Tag: gold farming

Kritika: Reboot Announces Server Bans, Trade Restrictions, New Class


Kritika: Reboot has been quite busy these last few days. To start off the news, publisher ALLM Co. has announced several waves of bans due to illegal trading of in-game currency. The ban list of names can be found on the Steam news page. Secondly, in order to combat fraudulent trading of items, the company has sent out warnings by in-game mail to those who purchased in-game goods illegally. In addition to the warnings, Kritika has implemented trade restrictions on all characters under level 20.

And now some good news. Kritika players will be happy to know that it is now possible to reserve a character slot for the upcoming release of Kritika’s next character class. The HongRyoung is an archer class that uses bows and arrows and according to Kritika’s charts ranks at very high combat power with mid-tier difficulty and survivability ratings. Players can create a character and reserve a level that will present them with a celebration box for achieving. The class is not yet available to play.

Jagex Introduces Microtransactions In RuneScape


When Jagex introduced the Squeal of Fortune, they did so with the premise that the mini-game was balanced. Powerful and expensive rewards were relegated to untradeable and extraordinarily rare chances, and each player was only offered one spin per day (two for members). Today, however, Jagex has reversed years of outspoken anti-real money trading policies by introducing an update allowing players to purchase extra spins.

Spins can be bought in packages of 10, 20 (with 5 bonus spins), and 40 (with 35 bonus spins) for $5, $10, and $20 respectively. Jagex has denied that this constitutes paying for an advantage as players are not buying a specific item. The company has also denied that this constitutes gambling as there is no chance of “loss,” as players will always win something, even if it is a cheap 50 coin payout.

The gambling issue, however, stands to be a very important one. This update puts Squeal of Fortune in a similar bracket with lotto bags that many free to play games offer, and depending on if anyone decides to bring question, may constitute gambling and be subject to varying restrictions, laws, and even bans depending on the country.

Regardless of any potential and currently unknown legal implications, this move is sure to draw fire from the community, thanks in part to Jagex’s extreme stance over the past decade against any form of extra payment in return for advantages, and the justifications from developers (see above) as to how this does not violate the core principles is not being received well.

Hopefully more to come as this story develops.

 

Jagex Fights Gold Farmers, Restricts Free Accounts


Nuking bots from an MMO is easy, at least in comparison with nuking actual gold farmers. After all, programs can be broken from the outside, manipulated into revealing themselves, and detected through various means. But how can you know that the person behind the account grinding dragons for five hours is any different than the player grinding dragons for five hours to sell the gold for real money? Not until he actually makes the sale, and even then proving that the sale was for real cash is incredibly difficult.

With the new website, Jagex has announced restrictions for all new free accounts going in effect today:

  • New free-to-play accounts can only give away gold coins or items, or make a trade with an imbalance in the recipient’s favour, to the value of 25000 coins per 24 hours. This limitation also applies to drop trades.
  • New free-to-play accounts can make Duel Arena bets with no greater imbalance than 25000 coins per 24 hours.
  • We have also made a change to Wilderness PvP, where noted items will only appear to the original carrier when dropped upon death; not the killer. This affects all accounts – not just ones subject to the limitations above.

“The limitations will remain in effect until the affected account purchases membership. Subscribing will remove these restrictions permanently, even if the subscription later ends and is not renewed.”

It’s disappointing to see how much rampant gold farming can affect a game for its players.

Star Trek Doing Something Right: Hello Goldfarmers!


You be assimilate...for low fee instant deliver!

Gauging subscriber numbers in an MMO that doesn’t want to reveal them is difficult. Although it is possible to go through a company’s financial reports and make an estimation based on income, you still won’t end up with a hard number. Gold farmers, on the other hand, are an excellent indicator of how well the game is doing. An easy formula to remember is that as presence and force go up, the population goes up with it. In Aion, for example, gold farmers see the game as such a lucrative market that they are doing everything short of breaking into the NCWest offices armed with pistols, in order to push NCsoft back and keep selling to the community.

So launching to one million accounts aside, if I had to gauge Star Trek Online’s success by how many spam bots I had to put on ignore this morning in-game, I’d have to say the title is doing well for itself. Cryptic also appears to be doing a decent job of banning the bots, as almost all of the accounts I put on ignore were banned by the time this article is coming out.

More on Star Trek Online as it appears. Oddly enough, I don’t remember Champions Online having this issue. Maybe gold farmers hate super heroes.

Real Money Trading In Korea: In Plain English


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...

In violation of my court order to only use the gold image a maximum of twice on the front page, many MMOers are probably aware of South Korea ruling that real money trading, the conversion of digital cash to real cash, is now legal. Your gold pieces, kinah, plats, gil, influence, adena, credits, ISK, whatever you call that cash in your pocket, may be traded for real life cash. There appears, as most news stories have this effect, to be a fervor among MMOers (players and developers alike) as to what this means for their favorite titles. Will City of Heroes be encumbered by Koreans? Will Aion become even more saturated with this gold farming menace? Won’t somebody please think of the children?

As always, when there is a legal question to be asked, MMO Fallout’s “In Plain English” is here to explain it to you. To put it down in plain lettering, what this law does is turn the businesses into legitimate operations, that will pay taxes and refer to themselves in a way that would actually describe what they do.

What the law does not do is make gold farming legal, nor will it prevent companies from banning gold farmers. Swearing is legal, but it can still get you banned if you do it in an MMO. Although this bill does run up the possibility of there being a lot more gold farming companies to deal with, now that the scope is no longer limited to shady businessmen running a small building full of gold farmers off the books, and is more along the lines of a legitimate (questionably) business.

In all likelihood, the increased presence of bots and gold farmers will be minimal, unless you’re moderating the MMO Fallout comments and have to deal with “Hey, great website. I agree with all the things you said here and, by the way, I no this guy who powerlevels fishing. You shud try out his service, very cheep.” on a daily basis, or have to deal with magical pingbacks that don’t lead to a valid website (I do check the links in people’s comments before I approve them).

Happy MMOing.

NCsoft Nukes Aion, Bans 16,000: I Offer My Services


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
That's 16,000 less accounts to compete with.

Segueing to our next topic, look it’s Aion again! Barely a day after announcing the introduction of G-Unit (Not the rappers, as I discovered) to fight bots in Aion, NCsoft has announced a mass ban following the maintenance reboot earlier this morning. Nearly sixteen thousand accounts, too. The bans are anything from gold farming, botting, buying gold, to spamming and advertising.

So is there any recourse for players who feel they were wrongly banned? Unlikely, as NCsoft feels quite sure of themselves, using multiple instances as evidence rather than just one. If you do feel that you were banned improperly, you can always create a support ticket to have it looked at.

I wrote this knowing that I’m going to get a lot of emails asking “Why are you pushing NCsoft’s propaganda?” Two years ago, I would have picked Jagex for the most dramatic mass bans with the trade restrictions and other massive game mechanic changes. This year, however, the prize definitely goes to NCsoft and Aion for the most dramatic showmanship. The sixteen thousand on paper sounds great, until you go in-game on the same day to realize that the bots are back in full force.

More after the break…

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