Interesting. I wonder if the economic model in Starcraft is similar to the economic model in World of Warcraft. You might be aware of this. I find it interesting. In WoW it takes a long time to farm enough gold to buy a ground mount and far more to buy a flying mount. It takes gold to buy materials needed to level up crafts. You can farm mats but it’s tedious and takes a lot of time. You need gold to have repairs to your armor and weapons done on a regular basis. What it comes down to is having to spend tons of time in the game. It’s like maintaining and developing another life altogether so what many people do is buy gold online. I haven’t played WoW in a few years but it was illegal to buy gold online for the game because while it makes the buyer’s life easier it destroys the game’s economy and it’s basically cheating.
How it works: People are paid to farm gold in the game. I’ve read most of the farming shops are in China. Shifts of people sit in a large room, each farming. They are paid very little. The person or persons who pay them set up websites and advertise. A player who wants to buy gold goes to one of these websites and uses a credit card or paypal to purchase whatever amount he or she wants. He’s asked when he’ll be in the game to receive delivery of the gold by a player who will contact him in game. He’s also given a guaranteed delivery time.
If you’re above level 60 and want to buy a flying mount which makes it easier and faster to travel around it will cost 5,000 gold for the mount and another 1,000 for the training you need to fly the mount. That was as of about 5 years ago. Saving 6,000 gold for a mount can take 6 months, more or less depending on how many hours a day a person plays so spending $100 to get 10,000 gold in a matter of hours is well worth it to many players, the issue being time is money. For $100 you’ve saved yourself hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of playing time. The delivery players are low level toons so when you see a higher level player chatting to a low level player in a low level zone it often means gold is being delivered.
Here’s the shocker. People who run these gold selling companies make as much as $40,000/month after expenses. One guy called $20,000/month “a bad month”.
No, it’s very different in Starcraft because Starcraft is an RTS and not an MMO. Warcraft was also an RTS, and it plays more like Starcraft. World of Warcraft is an MMO RPG that is set in the same universe as Warcraft but plays radically differently.
Yes, there are basically sweatshops providing WoW gold. It’s… a sad waste of human capacity really. This is a game you pay other people to play?
Starcraft has a much cooler relationship with the real economy. There are pro Starcraft players, especially in South Korea. But they make their money off sponsors and ticketed events, much like professional athletes. (They make incomes somewhere in the range of $100,000 a year, so less than pro athletes but still pretty good.)
The only other example similar to WoW I can think of is Second Life, which actually has Linden Dollars that can be earned in the game and directly exchanged at a floating exchange rate for US currency. It suffers episodes of horrible hyperinflation, so you never want to keep your money in Lindens for long.
@pnrj - I had the first versions of both Starcraft and Warcraft. You’re right. I only got into WoW because my Unreal Tournament team decided to make the switch after UT4. I joined them reluctantly about 5 months after they made the move.
Yes they are sweatshops and yes they are a sad waste of human capacity. The entire game of WoW is imo. I was appointed a co-guild leader in WoW because I’d be a co-clan leader in UT and was trusted as such. We were an end-game guild and grew to 150+ members. To get “epic’d out” and get everyone into the guild epic gear requires 6,7,8 hours of time a day over more than a year, probably 2 years. Then Blizz comes out with an expansion and it’s back to day one. How I managed to hold down a demanding job at the same time is amazing. Many in the guild did the same or worse, were college students. I stopped a few levels into the first expansion pack. Then I met a girl and made the mistake of showing her a WoW video. In spite of everything I told her she insisted she wanted to play and there I was back in the game, helping her level. I finally left for good after the second expansion pack.
I don’t think I’ve heard of Second Life.
Cool about Starcraft. I’ve heard of gamers having the opportunity to go professional. UT almost got there but I think it was too early. The Proving Grounds was a ladder competition with observers and judges in which we participated. Our game against another clan was the first Zark modification game covered by The Proving Grounds. They did a write up about it but there was no prize money involved. That was the original UT and the concept of bringing in sponsors hadn’t arrived.
Gaming is fun but when you have to play 6 hours or more a night after work or school and all day Saturdays and Sundays to experience end game stuff there’s something wrong, at least for me.
I surmise I have chosen an intelligent and mind blowing website with interesting material.free to play game
Comments (4)
Interesting. I wonder if the economic model in Starcraft is similar to the economic model in World of Warcraft. You might be aware of this. I find it interesting. In WoW it takes a long time to farm enough gold to buy a ground mount and far more to buy a flying mount. It takes gold to buy materials needed to level up crafts. You can farm mats but it’s tedious and takes a lot of time. You need gold to have repairs to your armor and weapons done on a regular basis. What it comes down to is having to spend tons of time in the game. It’s like maintaining and developing another life altogether so what many people do is buy gold online. I haven’t played WoW in a few years but it was illegal to buy gold online for the game because while it makes the buyer’s life easier it destroys the game’s economy and it’s basically cheating.
How it works: People are paid to farm gold in the game. I’ve read most of the farming shops are in China. Shifts of people sit in a large room, each farming. They are paid very little. The person or persons who pay them set up websites and advertise. A player who wants to buy gold goes to one of these websites and uses a credit card or paypal to purchase whatever amount he or she wants. He’s asked when he’ll be in the game to receive delivery of the gold by a player who will contact him in game. He’s also given a guaranteed delivery time.
If you’re above level 60 and want to buy a flying mount which makes it easier and faster to travel around it will cost 5,000 gold for the mount and another 1,000 for the training you need to fly the mount. That was as of about 5 years ago. Saving 6,000 gold for a mount can take 6 months, more or less depending on how many hours a day a person plays so spending $100 to get 10,000 gold in a matter of hours is well worth it to many players, the issue being time is money. For $100 you’ve saved yourself hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of playing time. The delivery players are low level toons so when you see a higher level player chatting to a low level player in a low level zone it often means gold is being delivered.
Here’s the shocker. People who run these gold selling companies make as much as $40,000/month after expenses. One guy called $20,000/month “a bad month”.
@TheSutraDude -
No, it’s very different in Starcraft because Starcraft is an RTS and not an MMO. Warcraft was also an RTS, and it plays more like Starcraft. World of Warcraft is an MMO RPG that is set in the same universe as Warcraft but plays radically differently.
Yes, there are basically sweatshops providing WoW gold. It’s… a sad waste of human capacity really. This is a game you pay other people to play?
Starcraft has a much cooler relationship with the real economy. There are pro Starcraft players, especially in South Korea. But they make their money off sponsors and ticketed events, much like professional athletes. (They make incomes somewhere in the range of $100,000 a year, so less than pro athletes but still pretty good.)
The only other example similar to WoW I can think of is Second Life, which actually has Linden Dollars that can be earned in the game and directly exchanged at a floating exchange rate for US currency. It suffers episodes of horrible hyperinflation, so you never want to keep your money in Lindens for long.
@pnrj - I had the first versions of both Starcraft and Warcraft. You’re right. I only got into WoW because my Unreal Tournament team decided to make the switch after UT4. I joined them reluctantly about 5 months after they made the move.
Yes they are sweatshops and yes they are a sad waste of human capacity. The entire game of WoW is imo. I was appointed a co-guild leader in WoW because I’d be a co-clan leader in UT and was trusted as such. We were an end-game guild and grew to 150+ members. To get “epic’d out” and get everyone into the guild epic gear requires 6,7,8 hours of time a day over more than a year, probably 2 years. Then Blizz comes out with an expansion and it’s back to day one. How I managed to hold down a demanding job at the same time is amazing. Many in the guild did the same or worse, were college students. I stopped a few levels into the first expansion pack. Then I met a girl and made the mistake of showing her a WoW video. In spite of everything I told her she insisted she wanted to play and there I was back in the game, helping her level. I finally left for good after the second expansion pack.
I don’t think I’ve heard of Second Life.
Cool about Starcraft. I’ve heard of gamers having the opportunity to go professional. UT almost got there but I think it was too early. The Proving Grounds was a ladder competition with observers and judges in which we participated. Our game against another clan was the first Zark modification game covered by The Proving Grounds. They did a write up about it but there was no prize money involved. That was the original UT and the concept of bringing in sponsors hadn’t arrived.
Gaming is fun but when you have to play 6 hours or more a night after work or school and all day Saturdays and Sundays to experience end game stuff there’s something wrong, at least for me.
I surmise I have chosen an intelligent and mind blowing website with interesting material.free to play game