According to this article by Thomas Claburn over at InformationWeek, China has decided to put a stop to gold farming. That’s China, the country:
The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services…
Neither the declaration by China’s Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce nor the analysis mention World Of Warcraft by name.
I feel a disturbance in the force; its as if a thousand voices cried out in pain for 3 years solid, then suddenly…silenced
Blizzard and China are joining forces… I don’t see how China will be able to stop this… The thing I don’t really understand is that there are a bunch of websites selling gold, yet Blizzard does nothing about it or so it seems… Can’t they force the sites to be taken down?… I’m not sure how it works… But hopefully gold farming goes down…
From What I’ve read this law was passed in order to curtail online gambling, and there has been no word yet on how it will affect MMORPG games. There are a ton of games which are popular in china that allow users to purchase in-game currency via micro-transactions. I wonder how they will have to re-think their business model?
For randy to state that gold farmer players don’t play on china servers is a lame statement. Course they play on Chinese servers and US and EU servers as well. As for not being able to trade gold domestically – it happes all the time! You can’t stop gold farming. So quit your whining and live with it.