Have You Ever Bought Gold?
After the great response (thanks to everyone for all of the fascinating and insightful comments) to my article comparing buying gold in MMORPGs to sex in the Victorian era, I thought it might be interesting to put up a poll, asking the dreaded question directly.
I toyed with the idea of actually coming out and asking it or not as it’s a pretty taboo subject. However, after some of the very candid and interesting comments I received on my previous post, I figured I may as well do it. Although I doubt I will get enough results to make the figures themselves mean much in the grand scheme of things, what I do think will be interesting will be the comparison between the percentages.
Also, I just want to point out that the poll is completely anonymous (so don’t worry about being honest) and is refers to whether or not you’ve ever bought gold in any MMORPG you’ve played (not just recently or in the current one you’ve played).
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luvy duvy (19)
Tesh (18)
Good old Hammerfaust (13)
Longasc (12)
Rhii (11)
Never have and have no intention to, either.
When I saw the title in twitter I was going to come and comment that paying for gold was like paying for sex - which you’ve apparently already covered. So grats on that. Great minds, eh?
Actually, the other article had nothing to do with -paying- for sex, it was more to do with the hypocritical views on sex in the Victorian Era, where society was saying one thing, and then doing something completely different behind closed doors.
Yeah, I read that one after replying here.
I’m sure you can imagine my stance on the subject of both posts from my reply above.
Always enjoying reading your feedback, Psynister. I’ve tried to stay objective in my posts as I know the gold selling/buying debate can get pretty heated. I honestly don’t condem or condone either way so hopefully that came across in my writing and no one got upset
Yes, with the qualification that I used the officially-supported way to do so in Eve Online. I guess my philosophy could be described as Lawful Neutral in this case: It’s not about good or bad, but whether it’s against the rules or not.
Can of worms you’ve opened there my friend
I always found it odd how the act of buying gold is only considered “illegal” when the developers decide upon it. But when *they* want to sell gold or items, well then it’s all just cheery and no problemo 
In American football, it’s considered normal to charge into an opponent and knock him down, and people will actually cheer if such a move is done well. But try the same thing in soccer and you will be booed and driven off the field by the referee. Each game has it’s own sets of rules. All is well and good as long as the referee, the players and the crowd all use the same set of rules. Troubles arise if the referee suddenly decides to allow tackling in the middle of a soccer game. It will be the referee that will be booed, which is what happened with Blizzard and the pet shop.
So.. is American football unfair when compared to soccer because it allows players to exploit their strength and bulk? Conversely, is soccer superior because in it, only speed, agility, accuracy and tactical planning matter? My answer to both of those questions is no.
Nice analogy. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a liberal and dislike the aspect of greed that prevails in many businesses so I find it all a little hypocritical when we get told “don’t buy gold from them, buy a shiny fluff pet from us instead!”.
Nope. My main game is WoW, where not only have I not ever bought gold, I don’t think I’ve even farmed for gold for like four years or so. I think getting my epic mount on my first character was a bit of a grind, but since then, gold has rained out of the sky, I honestly can’t think what I could have wanted to pay real money for.
Never felt the need to buy anything from a third party in an online game.
Ah but plenty of people buy stuff from the first party… what’s the difference?
I never have because I’m too much of a rule follower, and I always worried that I’d be caught and my account would be shut down.
My best friend did, however, as did some of my guildies who were convinced that everyone bought gold in order to get their epic flying mounts in WoW. Despite my insistence that I’d paid for epic flying on three of my characters without buying gold, they didn’t really believe me.
I have. Quite a few times actually. But they mostly before TBC which opened up gold to actually being accessible.
I used to do it in UO, too, and for SWG credits, too.
Why? Because I put a value on my time, and if that value is greater than what I can exchange rate in-game currency for real-life cash, I’ll buy gold. Making money in MMOs is not fun for me. Grinding dailies and collecting resources bores me. So if there’s a way to make my hobby more enjoyable, I’m all about it.
And MMOs are my hobby. I don’t mind spending money on it, which is why I don’t mind microtransactions. It’s just like a model maker having to buy paint, a CCG player buying cards and building decks, or a miniatures player building their army by buying different troops.
And I can totally understand it from that perspective. If you look at the value for money or value for time aspect, buying gold can often be a lot more efficient.
I have, recently. But it’s a F2P cash-shop based MMO called Jade Dynasty. ^_^ Does that count? Or was your poll more asking about, ‘Have you bought gold in an MMO where gold-buying was against the rules?’
Hmm, hehe maybe you found a loop hole
I think I was talking about the illegal type.
Woot! Loopy nuggets jump through holes!
(Everyone else seems to be answering the question with non cash-shop models in mind though. >.>)
Yes. I was into the RMT scene when I played Ultima Online. I purchased more raw goods and houses than I did gold, but I bought a gold check here or there. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I can see why new MMOG players get sucked into it and why some players turn to it. I still think its a problem waiting to be solved by proper game design.
I hear ya. I don’t think banning players or farmers is the answer, I think it will be about coming up with a game design that doesn’t require the buying of gold.
Buying gold is like a shady microtransaction. I’d rather spend my time playing the way I want to without paying someone to make it easier for me than anything else.
Yes, I bought 25 plat once in EQ2 since I could not afford the master spells and wanted to raid with our guild also to be at least a bit combative in pvp fights.
Why didnt I just started tradeskilling or harvesting? I am a lazy person with no patience at all for that kind of stuff!
Also I want to have fun when I play a game and not wasting my time staring at a stone while harvesting or pressing random buttons while tradeskilling! Cant see the fun in that to be perfectly honest!
Yep. If making money was more fun in EQ2, I’m sure a lot less people would buy plat!
I agree with this comment. I’ve played WoW, and EQ2 (among others) and only in EQ2 did I feel the need to buy gold. In WoW I setup a DK in Winterspring and every day login and mine Thorium, once my main was in a position to do dailies it became even easier. In EQ2 there is no real mechanic for doing that. Harvesting can help, but not always and the loot that drops from instances doesn’t always cover what you need.
I never felt the pressure to buy gold as much I did in EQ2. Maybe it was because I was on a PvP server but the competition was rife and it felt terrible to get beaten by someone who had better gear than you so I can understand why people do it.
I purchased gold once, in WoW, because I could simply not afford my Epic ground mount, many years ago, and though my class (Paladin) had a quest-able mount, the chain was long, arduous, and I had no active ways to make money (blacksmithing was a money sink on my server if you did not raid - and I didn’t).
I also purchased during FFXI, once, more or less to see how easy it was, and because there was one particularly tasty piece of gear I knew that cooking would never be able to fund, because my character ate close to 50% of what she produced.
I bought a small amount on a few occasions in EQ2, spent maybe £50 in total.
Like so much in life, it’s about justifying it to yourself - I spent over a year on one server levelling a toon only to see the server (Darathar) dry up horribly. I then jumped ship to a much more heavily populated server (Nagafen) and needed a boost to get me going.
Anyone playing on that server in those days will know how difficult it was to level a new account and since I’d already done it once (twice if you count my previous time on a PvE server), I figured a few extra plat was acceptable. Once I was up and running it was no problem to make my own money.
I’ve never really had much of an issue with bots and gold buying/selling in EQ2. You can’t buy friendliness or skill with it, and those are the things I’m looking for in the people I group/guild with. Plus in EQ2 PvP it was always nice to get a few easy bot-kills to add to my body count :))
Hehe, yeah it was funny to see the groups of botters farming stuff in EQ2. The great thing about being on a PvP server was that you could actually kill them
Great fun to wipe out an entire group of them single handely too 
I’ve never bought gold.. but have thought about it. When everyone else was buying all this uber stuff and I’m stuck in crap gear, I have thought about. It’s just that.. well.. My account is too valuable to me to have it banned for something stupid.
Question: If you were absolutely sure you couldn’t get banned, would you do it?
[...] are robust enough to support that sort of thing? You’d think with the constant talk about gold buying, that there would be some games with enough currency flow to be able to practically implement [...]
I have not. I have never found WoW gold-restrictive enough to make it necessary. However, I might not be as averse to the idea if I found myself in that position. Fortunately in Wow, I generally feel like if I’m having the problem it’s because I’m doing something wrong, not because WoW stacked the deck against me.
My youngest brother has bought Isk in EVE, I know. I think it was before the introduction of the legal way to do it, though I’m not an EVEhead like he is, so I really don’t know. In a game like that, where the cost of death is extremely high, I can understand the allure of goldbuying much more, and I’ve never criticized him for that choice.
Except when it was choosing Isk over laundry!
I admire CCP tackling the problem of ISK selling head on and introducing a new way to purchase it. They’ve obviously understand that if they didn’t do anything about it, it will occur illegally, yet by introducing a legal system, they stand to profit from it.
[...] feedback I received on my article about the comparison between Victorian sex and RMT and the poll I put up asking directly if anyone has ever bought gold has been both tremendous and incredibly insightful. Although my poll is very minor, the results [...]
I have bought gold a few times in EVE.
I detest the way other players breaking the rules can leave you weeks away from restoring your character, and can cost you huge amounts of actual money too. if you don’t have enough to keep your clone up-to-date then you risk losing so much.
In those circumstances, I felt no shame at all in buying a bunch of ISK so that I could at least restore a clone and get a decent ship back. I still lost the weeks, but at least it didn’t take longer to grind the money back.
Which rules would those be? Nonconsensual PvP and in-game scams are explicitly allowed in Eve.
In particular, podding.
On my way to a mission, the only route took me through some dangerous space, and every time I went through (at least a handful of times over a week or so) I got attacked and podded.
Podding is not against the rules of the game, as you might have been told if you ever reported those incidents to the GMs.
However, it is illegal in-universe, and any violations are punished by CONCORD in the areas they govern. Those punishments range from summary destruction of the offending ship in highsec to being fired upon by sentry guns in low security space. In outlaw spaces like wormhole space or nullsec, there are no game-enforced consequences to podding.
Indeed
Was that illegal gold or through the PLESK scheme?