Harper blog

Within a majority of the MMOs created, there is virtual currency where the player can earn and accumulate money.The practice of acquiring large volumes of virtual currency for the purpose of selling to other individuals for tangible and real currency is called gold farming.  The uses for such virtual currency are numerous and vary from game to game.Many players who have poured in all of their personal effort resent that there is this exchange between real and virtual economies since it devalues their own efforts.  The virtual economies created within MMOs often blur the lines between real and virtual worlds.As a result, the term ‘gold farmer’ now has a very negative connotation within the games and their communities.  The result is often seen as an unwanted interaction between the real and virtual economies by the players and the provider of the virtual world.This slander has unfortunately also extended itself to racial profiling and to in-game and forum insulting.  This practice (economy interaction) is mostly seen in this genre of good games .

The reaction from many of the game companies varies.  The two seem to come hand in hand with even the earliest MMOGs such as Ultima Online having this kind of trade, real money for virtual things.In games that are substantially less popular and have a small player base, the enforcement of the elimination of ‘gold farming’ appears less often.

The importance of having a working virtual economy within an MMOG is increasing as they develop.Companies in this situation most likely are concerned with their personal sales and subscription revenue over the development of their virtual economy, as they most likely have a higher priority to the games viability via adequate funding.  A sign of this is CCP Games hiring the first real-life economist for its MMOG Eve Online to assist and analyze the virtual economy and production within this game.Games with an enormous player base, and consequently much higher sales and subscription income, can take more drastic actions more often and in much larger volumes.

The results of this interaction between the virtual economy, and our real economy, which is really the interaction between the company that created the game and the third-party companies that want to share in the profits and success of the game.Blizzard Entertainment and their wildly successful World of Warcraft are not afraid to publicly announce that tens of thousands of accounts have been banned due to violations regarding currency selling[citation needed].  This battle between companies is defended on both sides.This account banning could also serve as an economic gain for these large games, since it is highly likely that, due to demand, these ‘gold farming’ accounts will be recreated with freshly bought copies play online games

.  The company originating the game and the intellectual property argue that this is in violation of the terms and agreements of the game as well as copyright violation since they own the rights to how the online currency is distributed and through what channels[citation needed].In December 2007, Jagex Ltd., in an successful effort to reduce real world trading levels enough so they could continue using credit cards for descriptions, introduced highly controversial changes to its MMO RuneScape to counter the negative effects gold sellers were having on the game on all levels.[5]

.  The case that the third-party companies and their customers defend, is that they are selling and exchanging the time and effort put into the acquisition of the currency, not the digital information itself.  They also express that the nature of many MMOs is that they require time commitments not available to everyone.  As a result, without external acquisition of virtual currency, some players are severely limited to being able to experience certain aspects of the game.