Hi guys, I got something for you to think about. Before reading, please note that I am a big Diablo fan and I am totally going to play buy and play the game! Yet I`m too curious, wether everyone here really knows and understands this:
Everyone who ever played a MMORPG knows whats a china farmer. Who doesnt, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming
Everyone who ever played a MMORPG also knows, that even if its infamous, it is though possible in almost every bigger MMORPG to spend real money for difficult to reach - ingame content. This is possible, as there are countries on our planet, where people are that poor, that they are willing to work for things we throw away on the daily. There are whole farming-factories, where people farm WOW gold the whole day, to be paid pennies, while some european is gonna buy it of a legit company for dozens of dollars. Wallstreet- noted companies have invested in gold-farming enterprises. This is a big and evolving business, yet not without difficulties: at first, the game developing companies try to forbid this business to maintain challenge and effort-rewarding balance to protect the gaming experience of their players. And secondly, its still infamous to buy items and gold for real money between players and rarely someone would ever admit to having done it.
This is where Blizzard comes in, and here I have to say: chapeau to this genious business decision, they bring in the RMAH and by that they do 3 things: they remove the difficulty of thransacting content for RM, since the game developer does not object anymore, secondly they totally legitimize it, since its a part of the game and last and most brilliant: by that they force all the third party ingame content providers (china farmers) pay them a fee (ah sales fee). That way they dont have to bother about the china farmers, as they pay them money utilizing a legitimate part of the game. By that Blizzard makes sure they get their piece of that million dollar cake.
A less pleasant side effect is, that this will catalyze the growth of said business enterprises, as more and more players will buy, and with rising demand, the supplies will have huge rising potential. You better bring your mandarin dictionarys, they might come in handy, as every 3rd player will be a china farmer More farms in china, africa or whereever else you can exploit people to work for pennies, for food or medicine, will be founded to sell us awesome swords and armor. Its the same story as the scandal ten-or -omething years ago with Nike and the shoes, sewed up by children in far east asia, for those who remembers. Yep, your beloved Jordans might have been made by children That fact got public, everyone was shocked, nothing changed.
Again: there is no way I accuse Blizzard for anything, they are just developing a brilliant game and are using the market situation as good as they can, to make sure they can finance their project and make the investors happy enough to one day maybe give us Diablo IV
So why am I writing this? Just for YOU having aknowledged that you will be financing exploit of poor people Not much, but still a little bit. What you gonna do now?
You'll only have access to the RMAH in your area. Yes, you can make characters in other realms, (like a NA player on a EUR server) but you won't have access to that RMAH, and won't be able to buy off your local RMAH and give to your character on that other realm. So you won't be buying off Chinese gold farmers unless that is your local realm. You'll be buying off the Texan gold farmers. ;p
You guys aren't getting it. Chinese farmers can play wherever the hell they want, but whatever they try to sell will only go back to their localized auction houses. I can go play on Chinese servers if I wanted to, but I can't sell to them on their AH but instead North America. This isn't even debatable, Blizzard has discussed this like Wingless said.
Everyone who ever played a MMORPG knows whats a china farmer. Who doesnt, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming
Everyone who ever played a MMORPG also knows, that even if its infamous, it is though possible in almost every bigger MMORPG to spend real money for difficult to reach - ingame content. This is possible, as there are countries on our planet, where people are that poor, that they are willing to work for things we throw away on the daily. There are whole farming-factories, where people farm WOW gold the whole day, to be paid pennies, while some european is gonna buy it of a legit company for dozens of dollars. Wallstreet- noted companies have invested in gold-farming enterprises. This is a big and evolving business, yet not without difficulties: at first, the game developing companies try to forbid this business to maintain challenge and effort-rewarding balance to protect the gaming experience of their players. And secondly, its still infamous to buy items and gold for real money between players and rarely someone would ever admit to having done it.
This is where Blizzard comes in, and here I have to say: chapeau to this genious business decision, they bring in the RMAH and by that they do 3 things: they remove the difficulty of thransacting content for RM, since the game developer does not object anymore, secondly they totally legitimize it, since its a part of the game and last and most brilliant: by that they force all the third party ingame content providers (china farmers) pay them a fee (ah sales fee). That way they dont have to bother about the china farmers, as they pay them money utilizing a legitimate part of the game. By that Blizzard makes sure they get their piece of that million dollar cake.
A less pleasant side effect is, that this will catalyze the growth of said business enterprises, as more and more players will buy, and with rising demand, the supplies will have huge rising potential. You better bring your mandarin dictionarys, they might come in handy, as every 3rd player will be a china farmer More farms in china, africa or whereever else you can exploit people to work for pennies, for food or medicine, will be founded to sell us awesome swords and armor. Its the same story as the scandal ten-or -omething years ago with Nike and the shoes, sewed up by children in far east asia, for those who remembers. Yep, your beloved Jordans might have been made by children That fact got public, everyone was shocked, nothing changed.
Again: there is no way I accuse Blizzard for anything, they are just developing a brilliant game and are using the market situation as good as they can, to make sure they can finance their project and make the investors happy enough to one day maybe give us Diablo IV
So why am I writing this? Just for YOU having aknowledged that you will be financing exploit of poor people Not much, but still a little bit. What you gonna do now?
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