I don’t think I’ve ever made that money back when I was playing WoW. Granted, gold was less common back then, but still, this is no way an easy feat. Too bad that it became meaningless with official gold trading. Back in the day making gold was the only way to having gold which was – and still is – needed to get consumables, BoE items and repairs.
Today you can just throw some real money on the problem and it’s solved. Usually this money is trivial compared to the effort needed to make it even the most effective methods – at least in well balanced games. In EVE it was possible to make $10-20 worth of ISK per hour, which wasn’t bad considering that you were still playing a game instead of doing real work. Actually many people did it as “real” work, as small-time goldsellers. But WoW decreased the need for gold (in EVE you can buy every “gear”, in WoW it’s mostly soulbound) enough to push down the demand. It was on purpose, to battle goldsellers. I understand their point.
But still, an important aspect of the game is lost and players who don’t realize this waste many hours farming gold that they could get from the price of a coffee.
Political PS: a lazy guy ate a banana and thrown away the peel. Which then triggered liberals and shut down a university event. I’ve been following US politics for years but I still roll my eyes how can such madness happen in a developed country.
Reminds me of Germany after WWI (minus inflation) – the amount of local currency needed for basic needs is great and local inhabitants see that their pay has many digits on it. In case of Germany, they understand that they are poor. But in WoW they are happy about it, not realizing that in terms of other currency, its worth is almost nothing.
About banana accident: After being told that it was racism, I could see why it could be viewed as one. But inside I was rolling on the floor laughing about vivid imagination of the one who reported it.
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@restet: even if the banana peel was placed there on purpose as a racist insult, it would only mean that one cowardly person is racist. Which doesn’t validate lockdown or anything other than point and laugh on the stupid klansman.
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The people who value purchased in-game rewards are people who value being good at the game itself and not having the profits from it. For some reason i am not aware of, this seems to be a weird idea that even some game designers seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around.
Gevlon’s particular stumbling block is the fact that he seems attach monetary value to in-game results almost on reflex and views results that have comparatively little monetary value as comparatively useless. This is a highly questionable position, predicated on the notion that everything that is useful is necessarily possible to monetize and that usefulness and ability to monetize are, in fact, in a positive correlation.
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Way off topic: I was thinking about your big list of MMO permutations while re-reading the pay-to-win article. Have you thought about pay-to-lose? You pay real money, and get a nice gaudy badge saying you’re playing at a disadvantage, and get to e-peen around about how you clear raids anyway. Imagine if WoW had a paid service where they stripped easy mode off a new levelling toon. E.g. no autoattack, mobs take less damage and do more, nerfed healing, expensive (instead of slow) food. Maybe even XP loss for death. If you can get it to max level, your toon gets a golden dragon on the portrait, like an elite mob, plus a unique transmog for an in-world badge. (Silver until then.)
I bet a WoT or LoL style competitive game could end up with monetization rates of well over 50% if they used such a system, as there would be an objective way to shame noobs.
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You can look at this as “malinvestment” all you want, but if she had fun playing a game, and it was that or mindlessly watch TV… AND, as a bonus, she gained some perceived benefit towards “advancing her character”… well then. So what if the dollars per hour isn’t high.
In the final analysis, ALL time you spend playing “games” is time essentially wasted in a sense. The “problem” in this context wasn’t something throwing “real money at” would solve, the “problem” was that she had time to kill and nothing of value to do in that time slot. Paying real money to not be able to waste some time would be a greater malinvestment.
Sure, you could argue that every non productive moment (Other than required sleep and personal maintenance) should be spend on productive pursuits, and sure, there ARE people that driven and disciplined… but it sure as hell isn’t you, I, or any of the rest of us with even an ancillary connection to the game world as a player. THOSE people avoid games and “time wasting activities” like the plague.
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That 17k gold came from 20 minutes, not one hour, which would put the return at closer to $3.50 per hour assuming that the sole purpose of the activity was to gain wow-gold.
That assumption is not necessarily true. The cost of earn that currency becomes unquantifiable if the currency was a side-product of
– grinding for account-bound rewards.
or
– an activity conducted for relaxation or enjoyment.
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@Maxim: I attach competitive value to gaming achievements. 1600 rating (which I have in PUBG now after ladder reset) isn’t “good” or “bad” per se. It’s good because it comes with a #3428 position out of 200K in EU (top 2%) If someone can buy it for $2, it will be bought, so it’s worthless to pursue
@Smokeman, Dobablo: she could advance her character by throwing the price of a latte to the problem while playing something more engaging in the game than chain-skinning. But more importantly, she wrote a post about it, so considered it important or valuable.
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“This is the glorious period where I can make nearly 20k gold from less than an hour’s work.”
“There’s a mount to be had here, and if the grinding keeps happening it shouldn’t be long to obtain. I’d planned for 500 demons a day but was too busy yesterday, so I’ll just have to farm 1000 mobs for leather to make up for it. Honestly, that shouldn’t take long at all.”
>work
>grind
>farm
>not long
These are not words folk use to indicate they’re enjoying themselves.
There are several motives they could have had other than simply getting a lot of gold, but I’m not seeing any evidence of them. E.g. If I had done it, I would have done it because I’m sometimes in the mood for a meditative activity like repetitive skinning, or for Science™, neither of which are fungible with coffee. It wasn’t either of those.
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@Gevlon
When you are saying “worthless”, you keep forgetting to add “to me, personally, because competition is the only thing i value in games”.
If you use worthless as a blanket statement, you are denying all worth of games that other people see that is not derived from competition. Not sure what makes you feel you are in a position to do that.
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@Maxim: competition is the only competitive advantage of games as a genre. If you want to socialize, Facebook is better. If you want to explore a story, films and TV and books are better. If you want to just fool around, minecraft-like toys are better. A game dev must focus on competition or will be beaten by a company that doesn’t have to bother with designing graphics engine or deal with goldsellers.
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