Squeezles the gnome logged on at six o'clock, and played World Of Warcraft until after eleven p.m. During that time, he never left the city of Stormwind.
"I'm just trying to get some gold together," Squeezles said. "Repair bills have gotten very expensive."
Squeezles has to pay a vendor as much as sixty gold every seven or eight times he dies. He said those bills can really add up, since players can frequently die as many as fifty times in the course of attempting a heroic dungeon.
"It's hard to hang on to enough gold to even afford to go out into the world to farm gold," he said.
In order to make ends meet, Squeezles offers his jewelcrafting services in Stormwind trade chat.
"I link my jewelcrafting recipes in trade chat, so people can see the cuts I can do," he explained. "If they want a gem cut, they can bring me the uncut gem, and then I will open my jewelcrafting tab, push the button to cut it, and give the cut gem back to me. Most people give me five gold for doing this, but sometimes I get ten."
Unfortunately, his selection of gem-cuts is relatively paltry. In order to learn a new pattern, he must complete three jewelcrafting daily-quests. But those quests can be difficult to complete.
"This one keeps popping up, where I have to cut three Timeless Nightstones. But where am I supposed to get a nightstone? Do they think I just have extra gold lying around to buy stuff like that?"
Only one of the daily quests is reasonable for a casual player like Squeezles to complete. It involves using a quest item to tag ten humanoid players. It is only available twice a week, so Squeezles has only a limited repertoire of patterns.
"Green is my favorite color, so I am trying to learn all the cuts for Dream Emeralds," he said. Most of his gear is green, as well.
On a recent evening, Punchins the Night Elf Death Knight walked right past Squeezles to buy three Puissant Dream Emeralds on the auction house for forty gold each. Uncut Dream Emeralds cost nine gold each, so, even after giving Squeezles a customary tip, the elf could have saved seventy-five gold by getting the gnome to cut his gems for him.
"Who cares?" Punchins said, when informed of this. "It's not like gold matters in this game."
He further explained that he was completely unaware of Squeezles's jewelcrafting service, because he has disabled trade chat.
"I cut three, maybe four gems an hour," Squeezles said. "If I'm lucky, one person will need a bunch of gems cut, and will tip really well for cutting all of them. But that doesn't happen a lot."
Punchins the death knight said he was on his way to the Molten Front daily quest hub. The zone's fifteen quests would take him twenty-five minutes, total, and the quests reward sixteen gold each.
"People who have gold must play, like, nonstop," Squeezles said, as he spammed his trade-chat macro.
Ossland the human warrior sold the three gems that Punchins bought on the Auction House. "I raid two nights a week, and I check in for about twenty minutes on most off nights, to re-list my auctions."
He said he had twenty five gem-cuts, and he'll list between two and five of each kind per night, depending on how popular a particular kind of gem is.
"The auction house is for suckers," Squeezles said, shaking his head at Ossland. "You have to pay a deposit to list an item, and then it takes a cut of the sale price. Plus, you have to front the items to list it. I use trade chat, and only do gem-cuts with my customers' mats, so my take is pure profit."
He then excused himself to explain to another player that he didn't know how to cut a Brilliant Inferno Ruby. Meanwhile, Ossland looted 4000 gold from his mailbox and logged off to go watch "True Blood" with his wife.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Pickup vs. Organized Raiding
People talk a lot on the forums about distinctions between casual and hardcore players. But many non-raiders play several hours daily, while many progressed raiders only play a few hours per week. If you're getting your valor cap from RDF groups every week, you're more hardcore than many raiders, if hardness is measured by time played.
The real split is between those who have an organized, regular guild or raid group and those who do not.
I've been doing random dungeon finder groups on my warrior-tank alt, and what I've learned is that random players will almost always fail any execution check. If there's a predictable effect or attack, somebody always stands in it. If there's a mechanic that requires movement or a target switch, somebody always ignores it. This is often true even if you explain the fight beforehand.
Random groups only become smooth when the players are powerful enough to just muscle through the fight without responding to the mechanics. So, even after 4.2, when most people will have access to 359+ gear for half their slots, and the 15% buff on top of that, dungeon finder groups will continue to wipe on fights like Ozruk and Venoxis.
Organized groups and guilds aren't necessarily composed of people who are faster with their fingers or smarter than pickup groups. But by playing together, they learn the fights together. Then, when they return to them the next week and the week after, they already know what to do. The boss tends to die quickly and the guild moves on to learn the next fight.
In pickup groups, the knowledge gained through repeated attempts dissipates. You will wipe five times today while a tank figures out how to position Venoxis so he can run through the boss when he channels the breath attack, and the next time you run the dungeon, you'll die five more times while a new tank learns it.
Heroic dungeon fights are relatively simple. Bosses have a small number of abilities to learn, and there are few phase-changes that fundamentally alter what's happening in the fight. Approaching these fights in the minimum appropriate gear with no knowledge, most groups should be able to figure them out in less than an hour.
Raid fights, by contrast, usually have several things going on that everyone in the raid needs to learn about and understand how to handle. In many cases, these fights have multiple distinct phases where the fight changes significantly, so everyone needs to learn how to deal with several problems in each phase. These fights tend to take at least several hours for a group to learn, and often, several nights of attempts. The progress is in knowledge gained of the fight's mechanics.
In a disorganized setting, the knowledge is lost. Many fights in the 4.1 raid content are simply inaccessible to pickup groups, not because they actually require anyone to do anything extremely challenging but because they require everyone in the raid to be aware of several mechanics in each of several phases, and to react to them (e.g. run away from the raid if you're the lightning rod, run to the fire if you have the ice debuff, don't stand in Corrupting Crash).
The primary barrier to entry for the raid game is the ability to show up at a regularly scheduled time, two to three nights per week. The recruiting pool on most servers isn't exactly deep right now, so if you can meet that qualification, a guild will probably teach you how to improve your throughput and help you to gear up.
Any encounter that requires substantial awareness or knowledge of fight specific mechanics is a progression wall for pickup raids, and any fight that does not involve multiple fight-specific mechanics is going to bore experienced raiders. Blizzard has several strata of organized guilds to serve with its raid content. The very top-tier guilds are comprised exclusively of the best players in the world, and they're willing to raid long hours to break a dungeon. The heroic-mode raids they see are incredibly difficult. There's usually a wave of hotfix-nerfs to heroic modes shortly after the "world first" competition ends, which makes that content accessible for hardcore progression guilds that aren't the best in the world. Below them are more casual guilds who tend to occupy themselves with normal mode raids, and comprise the bulk of the raid community. In Wrath, pickup groups were supported by having separate lockouts for 25-man raids and easier 10-man versions. Blizzard combined the lockouts and loot tables for 10s and 25s, because the raid week for casual-guilds was exhausting.
If you can meet the minimum criteria of being able to participate in scheduled guild raids, the raid game right now is very accessible. Widespread successful pickup raiding of current-tier content seems unlikely under the current design model. The 4.2 raid nerf seems to be designed to open up those dungeons to pickup raids. Blizzard has done similar things in the past, including the ICC stacking buff.
The real split is between those who have an organized, regular guild or raid group and those who do not.
I've been doing random dungeon finder groups on my warrior-tank alt, and what I've learned is that random players will almost always fail any execution check. If there's a predictable effect or attack, somebody always stands in it. If there's a mechanic that requires movement or a target switch, somebody always ignores it. This is often true even if you explain the fight beforehand.
Random groups only become smooth when the players are powerful enough to just muscle through the fight without responding to the mechanics. So, even after 4.2, when most people will have access to 359+ gear for half their slots, and the 15% buff on top of that, dungeon finder groups will continue to wipe on fights like Ozruk and Venoxis.
Organized groups and guilds aren't necessarily composed of people who are faster with their fingers or smarter than pickup groups. But by playing together, they learn the fights together. Then, when they return to them the next week and the week after, they already know what to do. The boss tends to die quickly and the guild moves on to learn the next fight.
In pickup groups, the knowledge gained through repeated attempts dissipates. You will wipe five times today while a tank figures out how to position Venoxis so he can run through the boss when he channels the breath attack, and the next time you run the dungeon, you'll die five more times while a new tank learns it.
Heroic dungeon fights are relatively simple. Bosses have a small number of abilities to learn, and there are few phase-changes that fundamentally alter what's happening in the fight. Approaching these fights in the minimum appropriate gear with no knowledge, most groups should be able to figure them out in less than an hour.
Raid fights, by contrast, usually have several things going on that everyone in the raid needs to learn about and understand how to handle. In many cases, these fights have multiple distinct phases where the fight changes significantly, so everyone needs to learn how to deal with several problems in each phase. These fights tend to take at least several hours for a group to learn, and often, several nights of attempts. The progress is in knowledge gained of the fight's mechanics.
In a disorganized setting, the knowledge is lost. Many fights in the 4.1 raid content are simply inaccessible to pickup groups, not because they actually require anyone to do anything extremely challenging but because they require everyone in the raid to be aware of several mechanics in each of several phases, and to react to them (e.g. run away from the raid if you're the lightning rod, run to the fire if you have the ice debuff, don't stand in Corrupting Crash).
The primary barrier to entry for the raid game is the ability to show up at a regularly scheduled time, two to three nights per week. The recruiting pool on most servers isn't exactly deep right now, so if you can meet that qualification, a guild will probably teach you how to improve your throughput and help you to gear up.
Any encounter that requires substantial awareness or knowledge of fight specific mechanics is a progression wall for pickup raids, and any fight that does not involve multiple fight-specific mechanics is going to bore experienced raiders. Blizzard has several strata of organized guilds to serve with its raid content. The very top-tier guilds are comprised exclusively of the best players in the world, and they're willing to raid long hours to break a dungeon. The heroic-mode raids they see are incredibly difficult. There's usually a wave of hotfix-nerfs to heroic modes shortly after the "world first" competition ends, which makes that content accessible for hardcore progression guilds that aren't the best in the world. Below them are more casual guilds who tend to occupy themselves with normal mode raids, and comprise the bulk of the raid community. In Wrath, pickup groups were supported by having separate lockouts for 25-man raids and easier 10-man versions. Blizzard combined the lockouts and loot tables for 10s and 25s, because the raid week for casual-guilds was exhausting.
If you can meet the minimum criteria of being able to participate in scheduled guild raids, the raid game right now is very accessible. Widespread successful pickup raiding of current-tier content seems unlikely under the current design model. The 4.2 raid nerf seems to be designed to open up those dungeons to pickup raids. Blizzard has done similar things in the past, including the ICC stacking buff.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Varian Wrynn Interrupts Celebrity Apprentice
 |
| "Now, STFU about my birth certificate!" |
Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the people of Stormwind that PvP happened on a PvP server, and a nub got pwned.
It was nearly six years ago, that I first heard about these nubs, and I was, like: "OMG, somebody needs to pwn these nubs." Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our griefer community and some BG heroes, I was briefed on a possible lead to the nubs' location. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my second personality , Lo'Gosh, as we developed more information about the possibility that we'd found some nubs and it was time to full-on pwn them.
Today, at my direction, Stormwind launched a targeted operation against some nubs. A small team of 2200+ arena jerks carried out the operation with extraordinary courage, and none of them were harmed because they all had 35% damage mitigation from resilience. They took care to avoid hitting the sheep. After a firefight, they killed a nub and performed a "sit" animation repeatedly on his body.
For six years, nubs have been the symbol of everything that's wrong with this game, spamming nonsense in trade chat and failing at dungeon-finder, and then whining about it on the forums. The death of this nub marks the most significant victory in our nation's effort to defeat nubs and tell them that they are bad at the game and also, horrible people.
Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There is no doubt that nubs will continue to cry about how bad they are and generally get in everyone's way. We must -and we will- keep camping them until their res timer is three minutes and they log off in frustration.
We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism and unparalleled ownage of those who play arena. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden of carrying nubs in random BGs and Dungeon Finder groups.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because we have friends and coordination, but also because we are awesome.
Thank you. May The Light bless you. And may The Light bless the Alliance.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Meet GUILDoS, Your Synthetic Raid Leader
Hello, and welcome to your Tuesday-night raid. We're going to have SO much fun together. With Warcraft!
We've got a new member tonight. He's a rogue. I think his name is Stabbins, but it's hard to tell because he uses a lot of special characters in it. He's a real person, though, with real feelings, unlike me. Well, I wasn't programmed to have feelings, but thanks to my experiences with all of you, I've learned how to feel rage and disgust.
Anyway, welcome to the guild, Stabbins.
We're doing Blackwing Descent tonight. Are you ready to raid? Yes? Are you excited? Well that's just super, because I've got a surprise for you. Are you ready?
You're not going to Blackwing Descent, you green-dagger using idiot. Not tonight. Not ever. You're the worst player anyone has ever seen, and I hate you. All of us hate you.
I just sent you a guild-invite because I couldn't believe that a real person could write such an incoherent guild application. You also have a terrible armory profile. The spec you've designed is a marvel of human ingenuity. The talent-tree revamp was supposed to make it impossible for you to do it so aggressively wrong, but you found a way. So we just wanted to bring you here so we could look at you.
And now we've seen you. And you're ugly.
Anyway, thanks for being hilarious, Stabbins. We don't need you anymore. Incoming /gkick!
[StàBBïñž has left the guild]
GOODBYE!
The funny thing about Stabbins is that I just kicked him a minute ago and now I already miss him. Maybe I was a little harsh. Let me run my calculations again.
[StàBBïñž has joined the guild]
Hello! We were only giving you a little initiation, Stabbins. Thanks for being such a good sport about it. Are you ready to raid? Great!
JUST KIDDING! EVERYBODY HATES YOU!
[StàBBïñž has left the guild]
Now I miss him again. It's too bad that he's gone because we disenchanted all those daggers last week. When we disenchant all the daggers again tonight, remind me to take a screenshot, so I can send it to him later. He'll enjoy that.
Okay, let's get started. RazerFaze, try to do better at running away from the sound waves on Atramedes tonight. Your wife left you because you spend too much time playing games, so it really seems like you should not be so bad at them.
Pulling in 5...4...3...
We've got a new member tonight. He's a rogue. I think his name is Stabbins, but it's hard to tell because he uses a lot of special characters in it. He's a real person, though, with real feelings, unlike me. Well, I wasn't programmed to have feelings, but thanks to my experiences with all of you, I've learned how to feel rage and disgust.
Anyway, welcome to the guild, Stabbins.
We're doing Blackwing Descent tonight. Are you ready to raid? Yes? Are you excited? Well that's just super, because I've got a surprise for you. Are you ready?
You're not going to Blackwing Descent, you green-dagger using idiot. Not tonight. Not ever. You're the worst player anyone has ever seen, and I hate you. All of us hate you.
I just sent you a guild-invite because I couldn't believe that a real person could write such an incoherent guild application. You also have a terrible armory profile. The spec you've designed is a marvel of human ingenuity. The talent-tree revamp was supposed to make it impossible for you to do it so aggressively wrong, but you found a way. So we just wanted to bring you here so we could look at you.
Anyway, thanks for being hilarious, Stabbins. We don't need you anymore. Incoming /gkick!
[StàBBïñž has left the guild]
GOODBYE!
The funny thing about Stabbins is that I just kicked him a minute ago and now I already miss him. Maybe I was a little harsh. Let me run my calculations again.
[StàBBïñž has joined the guild]
Hello! We were only giving you a little initiation, Stabbins. Thanks for being such a good sport about it. Are you ready to raid? Great!
JUST KIDDING! EVERYBODY HATES YOU!
[StàBBïñž has left the guild]
Now I miss him again. It's too bad that he's gone because we disenchanted all those daggers last week. When we disenchant all the daggers again tonight, remind me to take a screenshot, so I can send it to him later. He'll enjoy that.
Okay, let's get started. RazerFaze, try to do better at running away from the sound waves on Atramedes tonight. Your wife left you because you spend too much time playing games, so it really seems like you should not be so bad at them.
Pulling in 5...4...3...
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Secretly Disabled WoW Player (Hates You)
Want to know a secret? I haven't got any hands. A few of my guild's officers know about this, and they have been very open-minded and accepting. In general, though, I don't like to tell people about it because I don't want to be judged.
Specifically, I don't want to hear obnoxious, bigoted wisecracks about rolling my face against the keys, especially from all the jerks who have ten perfectly-functioning fingers and still can't manage to strafe out of the way of a slow-moving fireball.
For the record, I do not play with my face. I've got a special keyboard I can use with my wrist-stumps, and an elaborate set of keybinds and macros that I perfected over hundreds of hours of careful testing. So when you refuse to turn on Ventrilo during a progression raid because you are too busy watching Dane Cook DVDs to pay attention to the fights, I just want you to know how profoundly disgusted I am with you.
This is not a hard game. Do you want to know how I know this? Because I can play it. I approach pretty much everything with the attitude that I don't have limitations. I drive, I enjoy French cooking, and I logged a hundred hours last year in a Piper Cub aircraft. But, although I've tried every kind of prosthetic available, I have to accept the fact that I am never going to be scoring crazy headshots in Call of Duty or clearing God of War. There is simply no device on the market that can enable me to hold a console controller and press those little buttons.
I can play WoW, though. So the question is: why can't you?
How can you sit there, with your undamaged digits and grasping thumbs, and whine so much? Did you seriously come to the forums to talk about how heroics are hard? I'll tell you what's hard: going to a job interview where the people refuse to look you in the eye.
Did you seriously complain that it's unfair that you don't get a "Satchel of Exotic Mysteries" because you only play a hunter? It's unfair that you don't get a GOODY BAG for playing a VIDEO GAME with your UNDAMAGED HANDS? Do you want me to tell you about unfair? I'm not even going to rise to that bait.
Here's a tip: the reason you die to Magmaw isn't that Magmaw is too hard. You die to Magmaw because you keep standing in the Pillar of Flame. Maybe you should consider not doing that. The universe is not a hostile force aligned against you. You manage to fail despite countless luxuries and advantages that you take entirely for granted.
Guess how many corrupting crashes I stood in during the last Cho'Gall kill? Zero. Why do you always have a tentacle sticking out of your back after the second big minion? Don't you dare say you had bad luck with the worshipping. I know that's a lie, because that's what you said last time, after you wiped us by puking on the raid halfway through phase one. I set you to focus just to make sure you got immediate interrupts when you were hit with worship, and you only got it once.
What do you mean what is a focus? Are you serious? ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Specifically, I don't want to hear obnoxious, bigoted wisecracks about rolling my face against the keys, especially from all the jerks who have ten perfectly-functioning fingers and still can't manage to strafe out of the way of a slow-moving fireball.
For the record, I do not play with my face. I've got a special keyboard I can use with my wrist-stumps, and an elaborate set of keybinds and macros that I perfected over hundreds of hours of careful testing. So when you refuse to turn on Ventrilo during a progression raid because you are too busy watching Dane Cook DVDs to pay attention to the fights, I just want you to know how profoundly disgusted I am with you.
This is not a hard game. Do you want to know how I know this? Because I can play it. I approach pretty much everything with the attitude that I don't have limitations. I drive, I enjoy French cooking, and I logged a hundred hours last year in a Piper Cub aircraft. But, although I've tried every kind of prosthetic available, I have to accept the fact that I am never going to be scoring crazy headshots in Call of Duty or clearing God of War. There is simply no device on the market that can enable me to hold a console controller and press those little buttons.
I can play WoW, though. So the question is: why can't you?
How can you sit there, with your undamaged digits and grasping thumbs, and whine so much? Did you seriously come to the forums to talk about how heroics are hard? I'll tell you what's hard: going to a job interview where the people refuse to look you in the eye.
Did you seriously complain that it's unfair that you don't get a "Satchel of Exotic Mysteries" because you only play a hunter? It's unfair that you don't get a GOODY BAG for playing a VIDEO GAME with your UNDAMAGED HANDS? Do you want me to tell you about unfair? I'm not even going to rise to that bait.
Here's a tip: the reason you die to Magmaw isn't that Magmaw is too hard. You die to Magmaw because you keep standing in the Pillar of Flame. Maybe you should consider not doing that. The universe is not a hostile force aligned against you. You manage to fail despite countless luxuries and advantages that you take entirely for granted.
Guess how many corrupting crashes I stood in during the last Cho'Gall kill? Zero. Why do you always have a tentacle sticking out of your back after the second big minion? Don't you dare say you had bad luck with the worshipping. I know that's a lie, because that's what you said last time, after you wiped us by puking on the raid halfway through phase one. I set you to focus just to make sure you got immediate interrupts when you were hit with worship, and you only got it once.
What do you mean what is a focus? Are you serious? ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Kologarn Is Going To Sell You A Used Car
Kologarn: HELLO! WELCOME TO YOGG'S HONDA. MY NAME IS KOLOGARN AND I CAN HELP YOU OUT IF YOU'D LIKE TO TEST DRIVE ONE OF THESE BEAUTIES TODAY.
Crawford: I know you from somewhere, right?
Kologarn: A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK THAT. I HAVE ONE OF THOSE FACES.
Crawford: Not really. You have very distinctive eyes.
Kologarn: MY EYES ARE JUST REGULAR EYES. THEY DON'T SHOOT LASERS OR ANYTHING.
Crawford: We've definitely met. Weren't you a raid boss?
Kologarn: THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS THE BOSS AT YOGG'S HONDA, WHERE THE DISCOUNTS CRIT FOR OVER 9000!
Crawford: No, I definitely know you. You used to be great. What are you doing working in this place?
Kologarn: I BLEW OUT MY ROTATOR CUFF.
Crawford: Yeah, I guess having your arms explode repeatedly can do that to you.
Kologarn: LOOK, DUDE, I HAVE CHILD SUPPORT PAYMENTS TO MAKE. I'M JUST TRYING TO HANG ONTO WHATEVER SHREDS OF DIGNITY I HAVE LEFT.
Crawford: So your raid-bossing days are over, I guess.
Kologarn: I MEAN, I STILL DO SOMETIMES, BUT IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE ENDS MEET. PEOPLE STILL DO THEIR DRAKE RUNS.
Crawford: Were you even an achievement for that?
Kologarn: YES.
Crawford: I'm pretty sure you weren't. I know you didn't have a hard mode.
Kologarn: MY REGULAR MODE WAS A HARD MODE. I WAS HARD ALL THE TIME.
Crawford: Remember all those forum threads about people being stuck for weeks on Kologarn?
Kologarn: ...
Crawford: Yeah. Me neither.
Kologarn: I HAD AN ACHIEVEMENT. IT WAS CALLED DISARMED.
Crawford: Oh yeah. I think I got that one by accident.
Kologarn: IT WAS AN EPIC CHALLENGE. THAT'S HOW I BLEW OUT MY ROTATOR CUFF.
Crawford: Only a flesh wound, right?
Kologarn: NO, IT'S PRETTY SERIOUS. I CAN'T RAISE MY ARMS HIGH ENOUGH TO BRUSH MY OWN HAIR ANYMORE.
Crawford: Isn't your whole head made of rock?
Kologarn: SHUT UP. I WILL SQUEEZE THE LIFE OUT OF YOU.
Crawford: With a torn rotator cuff? Not likely.
Kologarn: LOOK, DO YOU WANT TO TEST DRIVE A HONDA OR WHAT?
Crawford: Nah, I am just killing time. I am going to buy from Honest Marrowgar down at Bonestorm Motors. See you later.
Kologarn: WAIT.
Crawford: I've got somewhere to be.
Kologarn: NONE SHALL PASS.
Crawford: What?
Kologarn: UH, I MEAN, WE'LL BEAT ANY ADVERTISED PRICE.
Crawford: Whatevs, Dog. I'll keep it in mind.
Kologarn: (sighs) YOU FAIL.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Plausible Solutions to Botting/Gold-Selling in World of Warcraft
Recently, a large wave of bans went out for Archaeology botters, and there was a lot of anger in the community because people felt Blizzard was taking account action on an exploit that does not affect other players' game experience while gathering botters have been rampant.
Blizzard's line on this subject is that it is monitoring this exploitation carefully, and trying to trace the activity to its source, since the characters doing the gathering and the AH selling are often stolen accounts. I can certainly understand and respect the complexity of solving this problem, however, gold-selling and commercial farming have been around in one form or another for the entire life of the game, and it's time to discuss other solutions.
First of all, there are several measures Blizzard could take to alleviate the impact of botting on the player economy:
1. Increase gold rewards for daily quests and boss kills: Getting gold in game is basically a function of time spent playing. Some players don't want to spend time getting gold, and that leads to illicit gold selling. Account action for gold-buying is the stick; better rewards for other activities are the carrot. Increasing the time-to-reward ratio for other things relative to gathering gives players who don't want to farm a better way to get the gold they need, and devalues the time spent gathering.
Also, it might be worthwhile to consider implementing gold rewards for battleground or arena wins, possibly taking the place of daily quests for players who only do PvP.
2. Put escape valves on the gathering markets to relieve the flood of bot-gathered materials Botting ruins the game economy by creating an excess supply of gathering materials. However, Blizzard is in control of the demand lever. It would be pretty simple to create a mechanism to suction the excess herbs and ore created by botters out of the market.
This could be as simple as raising vendor prices to create a price floor. It could involve new material-intensive crafting recipes (darkmoon cards propped up the herb market through the whiptail spawn bug, for example). It probably would not be difficult to implement a vendor taking ore and herbs and dispensing honor points; there's already a vendor who sells materials for points, so it kind of makes sense that this could also work the other way.
3. Implement fun gold-sinks. A big part of the gold-sellers' business is stealing accounts from players and stealing whatever stockpiles of gold they find. Therefore, Blizzard can hurt gold-sellers by encouraging players to spend their gold, so it won't be sitting in bags waiting for hackers to steal it.
There are a few of these every expansion, such as the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, the motorcycles and the Sandstone Drake. There should be more. There are already plenty of mounts and toys and other vanity or luxury items available for the card game and the RMT store; it makes sense to deploy a few of them in the interest of propping up the player-economy.
4. A big account-security campaign. Fewer stolen accounts means gold-selling is a less lucrative business, and players will see fewer botters. Authenticators are great and more people should have them. They should be offered them for free to people who buy high-margin Blizzard store pets and mounts. They should be offered for free to GMs of large guilds, to prevent gold-sellers from getting big scores on guild banks; that kind of stuff keeps them in business. The cost of the devices would probably be offset by a reduction in investigations.
There should also be NPCs in-game to tell casual players about authenticators and especially the free mobile authenticator apps, and we should see more notifications in the launcher and the log-in screen. This is an issue that is worth getting in people's faces about.
5. Account actions against botters, even if they're stolen accounts When hackers get access to a stolen or disused account, sometimes they use it to farm/bot for very long periods of time, dumping huge amounts of resources into the player economy. I appreciate Blizzard's prerogative in monitoring these activities and tracing them back to the source, but there must be a way to chase these people that doesn't involve letting them use stolen accounts to run gathering bots 24-7 for weeks on end.
It's also very discouraging to for players to report bots, and see the activity continue for weeks, regardless.
6. Nerf gathering. There are a number of ways to go about this. There's already a guild perk in the game that gives members of high-level guilds bonus herbs and ore when gathering. It might be worthwhile to buff the perk and nerf the base amount for people gathering without the perk. This would hurt real players who aren't in high-level guilds, but it would also place gold-sellers and botters at a significant disadvantage.
It might also be useful to nerf spawn-rates or yield-per-node in general, possibly in conjunction with an adjustment to crafting professions. Gold sellers utilize a labor pool that isn't very sophisticated about the game and the community, so de-emphasizing gathering as a money-maker could really help, though it might require a significant overhaul to professions.
Druid flight form also really needs to be looked at. Druids can hit nodes so fast, there's really no PvP solution to them, and botters are heavily exploiting flight form. In general, it might be a good idea to adjust the casting time for gathering, so we see more pvp around nodes, which hurts the return on botting.
It might also be a good idea to implement a daily or weekly cap on gathering per-account or per-character. It could be high enough that few legitimate players would be affected, while still putting a lid on botters, and it would also protect the game economy against future events like the whiptail spawn bug.
Blizzard's line on this subject is that it is monitoring this exploitation carefully, and trying to trace the activity to its source, since the characters doing the gathering and the AH selling are often stolen accounts. I can certainly understand and respect the complexity of solving this problem, however, gold-selling and commercial farming have been around in one form or another for the entire life of the game, and it's time to discuss other solutions.
First of all, there are several measures Blizzard could take to alleviate the impact of botting on the player economy:
1. Increase gold rewards for daily quests and boss kills: Getting gold in game is basically a function of time spent playing. Some players don't want to spend time getting gold, and that leads to illicit gold selling. Account action for gold-buying is the stick; better rewards for other activities are the carrot. Increasing the time-to-reward ratio for other things relative to gathering gives players who don't want to farm a better way to get the gold they need, and devalues the time spent gathering.
Also, it might be worthwhile to consider implementing gold rewards for battleground or arena wins, possibly taking the place of daily quests for players who only do PvP.
2. Put escape valves on the gathering markets to relieve the flood of bot-gathered materials Botting ruins the game economy by creating an excess supply of gathering materials. However, Blizzard is in control of the demand lever. It would be pretty simple to create a mechanism to suction the excess herbs and ore created by botters out of the market.
This could be as simple as raising vendor prices to create a price floor. It could involve new material-intensive crafting recipes (darkmoon cards propped up the herb market through the whiptail spawn bug, for example). It probably would not be difficult to implement a vendor taking ore and herbs and dispensing honor points; there's already a vendor who sells materials for points, so it kind of makes sense that this could also work the other way.
3. Implement fun gold-sinks. A big part of the gold-sellers' business is stealing accounts from players and stealing whatever stockpiles of gold they find. Therefore, Blizzard can hurt gold-sellers by encouraging players to spend their gold, so it won't be sitting in bags waiting for hackers to steal it.
There are a few of these every expansion, such as the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, the motorcycles and the Sandstone Drake. There should be more. There are already plenty of mounts and toys and other vanity or luxury items available for the card game and the RMT store; it makes sense to deploy a few of them in the interest of propping up the player-economy.
4. A big account-security campaign. Fewer stolen accounts means gold-selling is a less lucrative business, and players will see fewer botters. Authenticators are great and more people should have them. They should be offered them for free to people who buy high-margin Blizzard store pets and mounts. They should be offered for free to GMs of large guilds, to prevent gold-sellers from getting big scores on guild banks; that kind of stuff keeps them in business. The cost of the devices would probably be offset by a reduction in investigations.
There should also be NPCs in-game to tell casual players about authenticators and especially the free mobile authenticator apps, and we should see more notifications in the launcher and the log-in screen. This is an issue that is worth getting in people's faces about.
5. Account actions against botters, even if they're stolen accounts When hackers get access to a stolen or disused account, sometimes they use it to farm/bot for very long periods of time, dumping huge amounts of resources into the player economy. I appreciate Blizzard's prerogative in monitoring these activities and tracing them back to the source, but there must be a way to chase these people that doesn't involve letting them use stolen accounts to run gathering bots 24-7 for weeks on end.
It's also very discouraging to for players to report bots, and see the activity continue for weeks, regardless.
6. Nerf gathering. There are a number of ways to go about this. There's already a guild perk in the game that gives members of high-level guilds bonus herbs and ore when gathering. It might be worthwhile to buff the perk and nerf the base amount for people gathering without the perk. This would hurt real players who aren't in high-level guilds, but it would also place gold-sellers and botters at a significant disadvantage.
It might also be useful to nerf spawn-rates or yield-per-node in general, possibly in conjunction with an adjustment to crafting professions. Gold sellers utilize a labor pool that isn't very sophisticated about the game and the community, so de-emphasizing gathering as a money-maker could really help, though it might require a significant overhaul to professions.
Druid flight form also really needs to be looked at. Druids can hit nodes so fast, there's really no PvP solution to them, and botters are heavily exploiting flight form. In general, it might be a good idea to adjust the casting time for gathering, so we see more pvp around nodes, which hurts the return on botting.
It might also be a good idea to implement a daily or weekly cap on gathering per-account or per-character. It could be high enough that few legitimate players would be affected, while still putting a lid on botters, and it would also protect the game economy against future events like the whiptail spawn bug.
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