Topic: Gold farmers: The unsung heroes of MMOs?
http://perpetuum-online.blogspot.com/
In this newest blog, we see a dev cruelly ban some innocent little gold farmers who wanted nothing other than to feed their families of 10 children (Most likely, the money whoever sent them went to feeding little Cao Cao and Lu Bu, but the rest of the children will starve . But thank you for saving those two children, you sir are a true man).
Lets stop to think a moment though, on how important gold farmers are to MMOs, especially small operations like this. That's what, 12 toons? At 3 toons per account, that is 4 accounts they actually bought. At 9.99 each, that's pretty much 40$ put into the pockets of the devs.
But not only did they put that 40$ in the devs pocket, there is a sort of rippling effect. Lets say a player, we'll call him Axe, is pretty new at the same and discouraged. He lost his light bot because he didn't know the beta islands were a scary place for newbies and some evil M2S guys ganked him, and then trolled him about it later for good measure. Naturally he is crying and about to rage quit.
But wait! An angel appears, delivering a miraculous deal. While Axe might not be rich in Perpetuum, he is actually a successful stock broker in real life and has loads of real life money to dump into the game (Naturally, he doesn't know that he could just hire an army of servants or make some elaborate multiboxing rig, but he is a newbie so we will forgive him). So with the simple words, "U buy gold 4 cash?", our newbie friend has a second wind! All of a sudden he has been gifted with the NIC to buy 100 assault bots, that M2S gank means nothing now! He is unstoppable! He promptly buys a years subscription because now he -knows- he can succeed at the game. Those are like what, 100$ or so? So now, thanks to this little gold farmer, the devs now have 140$ in their pockets.
But there is more! Now, the gold farmer is caught and banned! But it isn't the end of the story, no, NOTHING can beat the unfatiguable spirit of the gold farmer's devotion to feeding his family of 20. He drops ANOTHER 40$ on the game to get some more accounts! So we have like what, 200$ to the devs all from the actions of one player? Can any of you guys top that? I doubt it.
So lets hear it for the valiant gold farmers who do their best to support the games we love