One of the recurring rumors in the MMO blogosphere is that World of Warcraft would come out in a version for this or that next generation console. With variations of the rumor being either the console game accessing the same servers as the PC version, or there being a "lite" version for the console, not requiring any keyboard. I don't know if Blizzard will ever do that, but there is already a lite version of Everquest called Everquest Online Adventures for the PS2, and Final Fantasy XI has both the console and the PC access the same server. With the next generation consoles being increasingly networked and internet-ready, it is only a question of time when we will see more console MMORPGs.
One of the recurring comments in the MMO blogosphere is console gamers wouldn't be very welcome, being not as "mature" as PC MMORPG players. While it is true that the average age of a console gamer is probably much younger than the average WoW player, and that the monthly fee keeps a lot of bored teenies away from MMORPGs, I don't think that expanding the MMORPG genre to consoles would be a bad idea. In fact the growth in total player numbers would probably allow us to split the genre is several sub-genres, appealing to different demographics.
There are already existing differences in MMORPGs: PvP vs. PvE-centric. Casual vs. hardcore. World-centric vs. game-centric. Soloable vs. enforced grouping. But in most cases these are just differences by degrees. The PvE game LotRO has a PvP monster play part, while even the most PvP-centric game like Lineage has PvE parts as well. Nobody agrees what a casual game is, even WoW is too hardcore for some. Nearly all games offer both solo and group content to varying degrees.
Where I see a much clearer split of the genre coming is in the way that MMORPG combat is handled. Several of the upcoming games are promising to make MMORPG combat more action-oriented, with aiming and more frenetic clicking. Apart from the technological problem of how to realize this when there is lag, MMORPG action combat obviously would appeal more to a younger demographic. Older players, like me, aren't really excited about the idea. Me, on the other hand, I'm dreaming about MMORPG combat which would be more strategic, slower, and require more thinking. I get excited about games like Puzzle Quest and Metal Gear Acid, which use puzzles or trading cards as combat mechanism. But I'm fully aware that this deeper but slower way of combat isn't likely to attract the younger crowd. But hey, if the genre grows big enough, there is room for games for all ages. Even a turn-based strategy game like Heroes of Might & Magic 5 still sells very well, because there are enough older gamers out there to buy it.
Consoles would be ideal to support action MMORPGs, with or without sharing servers with PC clients. The MMORPGs with slower, more strategic combat mechanisms would probably sell better on PCs. Besides the differences in combat, console MMORPGs would probably be more game-centric, with few social elements. It's hard to chat using console controls. On the PC side games could become more world-centric compared to WoW. The recent article on WoW in The Times discussed among other things how the (adult and female) author would have liked more social elements in the game, for example having a jukebox and a pub quiz or raffle on offer in the WoW taverns.
On the business model side, games with no monthly fee would probably be more attractive for a younger crowd. For older gamers a monthly fee isn't that much of a problem, and many would even be willing to pay more for things inside the game. That could be booster packs for the trading card combat game, or it could be fancy outfits like those being sold in Second Life or some Korean games.
In short, there are lots of ways in which MMORPGs could develop, and they aren't all going to be of the one-size-fits-all kind. By accepting that different solutions of platform, combat system, or business model could be ideal for different demographics, the genre could open itself up for a much larger variety.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Scammed!
I played World of Warcraft for two-and-a-half years without falling for any of the numerous scams around. No longer, now I'm 125 gold poorer, and one experience richer. I thought I'd buy a [Recipe: Flask of Distilled Wisdom] really cheap, but got sold a [Recipe: Flask of Distilled Wisdom] instead. You don't see the difference? Neither did I! The one I wanted is the recipe that has been in the game since the beginning, with a 2% drop rate from the end-boss of Stratholme, living side. The one I bought is the new version, which you can buy and use only if you are exalted with the Cenarion Expedition. Due to slopply game design from Blizzard this recipe isn't bind on pickup, so once somebody is exalted, he can buy these recipes in endless supply for 4 gold, and scam people into believing they are the real thing, selling them for hundreds of gold.
And I can't even report the guy who scammed me, although I remember his name. There is nothing in the Terms of Service or EULA stating that you can't sell worthless crap for large amounts of gold. It's caveat emptor, buyer beware.
And I can't even report the guy who scammed me, although I remember his name. There is nothing in the Terms of Service or EULA stating that you can't sell worthless crap for large amounts of gold. It's caveat emptor, buyer beware.
How big is Middle-Earth?
Curiously my most linked-to article ever is the one measuring the size of Azeroth from the World of Warcraft as 80 square miles. With me planning to play more Lord of the Rings Online than WoW in the future, you could expect me measuring the size of Middle-Earth next. But I don't have to, because the size of Eriador, the region of Middle-Earth you can visit in LotRO has been officially announced, and no lesser medium than the New York Times.
They first had the size of the LotRO world given as "50 million acres", which would have been 1,000 times larger than Azeroth. That frankly would be impossible. So they issued a correction stating that they made an error, and that the real size is 50 million square meters, which is less than 20 square miles, and thus just a quarter of the size of pre-BC Azeroth. I can believe that number, I once ran from Ered Lindon to the Misty Mountains, and it wasn't all that far.
Now if you take the size of Eriador and assume that the rest of Middle-Earth will have the same scale, the whole world of the Lord of the Rings Online, after all expansions are out, will be as big as World of Warcraft before the first expansion. Fortunately we can expect Turbine to bring out expansions faster than Blizzard. But criticism that Lord of the Rings Online will be relatively small on release is certainly justified.
They first had the size of the LotRO world given as "50 million acres", which would have been 1,000 times larger than Azeroth. That frankly would be impossible. So they issued a correction stating that they made an error, and that the real size is 50 million square meters, which is less than 20 square miles, and thus just a quarter of the size of pre-BC Azeroth. I can believe that number, I once ran from Ered Lindon to the Misty Mountains, and it wasn't all that far.
Now if you take the size of Eriador and assume that the rest of Middle-Earth will have the same scale, the whole world of the Lord of the Rings Online, after all expansions are out, will be as big as World of Warcraft before the first expansion. Fortunately we can expect Turbine to bring out expansions faster than Blizzard. But criticism that Lord of the Rings Online will be relatively small on release is certainly justified.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Take out the trash
The April Fools' joke from the Death & Taxes guild was a fake map of Black Temple showing a huge rat maze with a handful of bosses, thousands of trash mobs and a remark saying that the respawn timer on the trash was 20 minutes. Whether it is for loot or the challenge, people go raiding to fight boss mobs. Spending hours to clear trash mobs, only to see them respawn and having to clear them again, is highly annoying. With the trash respawn timers being generally short in the Burning Crusade raid instances, complaints have been piling up.
Fortunately these complaints have come from the top raiding guilds, which are the only customers Blizzard is listening to. So WoWInsider now has the story that Tigole announced raid changes for patch 2.1.0 which would make trash mobs easier to clear and respawn slower. (Unspecified changes to how Elixirs and Flasks work have also been announced. As have changes that make rogues better in raids.) And no, this isn't another fake joke.
I think a certain amount of trash mobs in a dungeon is fine. But I do agree that they shouldn't respawn so fast. The respawn timer in the first part of Karazhan is only 30 minutes, so if your raid isn't working like a well-oiled machine, and there is some delay due to somebody getting disconnected or having to leave, you get caught in a wave of respawning trash. I also wouldn't mind them thinning out the trash a bit more, as fighting the same mob over and over gets old pretty fast.
What I'm a bit dubious about is the design philosophy to make raid dungeons deliberately too hard to start with, and then gradually nerfing them down to an acceptable level. Sure, that is more popular than starting too easy and making it harder later. But a bit more playtesting would have been nice.
Fortunately these complaints have come from the top raiding guilds, which are the only customers Blizzard is listening to. So WoWInsider now has the story that Tigole announced raid changes for patch 2.1.0 which would make trash mobs easier to clear and respawn slower. (Unspecified changes to how Elixirs and Flasks work have also been announced. As have changes that make rogues better in raids.) And no, this isn't another fake joke.
I think a certain amount of trash mobs in a dungeon is fine. But I do agree that they shouldn't respawn so fast. The respawn timer in the first part of Karazhan is only 30 minutes, so if your raid isn't working like a well-oiled machine, and there is some delay due to somebody getting disconnected or having to leave, you get caught in a wave of respawning trash. I also wouldn't mind them thinning out the trash a bit more, as fighting the same mob over and over gets old pretty fast.
What I'm a bit dubious about is the design philosophy to make raid dungeons deliberately too hard to start with, and then gradually nerfing them down to an acceptable level. Sure, that is more popular than starting too easy and making it harder later. But a bit more playtesting would have been nice.
Puzzle Quest Journal - 2-April-2007
No idea yet whether this is going to be a regular column, but seeing how addicted I am already to Puzzle Quest before even getting hold of the full game, I thought I might as well start a journal. First things first, Infinite Interactive posted a Puzzle Quest April Fools' joke on how to access the cheat menu.
The "Toggle AI Cheating" is an insider joke, some people complain that the AI cheats, but I'd say the AI is simply better at playing the game than most players are. The "Show Nude Heroes" and "Play Secret Cow Level" are giving the joke away. Much better hidden is that the access code apparently is morse code for "I AM A NOOB". I wonder on how many cheat code sites this fake information will be copied. :)
I ordered the PSP version from Amazon.co.uk, but they are unusually slow this time, and give me a projected delivery date of mid-April. So I followed the advice of one of my readers and ordered from HMV instead, who just mailed me that they already shipped it. So I hope to get it before the Easter weekend. Until then I'm stuck with the PC demo version, limited to level 7.
But after some experimenting it turned out that there are more monsters to fight in that PC demo than I thought. The trick is to save all your money, until you can buy a forge for 600 gold. That opens up another mini-game to forge items from runes, and as you get these forged items for free, the initial 600 gold investment is well spent in comparison with buying items from shops. But more importantly, at least in the demo, once you have the forge you can battle a new mob at every tower on the map, by selecting "search for runes". If you win those fights, you get new runes, and can combine them with the existing runes to forge more different items. And the runemasters you fight are level 15 to 30, which with you being level 7 max is a serious challenge.
These hard fights allowed me to evaluate better the four character classes in the game: druid, knight, warrior, and wizard. The difference between the classes are in what spells they get, and in how many points it costs to raise which stats. As you only get 4 points per level, you can't really afford to put many points into a stat that costs 3 points to raise, you're better advised to divide your points between those that cost 1 or 2 points. This predetermines in which stats the different character classes will end up being good at. So here is my review of the Puzzle Quest character classes:
At first I liked the druid, because the first spell he gets is a healing spell, Gemberry. He also gets Calm to remove status effects. By healing yourself you can prevent yourself from losing, which means you eventually win. Unfortunately the druid isn't very good at damaging his opponents. His battle stat, increasing the damage from skulls, costs 3 points. And he doesn't get all that many or all that good damage dealing spells, only Forest Fire in the demo. Against the harder runemaster opponents the fights always took very long, and when the opponent had a way to heal himself they got downright unwinnable.
The knight is a bit better. For him the battle skill costs only 1 point, so by putting lots of points there he has a good damage potential. His spells are a mix of many different types. Board manipulation, like getting all the experience point purple stars with the "Divine Right" spell, or destroying a gem that's in the way with "Thrust". A limited way to gain life with the favor spell (Every time you gain experience, 50% chance of gaining +1 life. Obvious combo with Divine Right.). And the knight gets the awesome Stun spell, which both damages the enemy and lets him lose a turn. But as the knight gains mana slower than a druid or wizard, he'll still be doing most of his damage with lining up skulls. The knight is a kind of hybrid class, although more leaning towards melee.
The warrior is probably easiest to play, I think I'll chose that class for my first "real" game when I get hold of my copy. The warrior is another class where the battle skill only costs 1 point, so if you are good at lining up skulls on the board, you'll deal tons of damage. And again mana gaining is slower than the caster classes. But his spells come in only two flavors: dealing damage and manipulating the board. Against some harder enemies I was able to win by simply constantly denying them the blue and yellow mana they needed for their abilities, which is easy with a Wild Lore spell (Destroy all blue and yellow gems.) Such mass destruction spells of certain gem types also increase the concentration of the other colors, which if correctly pulled of can give awesome chain reactions.
The final class, the wizard, is a lot harder to play, but very powerful. While the battle skill costs 3 points for him, the wizard can gather mana quickly by putting points in fire and air mastery. The wizard has by far the best damaging spell, I ended a couple of fights by just using the mana I had to cast several Fire Bolt spells in a row. Haste is also very nice, dealing 4 damage every time you get an extra turn. That should be awesome at higher levels, because besides getting extra turns when you manage to get 4 tiles in a row, you also increase your chance to get random extra turns when increasing your mastery of the four elements. The wizards weak point is his morale skill, which is low to start with and costing 3 points will forever remain low. As morale determines your life points, and also much of the damage reducing armor in the game needs a certain minimum morale, the wizard is very vulnerable.
Apart from the class spells you can gain other spells, if you build a dungeon, capture a monster by beating it three times, and then play a mini-game to steal one of his spells. These stolen spells cost you more mana to cast, but might give you a better rounded selection of spells. Apparently you can only carry 6 different spells into battle, so you'll have to chose which mix is good.
Choosing a different class very much changes how you play this game, which is great for replayability. I found it very interesting how your spells and abilities, and those of your opponent, change each battle into a different experience. A warrior killing a skeleton is a totally different game than a wizard killing a bat. By having role-playing elements in the game, you can modify the difficulty level by leveling up or equipping yourself with better gear. (Apparently monsters go up in level too, but only in a fixed level range. Lets say one specific monster can be level 18 to 24, then if you're lower than 18 it will be level 18, if you're between 18 and 24 it will have your level, and if you're above 24 it will be 24.) So you can eventually outlevel a monster you found too hard to beat earlier. Losing a battle in Puzzle Quest is no big deal, you still get some gold and experience, and just try again. The only way is forward, until you hit the level cap of 50 and complete all the quests. Given the many different features and possibilities that Puzzle Quest offers, this promises to be an entertaining journey.
The "Toggle AI Cheating" is an insider joke, some people complain that the AI cheats, but I'd say the AI is simply better at playing the game than most players are. The "Show Nude Heroes" and "Play Secret Cow Level" are giving the joke away. Much better hidden is that the access code apparently is morse code for "I AM A NOOB". I wonder on how many cheat code sites this fake information will be copied. :)I ordered the PSP version from Amazon.co.uk, but they are unusually slow this time, and give me a projected delivery date of mid-April. So I followed the advice of one of my readers and ordered from HMV instead, who just mailed me that they already shipped it. So I hope to get it before the Easter weekend. Until then I'm stuck with the PC demo version, limited to level 7.
But after some experimenting it turned out that there are more monsters to fight in that PC demo than I thought. The trick is to save all your money, until you can buy a forge for 600 gold. That opens up another mini-game to forge items from runes, and as you get these forged items for free, the initial 600 gold investment is well spent in comparison with buying items from shops. But more importantly, at least in the demo, once you have the forge you can battle a new mob at every tower on the map, by selecting "search for runes". If you win those fights, you get new runes, and can combine them with the existing runes to forge more different items. And the runemasters you fight are level 15 to 30, which with you being level 7 max is a serious challenge.
These hard fights allowed me to evaluate better the four character classes in the game: druid, knight, warrior, and wizard. The difference between the classes are in what spells they get, and in how many points it costs to raise which stats. As you only get 4 points per level, you can't really afford to put many points into a stat that costs 3 points to raise, you're better advised to divide your points between those that cost 1 or 2 points. This predetermines in which stats the different character classes will end up being good at. So here is my review of the Puzzle Quest character classes:
At first I liked the druid, because the first spell he gets is a healing spell, Gemberry. He also gets Calm to remove status effects. By healing yourself you can prevent yourself from losing, which means you eventually win. Unfortunately the druid isn't very good at damaging his opponents. His battle stat, increasing the damage from skulls, costs 3 points. And he doesn't get all that many or all that good damage dealing spells, only Forest Fire in the demo. Against the harder runemaster opponents the fights always took very long, and when the opponent had a way to heal himself they got downright unwinnable.
The knight is a bit better. For him the battle skill costs only 1 point, so by putting lots of points there he has a good damage potential. His spells are a mix of many different types. Board manipulation, like getting all the experience point purple stars with the "Divine Right" spell, or destroying a gem that's in the way with "Thrust". A limited way to gain life with the favor spell (Every time you gain experience, 50% chance of gaining +1 life. Obvious combo with Divine Right.). And the knight gets the awesome Stun spell, which both damages the enemy and lets him lose a turn. But as the knight gains mana slower than a druid or wizard, he'll still be doing most of his damage with lining up skulls. The knight is a kind of hybrid class, although more leaning towards melee.
The warrior is probably easiest to play, I think I'll chose that class for my first "real" game when I get hold of my copy. The warrior is another class where the battle skill only costs 1 point, so if you are good at lining up skulls on the board, you'll deal tons of damage. And again mana gaining is slower than the caster classes. But his spells come in only two flavors: dealing damage and manipulating the board. Against some harder enemies I was able to win by simply constantly denying them the blue and yellow mana they needed for their abilities, which is easy with a Wild Lore spell (Destroy all blue and yellow gems.) Such mass destruction spells of certain gem types also increase the concentration of the other colors, which if correctly pulled of can give awesome chain reactions.
The final class, the wizard, is a lot harder to play, but very powerful. While the battle skill costs 3 points for him, the wizard can gather mana quickly by putting points in fire and air mastery. The wizard has by far the best damaging spell, I ended a couple of fights by just using the mana I had to cast several Fire Bolt spells in a row. Haste is also very nice, dealing 4 damage every time you get an extra turn. That should be awesome at higher levels, because besides getting extra turns when you manage to get 4 tiles in a row, you also increase your chance to get random extra turns when increasing your mastery of the four elements. The wizards weak point is his morale skill, which is low to start with and costing 3 points will forever remain low. As morale determines your life points, and also much of the damage reducing armor in the game needs a certain minimum morale, the wizard is very vulnerable.
Apart from the class spells you can gain other spells, if you build a dungeon, capture a monster by beating it three times, and then play a mini-game to steal one of his spells. These stolen spells cost you more mana to cast, but might give you a better rounded selection of spells. Apparently you can only carry 6 different spells into battle, so you'll have to chose which mix is good.
Choosing a different class very much changes how you play this game, which is great for replayability. I found it very interesting how your spells and abilities, and those of your opponent, change each battle into a different experience. A warrior killing a skeleton is a totally different game than a wizard killing a bat. By having role-playing elements in the game, you can modify the difficulty level by leveling up or equipping yourself with better gear. (Apparently monsters go up in level too, but only in a fixed level range. Lets say one specific monster can be level 18 to 24, then if you're lower than 18 it will be level 18, if you're between 18 and 24 it will have your level, and if you're above 24 it will be 24.) So you can eventually outlevel a monster you found too hard to beat earlier. Losing a battle in Puzzle Quest is no big deal, you still get some gold and experience, and just try again. The only way is forward, until you hit the level cap of 50 and complete all the quests. Given the many different features and possibilities that Puzzle Quest offers, this promises to be an entertaining journey.
WoW Journal - 2-April-2007
Yes, I'm still playing World of Warcraft. But significantly less than before. This weekend even the Puzzle Quest demo, limited to level 7 as it is, managed to keep me playing longer than WoW (I just had to play all character classes to the max in Puzzle Quest to see which one I liked best. I recommend warriors.) So I didn't do any instances at all this weekend, and only grouped shortly once, to help a guild mate with an elite quest.
So what I was doing in WoW is playing my level 68 warrior. Having finished all the quests in Nagrand, except a couple of boring ones that I decided to skip, I moved on to Blade's Edge. Questing there started a bit slow, there aren't all that many quest-givers in Thunderlord Stronghold. But once I did the first handful of quests, it opened up a quest series for Rexxar, Champion of the Horde. Apparently he has given up wandering through Desolace, and has been replaced there by another champion of the horde NPC for the Onyxia quest chain.
Many of the quests in Blade's Edge mountains involve killing ogres. Fortunately there are a couple of fun quests and events, not just serial killing. You meet the disembodied head of a troll witch doctor, who is asking you for 10 beers and a hookah (no, I'm not spelling that wrong), which leads to you receiving a source for beer that distracts one tribe of ogres. You get to curse some ogre buildings. And Rexxar sends you to control a marmot which stealthes through the ogre camp to poison their kegs. All fun enough, but after a couple of hours I tend to get bored nowadays.
That is insofar strange as soloing with my warrior is more fun than soloing with my priest. I so love the spell reflect ability, especially since it also works on a couple of breath weapons. Not only is the ability very useful, it also forces you to react more, making combat more interactive. Nevertheless I did have a situation again this weekend where I got disconnected while fighting 2 ogres, and by the time I reconnected one ogre was dead, and I still had enough health left to kill the other ogre before he got me. That makes me feel as if my button-mashing wasn't serving for much more than shorten fights I would also have won on auto-attack. Not very heroic, nor interactive.
So what I was doing in WoW is playing my level 68 warrior. Having finished all the quests in Nagrand, except a couple of boring ones that I decided to skip, I moved on to Blade's Edge. Questing there started a bit slow, there aren't all that many quest-givers in Thunderlord Stronghold. But once I did the first handful of quests, it opened up a quest series for Rexxar, Champion of the Horde. Apparently he has given up wandering through Desolace, and has been replaced there by another champion of the horde NPC for the Onyxia quest chain.
Many of the quests in Blade's Edge mountains involve killing ogres. Fortunately there are a couple of fun quests and events, not just serial killing. You meet the disembodied head of a troll witch doctor, who is asking you for 10 beers and a hookah (no, I'm not spelling that wrong), which leads to you receiving a source for beer that distracts one tribe of ogres. You get to curse some ogre buildings. And Rexxar sends you to control a marmot which stealthes through the ogre camp to poison their kegs. All fun enough, but after a couple of hours I tend to get bored nowadays.
That is insofar strange as soloing with my warrior is more fun than soloing with my priest. I so love the spell reflect ability, especially since it also works on a couple of breath weapons. Not only is the ability very useful, it also forces you to react more, making combat more interactive. Nevertheless I did have a situation again this weekend where I got disconnected while fighting 2 ogres, and by the time I reconnected one ogre was dead, and I still had enough health left to kill the other ogre before he got me. That makes me feel as if my button-mashing wasn't serving for much more than shorten fights I would also have won on auto-attack. Not very heroic, nor interactive.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
The serious side to the joke
Ah, April Fools' Day. Blizzard announced Tin Foil Hats and tried to pass of their old Warcraft RTS games as the new WoW expansion. Turbine announced blue-skinned hobbits with white hats, whose complicately spelled name was pronounced like Smurf. And I write a fake announcement how WoW gets rid of gold farmers permanently. But of course such jokes are only funny if they are remotely believable. The funny thing in my joke was that it actually would have worked! If you would prevent players from giving each other gold, gold farming as we know it would die. But so would major parts of the player economy, as well as twinking, and sending stuff to your friends and guild mates. So the serious question behind the joke is: How much would we be willing to endure to get rid of gold farmers?
Farming gold is perfectly legal, as long as you don't use a bot to do it. Sending 1,000 gold to a complete stranger is perfectly legal too. Only receiving real money in exchange for these 1,000 dollars is against the terms of service and can get you banned. That means of the activities of a non-botting gold farmer, the only thing that is illegal happens outside the game. Unless the farmer is so stupid as to sell the gold on EBay using the same e-mail address that he used to sign up for his WoW account, there is no way Blizzard can catch him. They can't legally get hold of the buyers credit card statement or find any other proof that the seller received dollars for his gold. Blizzard can, and does, detect bots and bans accounts using them. Blizzard can't, and doesn't, ban a sweatshop full of Chinese farming manually. Neither can they do anything against the big companies buying gold from the farmers and selling that gold for dollars to other players. They can ban the account that is sending in-game spam mail or tells advertising a gold-selling website, but those are just free trial accounts anyway.
The reason why the in-game activities of gold farmers are legal is that they are indistinguishable from the behavior of regular players. I saw a guild mate of mine riding on a talbuk, and asked him how he got it. He said its a reward from getting exalted with the Mag'har, and he got it by killing ogres in Nagrand. At 10 reputation points per ogre, you can calculate how many of them he killed to get there. And he probably made a pretty sum of gold at the same time. How is Blizzard going to know that this guy killing 5,000 ogres is a regular player and not a gold farmer? Sending gold per mail is also something that regular players do all the time. Mostly between characters of their own account, but often also to players on other accounts, be it girlfriends, little brothers, or guild mates.
You can think of many different modifications to the game which would make gold farming harder to impossible. Like in yesterday's joke you could make gold effectively soulbound. Or you could introduced something like the Chinese government requires, having mobs drop less and less gold after 3 hours (although that would just force the gold farmer to buy 8 accounts). You could lower the gold cost for mounts and other money sinks by a factor of 10, thereby reducing the buyers' demand for gold. But any solution you come up with is sure to impact regular players as well. My April Fools' joke would have effectively killed large parts of the WoW economy. Diminishing returns would be rather unpopular, think of what would happen if your raid finally reaches the end-boss of the dungeon, and he doesn't drop anything because you took too much time to get there. Less money sinks would cause inflation in the prices of AH-traded goods. And so on.
Even the current situation, where Blizzard looks for suspicious behavior and then bans a hundred thousand accounts every quarter is a compromise. Whatever sophisticated software and methods you use, you will always have some false positives and false negatives. So after the bannings there are still some gold farmers left in the game (while the banned ones just start new accounts), and if you have just 1% of false positives you just banned 1,000 totally legit players which were caught in the dragnet by showing some unusual behavior. Of course these complain loudly, causing a lot of bad publicity.
So in the end stating that gold farming is harmful and should be eliminated is too simple. You need to do a more complete analysis just exactly how harmful it is, and what you would be willing to sacrifice to get rid of the problem. Apparently Blizzard thinks that gold farming isn't harmful enough to justify limitations to the legit player economy. They react slow to people reporting bots, both because of the danger of innocent people getting accused of botting, and because of the cost of following up every report immediately. They are against real money trade, but it isn't their top priority, and they aren't going to do anything spectacular, like preventing gold trade by changing the game, or sueing a major gold selling company.
Farming gold is perfectly legal, as long as you don't use a bot to do it. Sending 1,000 gold to a complete stranger is perfectly legal too. Only receiving real money in exchange for these 1,000 dollars is against the terms of service and can get you banned. That means of the activities of a non-botting gold farmer, the only thing that is illegal happens outside the game. Unless the farmer is so stupid as to sell the gold on EBay using the same e-mail address that he used to sign up for his WoW account, there is no way Blizzard can catch him. They can't legally get hold of the buyers credit card statement or find any other proof that the seller received dollars for his gold. Blizzard can, and does, detect bots and bans accounts using them. Blizzard can't, and doesn't, ban a sweatshop full of Chinese farming manually. Neither can they do anything against the big companies buying gold from the farmers and selling that gold for dollars to other players. They can ban the account that is sending in-game spam mail or tells advertising a gold-selling website, but those are just free trial accounts anyway.
The reason why the in-game activities of gold farmers are legal is that they are indistinguishable from the behavior of regular players. I saw a guild mate of mine riding on a talbuk, and asked him how he got it. He said its a reward from getting exalted with the Mag'har, and he got it by killing ogres in Nagrand. At 10 reputation points per ogre, you can calculate how many of them he killed to get there. And he probably made a pretty sum of gold at the same time. How is Blizzard going to know that this guy killing 5,000 ogres is a regular player and not a gold farmer? Sending gold per mail is also something that regular players do all the time. Mostly between characters of their own account, but often also to players on other accounts, be it girlfriends, little brothers, or guild mates.
You can think of many different modifications to the game which would make gold farming harder to impossible. Like in yesterday's joke you could make gold effectively soulbound. Or you could introduced something like the Chinese government requires, having mobs drop less and less gold after 3 hours (although that would just force the gold farmer to buy 8 accounts). You could lower the gold cost for mounts and other money sinks by a factor of 10, thereby reducing the buyers' demand for gold. But any solution you come up with is sure to impact regular players as well. My April Fools' joke would have effectively killed large parts of the WoW economy. Diminishing returns would be rather unpopular, think of what would happen if your raid finally reaches the end-boss of the dungeon, and he doesn't drop anything because you took too much time to get there. Less money sinks would cause inflation in the prices of AH-traded goods. And so on.
Even the current situation, where Blizzard looks for suspicious behavior and then bans a hundred thousand accounts every quarter is a compromise. Whatever sophisticated software and methods you use, you will always have some false positives and false negatives. So after the bannings there are still some gold farmers left in the game (while the banned ones just start new accounts), and if you have just 1% of false positives you just banned 1,000 totally legit players which were caught in the dragnet by showing some unusual behavior. Of course these complain loudly, causing a lot of bad publicity.
So in the end stating that gold farming is harmful and should be eliminated is too simple. You need to do a more complete analysis just exactly how harmful it is, and what you would be willing to sacrifice to get rid of the problem. Apparently Blizzard thinks that gold farming isn't harmful enough to justify limitations to the legit player economy. They react slow to people reporting bots, both because of the danger of innocent people getting accused of botting, and because of the cost of following up every report immediately. They are against real money trade, but it isn't their top priority, and they aren't going to do anything spectacular, like preventing gold trade by changing the game, or sueing a major gold selling company.
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