Our System at Work ™

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-11-05-farmbill_N.htm

“When the bill that would extend farm subsidies for five years goes to the Senate floor this week, eight senators will have special reason to pay close attention: They or their relatives collected about $3 million in federal payments from 1995 to 2005, according to government records compiled by a non-partisan environmental group.”

that gives me almost as good a feeling as our upcoming 2% raise in taxes, both sales and property, in Chicago so that we can support Tod Stroger’s extended family and various mobsters.

Surely it’s the other way round – the need for money by average or casual players is increased by these money sinks, resulting in more demand for farmed gold?

The only way to prevent farming is for the act of farming itself to have diminishing returns. It’s quite difficult to do that, although perhaps some system simlar to rest XP would increase the number of characters/accounts a farmer would need and therefore make it uneconomic.

Also farming helps us causal botters. I don’t buy gold, I just bot from time to time (it is fun to develop your own bot too), and the items sells good on AH as well. Without farmers, it could take me half an year to get my mount (I did some calculation, where I could farm about 10g/hour with a bot, even I play myself I could only do about 15g. But if I sell them on AH then that is totally different story depends on your drops).

The stable income Blizz got is from us working class adults, who have to work, have to take care of wife, kids, which leaves most of us about 1 hour each day to play and some more on the weekends. The farmer’s influx of cash is greatly needed for us to get mounts etc. The rest good gear can be done by having fun with friends in dungeons.

Also I think Blizz should make more easier dungeons, the hard ones require too much time and too much stress. Dungeons require 30 minutes to complete will be the best, too much trash mobs just give us headaches.

That said, WoW has some of the better money sinks of the games I have played. Mounts, Repairs, Pots, Training, Respecs, etc. Admittedly some scale better than others. Sadly, there does not seem to be a money sink deep enough to prevent gold farming and its attendant inflation.

It rapidly devalues the currency of the game by flooding the market with gold. Since there’s an excess of gold, the median price for any particular item vastly inflates. Because a player who is not buying gold is still getting the same gold earnings ratio for their playtime, their income is static. However, they’re now paying more and more for the same goods they payed for a day/month/year ago (if they can purchase them at all). This puts price points on gear well outside the reach of any sort of casual player, creating a massive barrier between the hardcore and casual. Thus, the casual player can buy gold, play more to earn more gold, live without the gear that the game is designed to funnel down to them or quit. None of those are desirable choices to present to casual gamers, who are the meat and bones of the MMO market.

More on topic, how come nobody mentions California rice subsidy? They not only take money, but California farm water subsidy, which is HUGE.

Only newbs pk. I crush in ATITD! the HARDCORE pvp game!

This is kinda interesting:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13147/

Yes, but what does that have to do with farming subsidies?

I Farm corn to crush?