Opathu's Investigation Into 'Gold Selling' on Eurogamer website

the links are broken i think.

2 and 3 give me the same article

Opathu wrote:

I'm just back in from the Caribbean, hence my absence from these geeky realms. Ok, seems there has been quite a bit of Internet reaction to my series on Gold Selling in MMOs for Eurogamer.net.

Here are the links:

1. Introduction to the series
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-introduction-article

2. Meeting the gold farmers and gold sellers
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-the-sellers-article

3. Talking to players about their views
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-the-players-article

4. The MMO companies' reactions and solutions
(next week)

Enjoy.

fixed

Thanks Mori, yes I have now edited the third section to the correct link (Players: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-the-players-article)

Final part of the series is now out!

Part 1 The Elephant in the Room (intro)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-introduction-article

Part 2 The Road to Eldorado (sellers)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-the-sellers-article

Part 3 Playing Away (players)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-the-players-article

Part 4 The Carrot and the Stick? (MMO publishers)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gold-trading-exposed-the-developers-article

*goes to read*

Very well done mate!

Nice story Nick.

Just got around to reading part 4.

One thing that strikes me is that control over the actual bots and sellers is that it would be pretty easy with a few tweaks to the PVP and channel settings.
If you make it that there are no safe areas outside sanctuaries, it means that you need to have at least a lvl 60 char to be able to get somewhere where you can spam. Sure, this would mean that "normal" and RP realms would automatically become PVP and RPPVP realms, but it would mean that players could help out with the problem.
If you then make it so that when a char dies they can only communicate in a "death" channel with a message of "toon X has died" appearing in all guild and personal channels. That way you can still read what is said but you can't post, except in the death channel where people can also join if they want. This then helps to limit where the spammers can advertise. You can then just report them for spam if you are in that channel and there's no other way they can do it.

Sure, it's not fool proof, but it helps us to do something about the problem and reduce the effect of those that slip through.

Read it all and all I can say: Good job

A good read. Nicely done Nick.