Gilfarmers...need to be stopped.Follow

I watch, in horror, as item after item, that I just about can afford, jumps in price 200K gil or worse! Gil farming/selling a growing epidemic, that's gaining in popularity way too fast. If things are allowed to continue the way they're going, I'm very disturbed to predict that by the time a year or so has passed, the only people left on the game will be veterans, who have money already, the gil farmers, and gil buyers...yeah that's a real fun thought, isn't it?

Does S/E care about this problem? I really don't know. I hear these gil farmers will intentionally train some players who enter their camp zone! That was a bannable offense, last time I checked, and yet...they're all still there! People have complained, called GMs, and it seems to have no effect. And, so they continue, hoarding up all the high-gain mobs, even the ones that people need for keys, snatch up mining points, and ultimately control the market, raising the prices as they see fit, because no one else can compete.

The only solution to this problem is going to come from the players, themselves.
WE NEED TO UNITE AGAINST THESE PEOPLE!!!
Some of you say that the companies are buying off S/E to keep up their business? Well I say this: I seriously doubt S/E will risk losing thousands and thousands of players (and potential income) over a few dozen gil farmers! Get your friends together, hell, get your LS organized. Wanna give them a taste of their own medicine? Go in force to a camp theyre hogging and sit around on it for a while. Why should we just sit around and whine about it to deaf ears?? Lets just go out there and let these people know WE DON'T WANT THEM IN OUR SERVER!

All of Bismarck vs. gil farmers
We are still the majority here.
Lets take it back, before there's nothing left to take!

You know what would be really fun, let's all get together some weekend night and go to one of the NM's they camp and camp it too, if we get the drop, let's sell it and spread the money around to everyone who came (Kinda like BCNM without the payoff ^^) If they leave we move on to another NM that another group is camping. The frustration we cause them would be worth the wasted evening of play ^^

Edit: We would organize the "Camp Crashing" party through the forums, everyone who shows up gets a cut of whatever we get if we even get the NM at all ^^

Edited, Thu Sep 9 14:16:40 2004 by Wintaru

A more pointed "strike" would be to STOP BUYING AT THE HIGH PRICES. Sure there's always the chance that someone not in on the "gig" will still buy the expensive item. But there's also a chance that during your camp crash you'll be hurting someone that's not in on it either. And there's still a chance the gil farmers will get the spawn anyway.

A key part you all have to remember, is that the price can't be driven up...if no one PAYS it. Same with driving the price down. If you were to get the leaping boots first and price em at 120k (or whatever is "low" for those) and the person that buys em bids 180k it doesn't matter how much you WANTED to help..the price history still says high price. Same with raising price, a person could price at 10k for sulfur all they want, *NONE* of the sulfur buyers will pay that price so the price can only go so high. In the end, it's the buyer's fault the price gets driven up. If they never buy it at the high prices, the gil farmers would either lower the price, or go farm something else. And then, the "real" farmers will get in there, get the drop..and want to sell it at the highest price they can so they can afford the other expensive items they need.

Now do I think it very likely that you could get the prices down by a simple buying strike? Not likely. Too many people out there won't know/won't care. Nor do I think it likely that a camp crash will stop it either. There aren't enough people to stop them from every camp the different gil sellers can/will go to. You might be able to keep em from Stroper, but you can't also keep them from lizzy/emp/whatever other NM there is. So they move away from one, they go to another, and by the time you get there, another gil farming group has gone back to the one you just left. Plus with the amount of money they pull in, I can't imagine it would be a big deal at all to take a day off and wait for the crashers to get bored and go away.

Don't get me wrong, I think that SOMETHING needs to be done...I just don't think this will work.

Speaking of these Zooej... last night in Yhoat there were many many gob trains started by these ????s Im sure alot of people called GMs there were some nasty shouts flying and Im sure they got plenty of nasty /tells(thats if they even understand english). One of them died between mine and the next pt over, after he pulled two gobs down our tunnel, that dosent go toward the zone...Needless to say he did not get raised, I assume he hped eventually.

Im pretty sure this ruined alot of pts last night...luckily I was in a good one, slowed us down a good bit still. I agree this has got to stop, not only are they out camping our NMs but they are taking over our regular leveling spots. There has got to be something we can can do that will permenantly shut them down.

Im up for anything that goes down against these people.

I made a joke about that in my LS... Sadly enough, it seems true.
Unfortunately, SE doesn't really give a care about their players, you may not like how this sounds, but it's true.
You're paying them, and as far as they're concerned, you're still going to be paying them even after you ***** and moan about gilfarmers, voke bots, etc.
The only successful way to show them your disaproval is to have a massive cancelling of content IDs(Good luck organizing this =P), or, as stated below, organize a group of people to overcrowd NMs and make sure you always claim said mob. Sell the items to people on the forums using the TRADE function, not delivery boxes. This keeps the loot between the honest people, and it's making sure that there are less up on AH, meaning there will be less undercutting, etc.
I camped for a jujitsu gi for my monk for about 4-5 hours last night, I claimed the first one only because I was the only one there, no drop...so I decided to stay for another one, this time however, a team of gilfarmers showed up on the scene, I managed to **** them off after running around davoi claiming all the other NMs, but they managed to get poisonhand... argh, I was so close. Of course the morons linked every monster, but they decided to be ******** and spam penta thrust on poisonhand(naturally killing any chance at the drop), then proceded to get rid of whatever was left.
Sigh... What's sad about this, is that many people will feel the need to use bots because there's no other way to match the competition when camping NMs... Yeah SE, they're risking getting banned because your fat asses feel like sitting all day doing nothing and making money off it, 12$+ for a month that we don't even get to fully enjoy? 2 Maintenances in less than a week, yeah, thanks much jackasses, what are you fixing anyway? Enlarging mithra boobies perhaps? I'd be disappointed but fortunately, I've played other MMORPGs and have gotten used to it and when it comes down to it, they won't do anything, we're paying them to ********** to the characters they've created, simple as that.

Just a note in response to Jexra's post:

If I see any gil farmer's name on the sell list of a big ticket item, I'll make a point not to purchase it and either buy it from a camper directly or camp it myself.

The main effort would be in not neccesarily getting enough people to outcamp these multiple groups but in getting enough people to care enough not to purchase the items at the over marked price they would sell them at. Unfortunately there's no way of knowing whether or not they're selling until the item has already been bought. And I'm sure a lot of people who NM camp for their income would be upset at the thought of everyone boycotting their items on the AH all together until the price falls, people could look at this as a chance to encourage the item to drop below general percieved market value (enough boycotts could do it and essentially fiddle with the market). And individual opinion on market value of certain items varies from person to person and budget to budget. I may think that 200-250k for a pair of Leaping Boots is fair game but someone else (most likely a seller) will think 300-360k is.

The main point I think of a "Camp Crash" would be intimidation tactics, not to actually try to drive away whatever monopoly over a particular drop a gil farming group think they have. It would have to be incredibly organized and would require a great deal of communication but there has to be something beyond instilling a stalemate into the economy and attempting to bully the gil farmers off our camps and servers. SE, more than anything we could do for ourselves, has to finally step up to the plate and do something beyond assuring us that they're "looking into it".

And more to the point, the largest and by far most sensible effort we could endeavor against gil farmers: to not invite them to parties, provide them teleports, offer them raises, or if (and please let this be a huge if) they reach 50 or even 55, to NOT invite or assist them with any of the genkai. I passed by one of the Zooe's the other day who had been poisoned and was down to a sliver of HP. He took one look at my doublet and assumed I was a WHM (despite being a THF) and sent a /tell: "4HPw" to which I replied: "gil farmer ww" and let him die and release. Even if I was a WHM I would not have healed him.

It's pretty much our best hope to "ignore" them unless we plan on training and MPKing them as much as we possibly can and therefore violating the TOS. :S

An excellent point ^^

I was thinking how cool it made this game, that many real life principals could be applied to it. I'd be curious to see if any econ students does a class paper on the economics of Vanadiel ^^

I'd honestly have to agree about the problem going away by itself. The one thing about economies, even ones such as the FFXI system, is they are chaotic and completely variable. Prices will go up, prices will go down, prices will even sometimes stay the same. The current situation will eventually be rectified, and some time after that it'll probably come back agian. The one thing certain about chaos is that it'll always be chaotic.

I think that's just the ticket right there. You can't guarantee that your item will get sold for the lower price you set on AH, but you CAN in a trade window. Sure the AH price will still be high, but it won't matter if people know they can get it in bazaar/trade window for cheaper. Take a bit of shouting, but it would help you, help the buyer, and help curb the gil farmers. Once items stop selling so quickly on AH, they'll have to find something else to do.



And THAT is a key part of the whole endeavor. If their market for certain lower level NM drops dries up, they'll want to level up to reach bigger/better drops. If they can't do that easily and they can no longer count on the low end items, who knows...they might move on to other games (we all know they won't just STOP..some of them use this as their only form of RL money, so all we CAN do is drive em away from *our* game)

WOW! I didn't think my post would stir up so many people. Well, I'm glad to hear that so many of you are genuinely as concerned as I about this problem.

It really is a big issue, especially with the Euro release coming up in just under two weeks. It would be a real shame for all those new players never to be able to advance or get any good gear, just because it's so expensive or they have no chance of fighting for it.

I'm all for the "no aid" idea. NONE of those people is getting crap from me...least of all, my money, if I can help it.

hey i don't nm camp so i don't how it feels but i know that a lot of people hate them for their excessive nm hunting and that they buy gil so I have made a note that if i see a gob train on them i will not help out and i will encourage everyone else not to help either. what they r doing is wrong and it should be stopped but really the only way to stop them is to not buy the gil plain and simple. Don't help them out cause they r trained to get to a certain lvl to camp nms. And if u help them u r helping their cause. that is all i gotta say for now about these people.

The only way to stop this is to not buy gil online. Ever. No one. Period.

Everytime you buy gil online, God kills a kitten.

Just don't do it.

If no one did, then these people would have to give up and move on to another game. But obviously, there's a large Bismarckian market, otherwise there wouldn't be so many.

Remember. Save the kittens.

And here I thought that it was everytime you **********, God kills a kitten. Now, buying gil online causes kitten genocide? Gonna be a whoile lot less Mithra in Vana'diel, I imagine.

Edited, Thu Sep 9 20:40:23 2004 by Xanoxonax