Thread Tools Display Modes
06-30-05, 10:54 AM   #21
spiritwolf
A Murloc Raider
 
spiritwolf's Avatar
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 5
Originally Posted by Beladona
Quote:
I see this as a worthwhile addition, and think it would be easy to implement.

Think of it this way. Reverse rested xp.

When you spend lots of time at an inn, you gain rested xp. The opposite should be true when you spend lots of time AWAY from an inn. Think about it this way. The longer you play without visiting a location that would give you rested xp, the lower your xp ratio and drop rate chance gets. Don't modify people's stats or anything, as that can be seen as unbalancing. Simply make it so that the longer you play non-stop, the less chance you have of getting good drops (past green) and the less xp you get.

As an addition, they could implement negative rest. If your rest value is below 0, when you finally DO reach a place that allows you to rest, you have to make up that negative amount before you get back into the rested bonus again. So if I played 48 hours straight without resting, and my rest value was something like -200, I would have to gain that -200 to get back to 0 rest, and only then would I be able to acrue rest xp.

I am sure some people would not like the idea of drop rate reduction being tied into rest xp, and I agree that may be a bit much, but from the point of view of trying to prevent true farming bots from gaining anything, it really WOULD be effective...
This sounds like the fatigue in Star Wars Galaxies : from the first enemy you fight, you gaine fatigue, which is a mental disability. You have to rest your fatigue and heal it by watching dancers or listening to musicians. It was a way to give a purpose to these two professions, but the beneficial part is that you are forced to go to an inn from time to time, because your efficiency decreased a lot.

The idea could be exploited in WoW but should carrefully be planed as extremes could gank gameplay for casual gamers...

great idea tho Littlejohn !
__________________
"Who's scruffy-lookin' ?" Han Solo
  Reply With Quote
06-30-05, 07:49 PM   #22
Littlejohn
A Warpwood Thunder Caller
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by Remelio
You're missing the "bot owning the camp" bit too.
If the bot gets fatigued then it won't be very effective. Give people the choice: your bot can play or you can play, but you can't do both. (The game gets a *lot* harder if you play exhausted...)

super efficient bot that will always react faster than you because its going at the speed of the processor instead of your brain. Even worse, a pvp bot?
So you've never killed a mob?! Humans are very competetive with the AI in the game -- this isn't a pure click fest. Why do you think player-made AI would be so much better than Blizzard's? (Off-topic: I've always thought it would be fun to choose to play a random mob. Spend an afternoon in an instance giving players some surprises. Every time you die, you get transported to a different random mob.

So if you look at the bigger picture, its more than just "making farming easier" and "thats not how you're supposed to play" - at excessive levels, the economic impact alone would make it to where normal players simply wouldn't have enough gold to buy things, because gold is so worthless in the player economy because of the massive influx of gold due to farmers.
I agree with you 100%! I just don't see anti-botting measures as effectively fighting that problem.

A warlock's pet AI or auto-run doesn't hurt anybody. I think Blizz crushes these mods just because they want a very clear, no exceptions, anti-bot policy. What's the goal of the policy though? Advertising? Winning the hearts and minds of players? That seems unlikely to me.

If they are trying to eliminate the "aftermarket" for gold, items and accounts, that makes more sense. BUT, it's not going to work -- all they are doing is creating human bots in cheap labor countries.

They've got to limit in-game supply. It's impossible to reduce spawn rates, so they must either reduce per-player drop rates (easy) or reduce per-player kills (also easy). I bet both of these could be done so that only a very small number of players are negatively affected.

P.S. I'm not using any of these affected mods so I'm not mad about it or anything. I don't even use decursive! It's just a very interesting problem that I don't really understand completely. Oddly, I sort of see the genesis of robot discrimination here. If people can't handle a bot beating them in a game, God help us if bots ever learn to post on a message board!

P.P.S. How do you know I'm not a bot? And does it matter?
  Reply With Quote
06-30-05, 11:43 PM   #23
Beladona
A Molten Giant
 
Beladona's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 539
Originally Posted by Littlejohn
... (Off-topic: I've always thought it would be fun to choose to play a random mob. Spend an afternoon in an instance giving players some surprises. Every time you die, you get transported to a different random mob...
We did that as guides in Everquest. Was pretty fun to play NPC characters from time to time and give out items. I am sure many players are familiar with the GM Events...
  Reply With Quote
06-30-05, 11:46 PM   #24
Cairenn
Credendo Vides
 
Cairenn's Avatar
Premium Member
WoWInterface Admin
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 7,134
And they (EQ) actually had that in the game for players as well for a short period of time (was it Test server only Bela? I can't remember now), where you could play an NPC. You hit the button, it randomly chose one for you, you died, you respawned as something else. Was fun. Freak the heck out of newbs I can tell ya .... "hey, what's going on?!?! the mobs don't act like this!"
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 03:02 AM   #25
Remelio
 
Remelio's Avatar
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 696
Originally Posted by Cairenn
And they (EQ) actually had that in the game for players as well for a short period of time (was it Test server only Bela? I can't remember now), where you could play an NPC. You hit the button, it randomly chose one for you, you died, you respawned as something else. Was fun. Freak the heck out of newbs I can tell ya .... "hey, what's going on?!?! the mobs don't act like this!"
Something like this is coming out in the next expansion for eq from what I hear.
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 03:03 AM   #26
Remelio
 
Remelio's Avatar
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 696
Originally Posted by Littlejohn
P.P.S. How do you know I'm not a bot? And does it matter?
You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 05:34 AM   #27
Littlejohn
A Warpwood Thunder Caller
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 90
The thread over on the Blizz forums got several responses by people who like to farm for long periods of time. I guess if lots of players like to do that, then there's no way to distinguish between "good" players and "bad" gold farmers. (These players do seem kind of anti-social to me though. One said that e-Bay gold doesn't hurt anybody. Another said he's been GM'd for excessive farming.)

I really don't understand the desire that mobs must drop the same stuff after you kill them 57 million times in a row. It crosses the line from fun to work for me. Actually, it's WAY over the line.

Has a game ever had declining drop rates? First 10 mobs drop 10s. Next 10 drop 9s. Next 10 drop 8s. (Obviously this has to be per-player. It would suck if I killed 10, then you came along and only got the 9s drop rate.)
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 07:33 AM   #28
diiverr
A Theradrim Guardian
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 67
This thread seems to have focused in on botting, so this might be a bit of a hijack.
UI mods that automate character movement are detrimental to the game, as it plays a key role in botting and other potential exploits. It also runs counter to the spirit of the game. Any UI mods that automate character movement will no longer work in the 1.6 version of the game.
As I understand it, this will negatively impact a number of autobuff/autocast addons. It's another issue, but personally, I wager the autocast mods that key off movement will find another trigger that works. They always do. That leaves us with the core of the change, as it was described in the quote above: automated movement.

Admittedly, I only skimmed the thread over on the official forums, but a number of posters seemed to be most "up in arms" about the detrimental effects this change will have on AddOns the likes of AutoTravel and Abandon Ship anyway. Not the buff mods, but the actual travel mods themselves.

This has probably been mentioned somewhere already, and would be no small feat for Blizzard to implement, but why don't they include an alternate means of travel in the game? If there are honestly that many people that find the act of foot travel in this game to be -that- irritating or tedious, then the game has a design flaw.

Give folks a reasonable mounted travel option, from town to town, with the ability to dismount at any point along the route, and it would seem you have eliminated a large platform for a great deal of their userbase complaints. I was thinking a rental mount on a fixed path. They wouldn't have to go everywhere, just "fill in the gaps" with logical routes. A Kodo ride from Camp Taurajo to the back gate of Ogrimmar or that Epic Kodo orc guy at the edge of the salt flats. That sort of thing. Have them travel at mount speed, but follow the normal foot roads/paths. Then, when you needed to tromp all the way up to the sludge fen or down to Freewind Post on your 15th alt, you could at least have an option to "horse-it" and hop off close to where you wanted to be without having to dodge disgruntled emu and hyenas with attitude problems all the way there.

Heck, if that's too much trouble to implement, maybe the flight masters should just sell gnomish "parachutes" to mitigate falling damage, and then enable the jump button during flights, or at least portions of flights. You could keep these parachutes use-specific through backstory of some kind of "static line" engineering that only works with a contraption on the flying steed.

Then again, after I take a look, the movement mods don't seem to be -that- popular, when you look at sheer download numbers. Unless they are packaged with popular suite's I'm not aware of? I don't even know. It could just be my skimming of the official post just picked up on what I wanted to read, or there is an unusually vocal minority squawking over there. I recall one poster even threatening to take the issue to the press in the UK, LOL.

<shrug>

DAoC style horse routes are the one single feature I find I miss in WoW. It was nice to be able to hop on a pony to "x" and know you could jump off half way there and usually be reasonably close to wherever you wanted to be. It would at least give you a minute of relative safety to hit the rest room, nuke a burrito, whatever, before you and your group got underway. Typically, this was while you waited for someone that "forgot to jump" rather than while you were personally en-route... but hey.
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 08:30 AM   #29
Beladona
A Molten Giant
 
Beladona's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 539
that or implement waystations in the larger areas with small mounts that you ride to a waystation. Make them work just like a griffin, where you ahve to ride it to the end, but at least with a waystation, you could potentially get to the middle of the area quickly...

You can then hop waystation to get across areas. You just have to ride twice (town to waystation, and then waystation to next town)

As for the autobuff addons that fire when you hit forward or a movement key or whatever, it is easy enough to set a simple frame to fire on a fairly common event (or a few events). I kind of didn't understand why they decided to do it via movement triggers in the first place...

Last edited by Beladona : 07-01-05 at 08:34 AM.
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 10:05 AM   #30
Inokis
EQInterface Staff
 
Inokis's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 156
I agree withe the City to City mount idea as an option for those who have issues manually navigating the world. I don't agree with exhaustion as a fix, this would negatively impact people who aren't doing anything wrong.

On a side note, mods such as AutoPetFeeding could soon be addressed as well. Although minor it is a bot function.
__________________
If not yourself, who can you count on...
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 11:58 PM   #31
mondoz
An Aku'mai Servant
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 31
One of the things I liked the most about WoW when I first started playing it was how cool it was to venture out into unexplored territories and discover what was just over the next ridge... The difference between the various areas were so distinct and striking, it was so much fun to just explore...

But now, after 60 levels on one character, and a total of about 30 or 40 levels across various alts, the exploration factor just isn't quite the same.
I haven't used any auto travel mods, but I can see their appeal. I can't count the number of times I've travelled the same routes over and over...

As Blizzard defines them, auto travel mods provide automated gameplay, which in general can be a Bad Thing. However, trivial actions, such as moving from city to city on foot don't sound to me like they would have a detrimental effect on the overall mechanics of the game. If a player can still be attacked during his travels, I don't see why it would be so bad.

I'm not sure why auto-travel mod discussions almost always descend into the realm of auto-farm/auto-kill/auto-play mods.
There is a massive difference between the two categories, both in concept and in complexity of implementation.
Recording and playback of motion between coordinates is a very simple concept. There is no reaction or conditional actions taken.

The category of 'auto-play/auto-combat/auto-farming' is completely different. A mod that aquires targets, applies a strategy to defeat the target, loot the target, recover lost resources, and repeat the process... Handling all the possible conditions and reactions, for various classes, targets, areas...
I believe Blizzard could easily defeat a mod like this due to the complexity involved, without resorting to implementing a new game mechanisim like the fatigue concept.

Previously, Blizzard has taken ideas from the most popular user mods and incorporated them into their GUI. If auto-travel, or some other form of 'common path travel' is popular enough, I imagine Blizard could implement something in-game to provide this functionality and still prohibit user-created automation.

Taken alone, I really don't see the auto-travel mods as being that bad. I don't see how it would affect anyone other than the player, and it certainly wouldn't give them some kind of huge advantage...
  Reply With Quote
07-01-05, 11:59 PM   #32
mondoz
An Aku'mai Servant
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 31
As to the effect of excessive farming, automated or otherwise, I do not believe that this sort of behavior would have a substancial detrimental effect.
Assuming 'Bad' Farming provides a proportionally large sum of money, what would one do with it? Sell it on ebay? Buy items on the AH?
If it were disproportionately distributed, via ebay or another real-life transaction, these other players would be faced with the same decision. What to do with the money?
What can money really buy in WoW?
For those whom have reached the 'end game' phase of WoW, money doesn't matter quite as much as the 'uber loot' bind-on-pickup items from high level instances. Money won't buy these items, and by the time you can actually use the best bind-on-pickup items, you've leveled up to the point where you can easily afford to buy most anything on the AH.

So, if a level 20 character suddenly had 5000 gold, what would happen? They might buy all the slots in the bank, and fill them with 16 slot bags. Maybe they'd outfit themselves with a full compliment of 16 slot bags to carry around, and the best level 20 equipment available on the AH.
Maybe they'd get a few enchantments.
Buying the bags would give some money to some high level players who made the bags, buying the enchantments would also give high level players some money. Not very much money, and certainly not enough to destabilize the entire economy.
What if they decide to power level a trade skill by buying out all the items on the AH that they need? They could buy up hundreds of stacks of wool, silk, dust, herbs, ore, whatever they needed. If they worked at it, they might level their trade up to 225 in a single session. They'd still have to actually 'play' the game to go level up to get beyond 225, (as I recall, I had to be level 40 to train alchemy beyond that point) and that's something money won't do for them.
What about all the materials they bought on the AH? I can't recall ever seeing a shortage of low-level trade goods on the AH. I'm not sure anyone could actually buy all of a certain category before people would keep selling more and more to replace it... So there wouldn't likely be a shortage of the materials for other people. But what about prices of these materials? Would they skyrocket as our imaginary rich character bought these items in massive quantites? Once he was done buying them, who would pay the high prices? Lower level characters who would typically buy them couldn't afford them, so they would either farm them themselves, or wait for the inevitable undercutting process to take over, and deflate prices within minutes.
Even if a relatively large percentage of players, perhaps as high as 20% on a single server suddenly had thousands of gold, there's just not much you can really do with it to actually affect other people.
If someone outbids me on a really rare item, it doesn't really matter if they 'bought' their money or not, as there's always going to be someone richer out there who actually earned their money some other way than 'bad' ways.


Let's take this to the extreme.
What about the 'normal' person running about trying to make their way through WoW, without the excess gold 'everyone' else would have if 'bad' farming were rampant?
Would they still sell their vendor trash after killing level 1 mobs and learning the ropes?
Would they still run around doing quests, gaining money and items from NPCs and looting items as they gained XP? Would they still buy the level 1-10 grey equipment sold by the vendors before they could even begin to look at what's for sale on the AH?
When would they start to be affected by being the only person on the server without 5000 gold in their pockets? NPCs wouldn't change their prices for training. Minerals and herbs would still be found in the usual places in the wild, fish would still be swimming about in the streams and lakes.
They could still take their linen scraps gathered from kobold corpses and fashion tattered robes to train their tailoring, and assemble meager leather armor from the skins of the animals they've killed.
The only place that would affect him would be if he tried to buy something on the auction house. If everyone was so rich, and gold worthless, he wouldn't be able to afford anything. He'd be forced to kill things, run through instances, and use what he found on corpses for equipment... until he found something to sell.
He could go collect some kind of trade good, and sell it on the AH at huge prices (everyone is rich, so prices must be super high) and suddenly he'd have a lot of money too. After selling a bunch of things he found in the game, he'd be rich from selling items at fantastically inflated prices. Just like everyone else.

I don't know about you, but that really sounds pretty similar to my own personal experiences in this game. Everyone else seems super rich, you work your way up to having as much gold as everyone else, because no one can affect what you make or find out in the wild. Anyone can find a really rare item that makes them a fortune overnight. Anyone can spend 24/7 grinding through instances to find rare items, and be on equal footing with all the other ultra-rich players.


I've heard a lot of people say that 'bad' farming would destroy the economy, but I just don't see how that would happen...
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 08:48 AM   #33
guice
A Cobalt Mageweaver
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 236
As I understand it, this will negatively impact a number of autobuff/autocast addons. It's another issue, but personally, I wager the autocast mods that key off movement will find another trigger that works. They always do. That leaves us with the core of the change, as it was described in the quote above: automated movement.
I, for one, never like UI doing things for me. It trivialized the game. It removed the skill from the player and put them onto the computer.

Need a heal? No problem! Just pop-in an add-on and it'll automatically tell me which heal will be most efficient for you. Move to another computer and you're screwed cause you've never learned, yourself, how to do it properly.

I'm very happy to see these bot UI add-ons leaving. The game is ment to make you learn your character as well as the game. When you got UIs doing everything for you, you've failed half of your learning course.

As for the comment earlier about how a movement UI removed the tandim of constant runs; I've personally never had problems with it. I just pop-on autorun, and switch between two systems while my character is running. Or I'll look over their Inventory, questlist, etc and build a "plan of action". Just imagine the game w/out gryphons.

The game is ment to make it feel "large" and that it does (EQ tried this but massively failed when they added 200%+ speed buffs). You spoke of Dustwollow Marsh, which means you hadn't gotten your mount yet. That's part of the game and one should imbrase it, not trivalize it. When you turn 40 you can get youself a mount, kind of like a "reward" for making it that far.

Last edited by guice : 07-02-05 at 08:50 AM.
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 10:28 AM   #34
Beladona
A Molten Giant
 
Beladona's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 539
ufortunately while the argument that it "does no real harm" is a somewhat valid argument, the true case is not so easy to discount. Past games have taught most that farming actually inflates economy and prices, resulting in devalue of in-game funds.

Think about it in terms of real life economics. The easier it is to come by money, the more exensive the goods in that area. That is the concept of "cost of living" in the United States. If you can get money easier in one place than another, usually the cost of living in that location is also higher. The same would be true in wow, except there are no boundaries such as location. The easier it is for players to get gold, the more people sell their goods for. It becomes a self propogating issue that can become serious if left unchecked.

THIS is why you have different prices on different servers. Player population and ratios affect gold income and as a result affect the prices you see in the AH. Easily getting gold from an online "farmer" also affects that...

Last edited by Beladona : 07-02-05 at 10:32 AM.
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 06:52 PM   #35
mondoz
An Aku'mai Servant
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 31
Originally Posted by Beladona
Think about it in terms of real life economics. The easier it is to come by money, the more exensive the goods in that area. That is the concept of "cost of living" in the United States. If you can get money easier in one place than another, usually the cost of living in that location is also higher.
...
In real life economics, 'cost of living' increases when inflation causes the prices of all goods and services to rise, thus increasing the 'cost to live'.
However, in WoW, with two exceptions, all prices for goods and services are fixed.
The Auction House and Enchanting prices are the only variable prices.
The cost of living concept relates to necessities, such as food, housing, clothing, gas, etc.. whereas the AH is more of a luxury.

The vast majority of items on the AH are items that people have found and are trying to sell for more than the vendors will pay for them. If those items get overpriced due to inflation, it still won't have a negative effect. Everyone has the same chance to go out and get the same items as anyone else. Everyone has the same chance to sell overpriced items at inflated prices. So what's the difference?

But there's some items that you need that can't be found in the wild. Some items have to be made by other players. Some are better than what you can find in the wild, some aren't. Are they absolutely necessary? Probably not.
Some potions are great, but not absolutely required. Enchantments are pretty nice, but also not an absolute requirement.
Can you level from 1 to 60 without ever touching the AH? As far as I know, sure.

The essential element of progressing through the game, the biggest 'cost of living', is experience. Gold won't buy XP.
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 07:08 PM   #36
guice
A Cobalt Mageweaver
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 236
Everyone has the same chance to sell overpriced items at inflated prices. So what's the difference?
Cause everybody doesn't have that luxury.

Inflation raises prices, there's no doubt about that one. It's been shown and proven many times fold in many games; SWG, EQ, Lineage, LineageII, etc.

Inflation breaks the economy in that your average users are no longer able to compete with. When you average user can't complete, things go downhill. The game gets ruined and no new comers will be able to catch on without some high level financial backend.

Don't think that everybody had the luxury to run a bot on their computer while AFK, cause they don't. It's actually your rare users capable of doing that. If you can, you're one of them. Some here may be able to, but your average user does not visit these or blizzard's forums. We're only a very, very minute percentage of the full player base.

Last edited by guice : 07-02-05 at 07:17 PM.
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 07:55 PM   #37
Littlejohn
A Warpwood Thunder Caller
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 90
Originally Posted by guice
Don't think for a second that everybody had the luxury to run a bot on their computer while AFK, cause they don't.
Mondoz doesn't think that. His idea is if prices are infllated, then the 6th level player coming to the auction house for the first time sells his stack of linen for 80g. Now he's rich just like everybody else...

I can't find a fault in the reasoning, but it seems like "everybody knows" that gold farmers ruin economies. Perhaps gold farming raises prices for rare stuff, but not for common stuff? If that's true, then 6th level players would see stacks of linen for 80s and desirable weapons for 80g. That kind of imbalance would ruin the game.

Here's a cynical thought. Game companies want players to identify with the game and feel a sense of ownership over (i.e. commitment to) it. What if companies like gold farmers because it gives players a common hatred? Hatred makes an awfully strong bond. Maybe there actually is no harm to the game, but companies take advantage of the myth to increase loyalty?
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 08:12 PM   #38
mondoz
An Aku'mai Servant
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 31
Originally Posted by guice
Cause everybody doesn't have that luxury.
I think you missed my point. Anyone has the ability to go to the AH, and sell anything they have for any price. I could go sell 1 piece of linen cloth for 1000g if I wanted to. If gold was really worthless, and everybody had tons of it, then it would sell.


Inflation raises prices, there's no doubt about that one. It's been shown and proven many times fold in many games; SWG, EQ, Lineage, LineageII, etc.
Inflation in WoW would mean AH prices rise. Nothing else.
If I recall correctly, SWG had a much more player-dependant economy than WoW. You could only get items from other players, only be healed by other players, etc... That's not so in WoW.

Inflation breaks the economy in that your average users are no longer able to compete with. When you average user can't complete, things go downhill. The game gets ruined and no new comers will be able to catch on without some high level financial backend.
I don't understand. 'Average users can't compete.' Compete how?
Ruined how?
They can't go on quests? They can't get XP?

High prices on the AH mean that I can't go kill some mobs and get good gear?
High prices on the AH mean that I can't go kill some mobs and get items to sell on the AH at those same high prices?

Why would a newcomer have any problems? Even if they had tons of gold, they couldn't do much with it unless they played for a while and leveled up to the point where gold actually did anything.

Even when you have gold, what does it get you? Better gear? Okay. But is it the only source of that gear? No. Anyone can go out and get the same items that everyone else can. The best items can't be traded or sold.


Don't think that everybody had the luxury to run a bot on their computer while AFK, cause they don't. It's actually your rare users capable of doing that. If you can, you're one of them. Some here may be able to, but your average user does not visit these or blizzard's forums. We're only a very, very minute percentage of the full player base.
I don't understand much of that.
I think you're saying that most people can't run automated programs to farm items. I don't think anyone will disagree with you or debate you on that point.

My point is that in WoW, gold farmers would not 'ruin' the game as many have claimed it would. In other games perhaps, but not all games have the same economies, the same rules, the same mechanics, etc. I still haven't seen any convincing arguments that it would in WoW.
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 08:34 PM   #39
mondoz
An Aku'mai Servant
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 31
Originally Posted by Littlejohn
Mondoz doesn't think that. His idea is if prices are infllated, then the 6th level player coming to the auction house for the first time sells his stack of linen for 80g. Now he's rich just like everybody else...
Exactly.

I can't find a fault in the reasoning, but it seems like "everybody knows" that gold farmers ruin economies. Perhaps gold farming raises prices for rare stuff, but not for common stuff? If that's true, then 6th level players would see stacks of linen for 80s and desirable weapons for 80g. That kind of imbalance would ruin the game.

I don't think that kind of imbalance would happen, though.
For the purpose of my comments, I'm assuming in your example that the 80g 'desirable weapons' are the ones the 6th level player could actually use.
From personal experience, the number of low level uncommon items far outweigh the number of very high level uncommon items. I'm speaking of how many times they appear on the AH and how many people generally have them. I submit that in our hypothetical WoW realm of rampant gold farmers, low level uncommon desirable items would not sell for insane prices. I don't believe their availability is low enough to allow the market to bear those prices.
If I saw that I could make a killing selling 10th level green items, I'd take my level 60 character, and run through deadmines a few times, and have enough green items to retire. However, since that's not a very difficult or rare ability, the market would be flooded, prices would plummet due to the amazing ability of WoW auctioneers to undercut one another like rabid dogs, and prices would match the item's rarity.
For the even more desirable items, Blizzard's Bind-On-Pickup concept is brilliant. You can't hold those really fantastic items ransom for billions of gold, even in our Farmer's Realm. Even a poor low level non-farmer, typical average joe can go with a few other people into an instance and have the exact same chance to get an 'Uber Item of Doom' as anyone else.
Bind on Pickup is a fantastic equalizer.

However, Bind on Equip items can be sold at any price. But the market would force their price to a level that matches their rarity. Items that are fairly uncommon would be less than really uncommon items, and so on. Epic items will always sell for proportionately more than rare items, etc...
The one important constant is that no matter how much money everyone has, drop rates will not change. If I had 500,000 gold, it's not going to make that Uber Staff of Ultra Death show up more often.

If everyone had 500,000,000 gold, you wouldn't see level 10 characters running about in epic gear, and MC runs wouldn't become snooze-fest cake walks.



Sorry I'm so long-winded.
  Reply With Quote
07-02-05, 09:27 PM   #40
guice
A Cobalt Mageweaver
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 236
But then it throws things off balance vs NPCs prices. They are static and can't change. And how many new player at the level 6 knows about the Auction House? I real new player, not one that has already leveled to 60.

And lets not discount the fact added botting start incuraging eBaying as a different revenue for selling excess gear and money.
  Reply With Quote

WoWInterface » General Discussion » Chit-Chat » Movement mods will not work as of next patch.

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off