Every day this site gets a good amount searches related to buying gold in LOTRO. For those of you trying to find that information, my main piece of advice is simple: don’t do it.
No gold seller is reputable in the sense that they’re “OK” to use. Even if they do their services properly, buying gold is against the terms of service you agree to every time you play the game. Losing your account (and, essentially, the money you’ve invested into it so far) is not worthwhile. Additionally, other services (such as power leveling) require these places to log into and play your account … I don’t know how anyone can feel comfortable with that, especially given recent warnings about accounts being hijacked in LOTRO.
Beyond all of the account concerns, it really only just does you, the player, a disservice. In the long run, it’s not that hard to make money in Middle Earth. This is particularly true in the later stretches of the game, in areas such as Moria. You can save even more by joining a kinship and sharing what you don’t need. There’s always someone else out there who wants your copper, yet doesn’t need the silver you use. Hell, sometimes people are nice enough to donate you the money for that horse you’ve been desperate for.
I realize a lot of people know this, but there seems to be a lot of people who don’t. I know new MMORPG players, particularly, seem to not understand the repercussions. To me it’s as silly as paying for cheat codes. Enjoy the game and let these gold sellers find something else to do. Maybe those of you looking for this will stumble upon this post and reconsider your situation.
This news has gotten a lot of attention so far, and justifiably so. China has been one of the countries at the forefront of gold selling and their presence has certainly been felt within LotRO at one point or another. If this law adhered to and enforced, essentially all virtual “black market” sales for items, gold, etc. will be officially against the law. I think this best sums it up:
“The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services,” the Ministries said.
I’ve noticed that obvious gold spamming in LotRO has gone down a lot over the last several months. It used to be that any given day you’d run into several of these sellers within Bree, in particular. It didn’t matter what server you were on, Brandywine or otherwise. Sometimes you’d find farmers as well, who were generally pretty obvious because they all wore the same thing, ran in suspiciously tight groups and had similar names (Xihu, Xiho and Xiha, for example).
I don’t know that it’s for lack of trying, though. Turbine has tools to report gold spammers (although those weren’t always in place), but I think the main difficulty for sellers has been what I perceive is a general lack of interest in these offerings from LotRO players. I could be wrong, but the benefits of buying gold in LotRO just don’t seem as strong as in some other MMORPGs. The game, overall, doesn’t suit that mind set … particularly when many of the best things in the game (and thus, most desirable) can’t be bought or traded in the first place.
Obviously defeating selling in China also involves defeating buying as well. I don’t know that this can be understated, given how much of the population in the country actively plays MMORPGs. It’s a huge market and this will be a major blow for these companies. Richard Heeks at the University of Manchesterestimates that around 80% to 85% of gold sellers are based within China.
This is actually very well timed with LotRO’s upcoming launch in China. Hopefully it will help things go a bit more smoothly.
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