Article Detail - World of Warcraft News

Who buys gold, really?

Posted May 21, 2007 at 05:31AM by Victor B. Listed in: Opinions & Analysis Tags: Blizzard, raiding

Tobold is one of those WoW bloggers whose analyses tend to make you think. This time, it's a post on gold-buying that has our interest piqued, if only because it asks a question near and dear to our MMO-playing hearts: gold buying.

Specifically, who's buying all the gold that gold farmers spend all day amassing? It's an important question for simple supply and demand reasons and, by Tobold's reasoning, it seems more likely that the hardcore raiders have something to do with it.

He words it thus:

A single Gruul raid can cost over 1,000 gold in potions and stuff... Now there are certainly raiders who have the time to grind for all that gold or materials themselves. But not everyone does. The fact that gold farmers target level 70 players with their advertising suggests that it is them who buy most of it. Raiding itself and preparing for it with attunements and grinding reputations is time-consuming enough, I wouldn't be surprised if many raiders "outsourced" their gold farming to a gold seller.

While there don't happen to be any conclusive answers to such a question, it does get us thinking as well. Are casual WoW players more of a problem with regard to gold farming when compared to hardcore raiders? The number of casual players vastly outnumbers the number of hardcore raiders mind you, so it's possible that liberal doses of powerlevelling services and gold buying could make casual gamers just as big a culprit in the continuing saga of the gold farmer as that of hardcore raiders.

In any event, Blizzard's use of bans and the upcoming changes to alchemy should lessen the amount of gold needed to get through a raid instance at 70. Whether it lessens the number of gold buyers out there is still going to be up for debate.

Read Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Digg It!

Bookmark / Find this article on:

4 Comments

Sort by:

last added

highest rated

by Mery (Unregistered) - 2007-05-21

» Maybe, but..

I know that our guild bank had about 30k by the time we started with BWL (It's been some time since i was activly raiding...) just by selling items from MC to casual players. Also gold was "worth more" back then (i.e. mosters drop more gold in outlands). It wouldn't suprise me if a good managed guild can just pay for all that crap, just like we did.

by Advertising -

by Tiran Kenja (Unregistered) - 2007-05-22

» Gold sellers is a symtom

Personally I think while gold selling help accelerate inflation, they are themselves a symptom of it. In broad terms there are the hardcore players who have nothing better to do and there are 'real people' (aka casual players) who have jobs or actually spend time on their education.

The problem with that is that the hardcore player base become a whole lot richer than the casual players. And as that happens the cool gear will start costing more and more and the casuals won't be able to get it.

So what do you do when you have disposable income and not enough time? You pay someone else to do the boring stuff that takes a lot of time. And presto! You can buy the cool gear (and help drive inflation up even more).

Gold selling isn't good for anybody, except themselves. But as I see it they are a symptom of the game economy gone wrong. Or at least that it favors the hard working. That, some would say, is at it should be. The only problem is people play these games for fun. And it's not all that fun not being able to progress well in the game because you do not have the time to keep up with the hardcore players.

Re: Victor B. (QJ. NET Staff) - 2007-05-22

» Capitalism at work

My friend once told me that gold buying was the bad side of capitalism at work.

The question is whether the supply of gold came before the demand, or the demand of gold created goldfarming

by Aya (Unregistered) - 2007-06-18

» Buying gold is never acceptable in WOW.

I have 2 level 70 characters, a job, and go to school full time. Im also in a 4-5 night a week raiding guild that has downed magtheridon 3 times and is starting to progress into SSC and TK. I have never bought gold or payed anyone to farm for me. Nothing that good in WOW is unreasonably priced, and if it is, go farm for it. I can easily make over 150 gold an hour on my mage in 7 or 8 different spots! And now with the daily quests added in the last patch its even easier. The vast majority of gold buyers ive encountered are terrible at gaming and just buy gold so they can show off their boe epics and crafted sets. I got my epic flying mount last week (under 1 week of 3-4 hr a day grinding ethereals for prison keys, mana elementals for primals, and scryer rep items) from 200g-->5000g in a week. Also 5 others in my guild did the same thing, all with the same results. If you simply cant tolerate a little grinding then maybe Wow isnt the mmo for you, Play EQ and pay sony for your mmo currency, after all they SELL gold to their customers. Id rather play wow and enjoy the epics that ive EARNED.

The QJ.net Network
Site	Feed
QJ.NET	RSS
Nintendo DS	RSS
PlayStation 3	RSS
PSP Updates	RSS
Wii	RSS
Xbox 360	RSS
MMORPG	RSS
Personal Computer Games	RSS
iPhone - iPod Touch	RSS
QJ.NET Forums	RSS