True Story.
I stone back to World of Warcraft’s Ironforge and some farmer is pitching his haul.
So, I try out my newfound knowledge of Asian … maybe it’s Mandarin, maybe it’s Cantonese, maybe I dunno what it is. Still, I have skillz.
/tell KnownFarmer ni hao. [Item] gold?
/tell Foton NI HAO! (gotta give him credit for enthusiasm.) 50G.
/tell KnownFarmer 30G.
/tell Foton bie bie.
Foton says to guild, wtf is bie bie? Anyone? Cmon, you college people should know this.
*crickets*
/tell KnownFarmer 35G?
(Maybe that’ll work. What the fuck would I know?)
/2 TradeChannel hey, anyone know Asian anything? what does bie bie mean? Does it mean “go to hell” or does it mean “let’s dicker”?
TradeChannel answers, Asian is a language?
(I think … FFS.) Answers: Are you high? Of course not. Anyone that knows anything?
Of course not.
(P.S. Apparently bie bie means “Go to Hell”. Maybe it means “The offer price is solid.” You ask me, it means “Your money isn’t good around here”. Whatever.)
My American dollars are still good, however. That whole “buy game gold for real dollars” has moved from the private *wink wink nudge nudge* tells like this …
… to a very public announcement in the Ironforge Trade Channel, like this …
Well, it can’t really get any more public than that unless Blizzard starts running a login announcement for the day’s gold seller, which is not as far-fetched as it sounds.
Erm…bie bie = bye bye?
That’s what I was thinking too Necrogeist
That was my first thought as well
Those prices aren’t bad, thanks! You should get a commission.
Ya, was $80 per 1k just a month or two ago. The wonders of supply and demand, eh?
I know that the Japanese say the very American “bye bye” but spell it differently. This is probably another case.
Foton is worse than the fcc, yellow barring everything, bastard is keeping the stalkers at bay.
bie, bie is a vulgar ancient chinese threat, stop kidding yourselves, a polite gold farmer that has the courtesy to say goodbye?! I pity da smoozles.
Well I can’t be expected to learn Chinese AND Japanese.
Bie Bie could be a shrunken turtle. (wtf) or it means Bye. Although contextually, since I was shopping for a fire sale, bye = Go to Hell.
Baibai = Japanese for bye bye. Maybe that farmer was a poor speller.
Oh yeah, that’s how it’s spelled.
“Ni hao” is Mandarin. It’s one of four or five Mandarin phrases I remember from three years of taking classes in high school. Public money well spent there. The others are “bu shi” for, basically, “no” or “not so”, “shi” for “yes”-ish, “ni hao ma” for “how are ya?” and “lao shi hao” for “hiya, teacher”.
Many’s the farmer I’ve had meaningless and brief conversations with using my extensive knowledge of Mandarin. Maybe I should take the time to learn “I don’t speak Mandarin.” Or maybe not.