Chinese farming in Augury Int - an inside report

Heh a wild ball in the outfield, but, it's always been my contention that many of these game publishers/developers are even the ones behind such practices. It's another means of income for them and the reason it's in the EULA is because they don't want anyone cutting in on their revenue. Ever think of that? Reminds me of the old mafia gang warfare over booze during prohibition. One gang of mobs didn't want another gang of mobs cutting in on their areas or revenue.

EQ2 actually SUPPORTS BUYING of ingame items for real life dollars on several severs now. Of course it's server specific, but, still there's SOE trying to make another BUCK.

I read an article earlier this year that stated around the globe this is a billion dollar business venture for a lot of people. It's not a game to them. It's easy fast cash at the expence of the games economy and players fun in the game.

My theory is they don't want these games to last forever, they want you go buy another and another and another so they can keep milking people over and over for real life dollars for the ingame items and high level characters and ingame coin. It goes with the saying "A Fool and His Money are Soon Parted".

And like mice to the pied piper, people quit one mmorpg for another and pay that retail price and in most cases that $15 a month PLUS buy ingame items, coins and characters off of ebay. What a business and people are gullible for it.

For me it's the reason I stopped playing the PAY TO PLAY mmorpgs and only play Guild Wars now. Even though I believe I know the system at least it's not costing me a monthly fee to be part of it.

Don't you ever wonder why you never read or see in the News of any of these sweatshops ever getting busted or taken to court? Now I know if I was a reporter or a big media outlet, I'd be wanting to place a story like that front page since it's so widely used and abused over the last 6 years. Interesting that's never happened by one of the Majors that produce mmorpgs and such. It's easy to say "Oh We Banned Them", how do you know they banned ANYONE? And even to keep it LOOKING legit, they could very well ban an ACCOUNT while giving their sweatshop employee a brand new one to start working with and if it is the majors doing this, dontcha think it would be pretty easy for them to give an employee ANY level character they wanted at any time? The light of this came when on the Test Servers of EQ I found out you could start at level *25* just by inputting a /command. Imagine that, so if they can do that for anyone, I'm pretty sure they can have an employeee get a level 75 buy putting in /command 75 with it specifically open to that account.

Ingame I have been confronted by several of what I would call peddlers. They have a list of the best items in the game and if you ask about it they lock onto your location by sending a join group signal. And rush over to you and drop as many items as they can into the view window (even if you didn't ask them to). Then they say "What want"? "How much you pay?", they will try to make any deal possible if it's within a certain price range, they all have a low and a high (which is what they auction for in the first place). And funny enough their names are Chineselike, Ho, Hia, Lang, or Cho, Min, Lah, things like that, in all encounters though the names have always made me suspicious that these are farmers for ebay cash.

Basically though, these kinds of players/employees only bother people who worry and worry and worry about the economy or afraid they will never catch up to the JONES. If you're just a common joe player who's just out for FUN and ENERTAINMENT, none of these people affect your style of play. They are merely out there for the "impatient", the "whiners", "those that can't stand to be left behind or aren't in the forefront or limelight", these are the kinds of players that will flock to the ebayers and "farmers for profit". And there's 1000's of them that just can't stand that their friend or someone they know or even don't know has something better than they got and in their minds it would take them years to ever aquire it UNLESS they used EBAY and got an advantage.

The EULA for all pratical purposes is a joke, it's not enforced by the standards it should be and in many cases it can't be enforced because there aren't any international laws inside some of these countries.

Where Anet's problem lies is they are so concerned about stopping these botters and ebayers, that they are hurting the core base of their players even more. Robbing Peter to pay Paul just isn't the way to go about it. They should leave drop rates and casual income alone and go specifically after botters and ebay farmers "personally and confront them with law suits", but, see that costs them litigation fees and that's expensive for them, so, the easy way for them is just to punish everyone. But, by punishing everyone, you keep everyone on the same "level of play", as you cut botters or income for ebay farmers, you're doing the same to your core base of players as well. Not a very good solution in my book.

The person who makes a mmorpg with no economy no trading no sharing of items whatsoever will be the mmorpg that will have the best community and gameplay. All drops are individually specific and only the person that it's specified for can pick it up and ever use it. Although you could transfer it to alts since alts are not another player and the alts would have to be on the same account and vault. Without player trade or player interaction in trades that would pretty much eliminate ebay farming. You could still be a crafter, but, you could only craft for yourself. Might sound boring, but, it would eliminate ebay farmers totally and completely.

ANd think of all the wasted time auctioning and trying to sell items that would no longer be part of the game. The adventure would be the game and/or pvp. Plus wouldn't have to keep all that data of transactions between players or people scamming other people etc. etc. It's a sound idea, I hope someone does it someday. NPC vendors would be the only means of upgrading outside of finding the loot yourself. But, in this type of game you would get what you "earned" and not by what you could buy on ebay.

If a person could make gold and give said gold away, then you would still have the ebayers and the botters. The theory of every one of your drops being customized for just you and no one else, would keep item farming down and would keep those items off of ebay, but as long as I can sell it to someone or something and get gold in return and then turn around and sell that gold for cash (what would stop that), then the problem will never go away.

Plus the chances of just me, getting that perfect weapon drop for my character is slim to none. My chances for me saving Gold and buying it off someone else makes the chance of me getting that item a whole lot better. I don't want that chance to go away or get slimmer.

My only advice would be to have a trader for every item or least the good to rare items in the game, that way that rare item would still be able to be bought and you would have something in the game worth 100k for to spend on and then do away with all forms of trade, including the transfer of gold. But then you could have the ebayers or botters getting cash and then dropping the gold at your feet. So IMO, you can not fix this and IMO its not worth all of this, although I do like the idea of a trader for every item in the game.

not fiar...

I'm curious as to why some people are so robustly defending bad working practices around the world. I couldn't give a fig what any celeb says. But then again, you have to understand that in countries like China people like this regularly don't get paid at all. Pay can be suspended for any reason (and who's going to have the money to sue?)

Only idiots believe that "there are too many people in China" to require sweatshops everywhere. Chinese workers are actually starting to sell their labour to the highest bidder in some areas because there are worker shortages. Some companies offer good facilities to their workers, such as creches - all of China isn't the unsophisticated third-world country a lot of ignorant red-necks believe it to be. Chinese people worker longer hours for less reward and perks than most of you lot do or will do. They don't need your feined pity in saying they need 19th century work to survive on.

However that does not mean that some people aren't taken advantage of. They are being exploited by rich no-good-nicks that can't be bothered to play the game properly. Doubtless these are the same people trying to vainly defend the status quo.

Not that it's right what he does, but if that's his piss-andy job, by posting his account name here you'll likely get him banned and he may lose his job. Did he know you were going to post this info, as well as his IGN?

No he didn't and I thought about hiding his name, but then I would be contributing to the problem. All of these farmers take a risk when they appear on public servers. They are guaranteed no privacy.

By now you should know that posting peoples in game names is against forum rules no matter how you feel about it and it should be removed like it or not.

Would you like some little red and blue lights on your avatar so you can be new hall monitor? It's not your job to be the little tattle-tale on every thing you see that you think is not right nor is it mine or anyone else's.

If a-net wants to get the ebay farmers that bad they eventually will, but i think your post was in poor taste.

I agree with that.

In addition:
That person isn't doing anything wrong.
We know this:
He is a griffin farmer (so am i).
He is from China or Taiwan.

He never stated he was selling anything on ebay and he is definately not a bot.

So, what is he doing wrong?

So the idea of working people to death isn't horrendous to you? You think these people want to work in subhuman conditions with a high chance of an early death? Oh sure they provide for their family any way they can, but that doesn't mean that this was their Plan A, so to speak.

oh yes, sitting in a room playing a video game is SOOOOO much worst that being in a factory, possibly getting limbs crushed, or anything else the bleeding hearts, save the trees/owls/whales, don't eat meat whiners can come up with this month.

if they can find a job that is much better than being in some that i know of then more power to them

it's not my fault they live there, it's not my fault they don't get paid that much money, it's not my fault they don't get to live here, stop making this everyone else's problem because it simply is not.

cry me a river.

maybe anet is selling gold on ebay now! lol

Do not support sweatshops! Do not support cheap / forced / slavelike labor in poor Asian countries!

How can you help?

Do NOT buy any toys, clothes, computer parts, artificial trees, electronics, etc. that were manufactured this way for xmas presents! Check the place of manufacture on ALL these items that you have already bought and return them if they were mass-produced in a poor Asian country! Tell your kids / friends / family that you are doing the RIGHT thing!

If you have a problem with the above, then please, please stop being a hypocrite and complaining about one type of sweatshopping whilst supporting all others.

That's right, DO NOT support 3rd world country sweatshops, through which people in countries that earn less than $1k USD per year could possibly learn skills and work for your money.

Instead, let them remain poor and hungry so that you can watch horrible pictures on television. After which, if you are in the mood, you can feel sorry about the difference in wealth and donate a few dollars to charities. Then feel good about yourself.

All you described was a fella who solo farms griffins in Augury Rock ... if you search the forums you'll find that the technique or the build isn't much of a secret. Those folks didn't invent the build nor were they the first to farm it solo.

From early on I solo farmed Snake Dance griffins, Augury Rock griffins, the UW, minotaurs, ettins .... etc. with my monk. The only difference is, I kept the gold for myself.

If you ever want something fun to do, go stand at the west entrance to augry rock and do the /wave or say things like "good luck" or "enjoy" or something stupid like that.

a guildie and i did that last night for 2 hours, laughing our ass off the whole time. actualyl got 3 people to stop and let us come along for "cheering them on"

Well, i wouldent assume hes an ebay farmer, and i dont want to stereo type but theres a good chance he is one . Now the notion that 55 builds are common knowledge... LOL LOL. i dont know one person that uses the EXACT same build. Everyone i know has modded their builds into something completely new, including me. Right now i have the fastest griff farm build in my guild. sometime i might post it, but the point is that more than half of the guild wars population does not know what a 55 monk is, so dont assume things


peice.

That knowledge is fairly common and easy to search for. Just because people are lazy don't assume the knowledge isn't readily available. And the base to the build is the same except the few who still do bonding successfully. The only thing that changes is the approach to dealing the damage.

this build and variations of it are quite common ... Augury Rock is probably one of the least challenging places to solo - Snake Dance griffins and the UW are more interesting and rewarding. Here are some of my old screencaps.

I used to do the same as this guy, but I recently changed to solo farming FoW with my warrior. It's ALOT more fun, I can tell you that. The rewards are more fun, because some you can actually use and the fighting style isn't at all as mind-numbing as Griffon farming.
But these pics sure do bring back memories... All those flashy blue, yellow and occational red numbers... *drools*

There are Hollywood stars tipping their maids/waiters hundreds and thousands of dollars for doing nothing, so paying real $$ for a crystalline sword is nothing to them.

If Anet has extra money to hire people doing that on ebay, I would prefer they spending that money in making GW more fun to play. 15 k Tormentor's armor anyone?

For all of you worrying about sweatshop workers, how about asking Anet improving their working conditions, i.e. like making farming easier and merchants pay more for their goods? If not, then stop being a hypocrite. This is the price West have to pay for beating communism in those countries, the rise of global capitalism.

well, some variations and the base build are common knowledge to *experienced players* cough. But there are lots of variations that people dont know about, yes they can take the time, read the skills, and eventually figure it out, but its not commen .

if it is so commen, guess my

solo perdition rock mo/me build

solo underworld mo/w and mo/me build

griffon farming mo/w mo/me (trust me these ones are not what u think ^^)

as a matter of fact, neither are mine. With the exception of my solo UW mo/w farmer - none of my farm builds are even 55 health or low health builds (55 monk got pretty boring). I used mo/me most often ... While some of it has to do with the build the rest has to do with understanding the timing of attacks and spells - that's why the builds are different for each farming area.