GIB ITAMZ!
Possibly the most famous boss monster of all times in Diablo II, apart from the Big Red himself, was Pindleskin. Pindleskin could drop anything in the game, although at a sluggish rate, and he was very, very, very easily reachable… good Pindlerunners could “do” him in under 30 seconds, and that was including the creation of the game, id-ing his junk and leaving again. But the downside of Pindy was that it was boring, and that you could pretty much fall asleep while doing it. Certain character builds had definite advantages when it came to “Pindling” as it became known, and the chances that you died were slim to none. But Pindle everyone did, and Pindling was in. You did not do it for your amusement. The Death animation sucked, the experience points sucked, and the there were hordes of monsters to kill which offered a more varied experience than Pindleskin. No, the only reason to kill Pindle over and over again were those nice items. So what is this lust for items?
The first and most obvious thing to point out is that farming has a high chance of getting good items, but you are not guaranteed this or that drop from monster a or b. Thus, farming is nothing more than just a gigantic slot machine, where you insert time and get out items. Yup. It’s nothing more than a gambling addiction. For some people this goes so far that they spend their entire day gam… farming away.
Items have a function in the game. When you have item X or Item Y, you might be more powerful than your neighbor. Thus, farming for item X until you actually have item X will mean you make yourself more powerful. Obviously, all unwanted crud you farm in the meanwhile gets sold and makes you richer still. Farming increases your power in the game. For that reason, people will farm as well.
Then there is the hoarding aspect. Some people are like dragons: They hoard their shiney baubles and never ever give them away. For those people, farming is also an addiction. Not because they get nice and powerful stuff, but because they get stuff, pretty much irrelevant what it actually is. I was pretty much that type, simply hoarding for the hoarding, and I didn’t even bother to sort it all out. Usefulŕ Mule. Simple. Never mind the horrendous fun I had when I sorted through all my mules trying to find that Gaze, or socketed item A, B or C or that 7% LL ring with 15% res all.
Obviously, function + hoarding = trading. You find items that are useful yet not to you and you can trade those for items that are useful for you. The more practical hoarders trade their shiney baubles for more useful shiney baubles. It’s a common policy amongst online gamers. For some, trading is the be-all-end-all, and their entire life is based upon it in the online game. Some of the traders farm, some only buy and sell, but they live off the farmers. The farmers find stuff, and the traders trade it. Without the farmers, the traders would become as rare as Roc’s teeth. An online economy functions by the grace of large amounts of semi-valuable items, produced by its farmers.
Farming can also be a side-effect of something. Say you rather enjoy the challenge a certain area offers to you. You like the monster mix, enjoy slashing their throats and watching them die, and get a real kick out of beating an area filled with evil critters. Side effect is that you do this area a lot and thus acquire a lot of stuff related to this area. Thus, your farming is actually a side-effect of you liking to kill stuff.
So… lots of reasons to go item farming. But apart from those reasons, there is also the design of the game. Most games have been designed in such a way that item farming not only pays off, but is necessary for making progress in the game. Imagine a sword that does 1-5 damage. That sword, in its most basic form, is rather dull. Let us add a possible modification of the sword: 10% of the 1-5 damage swords add 1-5 cold damage, giving a 2-10 damage range. Of course you now all want that 2-10 damage range sword instead of the 1-5 one. Whenever a monster drops a sword, there is a 10% chance he drops that sword. Say that the monster drops only a sword once every 10 kills… you have to kill 100 of the monsters to be statistically sure (well, actually only 50, but ok) the sword drops. Now, lets increase the number of possible weapons by oh 80, the number of magical modifications by oh 30, the range of those modifications be variably with oh anywhere from 1 to 300 different options, and the possibility for both a prefix and a suffix, each with 30 totally different options available to them. Then let us add some special items that can have up to six magical modifications, and even rarer special items that have pre-selected modifications and unique pictures. Now we have oohh like 3 gazillion different combinations. But the buck does not stop there, oh no. Now we are going to add more items, which combined together can yield unique effects and new and mysterious possibilities. We add some 30 of those items, and combinations of 2-6 of those items yield unique effects. Also, we add another 20 items which, when combined with magical items and one of the 30 previous items, can yield yet different items, with different colors and modifications. Are you still following me? I suppose I could calculate the number of possible combinations, but I shall only do that for the rare items, which, for pity’s sake, can have up to 3 pre and 3 suffixes. Here we go!
30*29*28 possible combos (we are not going to double them up after all) in prefixes, multiplied by 30*29*28 possible combinations for suffixes makes for 593.409.600 possible combinations. And they only drop once every say 300 monsters, so you need to kill 178.022.880.000 monsters for the perfect item. 178! BILLION! MONSTERS!
AAAAAARGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
>> runs off screaming <<
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