YAMMORPGT

[AStar617]

How is it worth players' whiles to sell, for example, 200k of Guild Wars in-game gold for like 15 bucks on eBay? Does this involve the use of cheats? Hacks? A huge overseas lanparty sweatshop of Guild Wars players? What?

 

[dighn]

15 bucks worth more overseas. it's actually a viable business in many parts of the world, especially if you can automate the process of collecting in-game assets.

 

[Xyclone]

Chinese Gold Farmers who work very long hours for very little (basically a sweatshop).

 

[BigJ]

Specialty characters built to farm areas.

Whether it's some guy looking to make cash or some companies overseas that actually do employ people to play video games all day, it gets done.

 

[AStar617]

So my sarcastic guess of an overseas lanparty sweatshop was... correct?

 

[Sphexi]

I've seen guys with 10 EQ accounts, on 10 computers, all going at once. They setup scripts to do goldfarming, combined they can pull a few million gold a day. They'll sell it for upwards of $80-$100, minus the cost of the accounts and all that they can make about $2500 a month. Not totally bad for something that doesn't take a lot of work.

 

[Rastus]

Originally posted by: Sphexi
I've seen guys with 10 EQ accounts, on 10 computers, all going at once. They setup scripts to do goldfarming, combined they can pull a few million gold a day. They'll sell it for upwards of $80-$100, minus the cost of the accounts and all that they can make about $2500 a month. Not totally bad for something that doesn't take a lot of work.

So, you can set up a crack rack like the distributed computing people do and make a living with it?

 

[Looney]

Or players got bored of the game, and want to leave, and are selling their stuff.

I've made well over $10k over the years playing MMOs, and i've never actively farmed with the sole purpose on selling the items. But once i get bored of a game, i'll quit and sell my chars/stuff.

I remember in EQ, i had no idea how much real life money all my PPs was worth, until i looked it up, and saw i had like well over $10k in just ingame currency itself. All that was made in just a single month too! I was soloing the mini-bosses as an enchanter when Planes of Power came out, and was getting stuff that was taking whole groups to do, and who often failed, but i succeeded well over 70% of the time. I was almost manic with my obsession over it, but i had a blast. Then i got bored, because everybody else was doing it, and quit the game.

 

[OrganizedChaos]

some games are easy to automate. when i played shadowbane the game was simple enough in its later stages that i had macro express 3 playing for me.
warlord floats 1 level above mob spawn, cast AOE mind damage twice, mana suck the mobs 3 times, convert mana to stamina twice so he could stary in the air another two minutes, AOE twice,mana suck x3 ,mana->stamina convert etc etc etc.

 

[Agnostos Insania]

Originally posted by: OrganizedChaos
some games are easy to automate. when i played shadowbane the game was simple enough in its later stages that i had macro express 3 playing for me.
warlord floats 1 level above mob spawn, cast AOE mind damage twice, mana suck the mobs 3 times, convert mana to stamina twice so he could stary in the air another two minutes, AOE twice,mana suck x3 ,mana->stamina convert etc etc etc.

Definitely. Even in Ultima Online (7 years ago) I "macroed" to raise my more tedious-to-raise skills. It was incredibly easy, there was a simple program that ran on scripts, it would even take certain actions based on a specific pixel's color. (Think of a HP bar for example)
I thought it might be extremely difficult to perform such scripting in 3D games, but I was wrong.
Note: This is almost always a breach of the game contracts and you'll be banned if someone with power catches you. Generally it's poorly enforced, however.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Originally posted by: Looney
Or players got bored of the game, and want to leave, and are selling their stuff.

I've made well over $10k over the years playing MMOs, and i've never actively farmed with the sole purpose on selling the items. But once i get bored of a game, i'll quit and sell my chars/stuff.

I remember in EQ, i had no idea how much real life money all my PPs was worth, until i looked it up, and saw i had like well over $10k in just ingame currency itself. All that was made in just a single month too! I was soloing the mini-bosses as an enchanter when Planes of Power came out, and was getting stuff that was taking whole groups to do, and who often failed, but i succeeded well over 70% of the time. I was almost manic with my obsession over it, but i had a blast. Then i got bored, because everybody else was doing it, and quit the game.

You have made $10,000? Jeez, how many years have you been playing and how many hours/day do you play? What games too?

 

[illusion88]

I sold Gold and Items in EQ1. I also powerleveled. When I quite, I sold my Bard for $600 and my Druid for $750!