only 9 people?

Plus the aid of annoyed players throughout each MMO world. It's enough.

I can understand stopping the spamming thing but I honestly couldn't care less about people who are dumb enough to spend their money on virtual money or items.

It is no secret that this behavior is a violation of terms of service. For those who choose to do it anyway, it would not bother me one little bit if, after being proven guilty, they became the targets of hit teams. GAME OVER.

What's wrong with this practice? It doesn't make or break MMO. So it's like... you created a service (a gaming service), and why can't others who utilize your service to make a profit?

To NuclearShadow and others alike... if you think buying virtual money or items are dumb, wouldn't then that same logic apply to online gamers who pay real money to get pleasure from virtual games?

So what's the difference between getting pleasure from virtual games and getting pleasure from getting virtual items in games?

Dumb? when you have money and no time to play, I don't see it's bad to save your time and jump on the "fun" -- I don't play MMO since 2008 btw.

There are plenty of free to play mmo or 1st person shooter that players can buy to get "pleasure from virtual games." It's not dumb.

difference:

getting pleasure from virtual games - takes time
at the end, you get it and feel good through achievement then use the item to your advantage.

getting pleasure from getting virtual items in games - it does not take time, it takes money (time is more valuable than money). You get it and may or may not feel achievement, but still use the item to your advantage.

While many of us feel the same the efforts to crack down on these practices make the games more enjoyable for the rest of us. I don't care to be bombarded with messages to buy crap I can earn on my own.

thats really cool. I see a new season of Underbelly in this.

"Did you feel boring to level your...." blah blah blah /addignore spammer.
I'm actually a little suprised they would hire anyone at all to look for active subscriptions to close down. It is after all, income they are terminating. Games where the best items can be purchased using in-game credits or real money, rather than earned on an individual or group basis never interested me. The above quote is very common in SOE's Star Wars Galaxies MMO. If there is an economy within a game, there will be spammers & I think most MMO players have just accepted this truth at this point. That doesn't mean I'm not applauding the effort. Barter system anyone?

Quoting hennnry " What's wrong with this practice? It doesn't make or break MMO. So it's like... you created a service (a gaming service), and why can't others who utilize your service to make a profit?"
You see the companies that builded the MMO have also builded a online market for that game, it helps them keep the servers running, this way these guys not only are they in violation on the rules, but they are also robbing costumers by using unauthorized sellers, wheter it should be legit to have 3rd´s also selling is a different thing. See it his way, if you had a pizza restaurant, would you like if all in a sudden someone came inside your establishment and started selling pizzas, "you created a service (a pizza service), and why can't others who utilize your service to make a profit?" "

What these morons running the MMOs need to do is set up a virtual ingame market place that allows people to trade real dollars for items. Then they take a nice chunk in an accounting fee.

If I were sony I'd be asking myself how to tap into that 2 billion industry, not how to sht it down.

Then they could also regulate the spammers with incentive not to spam. You spam, your market place is shutdown and all your items are confisicated. When there is a buck to made, the farmers will shut the hell up with the spamming.

Hey, and item duping would be fraud and we could throw those losers in real jail.

Another thing wrong with it is it's usually not legitimate(charachter leveling) for example requires the user to hand over his login/password information to the account. Now, I would argue that he deserves to have his accounts robbed and looted for obvious stupididty. It happens everyday and I'm sure much time is spent rebuilding these accounts or SOE simply losses the subscription. For SOE to make this an issue, I would imagine many morons are willingly handing over thier account information and then blamming SOE for allowing the spammers to advertise.

@hennnry:
This type of practice does indeed break an MMO. Players that use bots or armies of hired workers to farm tons of items and acquire tons of in-game currency force the prices of user-sellable items way down. As a result, the only way legitimate players can make a sufficient amount of in-game money is by resorting to similar behavior. When you have to spend all of your time farming just to make some pocket change, the game ceases to be fun.

I believe they are tapping into it. Using my previous example of SWG, last year they started an ingame collectible card game that will actually allow a player to purchase items, off a shelf so to speak, billing the charge to your monthly subscription. It reminded me of Hero or Cabal. Those two games have no monthly subscription but if you want the best items the game has to offer, the only way to get them is to buy them from the Game itself using real money. I could never get serious with a game like this as it offers nothing to the gamer of any substance. These games were intended for people who have more money than time in my opinion(which may be most people I understand). The causual gamer will get very little reward from this model. So SOE is dabbling in this arena already in my opinion and I'm sure there are better examples than mine out there.

Yes its not just dumb its idiotic. If you don't have time to play a MMORPG then why even waste your time subscribing to one in the first place? If everything is simply handed to you then what goals would you even set for yourself? Your simply buying virtual items for real money and if that's not dumb enough your killing your own gaming experience by doing so.

Free to play ones that sell items are different. When you buy such items you are showing your support for the game and help keep it alive its really no different than when PBS does a fund raiser and donates who give X amount gets a gift.

Why doesn't sony just sell the items on their own webpages? Why waste your life away when you can pay sony for the items instead of the smugglers? There are only two things in life that everyone experiences, death and taxes lol. You only live once, why sit in front of a computer game for one year to get a few items when you can buy them from sony right away?

I could always tell the people farming for money on ffx.. The game was fun at first then was just played out... It was all about level up and find a party to level pain in the ass to me.. I will stick with the fps games and not pay a monthly fee...

So basically, gaming companies finally learnt from these gold farmers that they can sell items themsevels and make money that way, on top of the monthly subscription service fee.

Nice... so it's like.. it's ok that companies do this, but not ok if free entreprenures do it.

Eventually, I guess there will be a class action lawsuit. Why? because there are poeple who want to play games but don't have time to do so. I'm one of them. I work about 12 hours a day, make a nice income, but can only play 1 hour per day. So if I want to enjoy an MMORG... the only real viable option is to buy through it.

Plus, do you guys REALLY think spending ungodly amount of time to achieve the highest level of an MMORPG is a great achievement? What about spending the time to build a career, make some ungodly amount of real money?

If you have only 1 free hour per day, there are far better ways to spend it than playing an MMO. Hell, you can't do ANYTHING in an MMO in an hour or under. By the time you find a good tank and healer, get your quest, then figure out where the heck you're going, you've already burned up 30 minutes or so.

The biggest problem with buying virtual money or items is that they rarely come through legitimate work. More often than not, the goods are stolen from another player through scams and key loggers.

Even understanding that these are just games and balancing one's life accordingly, these pastimes are still something one invests a fair amount of time in. It's extremely frustrating and disheartening to have everything one has worked for stolen away.

In other words, every time someone buys virtual goods through unofficial means (i.e. not serviced by the game's producers), he or she is providing the funds to have somebody else robbed.

The problem will continue as long as people are willing to pay for it. Sony should recognize that the times of "pay-to-play" MMOs are numbered. Many free MMOs have popped up that make their money solely off of having a virtual store where you can pay real money for enhancement items within the game. Sony should embrace this trend by lowering the acquisition price of their software as well as their monthly subscription rates. They should then open a virtual store that allows players to spend real money on items. By embracing the problem they can then regulate it, and even make more money via increased subscriptions and people who pay for enhancements.

I can't remember how many times in multiple MMOs I've reported bots and spammers...
They annoy the hell out of me...

Though I did attempt to sell one of my accounts. -_-

Sony does have a marketplace in EQ2 where you can spend real money to purchase virtual items. I'm fairly certain that's the only reason they're bothering to chase away the gold farmers. Before they opened the marketplace, spammers and gold farmers represented income. Now they represent competition for the subset of gamers who are willing to spend more money to get ahead in the game.

Sony has also implemented spam filters that work quite well. Spam used to get through all of the time, but now it's rare that a message gets past the filters.

For some reason this nine-member covert group reminds me of the Ghosts
Never know what hit'em.

I’m going to avoid the whole moral part of the discussion and get right down to the facts. The gold spamming is a dirty business. I have no tolerance for anyone that supports them, and for those who do, you need a wake-up call.

While I can't speak for EQ2, WOW accounts get hacked all the time by these "gold sellers". Once they break into someone's account, they sell everything the player owns, mail the gold to one of their mules, and then delete the ALL of the characters just to rub it in. If that account has access to a guild bank, they will flush it out too, affecting an entire guild. Once the account is fully tapped out, the spammer will then create a new level 1 character and use that to start advertising. Eventually the account gets banned for spamming. The true account owner then has to go through hell to get the account reactivated, and hopefully get all their characters, items and gold restored. It can take anywhere from a few days to a month to get it sorted out.

Before someone here states that it's your own fault if your account gets hacked, it's not that cut and dry. On more than one occasion that I can recall, Flash Player (everyone has this browser plug-in) has had security holes. Guess who exploits these holes. Your AV won't protect you. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I know people who have.

In the end this costs the MMO companies money as resources need to be allocated to deal with the fallout. It’s a pain in everyone’s side and someone needs to put an end to it.

Dear Sony,

Thank you.

Kind regards,

me

What this article doesn't say is the stites they send you to are sometimes loaded with keyloggers and the such. Then a few days after your transaction with them you end up getting hacked and loose most of your stuff....which they then resell to someone else who falls prey to their advertising.

I agree...

I have always thought the best way to counter farmers is for the developer to buy/sell in game currency and characters. Would you trust a black market dealer or Blizzard? (HINT: the correct answer is neither)

I think it be really cool if after 3 years of hunting your ass off and you finally wanted to quit if someone like Sony would purchase your Toon's. Even if you were paid "Sony Bucks" which you could move to a different Sony online game and distribute those same Sony Bucks" to get a quicker start.

I have bot a lot of online games and made a few bucks... I know these clowns wouldn't catch me. Sometimes it is just easier to build an account and sell it one time with the items.

This article is about farmers, not ALL farmers are hackers... Some really just farm.
I am not defending anyone or saying it's OK to farm. I am saying you are generalizing saying farmers are hackers... while i am certain some are, i can assure you many aren't.