“The lady doest protest too much, methinks” – Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene 2

Me thinks thou doest protest too much...

When Scott Hartsman was on the No Prisoners, No Mercy (NPNM) show (and shame on you if you have to Google the name to find out who he is) one of the aspects of gaming that we discussed was gold selling.  Having experienced the opening day jitters of Aion Online all I can say is this: I’m glad China outlawed gold selling – it has had such a tremendous effect on gaming.

I am sure there are myriad reasons the Government of China had for banning the sale of virtual goods for real money, but it is a law that will be incredibly difficult to enforce in the first place.  And to throw yet another wrench into the works, China is far from being the only country that has gold sellers.

Now I am sure those who where there on opening day, right along with me, will point to the long ques to get on to the popular servers.  In fact, at one point I heard a voice from the other side of the room cry “TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!”

But it is not the ques that filled me with angst. Oh no. As we have spoken about before, my friends, any time a company releases a new game, the number of servers available at start is just a crap shoot. Add to that the number of people who purchase the game just for the thirty free days that is pro-forma in the industry and you have one perplexing problem.

But it is not the number of servers that has me perplexed.

Nope.

As Mr. Hartsman pointed out to us on the NPNM show, time and again his forums were filled with players who were not just aggravated with gold sellers, but despised them.   Yet for all that, gold selling continued to be a problem in Everquest.  Such is the way it is with all games.  As gamers we  have all come to expect that. Still, it must certainly be a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing – for while one hand is typing out a message of protest on a video-game forum the other is reaching for a credit card to buy gold.

While some players have been busy complaining about waiting ques (and long ques are not always a bad thing as we discussed earlier) others where finding that there accounts have already been banned…or so it seems.   Over at a game site I happened upon this morning called Gamer Limit there is an interesting article by one Colin Robinson, entitled “joking about selling gold earns a ban“.  Here is an excerpt from the article by a perplexed player who emailed Gamer Limit after finding himself banned “allegedly” (as they say in legal circles) for “joking about selling gold”:

“I managed to log on one of the low population servers as soon as they brought it online, played for about 45 minutes, then when I hit level 5 (the level you need to use the regional chat), I joined in a conversation about the future of the game. I made a somewhat antagonizing remark to someone who said they would be buying kinah as soon as it became available, as if I was a gold farmer. I typed “YOU WANT BUY MIRRION GOLD? 1 MIRRION GOLD FIVE US DORRA” or something stupid along those lines, and got some ‘lols’ from people who clearly knew I was kidding. We talked about how full the chinese servers were of bots, and how chat was flooded 24/7 by gold sellers on asian servers. I said it would probably be a day or two before they started spamming chat and botting in US release, and then two minutes later I was booted from the game, and greeted by that message when I tried to join again. ” – “Redmoons” quoted on Gamer Limit

While the author of the article feels that this means NCSoft is getting off to a “questionable start” it appears that it hadn’t occured to either the author or player in question that the ban just might be for being a cross burning racist. 

 It seems, however, that all the gold sellers and leveling services pre-ordered the game and jumped right on to the early start. I hadn’t been online more than a minute than I was barraged with whispers from players with names like “fgytxz” offering their services – the most perplexing of all where the leveling services…

“Let me understand this,” I thought to myself, “I just paid Fifty plus dollars to purchase a game so I can relax and enjoy myself, and this person is offering to power level my character to the level cap in three days?” 

Sure, and while I am at it I can just give the anonymous player with a name that looks like a really difficult jumble (an all too common sight) a call once a month to let me know how my character is progressing. In fact, why even play the game at all?  Of course there is the slight chance that availing myself of said anonymous player’s services would soon result in my social security number and bank account number being plastered all over the Internet.

I have never seen the sense of it. 

Yet, as all things in an open market, there wouldn’t be a supply if there was no demand.  So while some players will be busy complaining about long waiting lines, and others about being banned for “joking about gold selling.” I for one would like to take a moment and applaud NCSoft – no, to cheer them from the rooftops for being tough on gold sellers and buyers.  It is a valiant fight and always a difficult one.  After all, when considered as a whole,  as gamers we rarely seem to have the phrase “live and learn” as part of our vocabularies.

So as I busy myself about the business of cheering NCSoft for their business acumen let me paraphrase yet another line from the immortal bard which began this article.

I come to bury gold sellers, not to praise them.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

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