"How a gold farm works"

In case you thought these folks were not organized.

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/01/how_a_gold_farm.html#more

It's a little like saying, "Some one is robbing liquor stores, this is a liquor store, therefore some one here must be a robber." Is there any proof people are gold farming SL? Absent proof, is there a way it could be done that makes economic sense? The ridiculous idea that Chinese crime gangs could use stolen credit cards to rake in the tiny profits of $L50 a week (a hundred or so a week per card?) So, is there any way a criminal gang could gold farm SL? I don't see one, but then I haven't really cared to make a legitimate profit off SL either.

There are a lot of claims about people cheating the sytem in various ways. Most of them seem to follow the logic, 'cos I can imagine it happening it must be happening.' Very rarely do people making these claims actually do the sums and see if it is actually worth the time.
The OP is comparing apples with oranges.

Hey, if I could get access to the CC records of LL I'd try to back up my claims with facts.

Until then, in the absence of complete data sets, we have a choice - keep our mouths shut, or speculate based on suplimentary data.

I see 5000 people logging on max simultaneously and 120K people logging in the last 30 days.

No other MMO I know has this total account/concurrency ratio.

Also, did you ever stop to ask why they don't accept paypal verification anymore? They had more than 100K accounts when they did that.

In the absence of data I would suggest supposition is pointless.

We have data. We do not have COMPLETE and perfect data.

I don't have all the data to prove to you that when I go to the grocery store a mass murderer isn't going to kill me, but hey, I still go.

But anyways you never answered my question - why do you think they got rid of the paypal verification option?

I have no idea why, and I am not prepared to speculate. If I did, I'd be talking out my ass.

Well, anyone posting in this thread is talking out of their *ss. Anyone making any claims at all about the OP or anything is talking out of their *ss.

But hey, at least I provided a link out of my *ss. All I'm getting from you folks is just a lot of *ss talk.

In fact, now that I look at it, all I did was provide a useful and informative link. And yet you folks found fit to freak all out.

Who's the ones talking out of their *ss here?

So who's freaking out? How is not speculating in the absence of data 'freaking out'? I'd say, it's the opposite of freaking out.

I posted a link and your reaction was:



The post was just a link. That's it.

I wasn't comparing anything. You speculated (quite a bit, considering how brief my original post was) as to what my intentions were.

Well, this thread followed on from your other thread on the same topic, so I guess I gleaned your intentions from that. Yes, I could have been mistaken. It really wasn't in any way intended to be a personal attack, and it's hardly inflammatory language. I still don't see how it's 'freaking out'. It's just the link was talking about a different game, not SL, that's why I said you were comparing two different things.
Many things are possible. It's just that sometimes I think, yes you could do it... but is the return worth the risk/effort? I have no doubt that various people cheat the system somehow. I'm just not so sure how much we can attribute to this.
See the way I look at it, incomplete data is as good as no data, sometimes worse, because it has the abilty to skew perception, an incomplete perception.

Maybe. But if we don't act on incomplete data we would be paralyzed at birth.

Morning Anna,

This is not the first time I've heard of such things (I have friends who have played in UO, DAoC, and now WoW), and I can sympathize with your concerns, but others are also correct here.

We have concurrency figures, which admittedly can look problematic in this light. However we also need the transaction figures to nail it down. I'm definately a 'show me' kind of person, and would prefer to have more data myself before worrying *too* much.

You do have some possible good points however. Why not go ahead and act yourself, and post a request for updated transaction figures in Answers? That will help greatly for everyone.

Hope this helps,