http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/03/14/1655206.shtml Slashdot just posted that a documentary looking into the lives of chinese youth who play games for a living. The whole documentary should come out soon, but they have a preview of what it has in store. You can view the preview here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4 . It's very interesting because it gives you the view point from the workers themselves. They see it as an easy way of living compared to the lives they used to live, how its all about having fun, and doing nothing but that. What makes it more interesting is how they technically made into a legitimate business. Of course, some MMOG players hate their guts maybe because they've been dupped by one by letting them join their group and the worker running off with most of the rare items. That's understandable, but life is like that, you get cheated if you're not careful. Anyway, cant wait until the full documentary comes out. I'd definitely see it.
Interesting.I always wondered about the farmers.I cant knock the hustle.I would watch this doc.Even though I dont play MMORPG's anymore.I never saw farmers as a negative part of WoW when I played.There is demand for what they supply. With all the time people put into those games why not make some cheese on the side.
I farm gold farmers... Well, actually i've never played an mmo... Interesting research tho, i've always wondered.
Interesting stuff! I've never played an MMORPG before, maybe Runescape briefly years back, but this seems like a growing industry and has a lot of potential. Hey, if the people like the job, that's all that pretty much matters!
Well, back in the day they totally screwed up Lineage 2 and I don't know if they fixed it. Instanced zones make it less of a problem in modern MMORPGs I'd imagine. I don't have a problem with people selling stuff in MMORPGs as such, but it does seem to end up ruining the balance of the game and some of the mystery (in terms of farming rare items).
Does Lineage II have a monthly fee? I was thinking of getting in some good MMOs that dont have monthly fees if possible. I wanted Planetside but I dont have a credit card. BTW, if money could be made on MMOs, I'd do it. Did you know some Chinese guy got arrested by the Japanese police for "Virtually mugging" an online player? He killed the player and took his gold (Which is doable in the game but you could get into trouble for it?)
What makes this topic "hot" in most MMORPG forums is that when a group/guild gets together to go on an adventure one of these types of people would join them, pose as a normal player. A lot of what they do, literally, is just not participate in the fights or heal their team mates and they either run in when an enemy drops a weapon to pick it up or if their team mate dies, they leave the body there after an hour or few minutes (depending on the game) and take all the items from the dead player. They don't really do this for "fun", yeh they might get a kick out of it, but they have quotas to meet otherwise they can get canned from the job.
Lineage 2 does have a subscription, I'm afraid. It has player killing on all servers (or did last time I played in 2004), but you get heavily penalised if you do so. Guildwars doesn't, but it's a bit simplified... kind of like an advanced Phantasy Star Online. Still fun though, and you can pick it up on play.com for around 15 GBP these days. Not sure on the price in the USA though. In terms of Planetside, you can buy Sony Online subscription cards in EB and Best Buy in the USA I think, or in Game in the UK.
Why do you get penalized for PKing? They just should fix PKing so no one breaks any rules. I didnt know you could get into trouble for killing a gamer and taking all his gold, armor, weapons, etc., anyway. It happened to me all the times I played Graal.
I'm not sure if it still works the same, but PKing worked like this: You are free to kill any player in the world (assuming you are able to do so stat-wise), but if you do then you become "red". When you become red anyone in the game can attack you without suffering a penalty. You cannot go into towns and if you are killed you will drop something at random, including armour and weapons. Some of the items in the game cost many thousands (or millions) of GP, so you could potentially get totally screwed because anyone can pick up what you drop and you need it to keep on grinding. To get out of being red you either have to get killed or kill many NPCs until you work off the bad karma you received for killing a player. Of course, without the penalty for killing a red player, you'd get people swarming after them so that they could loot whatever the player was wearing or carrying and out of character chat was regularly filled with people reporting reds in certain zones or so forth. It could be fun sometimes, and if you were in a good guild you could go hunt farmers sometimes. Unfortunately they hung around in massive gangs and literally had a high level boss to look after them. At one stage a Chinese farmer was the highest level character in the game and his guild of farmers defeated the NPCs of a town and took it over. It was an interesting dynamic, but totally unbalanced and potentially game spoiling. Once, while I was doing a class related quest of progression a bunch of chinese farmers were guarding the quest zone and charging protection money before they'd let people go and get their quest items. If they didn't pay they'd kill them! I should also add that during normal play, if you get killed by an NPC you could also drop things (although much less commonly) and again, anyone can pick them up. This, the constant grinding, and the fact the game got the full of griefers, farmers and net teens (no offence to anyone on the board... but you know what I mean) made me decide to quit.
So, I could play a game for a few years and become a high level vet, then turn and get a buncha noobies to join my guild, and make money? Sounds kinda like a rags to riches (literally) story of a mob boss. I did think about making an anti noob guild on Graal that killed any and all noobs for fun, but that would PROBABLY cause some trouble.
I never played it, but Ultima Online was wrecked for that exact same reason I was told. Noob huntin'! :rambo:
