.

In the book they relate the story of one student and a model electric guillotine he made. He was able to use this guillotine for his French project -- and his shop project, and his history project, and for his electronics project, and so-on.

I feel the same way about Gold Farming. I'm going to write about it once, today, and then I'll just repost the article every six months or so. I'll post it as a comment every time another blogger blogs about Gold Farming. I'll make an addon that will incrementally post my article in guild chat or city chat whenever the subject arises. When I go to the Opera, and my fellow Opera Lovers are constantly talking during the Opera about Gold Farming, well, I'll Be Prepared.

Lame Rationalizations of Gold Buyers

People who buy gold in WoW are a lot like criminals in that they have a compulsion to explain away their behavior. The guy who robs a liquor store and shoots the clerk in the leg will tell you, I'm sure, that, "Hey, everybody steals." Gold buyers, when presented with their iniquities, always do that. "Everybody does it." "Everybody does it." "Everybody does it."

Well, if you say that everybody does it, that must be true, right? And if everyone is doing it, that makes it morally acceptable too.

"Blizzard doesn't care." Again, since you say it it must be true, even though Blizzard spends copious amounts of money tracking down and then banning gold buyers and sellers. "It's just money," to Blizzard, even though every sport and competitive activity in the world must and does deal harshly with cheaters, despite any theoretical financial benefits, because cheating destroys the integrity of competition and hence any interest in the competition itself.

"I have a life and can't spend it playing the game," even though the majority of raiders these days seem to have families and full-time jobs. And if your life is so great and engrossing, why do you need to get your kicks by cheating in a game? Cheaters are, well, cheaters, and I have a hard time believing that anybody who'd rather cheat in a game than work towards their goals has some very successful life that prevents them from playing enough WoW.

How does it affect the economy?

Except on one count a gold seller interacts with the economy in much the same way a player does. It is still fundamentally wrong, however. Think of those 6-2, 200 pound "12-year olds" that are always showing up in the Little League World Series. They interact with the game, and the baseball, and most of the rules, and the umpires in the same way every other player does. Their mere presence is the offense, and that makes their every normal, ordinary action fraudulent.

The real wrench they throw into the economy is on high price items. Only one in a thousand people that are going to buy that 300g stack of titanium ore are gold buyers. When it comes that 30k rare mount, however, the number is probably more like one in ten, or one in five. So if you're in the market for high value items you're paying more to beat gold buyers, or maybe even losing out on items entirely.

And Gold Sellers Are Bad People Too

One of my favorite drug legalization arguments (and that's a bit like being the world's most expensive twenty-pound diamond, in that you're already in with the best) is about ultra-violent crime. Oh, if we legalize drugs, I'm sure all the murderous thugs who run and man the cartels will devote themselves to selling organic turnips at farmers markets. People who murder over drugs only murder over drugs, am I right? That guy who murders people over a missing shipment of cocaine is a pussycat when it comes to stealing jewelry.

As Blizzard has pointed out, gold sellers are also behind practically every account hack in history. They will never stop at just gold farming, and will always be looking for unethical ways to make more money. Every gold buyer bears moral responsibility for these account thefts and cheats.