The Lawbringer: Fighting the gold fight -- how the strategy must change
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 18th 2011 at 1:00PM
Last week on The Lawbringer, I introduced you to the world as it is, a battlefield littered with the corpses of stolen accounts, inconvenienced players, and a priceless reputation on the line. This week, we look at concrete solutions to actually helping the gold selling system wind down and remove many of the hurdles that instant gratification with purchasing gold sets up for Blizzard. You might have mixed and angry reactions to what I'm going to talk about, but do give me the benefit of the doubt. I think being open-minded might win this fight.
So what can Blizzard do besides selling its own currency? Here are my suggestions for the first steps that Blizzard needs to take in the new war against gold selling.
Get rid of repairs and durability
Durability and repair bills are an outdated system of gear content gating and a PvP risk-reward mechanic that should have been removed with Cataclysm from the start. In the beginning, repair bills were a mechanic to make PvP graveyard bombing less efficient as a strategy. Repairs also were content gates in that gold was a hurdle you had to clear in order to access endgame content that was, at the time, set up for the hardcore. Much as in EverQuest, raiding was seen as the ultimate goal of the dedicated guilds, never truly thought of as something 10 people could ever do successfully.
Times have changed, and the name of the game is accessibility. The only thing repairs do now is artificially slow down casual players and raiding by making extended play reliant on the money in your purse. Even PvP had repair bills removed from it a long, long time ago. You might not see repair bills as a huge monetary drain because of the new ease of collecting gold, but that doesn't change the fact that repair bills remove an average player's gold from their purse at an alarming rate.
Getting rid of durability puts more money into the pockets of every player, allowing those players to spend that gold elsewhere. Without durability, one less negative effect on your gold purse contributes to the need to buy gold. You don't need to buy consumables to raid, nor do you need to pay for keys or content gates, but you do have to pay repair bills.
Step 1: Remove durability.
Of gold sinks and security
The pet store was a huge success for Blizzard, offering downloadable, account-wide content to players for a premium price. That price gave the player something fun and unique, binding the reward to every character on the account. The success of the pet store is not a fluke, either -- Blizzard knows that people will spend money on WoW for fun additions like the Celestial Steed or companion pets. Why not take things just a little bit further and help remove a huge chunk of the gold selling issue?
Epic flying is one of the most expensive perks that a player can purchase for his character(s) in WoW. The average player has to drop a huge amount of gold on this skill -- 5,000 gold (4,000 with a faction discount) -- to stay competitive in the gathering market, much less have a more enjoyable and fast-paced experience with the game. I come from a World of Warcraft where my flying speed, for longer than I care to admit, was slower than my ground mount speed. I hated every day of budget flying. Spending 4-5k in gold on each one of your characters is no small amount, and people are more than willing to purchase gold in huge amounts to pay for this perk. People already do it every day.
Here's my suggestion: The pet store should offer account-wide epic flying for mount purchases. Bundling epic flying with mount purchases not only decreases the amount of gold that players have to spend on epic flying for all their characters, thereby making bought gold look less efficient, but it also clues players in to a trusted source that they can buy from. Blizzard is accountable for its store and its wares; gold sellers are not. If you have your money stolen out of country by some gold selling operation, you are just kissing that money goodbye.
Bundling epic flying account-wide with a mount purchase seems dangerous to many people who bring up the slippery slope metaphor. Well, I agree. It is a slippery slope for things to be bought in the game world. However, it is a slippery slope I am willing to slide if it means the nature of the gold selling game changes to the point where it is not profitable or non-existent. Currency still exists in game, and the option to pay for epic flying is still there for players who wish to use their currency in that fashion. However, to combat the instant gratification that gold selling awards, Blizzard needs to make some of the most epic rewards available in different avenues.
Plus, think about the cool new mounts we could get with a new promotion advertising the new bundle. I'm all for it.
If you're not a fan of the purchase option, what about ramping up security with an authenticator program that grants you epic flight for your account when adding an authenticator to your system? While this is more of a stopgap, Blizzard could give players a "Secure Flight License" flag that grants you the next level of flight while your account is secured using any of the authenticator options available. Everything should be about lowering the amount of gold needed to compete and at the same time, making people's accounts more secure.
Personal currency is play-dependent
The storm drakes are a step in the right direction -- 4 unique models of one of Cataclysm's signature new drakes are available in 4 very different ways, not one of them costing gold. The Reins of the Drake of the East Wind are only available through taking the time and effort to successfully complete Cataclysm's first raid tier and raid achievements. The Reins of the Drake of the North Wind is a random drop from Altarius in The Vortex Pinnacle, making this mount a "eureka!" moment, a prize for being lucky. The Reins of the Drake of the South Wind is another such "eureka!" moment for raiders, randomly dropping after besting Al'akir. The Reins of the Drake of the West Wind comes from time and dedication to your faction's cause in Tol Barad, costing the player 200 Tol Barad Commendations which cannot be purchased with gold.
Gold sinks are not the same as time sinks. What the wind drakes show us is that Blizzard has the understanding and the means to put in plenty of different variations of mounts and rewards purchased or obtained through radically different means. None of these drakes can be purchased with gold outright -- each requires some effort on the part of the player or some time commitment. Personal currencies that are impossible to purchase with gold, like the Tol Barad Commendations, are especially useful for Blizzard in stemming gold buying -- giving players huge incentives to work on personal currency rather than shell out bought gold for items and rewards.
What tomorrow brings ...
There are more things that players spend purchased gold on, to be sure, but we're talking about quality of life improvements that are some of the biggest gold draws in the game today. Tomorrow, Blizzard could get rid of durability and bundle epic flying with mount purchases in the pet store. Tomorrow, all of the gold that people are buying to spend on these expensive perks and slow monetary raid content gating drips can be removed from the game. Blizzard can and should change the nature of its fight against gold sellers to be about giving access to more of the game's epic rewards through new avenues. People are already willing to spend their real-life money on the gold that they feel they need to play the game, so why not give them that chance to do it in a safe and secure way?
It doesn't just stop at mounts, epic flying, and getting rid of repairs. Blizzard selling its own currency is a red herring in terms of solutions to the gold selling problem. Over time, other pieces of the game could be tailored to be more merit-based or personal currency-based, much like collecting Tol Barad commendations for gear or valor and conquest points that allow you to progress through play. Some of the best mounts already go to people who pay and to people who put in the time commitment to save up enough Badges of Blank.
Am I saying that Blizzard should get rid of gold completely? Absolutely not. Gold provides the means for WoW's economy to be as robust as it is for many players. Every player, however, is not part of that meta-game. Will these suggestions fix gold selling? Of course not -- nothing can, as long as that type of currency exists in an online game. What we can do is provide game perks through different means that accommodate everyone's playstyles. Let's face facts: Instant gratification is a playstyle.
Change the strategy. Fight the gold fight. Let players keep more of the money they earn, and begin to move toward providing more perks through different avenues that take players' money out of the hands of gold hackers. You'll see an almost instant change and begin to move into a future free of hacking and account compromises.
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, Blizzard, Economy, The Lawbringer
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
potatoboy Mar 18th 2011 1:10PM
Love it. There are so many other ways to hav sinks that don have to be fungible. Having sinks (Mounts, Epic flight, repairs) in fungible game currency is beging for goldsellers.
potatoboy Mar 18th 2011 1:18PM
Another idea to eliminate fungibility from epic flight would be to have a set of dailies like the venomhide and new frostsaber. This would free up a lot of gold from alts.
philbert Mar 18th 2011 1:20PM
And yet, people are clamoring for more gold sinks
Snuzzle Mar 18th 2011 2:50PM
I have to politely disagree with this. Most players' daily gold sinks amount to nothing more than repairs and maybe food. Once you get epic flight, you're not using flight vendors very often. But even say, for argument's sake, that the average player is lazy and uses flight masters whenever he can instead of flying there himself. Repairs still make up a large percentage of gold that disappears into the ether, and we want gold to disappear into the ether. That's what helps keep inflation in check.
Apart from occasionally buying water if you use mana, or perhaps food if you don't have healing spells (which I don't even see most players use, but I digress) there's not much left in the way of daily gold sinks to keep gold levels reasonable.
No longer do we have to buy ammunition, vendor armor is crap, setting your hearth is free (as it should be), and once you're 85 you don't have to worry about training new spells. Heck, with dual-specs (and with dual-specs being a tenth of the price it used to be) you hardly even have to respec.
Occasional vendor gold sink costs for 85s: reforging, reglyphing, retalenting flight.
Daily vendor gold sink costs for 85s: repairing.
If I forgot anything, please let me know. But it seems like removing armor durability would remove a large amount of "disappearing gold" and would have huge repercussions on the economy.
Likely, Blizzard would rebalance some of the income (from quests, item vendor sale amounts, etc) to try to take this into account, but a virtual economy where you have no easy, regular way to remove some of the gold from the system, the currency quickly loses its meaning.
Perhaps this is the point, less reliance on gold, but if gold becomes meaningless due to it being so plentiful, players will find other ways to trade as has been shown in other games with poor economies and meaningless gold (usually in games where duping was possible). And these other trades may become lucrative to farmers...
Poltergeist Mar 18th 2011 3:12PM
Remove BoEs from raids and dungeons. Make any drop, including trash drops, BoP. This includes BoE's purchasable from valor/justice points. The only items that should be BoE are those made by professions.
I'd say the #1 incentive for players to buy gold is to purchase gear, not epic flight. Right now, BoE's from raids are the most expensive items to purchase. Make it so that if you want the gear, you have to get it the old fashioned way...raid for it.
Minstrel Mar 18th 2011 4:51PM
I think this article has good ideas to combat "dishonest gold sellers"...that is, those willing to scam and hack. You can't steal soulbound items and currency.
Of course, it doesn't prevent "honest gold sellers," that is, those willing to spend their time farming gold and selling it. Because for those people, the fungible asset is time, not gold. Switch to personal currencies and the like, and these people will simply switch what they farm. There are already paid character leveling services, which is obviously just experience farming. Anything a player can do, a farmer can do for them directly with their character if necessary.
I'm not sure if those types of farmers/sellers are a concern to most, though.
Jawbone Mar 18th 2011 5:58PM
@Minstrel - there are no so-called honest power-levellers - take a good look at the next BG that you enter, out of 15 people, 2-3 are AFK leechers of which at least half are your power-levellers botting, time isn't a sink at all for power-levellers.
Aykwa Mar 18th 2011 6:30PM
I don't think these solutions would work against theft in the real world, and they won't work against theft in the virtual world. The problem is about human nature, not about regulation/rules/policy. As such, changes those suggested in the article, I believe, would not make a significant change in the problem. There is no way to take enough away incentive to steal from others without making the game (or the real world if applied there) thoroughly unenjoyable for most everyone. Then you'll have a real exodus from the game.
I believe that a better solution would be the twofold approach of providing/requiring better security options, and incorporating better server technology to catch hackers.
First, better security options. Require people to have at least 2 non-password layers of security, and give them several options to choose from. Options like IP registering, where you can set up one or more specific IP addresses (or local blocks in case you have a dynamic address from your host that sometimes changes) and the servers will only allow you to log in from those IP addresses. This would be useful for the many people who only play from a few fixed locations at all times.
Or how about registering the computers you play on? You can register your computer's profile easily enough if Blizzard creates the software to do it, such that each individual component in your machine is identified, down to the individual identifying numbers of the parts, not just the model numbers of the parts. And then most of your components need to match what is on record in order to let you log in, so that you can register say, your desktop and 2 laptops, and only those physical machines will be allowed to log in.
Maybe even get fancy yet simple, such as allowing you to upload several pictures of people you know, with names for each one (think Facebook photo tags) then letting their system make you pick out which one is your picture (the system would analyze your photos and find random internet photos that are very similar to yours as the dummy options). Once selected (you're not told yet if you chose right or wrong), you have to choose from multiple names for each person in the picture, and if you choose them all correctly, you're in, and it should only take you about 10 seconds every time.
And of course you have authenticators. So make at least 1 of these mandatory on top of your password, and that's a huge security increase. And if a person is still hacked with 1 mandatory layer, make them add another layer, and another the next time, and so forth. Eventually, if a person is simply that much of a security risk that they are hacked 3 times no matter the security precautions, either they are in on it, or they are such a liability (maybe they are getting hacked by their own brother, who has access to their computer in their house and their e-mail, etc, which you can simply not do anything about) that you don't need their business. But I can't see how any honest person would be hacked with at least 2 of the above options.
Second, Blizzard needs to develop better ways to catch the hackers. And don't tell me they don't have the technology to do it. Because if they can track your character so well in game that they can keep track of thousands of achievements and hundreds of seemingly obscure statistics, then should have the ability to track people who hack the game in order to have speed bonuses or glitch under terrain or bot or any of another host of hacks. They have the resources and skills and to do it, but whether they have the desire to do so is questionable.
Winning the gold fight is not about changing the daily lives of everyone who plays the game to the point where playing is either more complicated or less enjoyable. It is about more tightly controlling a closed system through technology, options, and accountability. Players need to be responsible enough to take a little bit of time to set up their security when they start, and to take the extra 10-20 seconds to log in once security measures are in place.
Just my $0.02.
SamLowry Mar 18th 2011 11:29PM
And Minstrel, the point of Aykwa's long article is that there really is no such thing as an "honest gold seller". Almost every last gold coin sold has been stolen, pure and simple.
While there might actually be one or two who are legitimately "goldcapped" from gaming the AH (and then, after wasting all that time, decided there was no other way to get rid of all that stinkin' gold cluttering up their alts), I can assure you that 100% of all goldsellers will tell you they are one of these very rare folks.
perasitewow Mar 18th 2011 1:11PM
I really don't like the idea of bundling an in game benefit like faster flight to a real world purchase. This just means that it becomes almost mandatory to shell out real cash in order to stay competitive in any gathering professions. I just think that they have inflated the cost of everything so much (repair bills, gold sinks like the chopper and alchemy drake, flasks and pots, flight speeds, flight in different zones) that in order to be able to accomplish things, many people look to purchase gold so that they don't have to spend months doing dailies or some other nonsense to earn the gold.
My solution would be to drastically lower the costs of things, so that they are more accessible. The problem with personal currencies like TB commendations is that we are now looking at an artificial grind to collect badges, gated by daily limits on how many you can get. Sure it stops gold purchases for the item, but it is just really REALLY annoying.
matticus Mar 18th 2011 1:19PM
More annoying than legitimately getting gold? What if they allowed valor/justice points to purchase some of these items instead of just badges?
Avan Mar 18th 2011 1:28PM
Perhaps a happy medium could be found. Currently, base flying speed is 150%, while epic flying is 270%, with Master flying being 310%. Those are jumps of 120% and 40% each. So perhaps, the faster flight speed granted by buying a mount from Blizzard could be a 60% increase, for 210% flight.
Cyrus Mar 18th 2011 1:39PM
"I just think that they have inflated the cost of everything so much (repair bills, gold sinks like the chopper and alchemy drake, flasks and pots, flight speeds, flight in different zones) that in order to be able to accomplish things, many people look to purchase gold so that they don't have to spend months doing dailies or some other nonsense to earn the gold."
Blizzard doesn't inflate the cost of flasks and potions. Players do. The more money players have on hand, the higher the prices for things like that are; that's what inflation is. One reason for gold sinks (both direct gold sinks, like mounts sold by NPCs for 20K, and indirect gold sinks, like more expensive flight paths in higher-level zones and more expensive repair bills on higher-level gear) is to get gold out of the players' hands to cut back on inflation.
Twilytgardnaery Mar 18th 2011 2:36PM
But that's just it, you're not being *forced* to shell out the RL cash. You're being provided with an alternative. Example: You make a reasonably good amount of money, but you've got a pretty long work week. You're single, or married without children, and overall, you've got more money than time to spend on obtaining things you want in game. As it stands now, that's a big draw for gold sellers. You don't wanna spend your hard-earned game time grinding gold for a fast mount? Don't have to! Just compromise your account by going to one of the many, MANY gold sellers out there. If Blizzard were to implement a flying+mount bundle as proposed, the people that could invest money but not time would have a safe way to do so, and the people who can invest the time but not the money will still have that option.
Homeschool Mar 18th 2011 2:55PM
The suggestions above lean toward the free-to-play model, where many bonuses are accessible by in-game actions (earning gold) or by a transaction to the game company. This leads toward the majority of players using their free game time to obtain bonuses slowly, while the game publisher's costs are (hopefully) supported by the minority for whom a few dollars is worth the saved time.
It's an exceedingly unpopular approach for a game like WoW, when many players will see this as a means for the wealthy to gain unfair advantage. And, to some extent, there's truth in that - players with extra money are able to pick up new items as soon as they're available. It's a fine line to walk, between keeping those bonuses priced effectively (hitting that sweet spot of cost vs. demand,) and making the non-purchase acquiring method available and tuned to the speed that a player can feasibly achieve the rewards without purchasing.
Honestly, I'd prefer to see gold replaced in the majority of situations by quest-type approaches. Rather than simply dropping by a vendor, I'd love to see more use of achievement prizes. Given that questing from 80-85 nets out to about the same price as epic flying, I'd love to see Loremaster of Cataclysm reward a flight upgrade, perhaps by means of a mail-delivered consumable token. With their approach of multiple versions from multiple sources, perhaps said upgrade tokens could come from a variety of means - win 1000 rated BGs or arena matches, purchase with Valor, complete X achievement...
The only place I can really see the need for gold is in person-to-person transactions, and that's an issue that will prove a tough nut to crack.
Odinfrost Mar 18th 2011 4:01PM
@ matticus
“What if they allowed valor/justice points to purchase some of these items instead of just badges?”
I would much rather they use the Argent Tournament model were one could do single player dailies to get the personal currency than instance or PvP grinds. That said an even better system would be allowing a player to choose either instance grinding, PvP marks/badges or single player dailies to grind out “currency” to purchase epic flying or other perks. This allows maximum choice to the playerbase, as you can choose the route you like best, and eliminates the need of gold for any of this stuff…two birds with one stone and whatnot.
hbei Mar 18th 2011 1:14PM
eh.. no.
a mmorpg game play without emphasizing the importance of gold is lame.
Truthhammersc Mar 18th 2011 1:16PM
The easiest and most secure way of killing the gold selling business is to restrict gold interchange vendors, face to face transactions and auction house. No more mailing gold between characters only items. Period. CoD should be a thing of the past. That would destroy the ability of characters to be pillaged for gold and the money moved to cutouts. It would throw a huge hurdle in front of toons. Would it be a bit of inconvience? Yes. But gold is so easy to come by in the game that it would only hinder characters for the first 10-20 levels.
Noyou Mar 18th 2011 1:41PM
Actually you are partially onto something. They should eliminate the COD and restrict mailing gold to only your account. This means that the gold seller would have to be working with another gold seller and be on their actual account for a 1 on 1 transaction. They could also set up a flag for say transactions over 1k (or whatever amount). This might only inconvenience the gold seller/hacker but it seems to me it would slow things down for them. As long as there are lazy people in the game there will be a market to get things fast at an increased value. For them to reduce the gold issue they would have to eliminate the AH and remove gold as a currency pretty much. Or make gold BoA. This might actually make people trade goods for goods more like a barter system. Either way it seems like it would take a lot of Blizzard resources to get rid of it. Not sure if that's something they want to do. I'm sure people smarter than myself could come up with a better solution.
Darren Mar 18th 2011 1:45PM
@truthhammersc
That could possibly be.... the worst idea ever. Under your idea, if I wanted to buy an alt epic flying, I couldn't simply use my max level crafting on an existing toon coupled with the epic flying and high level (possibly better gold) zones to make money for it. I'd instead have to go through the entire grind from scratch each time. The initial gold grind, if you can't give gold to alts, would be in full effect everytime and would be awful. Besides, whats stopping a hacked acount to go face to face with the buyer anyway? Or using the AH like is occasionally done now for the exchange of sold gold?