Greedy Goblin

Thursday, January 5, 2017

2 BDO posts on top

I've checked my blog statistics and found these:

Please note that most readers don't click on individual posts, just read the front page. They are my "loyal readers", who read the blog itself. I also have permanent pages and their visit count dwarf the individual posts. The pictures about individual posts show referred readers who come here after a link somewhere. In my EVE time it was mostly r/eve. My World of Tanks posts are referred from various WoT forums. But among the top performers there are two BDO business posts. This is interesting. I've left BDO when I realized that there is no other endgame than getting even more gear for faster grind for even more gear. Of course I didn't grind but used industrial methods. The result is that I became the richest player on the server in 2 months and got full Tet gear when others whined about getting duos is hard. I simply didn't consider BDO and interesting game anymore.

Blog-wise I clearly made a wrong choice. Many players consider BDO interesting and clearly find my work valuable. They want to earn in-game currency to avoid paying real world currency. The pay-for-power aspect of the game is strong (it's an Eastern grinding MMO after all) and the devs aren't shy of lying or false advertising. There were multiple P2W outrages in BDO, one resulting a mass-chargeback campaign. The $/in-game ratio is laughable, I could earn $15 worth of in-game currency per day while AFK, just collecting materials once a day with 15-20 mins clicking.

The point is that - just like with WoW - I might made a mistake: I aim for something "yuge", not valuing that I am successfully teaching thousands of simple people about the basics of moneymaking. Maybe this is a bigger thing than evicting Goons or showing that the biggest e-sport is a shameless moneygrab where wins are determined by payment and not skill (post in max 2 weeks and I have rock-solid evidence and it seems I'll have the crown jewel, the working exploit too).

Anyway, maybe I should return to a "lesser" MMO and settle with communicating to the economy-illiterates, turning them to economy-literates, people who don't 0.01, who don't grind and get moderately rich.

On the other hand the drive to do "yuge" is strong. Somehow seeing VFK fall and seeing the casinos banned and raiding Ulduar in blues and seeing "World of Tanks is Rigged" top hit on Google after typing "World of Tanks" somehow feels better than watching people learning their first steps in economy. But that supposed to be my goal.

I wish I find a game where I can do both: teach moneymaking and lead some guild to victory. Maybe I didn't try hard enough. I mean while I can blame Falcon for having to leave EVE, I can't blame him for not having a successful corp: I didn't even try to build one, I played solo.

What to do, what to do?

26 comments:

Provi Miner said...

HTFU and get gud..... seriously gob's set up in a low sec system and kick ass. you know you would have 100 + on day one (75 spai's and awoxers but they tend to weed themselves out easy). Set up a bad ass production system with your whole corp working it, if need be hire mercs (like MC and a sub cap merc corp) to defend your cap production. take over things drive the nails into your enemies heads and laugh while fozzi and co are unable to stop you from using "their" game against them. There are few joys then bitch slapping the game devs using their game to prove them wrong.

Skeddar said...

Guess it'll be exciting how many views your final LoL post will get.

Since your last 20 games are still at 50% wr and your div didn't change I am skeptical about the 'working exploit', but we'll see (obviously you could have started a new paying account which is gold now or sth).

Smokeman said...

You might be missing an important point.

The vast majority of players properly realize that in game currency is worthless.

Sure. It's useful in game, but it's not the reason to play.

Case in point. You accumulated trillions of Eve ISK. So what? Can you spend it? Does it make your Eve play time ... Oh wait, you no longer play that game... any better?

You probably have hundreds of thousands of WOW gold on one or more characters. So what? You no longer play that game.

What people WANT, is tips on getting in game currency WHILE PLAYING THE GAME.

With BDO, and actually... with WoW and Eve...while you were starting to play the game, you focused of earning in game currency WHILE actually playing the game. That was useful to a lot of people. Once you got good at earning in game currency... YOU STOPPED PLAYING THE GAME. And you became less useful to people actually playing the game.

Gevlon said...

@Provi Miner: I can't do anything in EVE, not because of awoxers, but because of Falcon

@Smokeman: I did play EVE politics, I spent my money on hunting Goons.

Unknown said...

I've started to read you because of the eve. Damn man suck it up and get back to us, and maybe if people like to read about eve and economics, and in addition to learn, maybe just maybe give it another try, and start some on-side tutorial/lessons posts for new ones...

Unknown said...

I wonder what you think about World of Warships?
It's mechanics are very similar to WoT for the back end payment and grinding scheme, but the game itself seems to be more strategic in general. I play it, i don't pay for anything other than premium account (i believe the company should be paid for their efforts) and I enjoy it, even if an occasional player may have advantage over me by paying more. Also, the tactic of rushing and getting early kills, at the expense of team's loss doesn't seem to work there - rushers die without any kills and gain very little xp.

Anonymous said...

Again i will suggest Archeage, strong economy gameplay (and a huge need of ingame currency for the players), endgame goals (faction wars, castles, contested raid bosses, ...), and quite a nice population on the recently released fresh servers (with limited cash shop) for a few months), your travel to wealth and power would probably be worth a good read.

Gevlon said...

@Bart: you probably missed the part that the community manager has a personal vendetta against me and also - along with other devs - is corrupted as hell. No in-game method beats pinging your buddy dev who gives you a trillion.

@Slawomir: the same company makes World of Warships as World of Tanks. I'm sure it's just as rigged.

@Anon: I'll look at Archeage

Anonymous said...

Would you post more about real life economics/business/finance? You've posted a lot about what not to do (such as keeping up with the Joneses) but I don't think you've posted much about what to do to make money in real life. I understand you like to focus on video games (and I enjoy this focus), but occasional posts about making real life money could be very interesting. If you wanted to help educate people it could be a lot more practical to use real life examples instead of video game examples.

Anonymous said...

Come back to EVE and find proof of a dev's corruption, such proof that CCP simply cannot ignore it any more. So far you have found and presented proof of unprofessional behaviour, which is an indicator of corruption, and after applying Hanlon's Razor, that is not proof of corruption. Since I also find EVE to be the best game, and knowing human stupidity is everywhere, I weigh and decide to continue playing.
The ISK-in-game-change at the turn of a month was very interesting, in fact, but we still do not know the reason and the person behind it. You found a smoking gun, but neither victim nor perpetrator nor intention have been established.
You wrote yourself it is the best game. Make it even better. Come back.

Anonymous said...

Start an alt and don't tell us.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: Falcon - by the testimony of Sion - lied to the media and covered up a crime to protect Goons. If that doesn't get him fired, giving out pretend money definitely won't.

@last Anon: and what can that alt achieve? Kills, pretend money? As soon as I'd get involved in anything relevant, I'd be revealed.

Anonymous said...

Maybe try real life social game. https://www.etoro.com/

I mean, if you get profitable with real money, its ultimate proof that your methods work.

Anonymous said...

If you come back to eve and start a corp I will gladly join you.

Sacula said...

I think you should do reviews on different MMOs. I trust your opinion over other sites whom I suspect are paid to give positive reviews.

You could still give your honorable third party perspective on current events in Eve but then that would just probably make you want to play it more.

Anonymous said...

I mostly read your blog through your atom feed. I wonder if this is taken into account in your view counts, and if not how many readers do the same.

Piffle said...

"I think you should do reviews on different MMOs. I trust your opinion over other sites whom I suspect are paid to give positive reviews."

I'll second this. I actually found the posts you made about BDO to be fascinating and I had never heard of it before. I have far less time to game these days and MMOs seem out of reach for me; reading about your escapades in various games almost feels as if I get to relive some of my gaming days through you.

Plus, I really enjoy the analytic style you bring to games. I actually more prefer reading about your method of thinking and how you approach games than I do all the politic-y stuff regarding EVE.

maxim said...

You need to embrace the contradiction.
Be a humble economics teacher / professor by weekdays and a vengeful yuge goblin by weekends
You might even play more than one game simultaneously :)

Provi Miner said...

frack him gob's bend the game to the point where you make him or you, no matter how he slants the table... I see your problem you want a fair fight on a level field. you say you played eve solo so you might have missed this factoid that every but morons and slackers know:

if its a fair fight someone fucked up.

The trick gob's is to win inspite of the dev's look at the turn over you can push the meta so far in one direction that falc becomes unimportant create a situation where PI is the focus he doesn't work with that team and from what I have seen as long as it doesn't touch this team or that team he would be ok but the moment he makes a move on you that affects other teams then the axe's and pitch forks come out.

Doktor Jeep said...

Hey Gevlon, what about War Thunder? It's very WoT-ish but I'm no pro at this. What is your opinion?

Cathfaern said...

I don't know how long this project would be, but maybe you should write a series about how people should make money in MMOs. I don't mean in a particular MMO but in general. What I saw that you start a new MMO and you're rich in no time. Most people can't do that. Maybe they can after others find the "best" way to get rich and they read some guides and after it they can get rich. But you have the "ability" to do this on your own. You could teach about this. And after some theoretical writings you could choose a random MMO (or readers could vote for one) which you did not play before and demonstrate how these strategies work on that particular MMO and how you apply them (and of course get rich). After it you could hop to a new MMO (preferably which have different economy than the previous one like WoW vs. EVE) and do the same.
You know, the whole "give a man fish vs. teach him how to fish" business.

The side effect of this is that you can try many MMO. And because you have blog material it's never waste of time even if they are horrible in the long run. And if you're lucky you can find some big project while doing this.

Unknown said...

I didn't miss that part, well it's almost impossible to miss, every third post has something about it...
thats why I used phraze 'suck it up', give it another try and as You always said you are not social, so dont give a damn about him..
and do what you like in a game that you like, we like...

Gevlon said...

@Bart: he is a lead dev, I can't "don't give a damn" about him. He can ban my account, remove items, give items to enemies, unban them after they cheated. He is a GOD in the game framework. You can't ignore God. You can leave the game and then he is just a dude working on some game.

Anonymous said...

You could probably do a lot of good in the real world giving basic money management tips to RL noobs too.

It is possible that might be as interesting as an MMO in some ways if you find a good angle.

Anonymous said...

"I didn't even try to build one, I played solo."
I would gladly play EVE online in Your corp. Having such goal like world domination.

/Makez

Xmas said...

Your posting style is abrasive, but you've got a skill at reading game systems: economies, politics, matchmaking. You make decent posts on how to play within those systems. Most of those are probably unintended methods of gameplay, but they are not cheating or exploits. I do like to read those posts, even if I don't play the games.