Greedy Goblin

Monday, March 22, 2010

Don't kill a banker!

A funny event happened in the ganking guild: I was busy transferring goods between the sides, when my little banker in Booty Bay was oneshotted. My Booty Bay banker is a hordie, exactly to avoid such event. The event turned from annoying to hilarious when it turned out that a guildmember performed the glorious act. So I logged to main and caused some amusement on the gchat by informing everyone about it.

Why the post? Because the problem was not that the ganker killed my banker, it was that he killed a banker. This could be anyone's banker, you should not kill him. Nor you should kill the auctioneer or bank accountant NPCs. These are essential to the economy that makes us rich and supplies us with resources.

Without the banking/AHing players and NPCs, you'd have to grind anything and everything yourself and could only vendor the items that you loot and cannot use (or cannot barter with friends).

This event also illuminates one of the biggest bad assumptions of socials: "the goblins kill/rob/abuse anyone they can". No! We don't harm useful beings, exactly because they are useful. Abusing a business partner is just as stupid as abusing your car by not buying it new lubricant. May get you some money now, at the cost of a later huge loss.

The socials derive harming or helping from feelings and "personality". Only a "bad" person is capable of harming others, and if someone is "bad" he is doing it indiscriminately. Of course it's nonsense, especially since socials harm others (the out-group members) too, but according to them it's OK, since they were "evil" or "lowly" anyway.

It's the useless, idiotic people we abuse, separate them from the resources they grinded or gained from "freindly heplfull ppl". In the simple WoW-experiment, we will gank the same idiots: those who do dailies (instead of AH or even farming), stupid achievements (can't wait for Midsummer, when the flock of retards will swarm to desecrate fires in our land for the achievement).

One of the things I want to prove, that despite our widespread ganking, the intelligent hordies will not be harmed, exactly because they are intelligent and can easily dodge us. It's the idiotic fanboys who will suffer!

Note: I'll be away for some days (work), so I may not be able to process comments. But socials don't hope, I'll be back!

13 comments:

Yaggle said...

I thought that people who do dailies are useful to you because they generate money to buy your things with in the auction house. Or would you say that these people are not useful because they spend their money on mammoth mounts. And those daily-doers use the bankers and auctioners, too. Why put limits on the mayhem you will create? You're inglorious for a reason!

Anonymous said...

Ganking is ganking, doesn't matter if it's a banker-ah-whatever type of character. Why do this act of self-preservation when it's you who wanted to gank the horde off from this server? By all means, you should gank where it hurts the Horde in that case, and the economy is a very good place to strike. Don't try to exclude a part of the gankable characters, or everyone will name theirs bank-something.

John Newhouse said...

Hehe, I hope you will have enough people level 80 by midsummer to make a 24h camp to defend cities :)

Anonymous said...

And what exactly makes an achievement stupid in your eyes? Time? Difficulty? Chance of success? Location? RNG? Rewards?

Achievements are just another form of "winning" the game. Some people go for the top loot available (ie. raiding). Some play for PVP. Some play to make in-game gold (goblins). And yes, some play to get as many achievements as possible.

It doesn't matter if an achievement is easy, difficult or plain silly. It is their goal, no different from making pretend money as fast and efficiently as possible, regardless if the profit made is major or minor. For you to decry achievement hunting is like the raider calling goblins stupid because they spend their real-life time making pretend gold. It's a pointless comparison.

You embarrass yourself when you denigrate one or any other goal in WoW as stupid, just because YOU have chosen another. Let me put it another way: Have you got your Loremaster title yet? No? "HURR DURR YER STOPID U WASTE TIEM MAKING GOLD INSTEAD LOL WHY BOTHER ITS NOT REAL GLD I CAN JUST BUY GLD CAN *YOU* BUY MY MOUNT NOOOOOOOO!!!"

Part of WoW's success is the plethora of goals it gives players, allowing everyone a different way of "winning". Making the maximum profit for the most minimal time/effort may mean something to you, but it means nothing to someone else. Getting every and all achievement under the sun (regardless of difficulty) may mean nothing to you, but it doesn't have to.

You may consider some achievements stupid, but no more than providing financial tips that give less than 2,000G profit each time. If it's not a quick and easy trick, the raider doesn't care. The achievement hunter doesn't care. The PVP Warlord doesn't care. They have plenty of money for repairs/flasks. They think wasting time for such minor profit is STUPID.

The goblin will do the AH deal even if the profit is minor, because that's what he plays the game for. The raider will join a raid for the chance of just one item drop even if the gear increase is minor, because that's what he plays the game for. The PVP Warlord will take down anyone, anytime, anywhere, just because of that delicious floating red text, because that's what he plays the game for. The Quester will do lvl.2 quests on any continent, because that's what he plays the game for. And yes, the achievement hunter will do any achievement, no matter how silly and stupid, because... that's what he plays the game for. And with your "stupid achievements" line, you proved you think EXACTLY like they do.

You think others are stupid because they have different goals than you, and you cannot understand why.

F said...

This is a bit a surprise coming from you.
Stretching your concept, you shouldn't kill a hordie mining, gathering, farming for the same reason. More: you shouldn't kill at all unless your target is idle and non productive or already engaged in some pvp. In fact if the hordie is questing, he is gaining gold by means of drops and rewards and the gold make the world go round. Your logic isn't bulletproof.

Anonymous said...

You shouldn't kill any hordies at the AH. They buy stuff, mabye from allience characters, thereby transfering gold to the allience side of the server. That's good. Why would anyone want to stop them?

Very funny though, killed by your own guild member.

Ulv said...

Gev,

I'm missing something I think...

It's not ok to kill a banker or other userful entity because it allows us to make profit BUT it's fine to gank a too out in the field that's running round mingin/herbing/skinning and selling it cheap on the AH thus stimulating the economy?

I'm fairly sure that the market would not be so useful if there was nothing in the AH to wheel and deal with.

Lamoron said...

It's the idiotic fanboys who will suffer! This is not exactly true mate. While I agree with you in theory, your definition of "intelligent" is based only, on people appreciating the same things in WoW that you do. I like fishing... I know it's wierd but I do. I like watching 50 hours of "The Wire" while doing something productive with my time, and on my server I can do 500 gold an hour just by fishing (I'm basicly the only one doing it).

Sure it's not an incredible income, but The Wire earned me 20-25.000 gold, which is respectable at least. I did the AH dance, I made my fortune three times over before, and now it bores me. I like doing a select few dailies, I like earning a hundred stupid Cooking Awards to get me a stupid cooking hat, not because I make money from doing it, but because I've done everything else and I just need something to occupy me.

So basicly you are punishing the fanboys, and three cheers for that, but you're also annoying me when I spontaneously explode, in a shower of entrails, while attempting to haul in some Glacial Salmon.

Now there are things I could do, like put on my PvP gear, keep all my buffs refreshed, or just transfer to a PvE server, but honestly it's to much of a bother. I spend more time fighting back than if I just let him kill me, and everyone I know is on my current server.

I don't hate Gankers, I just wish you'd be a little more inventive... like these gankers.

Once i was fishing, and someone stealthed was tapping their foot at me in emote. I fished some more and I got threatened with doom by someone else I couldn't see. So I put on my gear, put up my buffs, and was utterly ripped apart by three rouges. Good times.

Or the Cat Druid who kept "licking" me while I was fishing, before eating me and my catch (well, if he could that is).

Be inventive, make it an experience to be horrible killed by your deathsquads, and add something to the world. I guarantee you, that fanboys won't rage any less, but the intelligent people out there will appreciate it.

Also, english isn't my first language, so please ignore my horrible sentenace structure and punctuation :D

Kristine Ask said...

Your initial statement was that you were going to cause havoc for horde. One of the common ways of doing this is killing bankers, flightmasters and other player and non-player characters that are used in the everyday running of the game.

That you suddenly give amnesty towards bankers has little logic. Because, under the same logic (they are creating moneyz (tm) )you should not harm anyone farming, grinding - or completing quests for that matter.

They are after all generating gold too.

Its still enjoyable to watch you conduct your social experiments. Just make sure you stick to the rules, and dont change them as you see fit. It kinda removes the challenge.

Xaxziminrax II said...

The idea of this post reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend. I was saying to him. "If only beneficial instinct survives" (for anyone with the instinct to sleep in the lion's den surely won't live to pass it onto their kids) "why did we gain some instinct to keep alive the mindless idiots?" He gave this answer, and everything made sense: "Because at some point, it was beneficial to keep them alive."

That is not unlike what you're talking about now. It's like if you have a Chinese farmer CODing you cheap mats, why would you report him to a GM? You would cause yourself loss of money! You might as well just offer to buy the mats for double price, you would be shooting yourself in the foot!

The same is true for your 'don't kill a banker' idea, as bankers are useful to you, as well its true for managers of department stores, or anyone else who relies on others for their business.

Eaten by a Grue said...

By that logic, a hordie out farming is useful, since you could conceivably buy his raw materials and turn a profit. Yet you guys stated goal is to kill the farmers.

Anonymous said...

I Disagree, just because it inconvienced you doesnt mean it doesnt affect everyone else. For example considerable inconvience is caused by the allies everytime they kill the flight masters of ratchet and cross roads and keep killing them for sustained periods of time. The net effect of that on my server has to been to push people to level in ghostlands (ok you can argue horde should be leveling there from 10-20 anyway but...) the point is, by killing auctioneers in rac, booty etc it will have an effect

that effect will be to make cross faction trader harder and to make buying pages of strangle thorn harder. thats good for ya if you exploit it. Why rein in yr guildie whose going for blood admiral i presume?

Dave said...

I'm thinking that most of the folks who commented already are fairly accurate in saying that you are making an arbitrary distinction between who it is OK to gank and who it is not OK to gank.

Your goal seems pretty clear, disrupt the Horde to the point where the majority of the socials that make up the imbalance decide to leave.

Your guildie, one of YOUR protege's was doing just that. Not only that, but this person may have thought that this bank toon was trying to take advantage of your cross-faction dealings, and was doing you a favor by preventing this.

Bank toons should be fair game, and they should drop a percentage of the gold on the character. Then maybe farming would be profitable, especially on any server you are on. :P