Gold farming

Buying gold from gold farmers is against the rules of the game, and hence has always been against the kinship rules. Members were also advised that gold trading is far from being a victimless crime, since gold farmers are almost always responsible for hacked accounts: part the virtual gold you buy online has been stolen from your fellow players. Now, according to the Guardian, it turns out that there is something far, far nastier behind the gold farming rackets: the online slog is actually carried out by prisoners in Chinese labour camps.

"As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells. Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money." Read the full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may...aming-scam.

After this, any member of TWA who is caught buying gold will be expelled from the kinship. No excuses.

Would it be worth adding an explicit policy on expulsion that any existing or new recruits can refer?

I agree completely with the stance and moral position but I can't find anything in the constitution or miscellaneous policies that buying gold from farmers is an expellable offence.  I think I remember seeing something about abiding by CM/Turbines code of conduct and T&Cs and there would be a disciplinary offence etc.

This is not a defence in anyway of gold buyers, simply a case of making your statement official so that it removes any uncertainty from members on what will happen and their right to appeal etc.  I am guessing it also needs to go to the council?

What is amazing and shocking is that no paper or news program has reported what many of us have known for an extremely long time.

Would it be worth adding an explicit policy on expulsion that any existing or new recruits can refer?

You're of course quite right, and this will be done at the next officers' meeting. The general policy was in fact re-confirmed about two months ago, when the issue was last debated, but it it would best to have it enshrined in the constitution.

Cheers Kai, I wouldn't want the "I didn't know" defence being used in an appeal :-\

Interesting read. Noticed one of the comments to the article as follows:

"I don't get it.

If gamers are willing to pay money for these credits, why don't the game-makers just sell them directly, rather than make the players go through all this 'gold-farming' stuff?

It seems they're missing out on some easy money."

Can imagine the outcry if they did, but considering the way the lotro store is going, well....

As this seems such a silly thing to do, can you confirm then that this is a real problem? Have any of you ever known any player willing to pay RL money to get in-game money? I guess he/she should be taken for medical care rather than expelled from the game.  :party2:

From the front page...

We have no requirements except that our members conform to the server rules regarding fair play and RP, and behave themselves in an appropriate manner to uphold the good name of the kinship. Aside from that, members can be as involved or uninvolved in any of the kinship activities as they wish.

I guess we never put up an explicit list of offences, so there's room to adjust punishment and take circumstances into account where needed. Besides, it's ban-able by CM/Turbine rules, so there's a good chance we don't have to deal with it when they're done. But it might be handy to add some paragraph about this to the misc. policies list, since most members read the front page only once.

As for the how, it's the full council that's got the final word in these matters, as usual (and mentioned in the constitution with the recent change!).

Back to the topic at hand... There's indirect ways to buy gold from the Lotro store already, especially when you look at housing, repairs, horses, relic forging etc. Normally they're mostly gold-sinks, implemented to create a steady outflow of gold out of the system (to compensate for the steady inflow from questing rewards), which you can buy away with TP. It's just useless in Lotro, since they've done their very best to make the whole economy barter-item-based.

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Ingaras, Hunter (75)
Indo, Minstrel (81)
Celefindel, Loremaster (115)
Magolisto, Champion (75)

and some others...

Also, as these days I am actually farming gold (ore), this thread is such a disappointment!

I expected a detailed map with the locations of bountyful gold nodes, lol

Also, as these days I am actually farming gold (ore), this thread is such a disappointment!

I expected a detailed map with the locations of bountyful gold nodes, lol

Will swap this map for one for logs :-)

Also, as these days I am actually farming gold (ore), this thread is such a disappointment!

I expected a detailed map with the locations of bountyful gold nodes, lol

East of Esteldin Maeg, just done a lot of farming there myself. Go as north as the Angarim village, as south as half way to DD, and as east as the road.

As for the RL farming of ingame gold, disgusting really, no excuses.