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The decline and fall of an ultra rich gaming empire
- dfischer 16y agoWow. Well, can I just say I loved EverQuest so much between 1999-2004 that when I found out there is an EverQuest Mac Client that still runs with a population AND also has a "time-lock" until PoP... well let's just say I started last week and I'm having a blast!
- goatforce5 16y agoArticle is from December 2008, FWIW.
- alanfalcon 16y agoFor all the great depth and anecdotal insight provided in the article, not one mention of the number one means of "inventory acquisition"? I'm talking about account compromises: stealing passwords, logging on to another player's account, selling (and trading) off all their virtual possessions for gold, then selling that gold to other players. The article makes it sound like there's a hint of legitimacy, as if these gold farms really just go around earning gold in the game worlds to sell it; by and large they don't, especially not in the behemoth that's WoW. And it's the reason why there are seemingly more options available to you for securing your World of Warcraft account than your bank account. Is it any wonder why Blizzard is quoted as hating them (IGE specifically, and all gold sellers in general)?
- plorkyeran 16y agoThat's a relatively recent development. In the time period talked about in the article, they did earn the gold, sometimes even entirely legitimately (other than the account sharing). In Vanilla WoW, the main problem caused by RMT was that on larger servers every single non-instanced good farming spot would be saturated with Chinese farmers 24/7. The transition over to hacking accounts to acquire gold didn't happen until late 2006-2007. I don't remember account hacking being any real concern at any point in EQ.