A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Admit it, anonymously!
Did you ever buy gold in a MMORPG where that was forbidden by the ToS/EULA? Let's see if we can use the option of anonymous posting for something constructive, and get you to admit something you might not want to sign with your name!
Bought 1000g back in Vanilla when that was a lot, and promptly spent it on my friends. Bought 2000g to get an epic flyer in WoTLK when I started a new account.
Then I learned how to make gold, and started selling it :)
once my guildy (NOT friend, btw) got the arcanite dragonling schematic that I wanted, I told him I'd buy him a burrito if he traded it to me. so technically rmt, but .... haah.
Too paranoid about account security and I make enough G as a scribe anyhow.
I have never bought or sold gold in WoW because it is against the rules and I worry about hacks, bans and theft. I find AH PvP the most enjoyable part of WoW and am approaching 500,000g so it is no longer tempting.
I did buy ISK in EVE, through their legal method; it made starting out so much simpler. The same way WoW alts get nice gear and have good bags and 7 bank slots at level 1. I saw the same content, just without quite as many hassles.
(However, I've been known to violate TOS/EULA in other ways, from using maphack to bypass stygian doll packs in Diablo 2, to using fastrun macros in AberMUDs)
I've bought and sold gold in WoW, probably bought 50,000 total. Bought and sold millions in UO as well.
But that's it. Always used the biggest, IGE because I figured they were large enough not to scam or keylog me, never used any small service or in game spam or web advertisement.
I am not affiliated in any way with this company nor do I recommended buying gold, just my point of view as a consumer.
When I was making my Shadow's Edge and needed arou 50,000 gold for Primordial Saronite, I would frequently buy the Lil' KT and Pandaren Monk mini-pets from Blizzard for $10 each, and sell the in-game codes "3000g for one pet or 5k for both!" Legal code buying courtesy of Blizzard. And yes, it is legal to sell codes for in game items for in-game currency according to blue posts.
Bought plenty of gold in wow, probably 20k+ in total. No repercussions, no bans, no hacks. Slow delivery time- always much lower than the time advertised on the selling website, but, I have always been delivered every last copper, and sometimes even extra as compensation for being late. I only play a few hours a week due to real life commitments and my wish to play other games besides wow. This is the only way my character can 'compete'.
In FFXI, the economy is vastly different. Crafting takes millions before your profitable and money from mob kills / quests is almost nil. Your only bet is to level a class that is useful in solo and/or specific fights that have chances of dropping valuable items... which very, very rarely drop.
In WoW, you can do dailies for a month and have plenty to max almost any craft, if you do it smartly... From there making money is easy.
No never I'd quit first, if it came to that. Once in a game a random dude who said he was quitting gave me 1.6mill monetary units after I'd performed some small service for him. to me that was a lot of money, but not a huge amount. Not enough to spend like water. I was extremely frugal with it and it lasted a long time.
Generally I see buying gold the equivalent of god mode in FPS games. It completely devalues the reward you get from the effort you put in.
I have twice. Once in EVE when i started playing and just couldnt get to grips with making enough ISK to survive (think I bought 7mill isk, about 5euros) and once in WOW, about a month after I started playing 2005, I bought 50g! I was literally scared to buy more just in case! It helped me learn the economy though and since then I've made well over 200k in all.
I think buying currency is something I'd only ever consider now in a new, alien game in which I need a slight leg up, so to speak.
Once. Couldn't afford to finish off Thunderfury (A hundred arcanite bars at the time, in the days before daily quests, was... painful), and gold at the time was surprisingly cheap. Did that and gave me a good surplus to continue raiding with at the same time. Was bought and delivered in... oh, ten minutes or so, although this was back before Blizzard really cracked down on it.
I'd never do it again, as I felt dirty for ages afterwards and the only reason I did it in the first place was guild peer pressure to get the damn thing done. But honestly I don't really regret it either, despite the real-world cost.
There was one guy in my guild in WoW who admitted that he had, and I was floored -- I had considered him a pretty trustworthy guy before he told me that.
Never been even slightly tempted because I have never played an MMO where I couldn't easily get all the in-game currency I needed by legal means.
Have never understood the point of buying gold for real money. If I had a spare few pounds I'd rather buy a bottle of wine or a novel than some pixels.
No, but not because of "sense of fairness and justice", but just because I didn't see it worth my IRL money. I can enjoy my game without piles of gold so why spend additional money on it? Same reason why I didn't buy some $10 panda, I enjoy the game without it, and it's not worth my $10.
Once in WoW. I had been out of the game for a few months for RL reasons and wanted to gear up quickly so I could raid with my guild again. Struggled with decision - don't regret it in retrospect but would certainly not do it again.
One is that cheating via shortcuts and exploits devalues any sense of personal accomplishment. Easy-mode, god-mode in FPSes turns you into a content tourist, see the levels, never die, no challenge = no flow and lots of boredom shortly after. Same thing is bound to happen for MMOs, just bolstered slightly by the "hah, I'm more superior than you" feeling, which is also ultimately quite a shallow means of getting virtual kicks.
Two, I'm not willing to risk an account ban by violating TOS. It's possibly a personal control issue. I'm an adult customer who will control the right to play or not play your crummy game. Why would I choose to put myself in a position where I can get smacked by a GM for TOS-breaking and have 'wasted' money by no longer being able to log in to play when I choose?
And three, because I am paranoid about account security and hacks that would compromise not just one game, but others and the credit card used. There's just something very 'underworld' about the whole gold selling sweat shop business, I can't shake the feeling I'm supporting some sort of crime syndicate if I pay an illegal third-party site instead of the developers.
Legalised RMT though, ah, that gets me seriously considering it 80% of the time. If the perks are worth the microtransaction value, I can see myself paying more than $15 a month for a game.
Yes, once. I bought (I think) 300g in early BC shortly after I had started. This allowed me to pick up four big bags, a couple extra bank slots, a BoE purple weapon and a nice cushion for later efforts at playing the AH. Entirely worth it and I have no regrets.
I don't need to post anonymously. I bought gold in a game I no longer play (WoW).
It's quite simple really: time is money, friend. My time was just too valuable to waste on gold acquisition, which is something I derived absolutely no pleasure from. Outsourcing was the logical choice.
Never bought, sold on several occasions to several different sites. It actually did pay for my WoW subscription through a couple of lean years, I was making a steady 10k/week and selling it for $50 or so for nearly no effort. Extra $200 a month definitely came in handy back then, haha.
My account eventually got slapped with only a 72 hour ban, after over a year of sales. I found it funny how light the punishment was, but I stopped selling after that because my situation had improved and I didn't really want to get my main account permabanned :)
No, I'm a honest player. I play the game as it is and I conquer all the things legally.
I see many people who get pro items and high level accounts just with 1 week of game playing. But I really don't care about that, let them to be happy, if they aren't in real life.
I wonder, what of these anonymoums is Tobold? hehehe
Never. However I imagine the herbs I get are from the farmers. My first account waney mine; not bought or stolen, borrowed, but I still regret it. I've said this before with my name, but I figured I'd stick to the format.
Yes bought gold in the one game the invented in my opinion, valueless, fun-less time sinks for it, WOW. Too many accounts, too many kids playing to think they were going to grind enough gold for mounts in vanilla WOW. So yes, we bought gold and guess what, the sky never fell.
Never. However I imagine the herbs I get are from the farmers. My first account waney mine; not bought or stolen, borrowed, but I still regret it. I've said this before with my name, but I figured I'd stick to the format.
Yes, in every MMO I've played (EQ, SWG, EQ2, WoW, Tabula Rasa, AoC, WAR, Aion). I buy gold when getting started but if I really like the games I get a 2nd account and use it to bot on for money.
I have in WoW. I have also used IGE as I thought they were large enough and ligament enough not to scam me.
I mostly did it, as I play the game to raid, but also work a lot and do not have time to farm the amount I need. Also the fact that I have had multiple toons hit 80 seems to suck away alot of my money.
But I think its a fair exchange for the amount of time I save not playing the game and doing other stuff and still being able to maintain my spot in the top raiding guild on my server.
P.S. And then there was the raiding - comps required and repair bills in original WOW. Raiding 3 days and farming for comps 2 days, uh no, I wasn't going to farm gold the other days I could play. Many of the raiders I knew were buying gold and Blizzard finally realized they'd set the stage for it with those original encounters, which were fun, but the massive amounts of comps needed on top or repairs was rather obscene.
One time, when I was around level 45 on my first toon and trying to get my weaponsmith specialty. At the time, farming all that mithril seemed overwhelming so I bought what felt like a small fortune (maybe 200 gold? I forget now). Since then, I've come to realize that gold just isn't that hard to get, so I never did it again.
Nope. My stance on RMT has been clear from the beginning - I dont think that anyone has -any- justification for buying gold in WoW, regardless of any perceived grind or time requirement that gold buyers try to use as justification.
I kinda agree with Gevlon on his assertion that Blizzard could be doing a lot more to curtail gold buying/selling if only they wanted to. Makes one wonder when major raiding guilds have openly stated that they buy tons of gold to support their raiding regimen, and Blizzard does nothing about it.
I've never bought any gold online. I did however sell gold to other folks, mainly friends or people that I let login at my home so I can tell Blizzard that I know the guys and am giving it to them as a gift. The Netherlands is a small place, you can get from one end to the other in 2-3 hours. And that's worth it for purchases above 50k.
Nope. I don't exactly think it makes baby murlocs cry, I just have never needed more gold than I have, nor do I possess the disposable income. Besides, I'd be too afraid of getting hacked.
I've never bought gold or anything in an mmo wih real life money (besides subscriptions and a couple of server transfer for WoW).
Being a broke college student my money is already tight, and the last thing I'm going to spend it on is virtual money. Especially when I can get just about anything I want to in WoW by either farming for it or just waiting long enough for it's price to drop.
I came back to World of Warcraft and really did not want to farm the funds for an epic flight mount so I bought some gold for it.
I don't feel bad either. I bought a BOP item and that was that. For items like that, ie. Things that do not give you any sort of tangible advantage in combat, Blizzard should just give you the option to spend real world $$$ to buy it. Better the money goes to them than to some Chinese Sweat Shop Owner.
A long time ago, when UO was fairly popular I was a regular buyer of gold/homes/resources off of Ebay. I'm not sure if it was officially against the ToS/EULA back then or not in UO. RMT was pretty mainstream in UO back then.
Nope. If I had, then I'd have run out of things to do. And now in WLK, it's not even necessary as it falls from the sky like manna just for walking around.
Also love how some people are posting not anonymously.
I did, many years ago, when the source of the gold was the work of other players. That was a straight-up money-to-time exchange. These days, I don't think it is okay, primarily because the gold comes from credit card fraud and account hacking. Now gold buying just encourages criminal behavior.
Nope. Never ever been tempted either. It's possible that it's just a symptom of my being broke (I'm too young for a full time job, and i have no interest in a part time one right now.)
I'm pretty positive it wouldn't change, even if i could afford it, and it wasn't against the rules. IF i have to pay RL money for gold, it puts me off for some reason. Item shops tend to as well, for some reason.
Worst part is, it's just a gut feeling! no logic involved,haha.
I think I probably wouldn't be so against this if the industry wasn't tied to so egregious activity like account hacking. Back in BC all we had to deal with were prolific farming which was bad enough, but the account hacking just took it to a level that simply can not be tolerated.
I never bought gold, but how about this for an anon admission. I not only botted WoW, I wrote bots that I publically released to other people helping hundreds (thousands?) of other people to also bot.
I started botting because my friends were botting. I started writing bots because the bots we were using sucked. And I kept botting because it was fun. I’m not talking about getting gold, or leveling or anything like that. I mean I spent a lot of time coding these bots, so it wasn’t about saving time.
For me the appeal was in building an AI that was intelligent enough to fool other people and actually played the game for me. There is a certain pride in coding the script for an AI and it’s absolutely fascinating to watch what I coded play the game on my behalf. My only regret in hindsight is that I publically released them.
It was a lot of fun thinking about ways to avoid getting detected. Things like detecting when someone is following you and then having the bot use the Flight Master to fly to an entirely other area all on it’s own. Or my personal favorite, handling whispers.
I had several tricks for handling answers to standard questions, but my favorite counter was the mistell. If someone were to ask me something my chat script couldn’t easily answer, I would reply about twenty seconds later with an offtopic mistell.
For example, if someone asked me if I wanted to help on this quest, it would wait 20 seconds and then randomly select an offtopic response like: “I say break up with the whore if she’s going to pull that crap” followed quickly (a few seconds) with a “sry mt”. And then I blacklisted that person and never responded to another whisper during that session. In most cases, I never got another whisper except for “lol”. But if the whispers did keep up for much longer than that, the bot would log for 20 minutes.
No I have not, and it's because I was worried about giving out my credit card to someone who was obviously shady to start with. Now I've learned how to make my own gold and don't feel I need to buy it. (Though paying 5k for epic flight on every toon makes me think about it sometimes!)
Yes, and only regretted it in that it's very easy to get hooked on it. I bought currency in the following games:
DAOC CoH/CoV Guild Wars WoW SWG
Most of those I only bought once or twice, but was often tempted. It's probably only lack of reputable vendors that kept me from buying more. I bought in WoW maybe 1/2 dozen times, mostly because I had dozens of alts across many servers.
Yes, I've purchased. Mostly in WoW..I've probably purchased hundreds of thousands of gold. I bought it once to buy my boyfriend a crafted sword he really wanted. I bought it to get my flying mount on an alt. Once I've done that experience once, I don't need to do it again.
I've never sold gold, but I sold EQ1 characters. I've also bought EQ1 characters back in the day. I made thousands off that.
Generally, I evaluate the amount of time it's going to take me. If it takes too long and seems like a tedious un-fun waste of time..I'd rather buy it. I get just as much enjoyment.
Absolutely not, but not because of some worry about ethics or the game economy, it just make no financial sense. Money is way to easy to make in any given MMO.
In vanilla WoW I bought enough gold to get a mount, as I couldn't figure out how to make money at that point and I didn't perceive a stigma against it. Never done it since. As a side note, I also sold a WoW account to someone.
No, but when I first started playing, I contemplated buying gold to buy my first mount (this is also back in Vanilla days where 40g seemed like a lot!) Ended up just farming enough ore and selling on the AH until I had enough money. Felt a lot more satisfying in the long run.
Since then, I've learned where farmed gold comes from and I refuse to support that business and/or risk my own account.
Let's see... Violated the TOS back in the DAOC days by:
* Playing in Windowed Mode * Transferring Plat between servers / realms * Buying a few Plat on Alt servers (before finding the Transfer services) * Letting my then-young daughter play on my account (running around, jumping off of things). * Buying a level 50 character account from a Guildie who was quitting the game.
And, yes... It used to be a hack to be able to play DAOC in windowed mode. You see, only hackers and cheaters would want to IM with people not in the game or read email while waiting for the portal / while making hundreds of leather gloves and boots.
Back when, a core group of our guild would decide they'd accomplished what they wanted to on our home server / realm and we'd all agree to move to another of the three realms and start over (or try RP or PvP Servers). However, I'd usually end up wanting to sink money into crafting as well, and would buy a couple dollars worth of plat. Then I saw the server plat-transfer sites and would use that to move plats around between various servers and realms.
This was all in the first half of the last decade and I haven't bought gold for any other game since.
Most unscrupulous gaming activity I've participated in that is somewhat related to the topic is buying some extra sets of Diablo II cd keys so I could multibox several characters. Not only did I have multiple instances of D2 running (which at the time was only possible with a hack that Blizzard has subsequently banned people for using) but I used these extra accounts to bot characters. I wrote and modified AutoIT scripts to run certain dungeons/bosses for loot over and over again.
As a previous poster said, the fun in this was in maximizing efficiency; the game was just a more interesting context than others.
As for gold/characters/powerleveling/etc, what's the point? I have a very hard time understanding the frame in mind in which buying gold is an appealing prospect. It speaks as much to bad game design as it does of the players who engage in it that so many people would pay to have others play portions of a game for them.
Nope, but I've been extremely tempted. Back in vanilla, when epic mounts cost 1000g and there were few ways to make money casually, I never came close to being able to afford it and almost bought gold to make up the gap.
I have a feeling that I wouldn't feel the same thrill of achievement if I knew I "cheated," much the same way I feel little excitement accomplishing something after I significantly outgear it(IE, downing the original Onyxia in WotLK Naxx gear), but that's a personal thing.
Nope, I never have in any MMO and I've played quite a few.
Not a moral issue for me. I honestly don't even think about gold buying/selling...unless someone brings it up. I don't think I have ever considered it a viable way to get gold. And god knows there have been lots of times I wish I had more gold.
Got the whole poor college student thing going on for most of WoW, and before that I was a poor high school student. Even when I have disposable income, I've not really seen the point. The rates have never been high enough that I didn't think I was getting ripped off. Guess I may just be too miserly with my money?
No, if I'm paying a subscription for a game I want to make it last as long as possible. Buying gold is a shortcut and I don't want to miss out on content because of it.
I bought 100G back in 2005. I had just hit level 40 and my mount fund was standing at around 30G; I couldn't afford to buy a mount or the mail armour that my newly-dinged hunter could wear. I think if hacking had been so prevalent back then I wouldn't have bought it, but at the time most gold was farmed. I did regret buying it, it felt like cheating and definitely diminished the pleasure of buying my mount. There was also the anxiety that I could get banned if found out. It was a one-off experience I've no desire to ever repeat it.
Yes - in FFXI it was very worth it - it made the game much more enjoyable for me. Money is hard to come by (generally requires camping a rare spawn for days or other terribly boring tasks). Some spells are both expensive and necessary for party play. Some equipment makes you much more valuable and likely to be accepted to a party. RMT cut out all the boring parts and let me enjoy the rest of the game.
In WoW it had the opposite effect and sucked the fun out of the game because everything was so easy. I could have easily earned that gold in a short time. Any challenge the game posed could easily be met by any average person putting in minimal effort. Even crafting could be maxed out while leveling without much trouble. RMT didn't do anything - I made enough gold just by playing to buy whatever I needed. I ended up changing servers and playing without the RMT.
Only once have I taken the 'easy' route in Eve, but through selling of PLEX. So I guess, no never did it against the rules. Allways felt gaining gold/... wasn't worth the risk of losing the character/account.
I have never bought nor sold gold - I already pay £8 per month to play, and I can't justify spending more money on a game, not to mention that if I did it I would always worry that I would get banned (not worried about getting hacked as I have the authenticator).
Also it would undoubtedly take all the enjoyment out of the game - I see it as effectively cheating, and I am of the age now where that is no fun at all.
Those of you guys saying over and over how gold is so easy to come by in WoW, I simply can't see how you can say that.
I understand not buying gold because it undermines the sense of accomplishment, etc., but to say that it's faster to earn gold in WoW than in real life, I just can't understand that.
Say you make $100 per hour at work, not unreasonable for adults. That means you can exchange an hour of work for 10k WoW gold. Tell me how to make 10k gold per hour? Cannot be done. And even if you make $50 still there is no comparison.
I understand if you make $7 per hour or something, it's not worth it to you, but for most of us adults, it's a no brainer. If you want to save time, buy gold.
Say you make $100 per hour at work, not unreasonable for adults.
I'm not arguing with your basic premise, but the median wage in the US is $26,514, or a bit under $13/hour. It's likely that MMO players skew somewhat higher due to the fact that certain luxury goods are required to play such games, but $100 per hour (about $210k per year) or even $50 per hour is a very poor figure to assume.
I have not bought gold, nor paid for anything else in a game besides the initial cost and subscription fee. I have paid time, though, and since time is money, and people learn at different rates, the RMT thing doesn't bother me much anymore (now that I'm older and time is more precious, rather than just blissfully used).
I'm a lot less conservative than I once was and have really been considering it for a long time, but the fear of the banhammer keeps me from doing it. Also, one night of herbing normally keeps me just above the poverty line, but it would be a lot easier if I did just go ahead and buy some gold. Ah well.
Never (really, despite my late, non-anonymous post).
Although I suspect that my toon (Bristal) has. Got hacked last Summer (likely from using my toon name & password in forums?) and my account was promptly banned. Not sure what the little bastard did, he won't tell me. Too painful, I guess.
I don't rally have anything against others doing it unless it becomes rampant and destroys the game for me.
I don't & wouldn't because playing outside the boundaries of the virtual world would ruin the appeal of the game for me. Bristal and the alts are self-sufficient, complementary, and support each other financially.
If I sent them cash from out here it would make them all seem so much more 2 dimensional. And selling some of their cash for RL money? Heinous. How could they ever trust me again?
BTW, "Bristal and the Alts" would not be a very good name for a rock band.
yep. Lots of times, in lots of games. WoW, EQ, EQ2.
ReplyDeleteNo. Played only WoW (almost since release), where buying gold is indeed equals skipping both content and sense of achievement.
ReplyDeleteYes I did, although later I regretted it
ReplyDeleteNope. I've played many MMOs and buying gold just feels like you're paying to not get your money's worth.
ReplyDeleteYes I have. I buy some about once a month mostly because I'm lazy and don't feel like makeing it.
ReplyDeleteNope, never bought it since 2005, not out of any kind of sense of justice or fairness, just did not need to.
ReplyDeleteI know people that do buy it, and I dont really care that they do, nor am I outraged they do.
Nope. But I have sold it.
ReplyDeleteNo on buying and no on selling.
ReplyDeleteBought 1000g back in Vanilla when that was a lot, and promptly spent it on my friends. Bought 2000g to get an epic flyer in WoTLK when I started a new account.
ReplyDeleteThen I learned how to make gold, and started selling it :)
No on buying, no to selling.
ReplyDeleteThe Lord be my witness!
ReplyDeleteNo, I did not.
I've neve bought gold, but I can't help thinking that a lot of my AH profits come from people who have and thus spend freely.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the whole AH trading sub-game in WOW would be anything like as big without gold-buyers.
once my guildy (NOT friend, btw) got the arcanite dragonling schematic that I wanted, I told him I'd buy him a burrito if he traded it to me. so technically rmt, but .... haah.
ReplyDeleteToo paranoid about account security and I make enough G as a scribe anyhow.
no never, although I was tempted once
ReplyDeleteNope. Never. Been close in TBC when I didnt know what gold was and how it worked.
ReplyDeleteI have never bought or sold gold in WoW because it is against the rules and I worry about hacks, bans and theft. I find AH PvP the most enjoyable part of WoW and am approaching 500,000g so it is no longer tempting.
ReplyDeleteI did buy ISK in EVE, through their legal method; it made starting out so much simpler. The same way WoW alts get nice gear and have good bags and 7 bank slots at level 1. I saw the same content, just without quite as many hassles.
No. Didn't see the point in it.
ReplyDeleteNever.
ReplyDelete(However, I've been known to violate TOS/EULA in other ways, from using maphack to bypass stygian doll packs in Diablo 2, to using fastrun macros in AberMUDs)
Nope. Not even remotely tempted to.
ReplyDeleteI've bought and sold gold in WoW, probably bought 50,000 total. Bought and sold millions in UO as well.
ReplyDeleteBut that's it.
Always used the biggest, IGE because I figured they were large enough not to scam or keylog me, never used any small service or in game spam or web advertisement.
I am not affiliated in any way with this company nor do I recommended buying gold, just my point of view as a consumer.
Something I can admit to while signed in.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was making my Shadow's Edge and needed arou 50,000 gold for Primordial Saronite, I would frequently buy the Lil' KT and Pandaren Monk mini-pets from Blizzard for $10 each, and sell the in-game codes "3000g for one pet or 5k for both!" Legal code buying courtesy of Blizzard. And yes, it is legal to sell codes for in game items for in-game currency according to blue posts.
Bought plenty of gold in wow, probably 20k+ in total. No repercussions, no bans, no hacks. Slow delivery time- always much lower than the time advertised on the selling website, but, I have always been delivered every last copper, and sometimes even extra as compensation for being late. I only play a few hours a week due to real life commitments and my wish to play other games besides wow. This is the only way my character can 'compete'.
ReplyDeleteNo
ReplyDeleteFFXI- Yes
ReplyDeleteWoW- No
In FFXI, the economy is vastly different. Crafting takes millions before your profitable and money from mob kills / quests is almost nil. Your only bet is to level a class that is useful in solo and/or specific fights that have chances of dropping valuable items... which very, very rarely drop.
In WoW, you can do dailies for a month and have plenty to max almost any craft, if you do it smartly... From there making money is easy.
Also, I have no problem signing my name to this.
No never I'd quit first, if it came to that. Once in a game a random dude who said he was quitting gave me 1.6mill monetary units after I'd performed some small service for him. to me that was a lot of money, but not a huge amount. Not enough to spend like water. I was extremely frugal with it and it lasted a long time.
ReplyDeleteGenerally I see buying gold the equivalent of god mode in FPS games. It completely devalues the reward you get from the effort you put in.
I have twice. Once in EVE when i started playing and just couldnt get to grips with making enough ISK to survive (think I bought 7mill isk, about 5euros) and once in WOW, about a month after I started playing 2005, I bought 50g! I was literally scared to buy more just in case! It helped me learn the economy though and since then I've made well over 200k in all.
ReplyDeleteI think buying currency is something I'd only ever consider now in a new, alien game in which I need a slight leg up, so to speak.
Once. Couldn't afford to finish off Thunderfury (A hundred arcanite bars at the time, in the days before daily quests, was... painful), and gold at the time was surprisingly cheap. Did that and gave me a good surplus to continue raiding with at the same time. Was bought and delivered in... oh, ten minutes or so, although this was back before Blizzard really cracked down on it.
ReplyDeleteI'd never do it again, as I felt dirty for ages afterwards and the only reason I did it in the first place was guild peer pressure to get the damn thing done. But honestly I don't really regret it either, despite the real-world cost.
Never.
ReplyDeleteThere was one guy in my guild in WoW who admitted that he had, and I was floored -- I had considered him a pretty trustworthy guy before he told me that.
His account got hacked the following month.
No, there was nothing I could have done with gold in any game that would equal the value of the cash I would have to spend to buy it.
ReplyDeleteMany years ago I did try to sell some Diablo II items on eBay illicitly.. but didn't get any bidders.
I have never bought gold.
ReplyDeleteBut I have played Darkfall.
I hope it doesn't make me a bad person in your eyes.
No, never.
ReplyDeleteNever been even slightly tempted because I have never played an MMO where I couldn't easily get all the in-game currency I needed by legal means.
Have never understood the point of buying gold for real money. If I had a spare few pounds I'd rather buy a bottle of wine or a novel than some pixels.
Nope, have never done that.
ReplyDeleteBack in pre-TBC days, got WOW gold, as I wasn't 'leet' enough for raiding and everything in the AH was $$$$...
ReplyDeleteI'm curious... do you see the IP addresses of people who've posted anonymously? :)
ReplyDeleteI'm curious... do you see the IP addresses of people who've posted anonymously? :)
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't.
But I have played Darkfall.
So did I.
No, but not because of "sense of fairness and justice", but just because I didn't see it worth my IRL money. I can enjoy my game without piles of gold so why spend additional money on it? Same reason why I didn't buy some $10 panda, I enjoy the game without it, and it's not worth my $10.
ReplyDeleteOnce in WoW. I had been out of the game for a few months for RL reasons and wanted to gear up quickly so I could raid with my guild again. Struggled with decision - don't regret it in retrospect but would certainly not do it again.
ReplyDeleteNever but then again I never really got heavily into end game activities where my need for gold outstripped my ability to earn it.
ReplyDeletenot bought it but swapped my gold with a guildy for his time cards
ReplyDeleteyup, multiple times. once from a guildie. no regrets.
ReplyDeleteYar, bought back in the day. Selling now. Sure come a long way, if I may say so.
ReplyDeleteNo. A number of reasons.
ReplyDeleteOne is that cheating via shortcuts and exploits devalues any sense of personal accomplishment. Easy-mode, god-mode in FPSes turns you into a content tourist, see the levels, never die, no challenge = no flow and lots of boredom shortly after. Same thing is bound to happen for MMOs, just bolstered slightly by the "hah, I'm more superior than you" feeling, which is also ultimately quite a shallow means of getting virtual kicks.
Two, I'm not willing to risk an account ban by violating TOS. It's possibly a personal control issue. I'm an adult customer who will control the right to play or not play your crummy game. Why would I choose to put myself in a position where I can get smacked by a GM for TOS-breaking and have 'wasted' money by no longer being able to log in to play when I choose?
And three, because I am paranoid about account security and hacks that would compromise not just one game, but others and the credit card used. There's just something very 'underworld' about the whole gold selling sweat shop business, I can't shake the feeling I'm supporting some sort of crime syndicate if I pay an illegal third-party site instead of the developers.
Legalised RMT though, ah, that gets me seriously considering it 80% of the time. If the perks are worth the microtransaction value, I can see myself paying more than $15 a month for a game.
Yes, once. I bought (I think) 300g in early BC shortly after I had started. This allowed me to pick up four big bags, a couple extra bank slots, a BoE purple weapon and a nice cushion for later efforts at playing the AH. Entirely worth it and I have no regrets.
ReplyDeleteI don't need to post anonymously. I bought gold in a game I no longer play (WoW).
ReplyDeleteIt's quite simple really: time is money, friend. My time was just too valuable to waste on gold acquisition, which is something I derived absolutely no pleasure from. Outsourcing was the logical choice.
Never bought, sold on several occasions to several different sites. It actually did pay for my WoW subscription through a couple of lean years, I was making a steady 10k/week and selling it for $50 or so for nearly no effort. Extra $200 a month definitely came in handy back then, haha.
ReplyDeleteMy account eventually got slapped with only a 72 hour ban, after over a year of sales. I found it funny how light the punishment was, but I stopped selling after that because my situation had improved and I didn't really want to get my main account permabanned :)
No, never, not even considered it.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm a honest player. I play the game as it is and I conquer all the things legally.
ReplyDeleteI see many people who get pro items and high level accounts just with 1 week of game playing. But I really don't care about that, let them to be happy, if they aren't in real life.
I wonder, what of these anonymoums is Tobold? hehehe
Yes - in World of Warcraft.
ReplyDeleteAbout once a month I'd buy 1k gold to fund the epic flyers of various alts. Probably bought 50k over the course of Vanilla, TBC, and Wotlk.
No regrets.
Never. However I imagine the herbs I get are from the farmers. My first account waney mine; not bought or stolen, borrowed, but I still regret it. I've said this before with my name, but I figured I'd stick to the format.
ReplyDeleteYes bought gold in the one game the invented in my opinion, valueless, fun-less time sinks for it, WOW. Too many accounts, too many kids playing to think they were going to grind enough gold for mounts in vanilla WOW. So yes, we bought gold and guess what, the sky never fell.
ReplyDeleteNever. However I imagine the herbs I get are from the farmers. My first account waney mine; not bought or stolen, borrowed, but I still regret it. I've said this before with my name, but I figured I'd stick to the format.
ReplyDeleteYes, in every MMO I've played (EQ, SWG, EQ2, WoW, Tabula Rasa, AoC, WAR, Aion). I buy gold when getting started but if I really like the games I get a 2nd account and use it to bot on for money.
ReplyDeleteI have in WoW. I have also used IGE as I thought they were large enough and ligament enough not to scam me.
ReplyDeleteI mostly did it, as I play the game to raid, but also work a lot and do not have time to farm the amount I need. Also the fact that I have had multiple toons hit 80 seems to suck away alot of my money.
But I think its a fair exchange for the amount of time I save not playing the game and doing other stuff and still being able to maintain my spot in the top raiding guild on my server.
P.S. And then there was the raiding - comps required and repair bills in original WOW. Raiding 3 days and farming for comps 2 days, uh no, I wasn't going to farm gold the other days I could play. Many of the raiders I knew were buying gold and Blizzard finally realized they'd set the stage for it with those original encounters, which were fun, but the massive amounts of comps needed on top or repairs was rather obscene.
ReplyDeleteOne time, when I was around level 45 on my first toon and trying to get my weaponsmith specialty. At the time, farming all that mithril seemed overwhelming so I bought what felt like a small fortune (maybe 200 gold? I forget now). Since then, I've come to realize that gold just isn't that hard to get, so I never did it again.
ReplyDeleteNope. My stance on RMT has been clear from the beginning - I dont think that anyone has -any- justification for buying gold in WoW, regardless of any perceived grind or time requirement that gold buyers try to use as justification.
ReplyDeleteI kinda agree with Gevlon on his assertion that Blizzard could be doing a lot more to curtail gold buying/selling if only they wanted to. Makes one wonder when major raiding guilds have openly stated that they buy tons of gold to support their raiding regimen, and Blizzard does nothing about it.
Yes, in DAoC, but not in WoW. It's sooooo easy to make gold in WoW, it is genuinely stupid to buy gold.
ReplyDeletebought it
ReplyDeletesold it
bought characters
sold characters
paid for powerleveling
...but modern WoW has made these things obsolete.
Did once in WoW when I came back to the game on a new server. Was easy and fast transaction.
ReplyDeleteI've never bought any gold online. I did however sell gold to other folks, mainly friends or people that I let login at my home so I can tell Blizzard that I know the guys and am giving it to them as a gift. The Netherlands is a small place, you can get from one end to the other in 2-3 hours. And that's worth it for purchases above 50k.
ReplyDeleteYes, a couple of times.
ReplyDeleteNope. I don't exactly think it makes baby murlocs cry, I just have never needed more gold than I have, nor do I possess the disposable income. Besides, I'd be too afraid of getting hacked.
ReplyDeleteI've never bought gold or anything in an mmo wih real life money (besides subscriptions and a couple of server transfer for WoW).
ReplyDeleteBeing a broke college student my money is already tight, and the last thing I'm going to spend it on is virtual money. Especially when I can get just about anything I want to in WoW by either farming for it or just waiting long enough for it's price to drop.
I came back to World of Warcraft and really did not want to farm the funds for an epic flight mount so I bought some gold for it.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel bad either. I bought a BOP item and that was that. For items like that, ie. Things that do not give you any sort of tangible advantage in combat, Blizzard should just give you the option to spend real world $$$ to buy it. Better the money goes to them than to some Chinese Sweat Shop Owner.
A long time ago, when UO was fairly popular I was a regular buyer of gold/homes/resources off of Ebay. I'm not sure if it was officially against the ToS/EULA back then or not in UO. RMT was pretty mainstream in UO back then.
ReplyDeleteNope. If I had, then I'd have run out of things to do. And now in WLK, it's not even necessary as it falls from the sky like manna just for walking around.
ReplyDeleteAlso love how some people are posting not anonymously.
once traded gold on one server for gold on another to aid a server transfer in DAoC(so it was platinum).
ReplyDeleteNo,
ReplyDeleteNever bought gold in any MMO , never needed too and I think it would have spoiled the fun somehow.
No, thought about it when I was grinding for my epic mount back in vanilla, but never did.
ReplyDeleteAnd the deciding factor in the end was that the gold sellers were all so hinky I wasn't going to trust them with my CC number.
ReplyDeleteI did, many years ago, when the source of the gold was the work of other players. That was a straight-up money-to-time exchange. These days, I don't think it is okay, primarily because the gold comes from credit card fraud and account hacking. Now gold buying just encourages criminal behavior.
ReplyDeleteNo to buying and no to selling. I can't bring myself to pay someone to play my game for me, but I have no problem with other people doing it.
ReplyDeleteNope. Never ever been tempted either. It's possible that it's just a symptom of my being broke (I'm too young for a full time job, and i have no interest in a part time one right now.)
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty positive it wouldn't change, even if i could afford it, and it wasn't against the rules. IF i have to pay RL money for gold, it puts me off for some reason. Item shops tend to as well, for some reason.
Worst part is, it's just a gut feeling! no logic involved,haha.
I thought seriously about it at one point, to the point of pricing the gold. I was just too afraid I'd lose my account.
ReplyDeleteI brought 1k gold back in Vanilla as i was a terrible player back then but really wanted that epic mount.
ReplyDeleteAnd once in Darkfall, after returning from a bit of a break i bought 100k to help me get back into it and get my magic a little higher.
Wow... just wow.... 0_o
ReplyDeleteI think I probably wouldn't be so against this if the industry wasn't tied to so egregious activity like account hacking. Back in BC all we had to deal with were prolific farming which was bad enough, but the account hacking just took it to a level that simply can not be tolerated.
Yes, in every MMO I've played. I don't feel guilty about it either.
ReplyDeleteI never bought gold, but how about this for an anon admission. I not only botted WoW, I wrote bots that I publically released to other people helping hundreds (thousands?) of other people to also bot.
ReplyDeleteI started botting because my friends were botting. I started writing bots because the bots we were using sucked. And I kept botting because it was fun. I’m not talking about getting gold, or leveling or anything like that. I mean I spent a lot of time coding these bots, so it wasn’t about saving time.
For me the appeal was in building an AI that was intelligent enough to fool other people and actually played the game for me. There is a certain pride in coding the script for an AI and it’s absolutely fascinating to watch what I coded play the game on my behalf. My only regret in hindsight is that I publically released them.
It was a lot of fun thinking about ways to avoid getting detected. Things like detecting when someone is following you and then having the bot use the Flight Master to fly to an entirely other area all on it’s own. Or my personal favorite, handling whispers.
I had several tricks for handling answers to standard questions, but my favorite counter was the mistell. If someone were to ask me something my chat script couldn’t easily answer, I would reply about twenty seconds later with an offtopic mistell.
For example, if someone asked me if I wanted to help on this quest, it would wait 20 seconds and then randomly select an offtopic response like: “I say break up with the whore if she’s going to pull that crap” followed quickly (a few seconds) with a “sry mt”. And then I blacklisted that person and never responded to another whisper during that session. In most cases, I never got another whisper except for “lol”. But if the whispers did keep up for much longer than that, the bot would log for 20 minutes.
No I have not, and it's because I was worried about giving out my credit card to someone who was obviously shady to start with. Now I've learned how to make my own gold and don't feel I need to buy it. (Though paying 5k for epic flight on every toon makes me think about it sometimes!)
ReplyDeleteOnce in FFXI polled some money with a friend to get like 1k gil or something each. I haven't since but the friend has on several more occasions.
ReplyDeleteYes, and only regretted it in that it's very easy to get hooked on it. I bought currency in the following games:
ReplyDeleteDAOC
CoH/CoV
Guild Wars
WoW
SWG
Most of those I only bought once or twice, but was often tempted. It's probably only lack of reputable vendors that kept me from buying more. I bought in WoW maybe 1/2 dozen times, mostly because I had dozens of alts across many servers.
Yes, I've purchased. Mostly in WoW..I've probably purchased hundreds of thousands of gold. I bought it once to buy my boyfriend a crafted sword he really wanted. I bought it to get my flying mount on an alt. Once I've done that experience once, I don't need to do it again.
ReplyDeleteI've never sold gold, but I sold EQ1 characters. I've also bought EQ1 characters back in the day. I made thousands off that.
Generally, I evaluate the amount of time it's going to take me. If it takes too long and seems like a tedious un-fun waste of time..I'd rather buy it. I get just as much enjoyment.
Never been banned or had any repercussions.
Absolutely not, but not because of some worry about ethics or the game economy, it just make no financial sense. Money is way to easy to make in any given MMO.
ReplyDeleteI bought a some gold in a few games (Vanilla WoW/EQ2/Eve/UO). Never regretted it for it made my game experience more pleasant (no boring farming).
ReplyDeleteBoycotted it in Aion and quit that game (i HATED the farmers there - in other games they where a lot less visible)
In vanilla WoW I bought enough gold to get a mount, as I couldn't figure out how to make money at that point and I didn't perceive a stigma against it. Never done it since. As a side note, I also sold a WoW account to someone.
ReplyDeleteNo, but when I first started playing, I contemplated buying gold to buy my first mount (this is also back in Vanilla days where 40g seemed like a lot!) Ended up just farming enough ore and selling on the AH until I had enough money. Felt a lot more satisfying in the long run.
ReplyDeleteSince then, I've learned where farmed gold comes from and I refuse to support that business and/or risk my own account.
Let's see... Violated the TOS back in the DAOC days by:
ReplyDelete* Playing in Windowed Mode
* Transferring Plat between servers / realms
* Buying a few Plat on Alt servers (before finding the Transfer services)
* Letting my then-young daughter play on my account (running around, jumping off of things).
* Buying a level 50 character account from a Guildie who was quitting the game.
And, yes... It used to be a hack to be able to play DAOC in windowed mode. You see, only hackers and cheaters would want to IM with people not in the game or read email while waiting for the portal / while making hundreds of leather gloves and boots.
Back when, a core group of our guild would decide they'd accomplished what they wanted to on our home server / realm and we'd all agree to move to another of the three realms and start over (or try RP or PvP Servers). However, I'd usually end up wanting to sink money into crafting as well, and would buy a couple dollars worth of plat. Then I saw the server plat-transfer sites and would use that to move plats around between various servers and realms.
This was all in the first half of the last decade and I haven't bought gold for any other game since.
I regret nothing!
Most unscrupulous gaming activity I've participated in that is somewhat related to the topic is buying some extra sets of Diablo II cd keys so I could multibox several characters. Not only did I have multiple instances of D2 running (which at the time was only possible with a hack that Blizzard has subsequently banned people for using) but I used these extra accounts to bot characters. I wrote and modified AutoIT scripts to run certain dungeons/bosses for loot over and over again.
ReplyDeleteAs a previous poster said, the fun in this was in maximizing efficiency; the game was just a more interesting context than others.
As for gold/characters/powerleveling/etc, what's the point? I have a very hard time understanding the frame in mind in which buying gold is an appealing prospect. It speaks as much to bad game design as it does of the players who engage in it that so many people would pay to have others play portions of a game for them.
Never. And I hate loath and despise the spaminating Gold Sellers who are freaking everywhere.
ReplyDeleteNope, but I've been extremely tempted. Back in vanilla, when epic mounts cost 1000g and there were few ways to make money casually, I never came close to being able to afford it and almost bought gold to make up the gap.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that I wouldn't feel the same thrill of achievement if I knew I "cheated," much the same way I feel little excitement accomplishing something after I significantly outgear it(IE, downing the original Onyxia in WotLK Naxx gear), but that's a personal thing.
Nope but I did sell an account and then recovered it a year or so later.
ReplyDeleteNope but an ex does buy it regularly.
ReplyDeletenever, but I probably would've at some point if I had the money :/
ReplyDeleteNope, never understood the point. I'm a "enjoy the journey" kind of guy.
ReplyDeleteMany, many times. Multiple thousands of dollars worth, in my four-ish year stint as a wow addict.
ReplyDeleteYep all the time in WoW again busy in RL and the occasional $20 for a few thousand gold means less farming and no stress on still raiding.
ReplyDeleteNo problems.
Nope, I never have in any MMO and I've played quite a few.
ReplyDeleteNot a moral issue for me. I honestly don't even think about gold buying/selling...unless someone brings it up. I don't think I have ever considered it a viable way to get gold. And god knows there have been lots of times I wish I had more gold.
Got the whole poor college student thing going on for most of WoW, and before that I was a poor high school student. Even when I have disposable income, I've not really seen the point. The rates have never been high enough that I didn't think I was getting ripped off. Guess I may just be too miserly with my money?
I've never purchased gold for any MMO, but when I stopped playing DAOC I sold almost every plat I had.
ReplyDeleteThese sales financed an entire new set of living room furniture.
No, if I'm paying a subscription for a game I want to make it last as long as possible. Buying gold is a shortcut and I don't want to miss out on content because of it.
ReplyDeleteI bought 100G back in 2005. I had just hit level 40 and my mount fund was standing at around 30G; I couldn't afford to buy a mount or the mail armour that my newly-dinged hunter could wear. I think if hacking had been so prevalent back then I wouldn't have bought it, but at the time most gold was farmed. I did regret buying it, it felt like cheating and definitely diminished the pleasure of buying my mount. There was also the anxiety that I could get banned if found out. It was a one-off experience I've no desire to ever repeat it.
ReplyDeleteNo. I enjoy AH minigame in WoW, so buying gold just doesn't appeal. Plus it feels a little like paying somebody to play the game for me.
ReplyDeleteNever bought or sold gold, and never considered doing it neither.
ReplyDeleteYes - in FFXI it was very worth it - it made the game much more enjoyable for me. Money is hard to come by (generally requires camping a rare spawn for days or other terribly boring tasks). Some spells are both expensive and necessary for party play. Some equipment makes you much more valuable and likely to be accepted to a party. RMT cut out all the boring parts and let me enjoy the rest of the game.
ReplyDeleteIn WoW it had the opposite effect and sucked the fun out of the game because everything was so easy. I could have easily earned that gold in a short time. Any challenge the game posed could easily be met by any average person putting in minimal effort. Even crafting could be maxed out while leveling without much trouble. RMT didn't do anything - I made enough gold just by playing to buy whatever I needed. I ended up changing servers and playing without the RMT.
Yep, in FFXI and WoW.
ReplyDeletenope, never bought any gold
ReplyDeleteOnly once have I taken the 'easy' route in Eve, but through selling of PLEX. So I guess, no never did it against the rules.
ReplyDeleteAllways felt gaining gold/... wasn't worth the risk of losing the character/account.
are the comments IP recorded ? Maybe bliz or sony are paying tobold for the Ip address' of the poster and comparing them with customer accounts?
ReplyDeleteI have never bought nor sold gold - I already pay £8 per month to play, and I can't justify spending more money on a game, not to mention that if I did it I would always worry that I would get banned (not worried about getting hacked as I have the authenticator).
ReplyDeleteAlso it would undoubtedly take all the enjoyment out of the game - I see it as effectively cheating, and I am of the age now where that is no fun at all.
Those of you guys saying over and over how gold is so easy to come by in WoW, I simply can't see how you can say that.
ReplyDeleteI understand not buying gold because it undermines the sense of accomplishment, etc., but to say that it's faster to earn gold in WoW than in real life, I just can't understand that.
Say you make $100 per hour at work, not unreasonable for adults. That means you can exchange an hour of work for 10k WoW gold. Tell me how to make 10k gold per hour? Cannot be done. And even if you make $50 still there is no comparison.
I understand if you make $7 per hour or something, it's not worth it to you, but for most of us adults, it's a no brainer. If you want to save time, buy gold.
And yes, I have bought gold in WoW.
No, never. It always seemed silly to pay for what I thought was part of gameplay.
ReplyDeleteSay you make $100 per hour at work, not unreasonable for adults.
ReplyDeleteI'm not arguing with your basic premise, but the median wage in the US is $26,514, or a bit under $13/hour. It's likely that MMO players skew somewhat higher due to the fact that certain luxury goods are required to play such games, but $100 per hour (about $210k per year) or even $50 per hour is a very poor figure to assume.
Nope, but then I never got deeply into the end-game.
ReplyDeleteI have not bought gold, nor paid for anything else in a game besides the initial cost and subscription fee. I have paid time, though, and since time is money, and people learn at different rates, the RMT thing doesn't bother me much anymore (now that I'm older and time is more precious, rather than just blissfully used).
ReplyDeleteNo, still feels like cheating to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm old-fashioned.
I'm a lot less conservative than I once was and have really been considering it for a long time, but the fear of the banhammer keeps me from doing it. Also, one night of herbing normally keeps me just above the poverty line, but it would be a lot easier if I did just go ahead and buy some gold. Ah well.
ReplyDeleteNever (really, despite my late, non-anonymous post).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I suspect that my toon (Bristal) has. Got hacked last Summer (likely from using my toon name & password in forums?) and my account was promptly banned. Not sure what the little bastard did, he won't tell me. Too painful, I guess.
I don't rally have anything against others doing it unless it becomes rampant and destroys the game for me.
I don't & wouldn't because playing outside the boundaries of the virtual world would ruin the appeal of the game for me. Bristal and the alts are self-sufficient, complementary, and support each other financially.
If I sent them cash from out here it would make them all seem so much more 2 dimensional. And selling some of their cash for RL money? Heinous. How could they ever trust me again?
BTW, "Bristal and the Alts" would not be a very good name for a rock band.