The Lawbringer: Fighting the gold fight -- the world as it is
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 11th 2011 at 5:00PM
The Lawbringer has in the past been used as a personal launching pad for some of the more out-there or esoteric ideas that I have in regards to the World of Warcraft and virtual currency in general. You guys seem to love it, and there's always plenty of great discussion about these ideas. For the next two weeks, I want to introduce you to my thoughts on how Blizzard should be attacking gold sellers and, at the same time, working to remove some of the content gates that gold has erected in the MMO we all love. This week, we will set up the story and the history of it all, and next week, we will talk about hard conclusions.
Gold selling isn't going away as long as fungible and liquid currency exists in MMOs. Gold is "fungible" because it can be exchanged for something exactly like it, at a 1:1 ratio -- gold is gold. Gold is also liquid, as it can be used and exchanged for other goods or services. Short of Blizzard's getting rid of this type of currency altogether or selling its own currency for a cheaper price than gold sellers can furnish it, people will sell gold and items that can be traded.
Blizzard has shown that it has the guts to go after gold selling as an industry but has so far failed in scope to bring down the snake that slowly poisons everything it has worked to build. As sellers become hackers, and as hacking chips away at the good will, reputation, and stability of the game we love to play and the company we love to patronize, there has never been a more urgent time to fight the gold fight. The strategy needs to change from focusing on the people who sell gold to a combination of those that sell and the gold itself.
Gold selling has become gold hacking
At one time in the history of MMOs, gold and item selling was a quaint notion. We had not yet been introduced to a world of horse armor and new mission DLC. This was a young world, a world that was still putting out its feelers about what was good and acceptable and what was dangerous and asking too much of people. A monthly fee was a new concept to a video game, at least to the average player, and the idea that you could pay real money for advancement in a persistent world was even more foreign.
Gold selling in World of Warcraft began as quaintly as it could have. Farmers would grind and fight, taking over the best spots in places like Tyr's Hand or those elves in Azshara and making money the old-fashioned way, the same way we players did. That gold was then sold to players on what seemed to be an open market. It was shady but shallow, only running as deep as the farmers, the gold they made, and the company that hired them.
Over time, however, the unfortunate drawback to Blizzard's rightful actions against gold sellers had turned this seemingly cut-and-dry industry into one of consequences, theft, and illegality. When Blizzard began to ban thousands of accounts for gold selling, these sellers bought more accounts and hid, still completing their transactions. When Blizzard hunted them down, they moved inwards to dungeons and instances, making tweaks to the WoW client to fool the server into thinking they were in another position, easily hacking chests in said dungeons. When Blizzard removed chests from dungeons, the gold sellers began to troll the auction houses of the servers, playing a gold game unlike anything anyone had seen before. Before long, it became more profitable to steal gold than to farm it, from the very players who bought it.
Gold selling has become gold hacking in World of Warcraft. Many other MMOs do not have this problem because they either sell their own items and currency, making it just plain not profitable to sell gold, or they don't have the issues of scale that WoW does. Either way, WoW's gold selling issue is a problem of a scale never before seen in a virtual world before, and something -- nay, everything -- needs to change. Blizzard's reputation, as well as the safety of its consumers, is at stake.
A fight that needs to be fought
Many people think that gold selling is fairly harmless, but they're wrong. Sure, the number of people getting hacked by gold farmers and sellers is not a majority of the playerbase, but there are better and more pressing reasons to fight the gold fight.
Gold sellers and hacking hurts the Blizzard and the World of Warcraft brand, as well as the brands that will eventually come from Blizzard. Account hacking is more prevalent than ever, and there are security concerns to the point of free keyfob authenticators being offered to victims after their accounts are compromised. The problem is also not always in the users' control, either. Keyloggers find their way onto our systems in every way possible, and even the best spyware tools can only detect and remove so much.
World of Warcraft is a game that prides itself on opening its doors to one of the most diverse groups of video game players in the world. There is a beautiful pride in being so accommodating. However, with such a wide range of players comes a wide range of knowledge, and many people still do not understand the value of safe internet browsing or the relatively intricate knowledge needed to protect oneself online. Many of us may think that those practices are simple, but we are definitely not the full audience.
Continuing to allow gold selling and hacking to happen into perpetuity could impact the good reputation and foundation Blizzard has built up over the years and even the success of the next MMO. How are we supposed to fall in love with Titan if the first thing that springs to mind about Blizzard MMOs is how many security hoops I will have to jump through to log in? Constant hacking attempts only weakens the Warden's purpose, and the race to be in front of the hackers will only cause mistakes along the way. Gold sellers have nothing to lose. This is a fight that needs to be fought and won.
So far, Blizzard's attempts to stop the hacking and gold selling have been effective, but not effective enough. The recent shot fired with PayPal, one of the most used payment services for gold on the internet, was a good step in one of the right directions. However, we are quickly figuring out that at its very heart, gold selling exists anywhere you have some sort of fungible currency. Short of Blizzard selling its own gold currency to players, something has to be done to remove the reliance on gold inside the game world.
Blizzard's strategy is all about containment and parrying. When gold sellers make a move, it parries with fast and easy access for players back into the game and flagging accounts. Compromised accounts are back relatively quickly, but it is not a sustainable system. Gold hacking will ruin enough people's days at some point in the future that the customer service system will be hit.
The strategy needs to change. The only way Blizzard can fix the gray market that has sprouted up underneath and around it like grass in the sidewalk is to combat the problem head on with a new and innovative strategy. This includes the vital task of looking to the root of the problem -- gold.
What is gold, anyway? In WoW, gold acts as a content gate, a decision-making tool, and a cost-benefit analysis medium. As a content gate, gold in WoW pays for repair bills and consumables for raiding, items from vendors, and bag space for our inventories. WoW gold is spent in game on heirlooms from guild vendors, flight paths for travel, and a million other purchases in the game world that funnels money from our purses out into the virtual ether.
As a decision-making tool, gold represents some kind of in-game wealth that gives players opportunities based on the amount they have accumulated or can potentially accumulate. Rewards like epic flying or the Vial of the Sands are all about choice and decisions, figuring out for yourself what aspect of the game makes you happy and you wish to have access to.
Cost-benefit analysis is so ingrained in our base nature that gold is just an extension of it. In game, we make decisions based on the risk involved and how much the potential consequences of our choices will cost us. Gold is that medium, and we must make the judgment call to run the heroic instance with the not-so-great tank, hoping that we will get through the ordeal with more gold or gear than we came in with. We make thousands of these decisions every day, from getting up in the morning to soloing an group quest.
Why do people buy gold?
People buy gold because it negates the three theories above. Buying gold brings you closer to the rewards of an artificial content gate more quickly. Bypassing the gate completely, it removes the decision-making element by letting you make all of the decisions, and the cost-benefit analysis is skewed in the "benefit" direction since cost is not an issue anymore. People buy gold for convenience's sake, wanting instant gratification for many of WoW's bonuses or because they just don't have the time to commit.
What could change tomorrow?
The new strategy should be to focus on removing the reliance on gold. Gold is here to stay, and in WoW's case, I am not recommending getting rid of gold entirely. But there are things that could be done tomorrow that could reduce the player's dependency on gold and turn the currency into just another way to get to the most expensive or most desired content. At the same time, reducing the player's reliance on gold lowers the amount of gold bought and sold, slowing phasing out the hacking and security compromises that exist today.
Here's the problem: Right now, too much gold that comes in to an average player's "purse" is removed by game mechanics. The average WoW player logs in, does some dailies, quests, and runs a dungeon or two, incurring repair costs, gear costs from vendors, and a daunting auction house. Looking at something like epic flying as something to save for is not fun to people who want the instant satisfaction that accompanies gold buying -- completely understandable. With disposable income, people are willing to shell out for instant gratification. You may find it stupid, but I find it utterly understandable.
Next week, we will look at hard solutions that can change the gold selling landscape for the better, giving players more options when it comes to in-game perks and removing the game's reliance on gold as a means of content gating.
This column is for entertainment only; if you need legal advice, contact a lawyer. For comments or general questions about law or for The Lawbringer, contact Mat at mat@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Economy, The Lawbringer
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
OghmaEh Mar 11th 2011 5:12PM
Gold selling is like prostitution. It's everywhere, but seemingly has no one that utilizes it's services. And just like the oldest profession, gold selling is not likely to go anywhere.
The Angry Intern Mar 11th 2011 6:51PM
hehe, that's actually a very good comparison. A lot of people use the service, but nobody will admit that they do.
rodmin Mar 11th 2011 5:16PM
Hmm, that nice text of yours explains why the chests were removed in the first place. Thanks for the heads-up on that.
Eirik Mar 11th 2011 6:03PM
... except that they weren't. Weren't removed from instances, weren't removed from the world.
During the Lunar Festival, I encountered a chest while running to the elder in Stratholme. And both before and since, I've encountered chests in the world outside of instances, in Borean Tundra, Hellfire Peninsula, and elsewhere.
A major change was to ensure that more interesting stuff was to be found in chests. I've often found rare quality items (and occasionally uncommons) in chests. Before cataclysm, a chest would often have ... food. and water. And cloth. Whee.
Rankin Mar 12th 2011 1:52AM
The instance chests in TBC content were removed. And you definitely didn't find any chests in Northrend, there were none in the open world or in instances.
Right now, the only chests you can find are in the open world or in vanilla instances.
ziggler Mar 11th 2011 5:16PM
why not allow players to transact gold in the ah, for game time or items? Someone on my server actually did this for some time, people just bought him stuff of the blizzard store or transferred the money to his account, and the gold came 100% from in game actions (glyph market as you might imagine).
Eirik Mar 11th 2011 6:48PM
EVE Online has game time (PLEX) that you can purchase with in-game currency. By itself, that doesn't solve the issue. There is still RMT going on in EVE.
As long as you can buy (or sell) items to NPC vendors, you have a "money = time" equation. And as long as you have both money and "game money = game time", you have the incentive to substitute "real money = game money".
Vitos Mar 11th 2011 7:00PM
I really like this idea. EVE Online has something like it where players can buy game time and turn it into a commodity that can traded in game. However, in EVE it can also be destroyed or stolen by killing the player's ship, but that wouldn't carry over to WoW.
Anony Moss Mar 11th 2011 11:21PM
There have been lawbringer articles addressing this before. The primary concern, if I remember it correctly, is that by associating a real Blizzard-supported value for gold to real life money creates a huge legal problem. The first issue is that if you, as a player, go out and make 1000 gold a day and that 1000 gold is worth $5 or whatever, then you've "made" $5 for tax purposes. Yes, this may seem silly, but when you're talking about likely billions of gold being transacted on a daily basis, this starts to become incredibly significant. Also consider that if Blizzard has a "bug" that costs you gold for some reason, right now that gold has no inherent value and thus you have nowhere near a legal right to claim foul.
The long and short of it is that giving gold a real life value creates legal concerns.
The author sounds like he will talk about them next week, but there are a lot of viable methods for reducing the value of gold. The first, and simplest, would be to create another currency (like honor/valor/etc points) that is not able to be traded and is able to be used on purchases from NPCs: such as epic flight, repairs and other costs.
The next option is to allow these points to be "essentially" exchanged through an item exchange. For example, if BoE items were instead set to NEWSTATUS and NEWSTATUS items could be sold to a vendor to generate NEWCURRENCY as well as then allowing players to purchase NEWSTATUS items with their NEWCURRENCY. This is a more complicated example, but essentially it creates a non-transferable system that still allows for some items to be exchanged without the currency being exchanged.
Imagine for a second of the Valor Point vendors included existing in-game BoE's to be purchased for significantly higher costs and if BoE's could be sold to the Valor Point vendor for some large % of that cost. Still allows for BoEs to retain a high value, but eliminates one of the largest gold sinks in the game.
Xsinthis Mar 12th 2011 2:29PM
Some countries are already adding real world value to digital possessions, so Blizzard is gonna come across that problem sooner or later anyways
The Dewd Mar 11th 2011 5:24PM
A very interesting lead-in. I'm looking forward to seeing what you propose as solutions.
I fear that as long as it's possible to buy BoE epics and the like, folks will always want gold to spend. And, unfortunately, as long as it's possible to make gold off other people, players will make gold to spend on things like that.
Trilynne Mar 11th 2011 5:27PM
I like where you're going with this... I'll look forward to part 2!
Rob Mar 11th 2011 5:45PM
I have a hard time getting your premise. You are basically saying that the solution is to give more players gold, more easily? Gold is already quite easy to get. You get about 5k gold just from going from 80 to 85. It's assumed you would plow that back into leveling professions that do not offer a ROI. So fine, you get no gold from getting to 85 if you level some professions too. However, you could quite readily do the dreaded dailies or dungeon runs, or sell some profession items, or gather things, or 'grind' mobs. Or play the AH even.
I think the average level 85 player would be really hard pressed not to find ways to make money.
Here is what I see as the real issue. People are lazy. As brilliant as Blizz's system is, in cataclysm they over did it. Enchants become a several thousand gold proposition. Epics start to cost into the 5 digit range, and beyond. THings have gotten crazy, precisely because blizz dumped a ton of gold on the player leveling from 80 to 85.
Because people are lazy and want items that now cost 10k+ gold, it makes going to get that 10k gold a serious issue. At no other time in the history of the game was there player made/obtained items that are so extremely valuable and coveted. So, now the lure is there to buy gold to get your Vial or your epics.
If they lowered the material costs on these items, ie if the vial cost 5k gold, then players would not be so hard pressed to get this.
Everyone talks about epic flight. Well, back at level 70 that was a serious deal, requiring months of grinding. Now, most people could get this amount just by leveling their toons.
If you start to talk about root causes, you have only to look at the current economy, where basic materials now cost 3x more than they did in Wraith (at least 3x), whereas the quest rewards haven't scaled all that much. Things are a bit more expensive now, and players are lazy. THat's the real reason people will buy gold, because there is something actually worth buying now.
Boobah Mar 11th 2011 6:44PM
Purples aren't costing 30k gold because of the 5k earned questing. Purples cost 30k gold because people spent 12 months with virtually no new content, and therefore nothing new to spend the gold on. The gold piled up, because the people who were playing were still making money with farming ore and herbs, selling glyphs, enchants, and gems, or just regularly doing a whole lot of dailies.
AltMaster Mar 12th 2011 12:23AM
This entire post is preposterous.
It speaks of the cost of items as though Blizzard sets those costs. They don't. They're set by the player base. If people are willing to pay 50g/stack for heavy leather, then there will be people selling it for that price. It has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of gold Blizzard gives you from 80-85. On that point, in fact, you should look at how much more it costs to repair, to fly from one point to another, or to buy from vendors. Those are the points of the economy Blizzard controls, not the cost of mats in the AH. You NEED more gold during those levels, and the game provides it.
I think the best option to curb gold sellers is to go after hacking, to secure the game. Period. Then, if people decide to sell their gold for real money, and other people decide to buy it, more power to them. It wont effect my game whatsoever.
Gold is very easy to earn. On my main server I have 9 level 85's, all with epic flying, and about 115K gold to spare. I've never even considered buying gold, because it's just easy to earn it using the economy that has been established for us by Blizzard. People who buy gold are just lazy, and they aren't likely to commit to the game in the long run anyway, as it *does* take time to accomplish real goals, goals that gold can't buy.
So if Blizzard effectively kills hacking, then gold sellers will rely on their own game time to make the gold they sell. The result will be that gold will become far more expensive to buy with real-world dollars and those that do have more money to burn than I do, and, again, won't hurt the game in any way I can predict.
Rankin Mar 12th 2011 2:00AM
Blizzard does have some control over the cost of things on the AH. They control the rarity of items and can adjust those drop rates accordingly.
Just look at what they did with Frost Lotus in WotLk. They decided it was costing too much on the AH and increased the drop rate from herbing.
AltMaster Mar 12th 2011 2:29AM
@ Rankin
Agreed on that, but that's a rare exception and doesn't affect the main concern, which is gold sellers. Blizzard can increase drop rates to their heart's desire and it won't have any effect on gold sellers because the root cause of the problem is the enormity of gold available to hackers. For their part they are giving away authenticators (which I want my $8 back, BTW!!) and that will help enormously. More could be done, though.
IMO, if accounts stop getting hacked, gold sellers will be effectively out of business in the sense that it has any impact on your or my gameplay. Again, if people want to sell their earned in-game gold, so be it. At the current going rate, according to spam, that's an income that should make them somewhere in the middle of the income chart in Afghanistan. Hardly a worthwhile endeavor.
DarkWalker Mar 12th 2011 8:21AM
It's a game, not a job. Most players are bound to be "lazy", by your definition of the term, and there's nothing really wrong with that as long as players don't resort to unethical behavior.
BTW, "fixing" that kind of laziness would perhaps not be in Blizzard's best interest. Make players have to work too hard for their fun, and they might leave for other games that offer instant gratification. And while some hardcore players might want such "lazy" players to leave, losing revenue most assuredly is not high on Blizzard's priority list.
wutsconflag Mar 13th 2011 3:39PM
@DarkWalker:
I find that people who use "this is a game, not a job" as an excuse are often the very same "instant gratification" people who would possibly buy gold.
There's nothing difficult about being able to afford anything you want in this game. The difference between the haves and have nots is knowledge. It's not even really time spent playing. I happen to have a friend who plays an hour a day who has reached (the new) gold cap two or three times over. He doesn't have anything that no one else does (not making gold off a rare pattern or anything) except some basic knowledge.
Fanniyemae Mar 11th 2011 5:48PM
Why not go to a strict barter system? We already have to farm mats, then to add a gold cost on top of it is a bit redundant. Stop charging for repairs, we already have to take time out of the day to go repair. Stop charging for vendor supplies, we're limited by what we can carry anyhow, and it's not like people aren't creating bank mules anyway. We can still have super rare items in the game and if done correctly, it would encourage and actually give crafters some sort of recognition for spending the time to level up crafting to make something they either give away or barter away.