Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Long Live The Gold Farmer!

I'd shout that from the rooftops of Orgrimmar if Blizzard would implement the same legit method of selling gold as Eve Online did. 1,000 gold in exchange for no subscription fees for the next six months? Heck yeah! Or whatever the going rate is.

I agree with Mystic's (so terribly sorry that I don't know the author's name.../kick myself) opinion that this kind of trading will not create raging inflation and wreck havoc on the economy. It might actually help the economies.

/step on soapbox

Though I do think it's a mistake to take this type of Real Money Trading (RMT) market and say that all RMT is OK. The reason this works is because companies can't apply Timecodes to EBITDA or pay employees with it. No profit = no go. The minute companies can get cold, hard cash for selling in-game gold that's when the problems start.

Profits grow companies. Companies grow competition. Competition drives prices down (for products whose only differentiation is price). When prices dive low enough where it doesn't make sense not to buy it - that's the problem.

/nod sagely
/cast [Appear Smarter Than I Actually Am]{Rank 4}
/trip stepping off soapbox

1 comment:

Bluegrass Geek said...

Reading that article, it does pose an interesting way of dealing with the problem. As the article points out, it doesn't eliminate gold farming, but it does provide a legitimate, secure way of trading your money for gold in-game. At the same time, others find something useful for extra gold: "free" game-time!

I have to say, this is something I'd love to see implemented in WoW. Though we'll probably have to wait for WoW2…