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Pay to Play II - Project Entropia
Gonzago writes: "God knows how many hours I spent mining or chopping down trees while playing Ultima Online. The dedication (spelled a-d-d-i-c-t-i-o-n) I had to that game would have made me some serious cash if I applied it to a real life job. Now I can have my cake and eat it too! At least that's what the people behind Project Entropia would have me believe. Not only does the premise behind the game look cool, but players will trade amongst one another with real money. Anyone want to buy some armor?" There's an article on CNN which briefly covers the game's premise: pay the company for all the equipment you need in-game, and it all slowly degrades - Entropia, get it?
A redundant article, so I get to make a redundant post.
Selling virtual items in-game was pioneered by this text based MUD, which is financed entirely by sales of virtual items to players.
And since we're talking about "virtual addiction", take a look at their MUD Addiction Page. Now substitute the word "play" for the words "get high", and read it again. Scary, isn't it?
the article mentions that people who dont wish to give money to the game will still be able to play. I wonder if this means there will be a whole society of non paying gamers wandering the streets of the game, begging for handouts, thieving gold when they can to save up for a tunic...
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
I signed up for beta testing many months ago in hopes of trying it out. I wasn't accepted into any of the pools but still held out hope of a public beta.
a sp
A couple of months back I received an email from the beta mailing list stating that they were going public with a "commercial beta test". This test would entail everyone paying in $10 to help test the ability of their servers to handle the financial transactions. This sounded quite contrary to their statements that there would be no need to put any money into the system. Here's a copy of the email:
Dear Sir/ Madam You have previously registered your interest to be a Beta tester for Project Entropia. MindArk is now preparing to start the commercial trial phase. An expanded panel of users will be selected to participate in the trials. Those are in the addition to the users that are already in the Beta phase II.
The commercial trial phase will include many of the planned features of the finished product. One of which is the financial system that has been creating ripple effects far beyond the MMORPG market. This financial system will be designed around real money exchanged into a virtual currency. Giving users a chance of actually make real money while inside the Project Entropia Virtual Universe.
Project Entropia will be free to obtain and use, only your connection fee to the Internet will cost you anything, there will be no monthly fees payable to MindArk. The fact that real money will be an issue in Project Entropia requires us to test this system to its full extent. This is why we are searching for users who are willing to insert small amounts of money in exchange for the chance to make much more.
In addition to the funds inserted into Project Entropia, MindArk will add funds to the Virtual World; an excess of 100.000 USD will be available for users to claim inside Project Entropia. This is a first in history; you can actually make a small fortune and at the same time be one of the first to explore Project Entropia.
The transfers are necessary for testing mass transaction flows through the system servers. And will help us track funds through the entire system, this is necessary to ensure that the system is fully functional when we head into the open phase. To achieve this, we elect to create a system where an avid user stands a fairly good chance of making a small fortune by testing this product.
Note that the transfer requirements does not constitute a change of the original specifications, Project Entropia will be free to obtain and use, according to everything that has been stated previously, nothing has changed on that point. This fee is only imposed to test the systems handling real money transactions. Without these tests we would have no chance of providing the service of real money transfers safely.
If you are interested in participating in these trials, you have to follow the link below. You will not be required to pay anything at this point. You only have to agree to the rules stated for a commercial trial participation. http://www.project-entropia.com/phase3/firstpage.
Kind Regards.
Erik Johnels Mindark AB
Note that they state in the email that they aren't going back on their word; this deposit is merely part of a test to see if their servers can handle the transactions.
After getting my hopes dashed by another MMORPG in the making (DAWN, which turned out to be complete vaporware) I was sceptical about the reality of Project Entropia...more so after they asked for money to participate in a beta. I went to their IRC channel to see if I could find anything out about previous betas, but all beta testers must abide by a strict non-disclosure policy which even prohibits them from saying they're in the beta (sounds a little too convenient). A lot of the talk in IRC was people planning their Project Entropia pyramid schemes.
Something tells me that this is simply a petty scam.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
From this interview
with on of the developers.
Since players will be able to purchase items, how will cheating be dealt with, since it could involve real money?
We will do everything in our power to prevent cheating in Project Entropia. We have already constructed a system to prevent this. In the case of somebody still being able to cheat, we will close their account and engage legal proceedings against these persons in real life.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
So, you basically give up real life to become a player in this game, which would eventually evolve to the point where you could buy a game (in the game) that would become your new life...
Ya, that was a great movie. Existenz, right? I admit that it's hard to get past that opening quote though: "Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as a computer programmer".
She actually did remarkably well, if you ask me.
Had some strategy/puzzle/luck games that you could play with other players.
.85 rate or some such is more likely. Though 1 : .75 is what I would expect them to charge.
/STRICTLY/ necessary, it just hastens things up a bit. It will ensure that not everybody all at once never ends up with the Armour Of invincibility and never die or need to buy another item again.
:)
Basicaly it was like this.
Say a 4 player game.
Everybody anted up 25 cents. The winner got 75 cents and the website pocketed 25 cents.
Basicaly a slight 'fee' or 'tax' is imposed on to every transaction to ensure that the company does indeed make some money.
Sure you can likely hunt down that Great Super Duber Uber Sword in the Forest Of Really Really Nasty Critters, but then after your 5 or 6 hours of work you will go into the town and sell it to some dude who is paying $5 real life for it.
The exchange rate system is likely NOT 1 to 1. A 1 :
In other words if you put $5 real life into the games currency, expect to only get $3.75 out.
That means that if you get 100units (whatever cash, I forget what it is called, read the article, no memory. ^_^ ) for $10, and you pay some dude 100units for his Super Duber Uber Armor, and that dude that withdrawls 100units from the game, he will only get $7.50 in real life cash.
::shrugs::
Company pockets $2.50 for your 5 or 6 hours of server usage (not half bad, heh) and since items are guarnteed to degrade, there is no chance of all of the system ever reaching an inert economy, there will always be money flowing in and out of the system, and with each transaction in and out of the system the company in charge of the system will be collecting a little bit of money.
Actualy having items degrade is not
In Ragnarock Online though, tons of Zeny (the games form of internal only cash) was being spent for some time on mere collectors cards (doh) that did absolutly nothing at all other then, uh, well, they actualy did absolutly nothing!
If the creators of this new game can learn how to properly manage fads and whatnot and manipulate supply and demand, they could make a FORTUNE off of these things.
Remember those electronic collectable card games that all bombed awhile back? Yah the ones that wanted you too pay money for booster packs? Heh.
If they can setup such a system within their game and actualy make it successful. . . .
Think Pokemon but with almost *ZERO* production costs.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
"If they DO monitor health, dealing with sickness is a paid by the state, so there's no cost attached."
Thats not correct, in Sweden the company pays for the first 14 days witch means most "normal" sicknessess (in other world excluding long term illness) are paid for by the companies.