Gil Seller "crisis" breeding racismFollow

You wouldnt believe how thrilled I was when SE adjusted the V. Emperor, stroper chyme, and the other exploited mobs to drop rare/ex. But sadly this had the same effect as throwing rocks at a wasp nest. The gil sellers are agitated and are now out of control, far more agressive then the past.

MPKs seem to be at record highs, and the forums are flooded with "Our world at war" type threades (more so on KI). The gil seller infection has spread to sky now. Sky is the home of a lot of important rare/ex and crafting items, and is traditionally one of the focal points of endgame. Their presence here was not well recieved... lol.

Hiyuxang/Flying are a particularly agressive bunch. Their presence means an alomst 100% MPK on any encounter, even if you're just an XP party in their area.

The result of this, a lot of players are picking up bad attitudes:

"MPK any Chinese player on sight. Guilty until proven innocent, but they can't speak english, and are therefore guilty"

"Do not party with a Chinese player... Ever. Under any circumstance. You are breeding a future opponent".

Very unfair. This is called profiling. In the real world my Middle eastern friends complain of harassment in airports. It's not fair, but its a natural reaction. (Luckily in real life my Chinese friends arnt called theives or gilsellers ^^)

99% of gilsellers are of the same ethnic background
99% of global terrorism comes from one religion

What is especially unfair to honest Chinese players (and there are many) is that the people managing the gil farmer sweatshops are often from America. They have set up these gil farming operations in the lowest cost labor pool in the world, and in doing so have branded an entire country as online criminals.

Now what are SEs options here? Consider this quote from an article:

"The Chinese online gaming market generated RMB 2.47 bln (USD 304 mln) in sales revenue last year and is expected to see RMB 10.9 bln (USD 1.34 bln) in sales revenue for 2005, according to China's General Administration of Press and Publication. It is dominated by massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG)"

These arn't all gil sellers, but with the current setup they are all going to be treated very badly in game by NA players (and JP, who hate them more then we do, since they share the same prime-time).

SE cannot afford to have an in game "race war" harm a billion dollar industry. I have been very impressed with the last few updates with regards to SE trying to hinder the dirty tricks gil sellers try, but I think its time we have another massive round of account deletions. GMs just arnt cracking down hard enough on these guys.

Sometimes I dislike branding gil sellers and profiling them as the ultimate cause of the problem is the "normal" players themselves. If Real Money Trade is not a profitable business, businessmen will not invest their time and money into this. It is obvious to see who is really making RMT profitable.

Instead of examining themselves, players resort to profiling and scape goating when things are not in their favor. I myself am a Chinese, and is part of a fairly prominent Taiwan/Hong Kong player LS. A lot of player in my LS have mixed into the JP player community and sometimes not distinguiable apart from regular Japanese players. There are people in my LS has strong belief that the coming of NA players bring all this RMT with them as NA players want to look "big" and like to show off. Although I do not neccessary agree with such thinking, but I tend to see more rude and greedy NA players more than non-NA (Edit: probably related to the average age of NA players being lower compare to the non-NA counter parts) (bad JP players are common too, so I am not profiling). And the desire to catch up the 2 years JP players got ahead, gil buying becomes a short cut to catch up.

Instead of profiling others first, I belief people should examine their own behavior first before others. This is a very hard thing to do -- who will incrimite themselves when they can lay quick blame on others. All of the current problems are brought by human nature itself.



Edited, Thu Aug 18 13:48:11 2005 by scchan

Amanada, that is well said. I salute you. Just to let you know that I want to destroy in Ballista purely on the basis that I think I am better than you at BLM :P

Seriously though, I agree with what you say. I know some people that generalize all chinese people as gil-sellers...ignorant bastards...us NAs can also put at least some blame on ourselves for continuing to support the gil-sellers by being gil-buyers.

People need to stop taking the quick and easy way to the top. Not to mention, I really dont see any more reason to spend more than the monthly fee on this game. If you spend more than what you pay for your account on this game, you obviously suck at this game.

Anyone who would let a game influence the way they feel about another race is either ==> (a) A Racist, or(b) Extremly Ignorant.

I actually know players that are known gil buyers and they are very nice and good players. And some do has some legitimate "reasons", they have RL work and yet want to enjoy the game the way they want -- which is not neccessary a rush to 75.

The people who think he/she has to buy gil in order reach the top are the ones do not understand playing skill and reputation cannot be bought. The real FFXI attraction is its community bonds (that is what keeps me from quiting >.> even I tried a few times), not reaching level 75 and camp HNMs everyday. However, badly skilled players do not well as well HNMs, and rushed players may have a hard time to get the connection to get into the good LSs. Flashy gear never gets you anywhere when you do not know how to use it.



I think it is important to strike a balance to between capitalism and uncontrolled greed. The reason why things are not ALL made personal is to keep the an alive game economy (so game world can be realistic). And gil actually means something in the game universe.

However the game universe does not have the tight trade laws like in RL. That is where all those item stealing, gil sell/buy, Jeuno casinos become uncontrolled. And there is really nothing a GM can do about that. It basically work on honor system -- SE trusts the player to not to foul play each other, or to resort gil buy/sell. Despite how idealized the honor system (I myself like it), it does not work, because it is human nature to be greedy. Greed is not neccessary a bad thing; greeds drive development and prosperity -- when communist China and Russia emerge from communism (China is not really communist nowadays), their people are poor and backward compare to American, European, Far East capitalist counterparts. And we have trade laws in RL to contain harmful greed -- if you run illegal casinos or steal money from your company -- you go to jail. Without strict rules to contain it, human greed is nearly impossible to check.


Edited, Thu Aug 18 19:51:29 2005 by scchan

i agree that the racial profiling of chinese players is getting somewhat out of hand, everyone i know who is chinese is offended by it. but thats mostly the fault of ignorant players who seem to think all gil sellers are chinese and all chinese are gil sellers.

the profiling itself is not the problem, if your a rank 1 lv60 character in lv20ish equipment that sits in 1 zone 23 hours a day, and doesnt speak any of the languages that the game has been released in, chances are your not a regular player and need to be checked out.

its not really racism against chinese players, so much as people know that the game has not been released in china, and if your playing it in china you should be able to speak either english of japanese, because otherwise how could you understand the game and play it. if you happen to live in china and are playing the japanese version and speak/understand japanese or english, people arent gonna think your a gil seller once you talk to them, unless they are idiots. when you cant speak anything but chinese, its kind of obvious that your not interested in the actual game or its story, because you cant read the launguage that its writen in.

Wow, I'm friend with yet another chinese player. That makes 3 lol. My first LS that I owned was chinese dominant, with me being the only american. They all speak good english and well mannered. Don't act anything like the gil sellers we know. They live in HK so maybe that explains somethings.


And a long time ago I wanted to buy gil.


Edited, Thu Aug 18 21:59:08 2005 by Zaleshea

Proud to be a Chinese :3 We actually have a quite a few Chinese posters here too....

我是ä¸å›½äººï¼

Take your funny squiggly language and... uhm... go... something... panda...

Wait you mean there's Chineese people who play games for FUN not MONEY?!?!?!

Okey I got my sarcasm out for the day ^^

You hit the nail on the head. Gilfarmers aren't the problem, gilsellers aren't the problem. Players that break the rules for their own personal gain are the problem. It doesn't matter if they use the loot or sell it, this kind of behavior can't be tolerated. I remember what Ordelle's was like a year ago when I quit. We had Chyme farmers trying to train on us while we were there for RSE keys. They were preemptive in their attempts too, we never showed any indication we were even after Chyme.

GMs need a mechanism to detect if a player trains more than x amount of mobs and what actions they take (death, warp, zone, escape). Take a 3-strikes rule on trains in "hot spots" like popular NMs (not areas like the Khazam zoneline or Crawler's nest). It shouldn't be too hard to tell if someone is leveling off the mobs that got trained or if they were camping an NM for 2 hours and then mysteriously trained 12 mobs, died in the middle of a large group of people, right after the NM spawned.

To be honest and a little speculative, I think you (and me) do not get karma bombed by other Chinese player. But by people who are unwilling to accept the real problem.



China is an extreme country. Compare to 30 years ago, the average living standard of China has improved a lot. I will think China right now is like Britian in the middle-late 19th Century. There are rich people, and unlike its real backward pass, people now pick up money making and profit taking. However, very poor people still exist. And those people are poorly educated, and still believe in the "American Dream" -- not by mean going to America, but it is the unrealistic ideal to be rich and propser thru migration. China is also full of robber barons -- not just Chinese robber barons, but robber barons from another country. And some of them are the gil selling companies. These robber barons only interested in the money making oppurtunities themselves, but not the social consquences of it.

Off Topic (about China):

IMO "American Dream" in spirit -- is move to new land and get prosper. A lot of rural people in China believe moving to new land -- cities or even to another country, your living will improve. This is a misconception in a lot of ways as a lot of such migrants are the people who pay big bucks to be take a dangerous trip as an illegal immigrant or homeless people in big Chinese cities.

Add:

China may be economically a lot stronger 20 years ago. The average living improves significiantly. And at least most people have enough food to eat, and the current China is mostly absent of social upheavel which had plagued the nation from 1830-1970s (basically from Opium War to death of Mao). But labor rights and political freedom, and the rule of law are still undeveloped. When people see money (like working as gil sellers), people will do it because the real only way secure personal security in China are money, political connection, and guns because of the rule of law and government cannot offer enough protection.

China is a prisoner of history -- people are still recovering and obessed from 150 year of strife and conflict. Everyone should learn something about modern Asian history ^^;;;

Edited, Fri Aug 19 09:04:40 2005 by scchan

Mobsta,

The definition of right and wrong is really a relative thing and is never really absolute. Something may be wrong to someone, may actually be good or neccessary evil to someone. It is best to hold one's opinion while open to possible opposing opinions. It is easy to say "This is good and that is evil." The world is never truely White-and-Black.

It may be to true univerisally to say "To steal is a sin" -- a majority of people may agree including myself. But what happens that person is poor, homeless, and unemployed -- may be theft is really the best he/she can do at this time. He/she will still go to jail if caught stealing, but that is because "common sense" thinks stealing is wrong. But sometimes if you have no food no nothing, I am sure you will go steal too.

Add:
Let say in this case, you have no job, a gil selling company say I give you a job to make virtual money. Boss says "You better have so-so amount of income in say 3 days or you are fired." What will you do? Do you go MPK to save your job or do you take the risk to be fired? I am sure to a lot of people that is an easy decision. I am not saying MPKing is correct in game rules. TOS gives a standard of judgement from a specific view point. You agree to that standard and use that as a frame of reference to say MPKing is wrong.

World and humans are not simple, and better not be treated in a too simplistic manner -- complexitiy of social background is as simple model of human society as you get.

Edited, Fri Aug 19 12:11:53 2005 by scchan