 Leave it to the guys at Wife Aggro to ask a thought provoking question.
This weeks gem is:
What do you think is a good way for game companies to eliminate 3rd party gold and equipment selling?
Personally I believe MMO developers are fighting a pointless, losing battle against the Gold Farmers of the MMORPG world.
By default people are press for time and in the MMORPG environment time is as precious as any +50 Flaming Pig-sticker of Doom. Paying a marginal fee saves a resource rich MMOG player valuable time. I wager to bet there are many middle and/or upper middle class earning MMO players will cough up the necessary money to acquire goods that would otherwise require a massive amount of personal time. Why? It's basic economics, time equals money.
While profit margins may be shrinking due to off-shore markets, the fact is this is a multi-million dollar industry.
Are there any practical solutions for to resolve this? The short answer is no, however, I will discuss two possible theories that could lead to a "functional" solution of gold farming.
The alternatives I see are:
Assigning a hard "net worth asset" cap for all players using a sliding income scale. Most MMOG's have a numerical monetary value attached to all items, from vendor trash all the way to rare drops. Utilizing this value-based system the developers could, theoretically, rank the net worth that any player should be able to attain. For example, a level 20 rogue could attain a maximum cash reserve and net value of owned goods totalling an approximated value of 100 gold.
This imaginary asset break down consists of:
- 35% personal equipment (weapons, armor, misc. items [e.g. rings])
- 15% personal inventory (potions, expendable items [e.g. arrows])
- 25% warehouse inventory (i.e. bank vault)
- 25% liquid assets (i.e. cash on hand)
When the character hits their"net worth asset" cap they would no longer be able to accrue equipment or money. Thus your level 1 avatar you can not buy 10,000 gold because the "net worth asset" cap of a level 1 would not allow such a figure. Twinking is still not addressed as players could use mains or high level alternates, however, the downward "net worth asset" filter would moderate any mass transactions between characters. A side bonus may also be realized in that instead of banning low-level, disposable transaction accounts the bans would have to involve max level farming accounts.
The negatives to this plan are that this slows down, but does not stop, the process and your core power gamers will be infuriated by the restrictions.
The only other alternative I see for seriously eliminating 3rd party farming is:
Eliminate ALL intra-character transactions. Remove twinking, void intra-mmo item mailing, ban currency transfers, and disallow character to character items drops. Once the character acquires an item it will remain theirs forever. The only exceptions I could envision are allowing the sales of FINISHED trade items (i.e. sword) and/or RAW trade item goods (i.e. wood). To further expand on the trade angle, if prices are set with inflation carefully calculated to control price increases that would regulate the last bastion of money transference (i.e. selling a level 1 item for 10,000 gold).
Following those step makes all items in the game either vendor trash or ensures the Avatar uses the item. Removing transfers also eliminates the low and mid level twinks and should in most cases correct player-based economies as a single characters wealth can no longer be distributed amongst multiple player alts or accounts. Rare item hoarding and liquid asset transfers would no longer be a viable money maker for 3rd party farmers and the money/time paradigm is no longer a intact as all players will be forced to "farm" in order to outfit/equip their characters.
The negatives to plan include the introduction of a potentially massive time-sink for all player's seeking to acquire assets and of course introducing any additional time-sink has deleterious affects on your casual gamer component.
A true crackdown on 3rd party farmers will never occur. Mass banning may appeal to the rank and file players, but the business of farming will continue to grow as a strong contingent of gamers will pay money to save their most valuable commodity time.
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