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Diablo 2 Items Bringing Home the Bacon
||Plazm|| writes: "I read an update over at Diabloii.net that talks about how some items in the game are producing sizeable income for some people. It points to an article at the San Francisco Chronicle describing some of these money makers. One banker claims he's made $25000 since he started with Diablo 2 and Ultima Online! Who are the people paying real money for this stuff? A few bucks is one thing, but a few hundred? I believe this has been talked about on /. before, but is the 'problem' getting worse? Is it a 'problem' at all?"
the people that are buyign this stuff, at any price, are the same people that play Quake in god mode and look up all the cheat codes for a game before they even install it. It's sad but their will alwasy be an aspect of society that will want to cheat or get an advantage no matter what the cost. Look at the proliferation of scripts, pinging other players, etc. That occur in most games. People willing to pay for some advatantage, no matter how much it destroys the play ability of the game, are the script kiddies of the gaming world. 20 years ago they would have been using loaded dice to roll up their D&D characters.
At least this time it is costing them something in real money to get these kind of advantages. I tip my hat to blizzards work that they have locked their game down tight enough that people are going to extremes outside the game to get these kinds of advantages.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
So people are spending money to get an advantage in a game, buying items that are essentially just bits on a server. A few years ago, people were spending about that much money buying items that were images on cardstock. It's not that different, except that the games of today weren't designed with the collectability and sale value of items in mind.
Several people have posted complaining that these gamers are trading "real money" for "flipping a few bits inside a machine".
Wake up guys, MONEY IS NO MORE REAL THAN THESE GAME ITEMS.
What is the value of a $20 bill? The paper and ink (and metal threads, and whatever else they throw in these days) aren't worth very much. The value of a $20 bill is *whatever people will give you for it*.
I think the people who are trading hundreds of dollars for these game items are paying far too much, but there is no inherent reason why such transactions are wrong.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Um, that's perfect topazes, not diamonds. Current reports suggest that a magic find percentage over 200 doesn't do much good, so there's no need to go overboard.
And they 'balanced' telekenesis so that you can only pick up minor items (like potions). This is very annoying in single player mode, where there is no one to steal drops from...
As for the economy aspect, I think it's kinda dumb to spend real money on Diablo II items. However, some people want uber-characters than can walk into any game and kill other players. Or maybe they're not good enough to take on Hell mode without help.
Dunno. Spending money on Diablo II items isn't any worse than spending it on an astrologer or the lottery.
At any rate, the economy associated with Diablo II has been interesting. There's been a lot of shifts in the marketplace in response to bugs allowing duplication of items, and the changes to gambling rules. Some moderately valuable items (like the Stone of Jordan ring or perfect skulls) became the new currency for a while. SoJs have become much more rare these days, and aren't used as currency as much. Pskulls are an interesting currency, because they are constantly being generated, but also constantly being used up.
Interestingly, gold (the currency inside the game) isn't often used for trading, because it isn't valuable enough!
I've also seen people auctioning off fully equipped high-level characters on eBay. However, with the balance changes in Lord of Destruction, some of these characters (which might have sold for hundreds of dollars) are now nearly worthless.
All in all, it's not too easy to base your economy on factors (like rarity) that can be changed at the whim of some programmers.
Ok, so you've got $25,000 eating a hole in your pocket and you want to buy that extra-special Sword of Sudden Doom (and tomato slicing) in Evercrack, DiabloII, .
/is/ the suffering and stress and paranoia of the lower levels. It's the effort and intrigue it takes to survive at those lower levels and work you way up. Once you get up high and don't have to worry any more, the game's over. So throw away your character and start a new one from scratch.
Sure, you can probably find someone to sell it to you. Sure, you can pick it up and start using it in game. Sure, it'll help you survive (probably by a large margin). But then where's the fun?
The game
If you leapfrog that whole phase and jump right into the uber-powered elite, then you've just skipped over all the enjoyment. It's just like when I was playing AD&D all the time and constantly encountering players who didn't want to play mages below 5th level "because it was just too hard". Phtt. Rodents.
Sure, I'll accept that the overwhelming majority of players out there don't appreciate the pleasure of struggling at the low power levels. These guys just hate that low level crap and want to get over to wailing on critters so large that only its ankle appears on their monitors.
Let these guys waste their money robbing themselves of the true pleasure of the game. It doesn't do anything to reduce my pleasure, and it removes these weenies from my immediate surroundings.
They're doing what they want and giving me a reason to call them lamers. I like that. Everyone wins.
-- Nolite audere delere orbiculum rigidum meum.
How would you feel if you were playing online chess and discovered that the opponent that beat you 10 straight games had done so with a chess program he purchased? I know that I would feel cheated because I was playing against him to test my skill against his. I don't care if he bought the chess program on "the free market."
The idea of a game is to pit players against one another and let the best player win, not to sell the victory to the player with the most disposable income and least scruples.
The problem isn't the market itself, but its consequences.
There are already enough lowlifes to worry about in normal online games (take Counterstrike as an example). However, when there's the possibility to win real cash in a game is where the bottom feeders really begin to show up and ruin everyones fun.
In Everquest, this has lead on some servers to a total cornering of the item market by ebay-sale-guilds. If you wanted a rare item, you had no choice other than to buy it for cash, since all the important places in the game had been occupied by them.
This had such a profound impact on most people's gaming experience that (as mentioned in the article) sony's lawyers approached ebay and were able to shut down the sales.
In Diablo 2, real-cash sales have lead to a staggering surge in cheats and scams. Whole game accounts were cracked by brute force and all their contents sold away on ebay.
Other people used exploits to allow them to loot duel players, often leaving more unexperienced players without a single dime while all their stuff was sold away by the looter.
There have also been numerous hacks to steal and duplicate items, mostly with the intention of selling them away for hard cash.
All in all, the ability of making cash has severely damaged the playing communities of the affected games.
I definitely hope that any future online games forbid the sale of items. And the final statement from Paul Sams gives me a little bit of hope that it will at least be so in Blizzard's future game World of Warcraft...
It's kind of funny that nobody has commented on the fact that the virtual RPG trade started with UO, not Everquest, and it was before 1997.
But even before UO, there was that obscure trading card game called "Magic" where rich nerds, the same that buy items in Diablo, shelled out big bucks for the Black Lotus.
And before Magic, there were all the kids who collected baseball cards. Some lucky kid got a Mickey Mantle rookie and he sells it to the rich nerd across the street.
Real money for unsubstantial things (electrons or paper card) has been with us for awhile.
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I'm just an ordinary man with nothing to lose.