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Help me understand. Why do you buy gold?
bcbully
Member EpicPosts: 11,838
It just doesn't make sense to me. I don't have a profound paragraph to write, I just want to know why. Thanks in advance.
"We see fundamentals and we ape in"
Comments
I remember a time in Lineage 2 when I could not make gold on my own, it was a completely separate grind in a separate area of the game, and the leveling was such a giant grind at the time that anyone focusing purely on that missed out completely on the adena grinding. You had to have two accounts to make any decent money and even then it was making a margin of a profit off of a dwarf character sitting in town selling things for 2 to 5 more adena than you got them for, it was garbage unless you happened to be a very high level in a good clan who had bosses on farm and heroes, if you had that then you were an adena making machine. I had to buy gold at points just to be able to get gear to continue my leveling, just because gear was so insanely overpriced and the crafting took so many materials that I just didn't have the time to dump into every single aspect of the game.
Oh I forgot to add as well, back in the time when I bought gold, real item drops in Lineage 2 had maybe a 0.005% chance to happen, so in 3 years of playing from the launch I got maybe 2 real items that dropped both of which were complete garbage.
I don't, but one of my guildmates in WoW bought gold a couple of times. Once was for the big mount with the vendor and smith on the back and the other time... I forget
People will buy gold to buy in game items that cost in game currency, be it mounts, armors/weapons, mats, potions, high end items in the Auction House, what have you. There are many "guides" on how to make "easy gold" in almost any MMO, but many people just do not have the ability to follow them. Out comes the credit card to purchase what they want in the game.
Does that help any?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
This was a big topic about 4 years ago, so if you decide to Google an answer to your question, adding "2009" will help you track down some good stuff. Some examples:
One answer that rarely comes up when players talk about it is the fact that it's a hobby. As such, people like to buy extras for their hobby, and game gold is one of them. For many, it's as simple as that.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Really simple answer there...Not every one can spend 50 hous a day gaming so they spend money to get items needed to compete. There are a lot of other ones but that is the most important one imho
It's valid regardless of whether you feel they are playing wrong or not. You've seen enough bcbully posts to know that the spin is intention here. He asks about buying gold because he knows most posters here will assume 'illegal' or against the game rules. From the replies you can easily see that is the assumption here, despite EQ2, NWO, GW2 and many other games making it doable within legal means.
Why do they do that? Because people like to spend extra for their hobby.
A LOT of people do. If they're enjoying it, they don't mind throwing more money at it. In none of the three games I mentioned, where one can legally get game funds, does it give a player any significant edge over other players. One is not suddenly a 'non-MMO player' or 'playing wrong' because they decided to buy a bunch of sparkly crap to hang off their avatar, and they most certainly don't have some kind of IWIN button either.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
lets say you got a 40hour/week job...
theres much less time to play then someone in college/school/unemployed.....
so i could either spend the little time i have for games grinding money etc etc....
or just go to any of the billion gold/money selling websites buy some for the fraction of time/money i would have to spend in a game...
selling/buying gold does not inflate the ingame economy nor does it hurt anyone.... except maybe someones ego
I can only speak from my own opinion.
People who buy gold are typically people who have disposable income. Someone who has disposable income typically has a good job so it limits the time they can play. They still want to keep up but don't have the time to farm gold and raid. So they buy gold to save time.
I get it and could care less if they do. They work for their money and should be able to spend it how they like.
I would rather someone work and buy gold then to be unemployed and have massive amounts of gold. Gold Buyer > Deadbeat any day of the week.
Again.. Just my opinion.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
dont know some people call in experience....
in school i had about 20-25hours/week.... i could easily skip a day or two per week and play in that time.... while in school i played EQ/DaoC and i played a lot...
i work about 40hours/week now and i can barely play... okay theres more then just work/school..... but still in school i had much much more time to play then now....
to feed the gold farmers and their families....
ok, seriously, i mean why don't we wash our own cars, butcher our own meat... the list goes on and on...why pay for anything at all? the people buy gold has looking at it as a chore, just different people has different view on video games and money in their life
Well buy gold sounds not so good to me, but playing an mmo I would rather spend 10€ buying a magic carprpet than joining a raid 150 times with a 0.01% chance to get it if it even drops.
So in that way f2p with cash shop is petter imo than p2p, you get your magic carpet when you want it not after months of frustration of never finding it.
Now there is just a minor problem and that is for devs how to get people to stay playing their game.
i know people who pay thousands of dollars each month on cars/alcohol/cloth..... just because some people cant handle money....
im trying to say what you just said... people who waste money they dont have arent limited to buying gold..... the gold seller is not responsible if you spend money you dont have... neither is a car dealer responsible if you buy a car you cant afford
2 options:
1) do i go to work for 10 hours, use the money I made to buy 50 gold in a game
2) farm 50g ingame, doing extremely boring and repetitive actions for considerably longer than 10 hours, possibly 30-100 hours
I don't buy gold, this is what I consider to be the mindset of the buyers.
Buying gold is almost always more time efficient than farming it yourself. Reason being the source of that gold is mainly China so the prices are low. Most of my pc components have the label 'made in china' on them. Everyone takes advantage of cheap chinese labour, because doing it yourself is always gonna cost more in either time or money.
If video games were banned in countries with wildly different income levels than the western world, most people would think twice before reaching for their credit card.
Simple answer would be: Time & effort.
Bought gold once (be it a rather large amount) because I had so many alts that to try and kit them all out with epic mounts (you can work out what game now) that it would have taken years of pure grind to get them sorted, so it was the simple option, buy gold, buy the mounts, play the game the way it was meant to be. ie. Raid and dungeon crawling.
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
Really?
So if I offered you 5 million dollars to write up a paragraph or two as to the possible reasons why someone would buy gold you would sit there slack jawed and throw up your hands?
I think that makes less sense to me.
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Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
besides the 'time is money' and if you have money and dont mind 'cheating' a bit to get ingame currency (sometimes, depending on the game and usually pve games, i like to progress only naturally as it adds another layer of depth to the game, for me) another concept used in games like Eve is investing in yourself or seeding the market. you may buy $50 near when you started or even buy a better character, planning on using this investment to eventually sell items yourself and make a profit, more time efficiently than if you had to gather the original amount of items at the pace you were originally limited to. another reason ive traded in certain games for ingame items was because i had made profit selling items i made in other games. i decided it was a bit more fair to use this game profit on other game purchases.
i personally dont think RMT will ever go away. the problem i have is with instanced nonPvP games, and even in EVE the biggest producers are the mining bots and market bots, there is no player check on them. open world pvp really weeds out who gets to do the productive farming and botting fast.
Depends on the value of the game I'm playing and the mileage I'm expecting to get out of it. With a game I truly like, I wouldn't do it. But with a game I know I'm not really vested into I might. It's funny how we all feel time is more important than money (or there wouldn't be a business for gold farmers), but is it really so simple? Sometimes money is more important than time with some folks. Let me ask:
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
An interesting statement to see after you corrected someone's opinion. I don't doubt that you and your friends can't manage your money. However, your conclusion based on that is purely anecdotal.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
1. Farming gold is boring.
I think we can all agree on this. IF your playing the game for the sole purpose of increasing your money, it's not going to be fun.
2. Transitive property.
If
Gold = Time
And
Time = Money
Than
Money SHOULD = Gold as well
Saying that it doesn't or can't or shouldn't is flawed logic to the HIGHEST DEGREE
3. Time is a finite resource. Why spend that time doing something Un-fun. I understand that you are ruining the games economy. I understand that in the long term your going to degrade the quality of your own experience. If game companies are going to force you to play their game in un-interesting ways to accomplish tasks however, then that's on them.
Just so you guys know. I have never, and likely will never buy gold in any game. I've never really had a problem getting gold because I enjoy gathering crafting mats and in most games there are ways to make gold that are fun. However, there are games where it really is just a grind for the sake of having a time-sink, and I understand why players would want to pay for the gold, if it took them less time to earn the cash than it will to earn the gold.
I've never bought gold and never will. If the process of earning things in games is so boring and unfufilling that I'm tempted to spend real money to escape it, time to find another game.
Why people do it boils down to laziness. Many of the new generation of players don't want to actually play games and get a sense of accomplishment out of earning the rewards. The just want "All the shiny stuff! NOW!". It's not surprising that third parties and increasingly game companies themselves are exploiting this laziness. SOE is even going to sell ready-made level 85 characters in EQ2 because a lot of people can't be bothered to level up properly.
It makes me sad for the state of games and I hope everyone who buys gold illegally gets their credit card stolen or account hacked, since the more people buy it on the black market the more companies are going to seek to profit themselves from these "features".
I despise the person buying the gold as much as I despise the person selling the gold. Now does that mean I wish he/she didn't have the option? No.
I have no problem with despising people. Yes, they can do what they want with their own money and I can cast any judgement about them as I want with no recourse and my chosen reaction is to despise them. Nothing at all wrong with it since it's a personal notion.
Jm2c.
EDIT: Someone told me the other day "bro, they just trying to make a buck." My response, "sucks to be them." :P (A chat we had in DCUO...but he didn't have a response lol.) That brings up another issue. Humanity in of itself doesn't care about one anohter if/when one's own needs are met. If one's needs are met it'd take a whole lot for someone to shift their thinking to another.
Discuss. Reason. Society.
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