Oh…Oh They’re Good
From a gold farmer, wanting to rent a toon from Cuppy:
(16:54:39) ipss...@hotmail.com the deal is free.don’t worry
(16:54:52) Cuppycake Free?
(16:55:00) Cuppycake You’ll level my character from 60-70 without me paying anything?
(16:55:16) ipss...@hotmail.com if u rent ur lvl 70 char to us ,u may get 1000g or 20$ per week.
(16:55:43) Cuppycake I don’t get it.
(16:56:58) ipss...@hotmail.com no. u can get it back.
(16:57:13) Cuppycake Ah, what do you use my character for?
(16:57:51) ipss...@hotmail.com we rent our clients’wow acc one week or so.after one week u get it back again.
(16:58:03) Cuppycake Yes, but what do you use it for?
(16:58:53) ipss...@hotmail.com we use it to hit monsters and get the golds ,then pay payment or offer lvling service.ok?
This is goddamned brilliant. If you’re a gold farmer, you undoubtedly replenish and re-level banned accounts regularly. It’s the cost of doing business, and if I had to guess I’d say it’s probably the biggest cost of running a gold farming operation. Getting a toon from 1-70 takes time, money, effort, and opportunity costs that could otherwise be spent bringing in the gold, and there’s no guarantee that the new account won’t be banned again before it has a chance to even pay for itself.
Until now.
These asshats have stumbled on to the holy grail of gold farming fleets. They will “rent” your toon from you, with promises of gold and/or cash in return. It’s all completely legit (they lie), and you won’t be banned. Until, you know, you get banned. At which time you’re going to be sorely pissed off, and your new *ahem* business partner will be nowhere to be found. Because it’s not their account that got banned, and they don’t have to level another toon. They also have droves of suckers entrepreneurs just like you who also want to get rich quick, just like you.
It’s brilliant in a very Chaotic-Evil sort of way, and you can expect to see it grow, cancer-like, into every game you play that has any economy to speak of.
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“we use it to hit monsters and get the golds ,then pay payment or offer lvling service.ok?”
That was priceless, thanks Amber
“you can expect to see it grow, cancer-like, into every game you play that has any economy to speak of”
Except, I guess, games like Eve Online, where skills train in real time. If I want to train Spaceship Command V, it takes a month to do whether it’s me playing during that month, someone else playing “for me”, or whether I stay idle the entire month and just log in to switch skills when it finally completes.
This has nothing to do with skill training.
It’s been awhile since I’ve played Eve, so maybe things have changed. But the idea here is that the gold farmer would use your account to harvest ISK. Which he would then sell for real-world money. Yes your skills would train while he’s using your account, but that’s a side-effect. The issue is that someone is using your account to farm ISK for money, and when your account is banned for it, they incur no responsibility.
If memory serves, you can trade in-game ISK for real-world game-time cards (which are legal to sell to other players), so maybe this wouldn’t be a problem in Eve. If, however, there are farmers operating outside of this ISK-for-game-time structure (and I’m inclined to think this is the case) then it’s still going to be a problem.
Okay, sure, that makes sense. And there is a small amount of illicit ISK trade in Eve, though the legal ISK-for-GTC business makes the black market relatively small compared to WOW. So agreed, this might still be a problem, though the cutthroat nature of Eve means that anyone gullible enough to fall for this is probably just as likely to lose all their wealth to other players completely operating via “legitimate” means. There are plenty of instances of Eve players who’ve lost thousands of dollars worth of ISK due to corporate espionage, Ponzi schemes, and other scams that are considered a legitimate part of the game mechanics.
People buy powerleveling, of course, but I just don’t get it. To me, playing the game is fun. Levels were just something that happened while I was having fun doing whatever.
If you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong!
I was in a guild (DAoC) with a guy that rolled a new toon practically every other time that we played. His reasons varied, but it basically boiled down to this: he was looking for a class that pwned every other class. He eventually settled on a Bone Dancer, go figure. (I too am an altaholic, but for different reasons. I simply suck at the end-game.)
There are just some players out there who aren’t happy playing the same game that everyone else is playing. They want an even playing field, but they want it for everyone but themselves. Their playing field needs to have sheer vertical cliffs that tower high above your field, from where they can perch and soak in the hot golden rays of entitlement. And they are willing to pay real world money for it.
Brilliant! Imagine all of the kids who won’t even get nervous about the transaction until afterwards. Man, these guys are friggin brilliant. But I still hate them.
Amber said: “There are just some players out there who aren’t happy playing the same game that everyone else is playing. They want an even playing field, but they want it for everyone but themselves. Their playing field needs to have sheer vertical cliffs that tower high above your field, from where they can perch and soak in the hot golden rays of entitlement. And they are willing to pay real world money for it.”
Best. Description. Of RMT. Ever.
You win teh Intratubez today.
…That’s not a bad deal, assuming they pay up front. Get a guy up to the max level, and you could be making $80 a month. If you get banned, enh, you have enough money to start a new account, pay some group to powerlevel you, buy some gold, and still have a little leftover for yourself. Not a bad deal at all…
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