Dave

I'm sure there will be a flood of NU UH THATS NOT HOW MY REALM DOES IT EVERS, but in %99.6 of the Ony/Sarth/etc runs where a bag/sack/etc drops (ie: non "gear" drops that everyone in the entire raid qualifies for and can use), it's a free roll that doesn't count against any other loot.

Gentlemen's rules should apply in that you probably shouldn't be a dick and try to score a trifecta on something like an Ony run where you can get a helm, bag and sack of gems. But occasionally it happens.

If you're going to roll on them at all, everyone should usually be allowed to get a roll on the sack and bag.

Honestly, most of the time drama can be avoided by not forging a path ahead to your own unique understanding of the game. If most of the world does something one way, you tend to avoid drama by going the same route when possible. This is basically why Blizzard had to enforce need/greed rules since on some absurd realms the EVERYONE PASS THEN WE ROLL IN CHAT nonsense became so ingrained on the server that poor bastards that transferred there were constantly under assault for using the buttons that blizzard provided like they should.

Even further, it'd be nice to see who exactly IS downvoting the comments.

It would be wonderful to have some transparency so that people know that it's not just a handful of people who work for the blog who do it immediately so that people disregard comments they don't appreciate. I assume that the commenting system will fully bury a comment after only a small number of negative votes, it'd be nice to know for sure that it's not a sock puppet procedure. Especially when it happens so rapidly.

Yes, so if comments aren't a major source of revenue and don't represent a large amount of the traffic, the best way to reward those who contribute, even in a way you may disagree with, is to talk down to them and make sure that they feel no need to further contribute, yes?

If you don't want negative comments, just turn off comments. Clearly they're not a major source of concern or revenue so why not?

I largely stopped commenting quite a while ago when all I ever saw in response to what I assumed were legitimate concerns or viewpoints, were flippant responses that conveyed nothing more than an 'I'm the blogger, you're the commenter therefore you are wrong' response. That's not a two-way communication deserving of respect.

So if you're going to lambast the few people who do decide to comment, it'd be nice if you'd do the same for the authors.

I hope you're giving a style guide this thorough to the new bloggers as well.

Half the problem is that there have been a bunch of just plain awful articles lately. It's barely worth reading most of them, and that sure isn't the fault of the commenters.

I mean if you just want to call out your revenue sources for being jerks, that's cool but it's ultimately a destructive path. Get better writers, don't post terrible articles just because they're submitted. You might find a lot of less negative comments if that happened.

This is an amazing troll or self-servicing post meant to get people to do the exact opposite of what you actually hope they do.

Well played.

Too bad only the unintelligent will fall for it and the majority of the people who understand things already are laughing at it.

There are many many many inflationary controls that can be added to the game to adjust for bought gold versus farmed gold.

The easiest of which would be to have equivalent vendors in the game for gathering tradeskills. They're testing the idea right now with frozen orbs for eternals and frost lotus and arctic fur. They could expand the concept even further by setting price caps on gathered materials in general and straight having a herb vendor with all the northrend herbs at fixed prices in unlimited quantities. Same for ore, leather and perhaps cloth and shards too.

You can still use the old ways to get them all for free, thus eliminating your need to buy gold. You can still buy them on the AH. You can still sell them on the AH if you want gold and don't want to buy money. But, it would eilminate all the AH barons on your server who buy up excessive amounts of things and re-list them at higher prices, thus artificially fixing the prices at an excessive amount which has a greater inflationary effect than any gold buying ever could.

It's a multi-pronged problem that needs a multi-layer solution. It's not just a LOLZ SELL GOLDS PROBLEM SOLVED LOLZ thing. It's complex and would require a team effort on blizzard's part to control the entire economy in a very strict way.

And it can be said that any luxury items are already overpriced, but if someone really wants to pay $200 for a battered hilt, I don't see how it affects me or you if they want to do that. You still have the (smart) option of farming it up. Nobody is harmed in this process. If at some point the sellers can't actually sell it for 30k, the price will come down. I think overall with the right price controls for raw goods in the game, sold gold could be amazingly effective at both controlling inflation AND slowing or stopping the hacker effect.

if you're really a lawyer and you make idiotic comparisons to the Mafia sticking around after prohibition based on gambling and extortion rather than running and selling booze... i have to wonder if you win many of your cases.

what are gold sellers going to DO if there's cheaper, legal gold? Hack accounts for the sheer fun of it?

I have no idea what this post is about, but I'm getting a little weirded out seeing a band that played at my local laundromat (BrainWash, no joke) on this site twice in two days.

They're amazing for a youtube cover band. it's almost a shame they're not interested in being anything "more" for now, I think they could be really successful.

Yes, Yes you are.

Learn to have some "fun".

Everything is not Serious Business.

But that's the thing, you can't compare FREE GOLDS to people ponying up real money for gold. It's not even a similar scenario because the impetus for people doing it and spending their money aren't remotely close. Anyone in the real game saves their money for useful things or rare splurges or advancing their characters. In the beta, these people transfer over characters with full bags of herbs and ores for leveling their beta characters so that's off the table. I personally tested with a full bank of herbs that I duped 3 times to get the proper leveling curve for Inscription. I sure didn't buy any herbs.

Which brings me to the other point, selling gold by blizzard would allow them to regulate the in-game economy by allowing you to sink your gold into the in-game economy by buying gathered things for gold rather than relying exclusively on the player-run econ to do it. Frost Lotus from Farmer Joe? 70g. Frost Lotus from Vendor Herbsalot? 50g. Now you've got the AH full of frost lotus at a cheaper price for the players to make their money at a moderately regulated price (nobody's going to beat the vendor price, so you don't end up with runaway inflation). With that you could see how cheap the farmers want to go, and ultimately if you didn't want to pay real money for anything at all (most people) and have more free time on your hands you can obviously farm the things yourself.

Other games and services do the exact same thing and to hear it from them (which I mostly believe) the amount of people willing to pay extra money for things like that are a very, very tiny amount of the people who play. Wouldn't it be interesting though if Blizzard saw enough profit in this idea to say knock 5 bucks a month off the fee for the game?

I mean it's nice and all to give the scary "terrorists will win!!!!!!" moral police viewpoint, but how about acknowledging the idea that there's another way that you may not even understand, one that has a place and could actually work out very well.

Wouldn't it be nice to see a return to the same-day service for GM tickets if the ones they had weren't spending every single minute of their time chasing after the hackers who bust your account for your gold?