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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?
that the hardcore RPG'ers are either so stupid or addicted that they'll crank out the cash to feed their habit.
...whether I think that this is stupid and won't fly or cool, and I want to play, I can't definitely see how it would be cool to actually have a small chance of getting a monetary return on the time I spent paying a game instead of waving bye-bye to monthly fees. I wonder though, how imbalanced the game will be if you spent A LOT of money on stuff. Granted thsi is the way the real world works too, so does it then become less of a game and more like real life?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
free to play, no monthly access, no charge to get the software.
and they plan on making money on this how?
you invest $100 bucks in the game and then after one month they go bankrupt.
where is the profit plan in this?
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
One of the reasons that many players of games have frowned on these practices in the past is that most of the time people with the cash to throw around like this are a$$Holes. Nothing makes a player madder than to have his carefully crafted player, who he has lovingly worked on for months, trashed because some 14 year old has a larger allowance than the gamers paycheck and bought a powerfull character just to kill other characters.
These kind of personalities have kept out of games like this traditionally because they did not have the personality and patience to develop a character of sufficient power to be a threat to other players. With this system it just comes down to a matter of cash, and those type of people alwasy seem to have cash.
My prediction is that this game will fail not based on game play but on the fact that most players will give up on it quickly as they become frustrated by the less socially adapted version of script kiddies that are let loose on them. While high cash players will make the game look good, it will still take 100,000 paying monthly customers. If a small percentage drive the rest off because of the type of people they are, and because they are to powerfull to be ignored, then the whole system will collapse.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
1. If this game caught on, it may be possible to earn an actual income from this game...
2. If you were earning an income from this game, how would you report it on your income tax?
Is it just me or does this leave the game designers very much in control of the cash flow? I'm guessing we'll see:
-Extremely expensive stuff that decays rapidly but that the most addicted "must" have.
-Pushing the prices to the very limit of what people are willing to pay, we're talking monopoly here.
-Extremely little stuff you'll get any real money for (Bronze sword 10 PED, Giant-über-leet sword of Doom 10000 PED? Don't think so. prices will have to be much more uniform.)
Personally I don't like the idea of a company setting the value of the equipment. It's virtual world communism (all is controlled by the "state", in this case the company running the world), and I don't think it'll fly.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hacking games to sell virtual items!
Isn't that what software pirating already is?
"Ask me about Loom"
Better set up shop in a state without sales tax, otherwise every transaction will need an instate/nonresident classification and collection. Hiring CPAs aren't trivial or cheap, and you'll still need them for the other state and fed taxes.
And you're collecting small payments mucho times. Think quarters for the parking meters, the populace hates micro payments.
Ya, Medievia is based on Diku. I haven't been there in.. 3 years now? But back when I was there they were in the process of doing a token "rename" job on all of the famous map structures, monsters, etc. in the game that came from Diku. Pretty funny.
It's IP theft, plain and simple. They've tried to remove all Diku code by reverse engineering it from scratch, and after 10 years, they've nearly succeeded. Make of that what you will.
-InfoBot(drop@gw01.outer.se.gamenet)- Welcome to the official Project Entropia ;)
:)
;)
channel! If you need help, talk to one of the operators that is
present.
-InfoBot(drop@gw01.outer.se.gamenet)- Beta testers, please mind the NDA, no
beta talk in this channel.
<Quazion> Hello, after reading the website and not finding the System
requirements, i figure lets have a look on there IRC server.
<Quazion> anyone who can tell me anything on the sys requirements ?
<Jem|SoF> there are none set up
<Quazion> And why i am asking this is cause i want to know on which OS
platforms it will run.
<Jem|SoF> just tell what kind you have when you sign up for beta
<Quazion> I am not giving away my personal information if i dont even know if
it will run on my computer.
<Jem|SoF> hang on I"m on phone
<Fiyz> thats your problem quazion
<E_J|MA> Windows
<Jem|SoF> WOOHOO
<Jem|SoF> HI
<Jem|SoF> eJ
<Fiyz> lol e_j spoke his short words
<Fiyz> hes AWAY now jem
<Quazion> Fiys, isnt it normal to tell upfront, and it isnt my problem its
just one less user i guess.
<E_J|MA|AWAY> sortof...
[Users(#project-entropia:30)]
[ Quazion ] [ Feroce ] [ Jem|SoF ] [ Supadude|S] [ Max-Damage]
[ AlornenAFK] [ haywire ] [ Gonzago|ED] [ Azur ] [ Viper|FWR ]
[ Fiyz ] [ Lawryus|UP] [ Riposte ] [ TooBorg|So] [ AzHippy|al]
[ Rebellion ] [ vip ] [ Zanuff ] [ balu ] [ AwayELLER ]
[ coin|MA|aw] [@BARADDA|MA] [ Small ] [ CryHavok ] [@bornie|MA ]
[@E_J|MA|AWA] [ kevinvee ] [@DROK|MA|aw] [@InfoBot ] [@ChanServ ]
<Fiyz> uh you saying its not normal to tell your comp info for a beta sign up?
<Quazion> E_J|MA|AWAY you can confirm windows only ?
<Jem|SoF> he did
<Quazion> just double checking
<E_J|MA|AWAY> At first windows only.
<Fiyz> how bout Lindows?
<Jem|SoF> yes you do tell what kind of computer you have
<E_J|MA|AWAY> we ARE looking at porting it to LINUX. but that is WAY down the
road.
<Quazion> E_J|MA|AWAY thanks for the information.
<E_J|MA|AWAY> NP
<Quazion> And yes i am running Linux
<Fiyz> you should make it for Lindows
<Jem|SoF> HI E_J
A way to restore balance: you may be able to buy cool toys, but you won't have the experience points to use them with 100% effectiveness.
Well, it's not perfect, but the idea of a kiddie blindly firing his shiny new BFG-9000 amuses me...
I'd also make the really cool toys *really* expensive. Want that BFG? $100, please. Top-of-the-line armor? Another $75. Don't price things linearly. Well, maybe that's a bit much, but you get the idea.
I'll continue avoiding MMTSs (Massive Multiplayer Time Sinks) regardless...
If you've ever played Everquest, or any of the other MMORPG, and hung out on the message boards, you know the kind of fights that have started over those games.
Adding real money to the mix will make those fights look like spitballs vs nuclear weapons.
From January to September of 2001 I was employed by MindArk AB in Gothenburg, Sweden, doing some of the game design work, especially bunches of scripting in an odd in-house OO language they made up themselves so that even the designers could produce useful code. ..which, I suppose, in essense means that there were no designers... but I suppose I had better take care what I say about my former employer lest they sue me or something.
Not that I'm really afraid they would, 'cause I would sue them right back. I didn't particularily enjoy working at MindArk. Oh, the people were nice, especially the ones that got fired whenever some high-up thought they looked too scruffy from working overnights. Whoops, there I go with the legally flammable stuff again. Thing is, MindArk like firing people who get sick and stay at home to take care of themselves. This might sound natural and reasonable to some of our US readers, but here it's illegal practice. Here in Sweden a company is legally bound to monitor the health of employees, because if they don't, they can be forced to pay for work-related damages. If they DO monitor health, dealing with sickness is a paid by the state, so there's no cost attached.
MindArk doesn't like doing things by the book though. One co-worker was fired for working over night, bumming out on the couch when the brass came to visit. Nevermind the fact that he just got the community forum online, that was apparently secondary. Then there's me, who originally was proud enough to think that I was (also illegaly) fired for being too critical.. turns out I had had one flu too many (no, I don't drink). After that, I also heard that the most driven of the artists got fired, and the effect these kinds of things have on co-workers.. well, I don't have to tell you, do I?
But I suppose most of you want to know about THE GAME, right? Well, that's where I don't want to go. I probably can't say jack squat about the game. If I did, I'd better play some Frank Black "Men In Black" real loud and hope they mistake me for one of them when they come knocking speaking in legalese.
However, I'm a clever guy.. what I can't say I can still insinuate, so read carefully between the lines here. I may only have 4 years of experience in the business, and granted that P:E was my first and only MMORPG, and the work I did was partially generic sound system design and partially extremely high-level theoretic community system design (that I doubt anyone will read my documentation for, or implement my classes for) but ..did you see the guy here on /. who said that the NDA "sounds a little too convenient"? Have you noticed how few have ever even seen the game? I've seen it. Eddy has seen it, so it does exist.. but how come nobody has really played it and told us about it yet? I can't answer that because I would get sued. I can't suggest an answer to that. Too bad because I could probably have told the lot of you a bunch of interesting stuff.
What I think I am allowed to say however, is that I will not be playing Project: Entropia. Maybe nobody ever will. Maybe I already said too much.
/ Per
/ Per
I've seen several of my friends play MMOs and have tried one myself (Anarchy Online) and we've shared experiences.
One of the problems I forsee is that MMOs have a tendency to "change the rules" as time goes on. Without a well established manner of determining certain game behavior (weapon/armor/combat interactions, etc.), you invite LOTS of people to bitch whenever the rules are changed. In all MMOs that I know of, combat/armor/weapon rules change to promote game balance. Imagine how pissed people will be when the Leet Sword of Lesser Monster Slaying they just bought with REAL MONEY gets nerfed.
1. If this game caught on, it may be possible to earn an actual income from this game...
It is *allready* possible, the value for credits in Everquest (credits==currency in the Everquest economy) on Ebay, is better than the value of many third world countries.
I personally know a few people who have been able to make several thousands of dollars a month off "farming" items in game. Of course if they actually calculated how much time they spent doing it (far more than a typical 8 hour day at an office), it wouldn't seem all that special to the typical middle class American...but to someone in a economically challenged area or country, it could feasibly be a serious windfall to them!
In EQ you can sell almost anything to a vendor. A vendor being a NPC the server runs. Now the amount is usually very small. But the starting point for the economy in EQ is selling items to vendors (get a couple of sliver for that wolf pelt) and looting corpses.
I imagine that in this game you will not receive any credits from looting. Only items, and that vendors will only take in a certain type of loot and then only a certain amount. (So if you found an exploit that let you get a ton of High Quality Wolf pelts you wouldn't be able to sell them all, if any.)
If you can make money from looting, and can sell anything to vendors it wont work.