Slashdot Mirror
Sony Bans Sale of Virtual Items from Everquest
Snaller writes "Everquest is an online roleplaying game where you have to work for long hours online to get your hands on the magical items... unless you buy them. Buy them in game using game currency, or on Ebay where players have been spending real dollars on buying virtual items. After you pay, you meet the seller in game and, hopefully, you get the item you payed for. But no longer, Sony has decreed that selling your virtual items is no longer allowed - try it and you may find yourself banned from the game.
" As a somewhat related side note, obnoxious GMs are roaming the worlds and forcing people to change their nicks to crappy D&Dish names. Really ticked off friends of mine who spent months building up charachters only to have their identities forcibly stripped from them. Of course since EQ constantly crashed for me so I gave up and returned to hoping Diablo 2 runs under wine and is released before my first heart attack. But I find it interesting that virtual property is being regulated: trade restrictions between virtual worlds and the real one.
Ebay auctioning was a real problem for Everquest. Because of the prices that items were being sold for, large groups of people were monopolizing certain areas of the game where the valuable items drop and farming them for sale on Ebay. This made it impossible for some users to get these items themselves.
Secondly, there is an incredible amount of scamming involved where people send money and never get receive their items or accounts. Buyer beware, yes, but unfortunately these people would flood Verant's support staff with these issues. Now that Verant is officially against it, these calls won't last long.
If Verant cracks down on anyone, it'll be the people controlling spawns for the purpose of mass selling for real money on Ebay. It is harmful for the game, and I think it's within their rights to protect their property from harm.
To *most* EQ users, this was a good thing.
As for people having their names changed, EQ has always had a fairly strict naming policy. If you were stupid and called yourself "Darksoul" or "Feardoom", you deserve what you get. Again, I think this is good for the game and appropriate for the fantasy setting.
Dagmar d'Surreal here...
What Sony did was rather apropos, although the way they did it may seem rather implausible to a lot of people. The trading of in-game items for cash was causing a serious problem on some of the servers where once a group of players had established high-level characters, they would simply camp (i.e., hog) the area or monster where a rare item dropped around-the-clock taking each and every one of the rare items and forcing anyone who wanted one to pay them money just to get it. Not only did this spoil the (granted, it's not much of one) illusion of a fantasy-world environment, it was pissing a lot of players off. It was rumored that for a short time on one server, multiple guilds had banded together to create a near-complete embargo of certain areas, where the sale of items took place over an 800 line.
There was also the problem of people selling characters (which involved selling the entire account) on E-Bay, only to wait until a couple of weeks had passed, and then calling customer support, verifying the information which would almost invariably still be associated with the selling player, and taking the account BACK. Since Verant has no way of verifying who owns an account beyond what information was used to create the account, this was causing MASSIVE headaches for their customer support people, because when someone pays a few thousand dollars for a high-level character, they tend to not take "We're sorry there's nothing more we can do" for an answer.
Now when foolish players get screwed, Verant is no longer in a position of having to attempt to sort out the impossible. They can finally say "You knew it was against the rules, you're on your own, chum." This isn't something they can actively go out and police, but at least it eliminates the huge headaches that underhanded "entreprenuers" were causing for them and the people playing the game.
The long and the short of it is that this is not some petty manouever by Sony to keep people from making a profit on the game without Sony getting any.
I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm getting sick and tired of medieval/fantasy RPGs/MUDs. I'd rather see a nice, well-done futuristic, or -- and I am loath to use this term -- "cyberpunk" MUD. The last such MUD I played was Iconoclast, which kicked ass primarily because of the roleplaying aspect, which was very heavily encouraged (as opposed to any random fantasy MUD, where it's kill, eat, sleep, repeat). Am I the only person who wants to see such a game? It sure seems like it...
--
It's like this. The idea of easy mode is that you can't stall or black out or red out, but also you don't have quite the turning ability of full realism. It would appear at first glance that this gives a big advantage to 'real pilots' flying full realism. But! A game like Warbirds is _very_ intensely modelled. Blackouts, redouts, stalls are significant challenges, quite demanding to cope with in heavy combat- you have to maintain 'situational awareness' of not only the enemies but also the state of your own aircraft or you _will_ blow your energy and end up unable to maneuver, or even crash.
To add to that, there are whole maneuvers entirely based on making the other person lose their SA, for instance doing a climbing spiral away from a Focke-Wulf (which has very nasty and violent departure characteristics). If you can get the FW hungry enough to get a shot at you, and you're maintaining the climbing spiral, you can get him to try to pull up, and snap into a really _nasty_ spin and fall, whereupon you swoop down and pounce...
I was never that great at gunnery but I'm a natural stickjock :) my love is the barnstorming, flinging a plane around madly and doing the unexpected. When I flew Air Warrior I had about a 50% chance of evading _anybody_ if I was freaked out enough, because I'd fly totally nuts and force them to black out trying to keep up with me! The whole mad-inverted-immel-to-ten-inches-off-the-ground routine. I'd also teach people how to fly and maneuver ("OK, we are at 10,000 feet. It will take you 20 seconds even to _reach_ the ground. Now turn real tight and keep the nose _way_ below the horizon, and this time you won't stall!" ;) )
There was this one time that I, in my dweebfire^Hspit, went after this cargo plane in Warbirds, figuring it was going to be a piece of cake. Well- wow! It noticed me and began flipping around like mad, sudden fierce maneuvers that I couldn't believe the guy didn't black out, it was all over the place and I, in my overpowered Spitfire, was clinging to the air by sheer force of will, wrestling the beast around about ten feet off the ground and staying on the guy for maybe ten minutes, pinging him repeatedly, basically putting in an amazing performance of virtuoso planehandling- and when he vanished over a hill and I lost him, I had to say over the radio, "Whoever was flying that Junkers- wow, man, good show!"
Cheating comes in many forms, but the point is, it kills the fun of the game. You want to be playing in the same universe as your opponents. It's just as spirit-breaking if you were in EverCr^Hquest and went up against some guy who spent $10,000 on having a character that could stomp anybody- and goes around doing so. Or against some group staking out an item so they can sell it on eBay. *shrug* these things need to be dealt with one way or another...
well, of course! did anyone stop?
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That's the *real* reason that linux isn't unix, you know--nethack isn't part of the default install on any distribution I know of . .
I had the amulet in an older version, and without cheating. I slipped and hit the wrong key, wasting a turn instead of wising for a scroll of recall (or whatever it was) and died instead. These days I'm marrieed with kids, and don't have that kind of time any more . . .
What some people won't do for a game... I remember back when I DM'd AD&D games in high school, one of my friends bought 20,000 experience points from me for $40. I took the money, and put a "2" in pencil in front of his experience point total pn his character sheet. Easiest $40 I ever made. I think that was the day I decided people who get into AD&D are a little to wierd for my liking.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
You can't sell that! Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos.
;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Obviously EQ is going mad with power (obStonecutters) what with the earlier attempt to prevent people from firmly bashing on the rules, and now this.
Sure, you're a dope if you pay for potion or castle that doesn't exist, but why not let the dopes do what they like? Put a disclaimer regarding the fact that it's all Unreal Estate and you ought to be set.
What especially galls me though is the names. I've played characters in fantasy settings who had normal names. At the moment in the GURPS campaign I'm in, my character is named Mack. Another PC is Nate. Who came up with this stupid rule that all fantasy names have to sound like exotic chemicals and/or have apostrophes in them?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Damn straight.
Fuck Slashdot
Let us continue the conjecture that one has and develops property, wealth, reputation, relationships and so forth within these communities.
Now, these communities are privately owned, unambiguously. All property of Sony or AOL/Time/Warner or whoever. Does this make them the equivalents of the governments of these new 'places?'
Does a certain sort of political 'right' accrue based on the fact that you invest time and effort - perhaps years, someday perhaps the better part of a life - despite the proprietary nature of this virtual existence? Does this blur the distinction between private property and public space? How much of that is dependent on the ability to 'translate' between private realms? (ON one hand, we think of our physical world as more constrained, since it is harder to move from one country to another if one is disatisfied with the political structure than it would be to move from one virtual realm to another - however, in fact, in the real world, much of our wealth is *more* liquid - I can sell my possessions, earned by years of labor, and move to another place, but all my labor in one virtual world would be completely untransportable to another...)
That's the most interesting aspect of this sort of development to me - it challenges a lot of the basic political and economic ontology of popular wisdom.
Is the 'property' of EQ ever your property, or does it belong to Sony? Do you actually have any rights to it that they don't explicitly give to you? Is the 'you' that 'owns' those objects the same as the you that is playing the game? If your character dies, you may lose those objects - just what rights do you have in that case?
More questions: what is the legal status of contracts made between two characters on EQ? Are they binding between the players? Are marriages? What civil rights do you have? Can Sony arbitrarily triple or quadruple the costs of a subscription? If you didn't pay, what rights would you have to your virtual property?
...that it's a commercial software product - people have to pay real world money to get into it in the first place. What the software company is saying (amongst other things) is that they want to be the only ones that make real money out of their product.
hehe...yeah...kinda... until the laws of economics kick in and well... in effect...
Rare items just aren't worth what they were in my day.
I guess you would call that the devaluation of the virtual dollar.
I post links to stuff here
sigh. there goes my dreams of growing up, making a multiplayer computer game that has items that have actual cash value. From there I would establish trading and allow people to buy things for real currency. Then, I would go into the game, give myself millions in game currency, then sell it for real world money, then retire to a non extradition treaty country. it's s simple dream, really.
I post links to stuff here
Anyone here who has mudded or run a mud knows what EQ is about to find out - rules do not define reality.
If they want to stop ownership transfer, the only way they're gonna do it is by coding around it.
Also, I think it's very unfair to frame the article in terms of 'Sony' doing something. Do you REALLY think anyone from the parent corporation has a clue, or gives a shit, about what anyone's user name is?
No. This is the result of some pedantic fuckwad GM enforcing their idea of 'role-play' on the only people who define rp - the PLAYERS.
Heh, same shit, bigger mud. Idiots.
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blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
How about a closed client and open server? That makes more sense to ANY game company, stop whining because stuff isn't free as in beer. I would rather pay 40$ for the game and get a free server included with it. Then I could set up my own special server on my T1, ADSL, ect for free. Having a plethora of servers means the users can be in charge of running the game without paying obscene prices for the servers et al.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I think the factor of people paying real money for virtual items would go away for the most part if the games contained a real economic system which was open to player to player and player to NPC sales. It would add alot of realism to the game's environment if you could auction off or sell something you had found or earned. But you say "then people can just get the same rare item a bunch of times and and make megabucks". To that I say give every character and item a 40-bit or so identifier tag. If two tags show up on the same server it maybe nullifies the item or doesn't let the person connect to that server. This would let there be LOTS of items and characters but would prevent people from getting duplicates. These tags could also be registered with the game's publishers on a secure server so you could check if a player had legit equipment. Diablo became a hackfest if you even dared to use a legit character. The ID tag could be enabled on the server level so it would be up to the server if they wanted to enforce legit items. Some people might complain about privacy but it's one of the few ways I can think of to defraud the frauders.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Basically, it was a similar system, "back in the day", (although obviously nowhere near as interactive or as advanced). This paper documents some of the lessons they learned about how people interact in a "virtual environment". It will offer some interesting insight on why EQ people just "don't get it", and I recommend if any of them are reading this... hey, YOU .. go read that article.
For example, there was a situation where a normal player got a "DM only" weapon (a weapon that could kill anyone instantly). How they handled that situation was ingenious, inventive, and consistent with the rules they had laid out for "The reality". The EQ people need to understand these things before they go passing edicts like this.
Well, it's not like there's a law being made against selling these things. It's a company selling a game and people were basically ruining the challenge of the game and making it harder for other, more rational people to play fairly. Sony had every right to shut down such transactions in the game and ask Ebay to remove the items. From what I read, most participants were in favor of that move.
Of course, when we talk about legal rights, the game participants were not doing anything they "shouldn't have", and the legal system has no place in any of this.
But back to the original thread - I'm not really a bad slashdot poster, honest! But I'm also NOT A KARMA WHORE, and I will speak my mind. I only wish you could have seen the state this article put me into when I read it (hint: fits of laughter) and I really didn't care what others thought. These prices were HIGH - several "items" were going for over $1000! Also, I know people like this at my school, and they are weird.
I stand by my original comments. Moderators, go to hell.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I have never played this particular game, but if it's anything like a mud, then there's a darn good reason...
Presumably, the game masters see it as a roleplaying game. Players should interact with one another in character and within the game. Otherwise, the game's virtual reality is violated (e.g. why did someone suddenly walk up to a peasant and hand them a magic cloak for no reason?) and the game's virtual economy goes haywire too (e.g. how is a gold coin worth anything if people transact in a "higher plane of existance" in dollars?).
If you're going to do out-of-character stuff, there's no reason to play a RP game at all, especially if it's a multiuser game where your OOC activities can warp the virtual reality for other players who are trying to stay IC. When I used to play Dartmud, one of the biggest disappointments was that just a few bad apples, who couldn't seperate fantasy from reality, could totally fuck up the game for dozens of real roleplayers.
You can say, "It's just a game" but if it's just a game, then cheaters have no reason to be get angry when they get kicked off.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So which of the multi-plaer RPGs run under Wine? I have Ultima Online running on my laptop (the only machine that still has Windows as a dual-boot option), but I haven't tried running it under Wine. What about the add-on programs? In my case, I use the UO-Auto Mapper, but am not addicted enough to pay for UO Assist.
Here's what John Smedley, the president of Verant said in a letter to some EQ sites:
...
The first of these changes concerns the selling of EverQuest Characters andItems outside of the game (i.e. things like Ebay). Here is the text of this change:
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
You may ask why we are doing this. There are many reasons, but first andforemost of them is the amount of trouble this is causing our Customer Service group. Simply put there are a lot of people out there who defraud others and we are being put in the middle of it, and we don'thave the time or the resources to assist people with these disputes when they arise. The next reason is amore philosophical one and that is that we believe people should have to earn their items and characters in thegame rather than from buying them outside the game. Obviously the second point can be argued from other perspectives that we do in fact respect, but we wanted you to hear ours.
Full letter is available on EQ Vault
Can I set my karma to -1,000,000 and sell the million points to him? I'll split the cash with you!
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The real issue is that the game does not work by itself. It's not elegant. They must enforce real-world 'rules' that are human-policed in order to make the game function. The design is flawed, and they are trying to make up for it.
Why on earth SHOULDN'T people be able to trade items, under whatever terms they want? What's the big deal? WHO CARES!
What type of name changes is Taco talking about? I'm just curious to see what type of names were forced to be changed to what "D&D-ish" names. I would suspect that there's not much to complain about if your current name is "buttfuck," or something.
I think CmdrTaco's side note actually brings up an interesting issue worth discussion. Is Sony's naming policy fair, or does it unjustly restrict one's freedom of expression?
Take a look at the naming policy as posted in the FAQ on Sony's site.
First off, I don't think most would really argue that having a profanity laced name would be considered inappropriate. However, their naming policy goes well beyond that.
Verant's goal is to keep names within the genre of the game. To quote their opening sentence:
Character names in EverQuest should reflect the genre of the game. Original, high-fantasy names are desired. These guidelines apply both to first names and to surnames, and also to the combination of first name and surname. (For example, Luke and Skywalker are acceptable names, but Luke Skywalker is not.)
Should Verant be mercilessly bashed for wanting to keep the game in as much of a roleplaying spirit as they can by establishing their ability to change people's names (to, as was so succintly put, crappy D&D names)?
And another issue is how well these rules are enforced. Clearly a number of GMs look the other way when it comes to names. Perhaps some of them do not agree with the naming policy and choose not to enforce it. But to the ones that do, does that automatically qualify them as "obnoxious"? After all, aren't they just doing their jobs, as stated by the rules?
And finally, where do you draw the line when it comes to deciding which names are appropriate, and which ones are not? Obviously there is a lot of room for interpretation here.
Boy, that's no joke. I once had this great pair of characters. I was like 12. I'd spent every day playing them, like 3 and 4 hours at a time, a day. All summer long, a group of about 6 of us played nothing but AD&D, day in, day out. Then, I made a wrong turn around a corner. WACK! WACK!! My two hero's were very dead. Sigh. What can I say? No, I'm not mental, but I cried! Hey, I was like 12 ya know? It had become a MAJOR part of my life, playing these two characters. Relmord the Barbarian and Samasa the thief. Relmord was a Simian, which was a race we made up just for our own games. They got +2 to Con, Str, and Dex, but -6 to Charisma. They were Tall, and smelled like, er, apes. They were basically a taller, more hairy, more muscular version of the Planet of the Apes type of Ape. Actually, I'd say they were like the ORC's in WarCraft II, but with Hair ALL over, kinda like an Orc/Wookie/Ape. Samasa was a elf. Boy, did those two look funny together. See, it HAD become real to me, and it took me a few days to adjust to thier death. I know that sounds loony, but there it is. The DM eventually resurected them, but I wouldn't play them anymore - they died fair and square, and so I left them in peace. No, this is not a troll, this is the truth - I'm just trying to illustrate that AC's point - Yeah, it's kind of addictive, and it does depend on the DM - good DM's are hard to find! Chad Price was one of the best. So was Ron and Rich Oldhaffer. Man, I haven't seen any of those guys in years. I know Chad's in New York, and hell - I moved to St. Louis, but I think I'm going to look them up - maybe they'll want to play for old time's sake!
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
The only intrinsic value US currency has is that it's the only tender the US government will accept for payment of debts such as taxes.
For example, American dollars are the only currency that the Federal government is prepared to prevent the counterfeiting of (except perhaps for postal or food stamps). It's also the only currency you can expect to be paid in for winning a civil suit against the American government or anyone in its jurisdiction.
IMHO, Sony's being a bit too conservative on this point. Why not expand economics in this way?
Because quite frankly, there's nothing in it for them. It'd be a massive PR nightmare if Sony were seen as profiting from such enterprises, so they can't themselves get a cut. And in addition to the dearth of direct benefits for them, there is a massive amount of negative consequences, primarily in support. And keep in mind that they're likely just be covering their butts so as to make themselves unanswerable to angry customers. You'll find most companies in Sony's position hoarding a large measure of discretionary power in reserve so that when the stuff hits the fan, they'll be within their legal rights to do whatever suits the suits.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Clearly, it's a form of censorship... or something... It's a corporation messsing with a community... And all that stuff.
BUT:
1. EQ isn't much of a community. Any Roleplaying community that I would want to be a part of would not have people doing the Out-Of-Character and Out-Of-Game stuff that goes on in EQ.
2. Selling game-items on e-bay is destructive to whatever real role-players still use EQ
3. If you view the company as a game master, then the game-master sets the rules. If you view the company as being system administrators for game servers running a game with rules only about how much damage stuff does, well, you're missing the point. A GM's job is to make the game fun for the players.
BTW, if anyone wants to create a real online community, join us at WorldForge (www.worlforge.org). Our servers, when we get them done, will be way beyond anything you've ever seen commercially.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Sony/Verant seem to be quite intent on alienating their player base with this sort of attitude - Origin, although they can be harsh, at least have the smarts not to play "Big Brother" too often.
This conveniently overlooks the fact that it was a majority of their player base that wanted the e-Bay auctions banned in the first place. It was only a few farmers and campers who protested, the majority of players didn't want to get stuck in a farming/camping/kill-stealing cycle, they just wanted to play the game.
BTW: I was one of those charter members in UO too, before I left in disgust a year later or so, but that is probably neither here nor there.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
I've played UO now for... well, close on three years - since JUST after beta.
I had a look at EQ, I had a look at AC, Shadowboobs (sorry, Shadowbane, what *WAS* I thinking) just doesn't interest me, Star Wars Online could be good (especially if the rumours that Raph Koster and Richard Vogel, who were instrumental in the development of UO, have joined it's development team are true).
One of the big draws of such games is that you can pretty much do what you want within the game mechanics (sorry, the intentionally programmed game mechanics - find a fault in the programming and use it, and you're likely to be banned).
One thing that all these games have in common though is that to have posession of certain items (be they hard to come by, or rare) is a status symbol of sorts - in UO in particular, the "rares" market is worth a LOT of money, both ingame, and out of it.
Richard Garriott (and therefor Origin, at least before he left) supported the sale of accounts and items on E-Bay - not necessarily because they thought it was a good idea (if you sell your account, you can STILL get it back as long as you have the original CD case with the rego number on it, so the system IS open to abuse0, but because he/they realised that to try stifle this would just alienate the players, who happen to be the paying customers.
Sony/Verant seem to be quite intent on alienating their player base with this sort of attitude - Origin, although they can be harsh, at least have the smarts not to play "Big Brother" too often.
I hope for the sake of EQ players, and the game itself (which although it didn't interest me, doesn't mean it's not any good), and the MMORPG market, that Sony/Verant wake up very quickly, or they're going to find themselves with a slowly but surely dwindling player population, despite the pretty picture of the submissively bound, buxom female on the front of the game box....
Enough background. Federation had to ban the trade of Federation cash (groats) for AOL hours, because people with Fed money were paying people with real money in order to support their habit. Almost the opposite of what's happening here.
There are a handful of text-based games out there that are almost free, but you can pay the administrator to get ahead (experience, game points, etc). Not completely related, but another trade between real and virtual worlds. .sig: Not a text file ********
--
$ more ~/.sig
********
$ more ~/.sig
********
To continue, you know this is the most despicable thing I've heard of on a MUD. The reason why is, "What's a D&D nickname?" D&D is a RPG that steals from multiple sources, and then there are the tons of D&D-like RPGs (computer and others) out there. I'm betting that they don't mean D&D nicknames but "Ye Olde Renaissance Festival Nicknames." I mean would my nickname, Ronfar, be allowed in this new regime? Ronfar comes from the SegaCD RPG Lunar II but who knows if it would be D&D enough. Good God, it's like some kind of virtual orthodoxy test!!!!
Actually, the best thing they can do is rename it to Virtual "the Village" and assign everyone numbers. If someone says, "I am not a number, I am a free man!" they could laugh maniacly at him.
Its official it's now EverAOL...
I've never been on one of these for profit MUCKs, but I've thought about it. Even if I weren't boycotting Sony over their many nefarious deeds, though, I would most certainly boycott them over this forced renaming garbage. I hope Sega cleans their clock when they start Phantasy Star Online provided they don't engage in any of this garbage...
With it's interest in MPAA, RIAA, Playstation and MMRPGs, it seems that Sony really is trying to take Micros~1's crown!
Well... that's the end of my post... mod away!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I have heard that Sony's problem isn't with sale of virtual items for money, but the support headaches it causes. People will buy an EQ item on eBay, send the real money, get gipped, then complain to EverQuest's customer support.
There is also the subsidiary problem of people "farming" creatures who have attractive items to sell for real money.
What do you mean?
You don't own the Charactor, you don't own the items, and with the UCITA you don't even own the software on the disk.
For 10$ you get the privilige of using a charactor you've been pouring enormous amounts of time into.
And they don't really need a reason to ban you.
So all the time and effort will leave you completely empty handed. You can't even sell your CD!
I quit EQ. I was amazed at how much time I spent on it once I got away.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
On the topic of the "related side note" the GM's are not only doing their job, but thy're being very rude about it. I have posted complaints on the everquest message boards at http://boards.stat ion.sony.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro to complain about the rude GMs and other game related problems. It's been pointed out many times "if you dont like it dont play" but please, the game is awesome, my complaints are about the overwhelmed su[pport staff that gets down right rude when they feel the least bit overstressed. The Everquest GM application is all about how well you can run around Norrath (the fictional world EverQuest is played in) and has absolutely no corelation to the GM's ability to deal wiht people outside the general role playing that is so scarce in the game anyways. Now it looks like Lucas is hiring this same..not incompetent..but already overwhelmed staff, to design and manage his starwars game of the same massively multiplayer style. To just finish this up and make my final point coherent... Please, everyone who is willing, read the everquest message boards, look at the number of negative complaints in contrast to the positive feedback, and please, I hope that if enough people flood lucas/sony/verent with comments,m and not just complaintys, to the effect that the public at large feels cheated, maybe things will get better? thanks -Doug
Q. What's it take to get a story posted on
Right now there's a guy who quit his job to become a level 40 dwarf trying to decide if 'Online retailer of enchanted weapons/goods' really looks that bad on a resume.
"Who came up with this stupid rule that all fantasy names have to sound like exotic chemicals and/or have apostrophes in them?"
I think part of the explanation is the fantasy aspect to the games. It would seem hard to draw up an elaborate fantasy world where everything is different, exciting, and fun to explore. Then you have to believe the main characters are Bob, Fred, and Jim, the same as in RL. I can see where that just doesn't work.
At the same time I have to agree that the names sometimes are terribly annoying. They should come with some sort of explanation how to verbalize these names. Nothing is worse than picking up a game, playing it for hours, then talking about it to your friends only to find you've been pronouncing the main character's name wrong in your head for the past 3 weeks. Ok, yes, that's happened to me personally. The game just never seems the same after that.
Somewhat like after I struggled with Linux for a few months only to be chastised for saying it "the wrong way."
Oh dear god, more nonsense. While I personally don't play the game, it certainly doesn't take a genius to recognize that this submission is yet another podium rant as opposed to real news
1. In the article shown above, Sony clearly states it's decision for banning the sales of virtual items. It wasn't done to "Screw the players because we were bored one night"
2. Names changes: Now this is weird, what kind of names were revoked? Certainly the first thing that comes into my mind are obscene names. Why weren't any of these names shared with us during the submission?
3. "Yadda yadda the game crashes under Wine" Uh duh, and? The game's requirements clearly state "Windows 9x" Either get Windows to play Windows games, or petition the company to create a Linux port.
In this light, this is more like an enforcement to keep the virtual segregated from the real.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
is www.worldforge.org.
You know. That's bad, but we're not talking $5 for a sword here. We're talking auctions going for over 4 figures. That goes way beyond "too far". That's up to "You're fscking nuts".
I kind of liked the way they did things with the old BBS games. In order to keep the game balanced and to keep people from getting too serious, things would be reset every so often. Games like Barren Realms Elite were great because every so many months (depending on the server) the entire network was reset to the very beginning. Other games, like Legend of the Red Dragon would reset individual characters when they became powerful enough to defeat the Red Dragon.
OK, so now you think I was getting way off topic. I guess my point is, would you pay $1250 for a Cloak of Fire if you know you're character is going to be reset in 5 more months???
BTW, does anyone know of a place on the interent to play BRE or LORD? All of my local free BBSs closed down out here...
kwsNI
Do you relize eBay is going to stop allowing the sale of EQ items?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll pay $1/point for some Slashdot karma
segfault@bellatlantic.net
Of course, governments, like the one in the US, which maintain fiat currency do something very similar. The only intrinsic value US currency has is that it's the only tender the US government will accept for payment of debts such as taxes. And if they want more money, they print more.
IMHO, Sony's being a bit too conservative on this point. Why not expand economics in this way? People want stuff, physical or not, and barter's an inefficient way of obtaining it. I haven't played the game, but I would assume they have some currency, and that the game itself establishes some base value for the currency (I've played muds where the money was implicitly on the "food standard"). What'd be really interesting would be if you could get some currency trading going... Everquest money for more conventional captial. Could be a first step toward the electrification of cash and the (re)privitization of money...
Just some thoughts. :-)
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
EverQuest cloak == virtual-world item
money paid for EverQuest cloak == real-world item
Ebay auction to set up transaction == virtual-world interaction
Sony's action against Ebay == real-world action
That is, Sony is taking real-world action to prevent virtual-world interactions which lead to real-world exchanges of the "rights" to virtual-world objects modeled on real-world ones. Kind of beautiful, actually. And a very interesting study of the interaction and coexistence of real and cyber spaces.
I didn't mean to give my own post a +1 bonus. (It was sort of weak, after all.) I was trying to vote to give the original post the bonus. So if you're a moderator, feel free to moderate me down for stupidity, but consider moderating up the original, 'cause it's still funny.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Believe it or not, this wasn'tYet Another Example of American Cluelessness.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Ah, does no one remember or play MUDs?
On every DIKU mud, it's the standard to have in the policy helpfile that you can not trade real goods for virtual goods.
Why?
a) Get a life. Go buy some food (no, not a 'roasted lizard's tongue', something you eat in real life)
b) We all need to game to relax. But it's not very relaxing when you spend a long time getting your social status in the game, only to be superseded by someone who has bought his way into the game.
It may not happen very much, but just the thought of it kills the fun of online games.
Would you like to play a game of Quake against someone using all the cheats? Because as any multi player game gamer (w00+, weird sentence) can tell you, that's what this is: Cheating.