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OSI Starts Selling Preleveled UO characters
NinjaPablo writes "OSI has started a new service, detailed here which allows you to pay $29.95 to get a decent character premade for you, and bypass the hours of working skills at lower levels. Most of the player community is in an uproar about the whole thing, since it basically means a newbie can pay a little extra and be as good as an average player right off the bat."
Character selling has become a common occurance on many of the larger MMORPGs/MUDs, but I think the way OSI is going about it isn't too wise.
Back when I used to play MUDs quite a bit, I sold a max-leveled character I was -given- on a pretty popular MUD for US$200 (no equipment, just the character). I always thought that if I ran the game, I would create souped up characters and sell them on the side anonymously or disguised as other players. This would prevent the uproar that OSI is experiencing (since it would appear to be regular character selling), and it would allow me to make some quick cash off my game.
Now they just give a very cheap price tag on this and what more, you have complete newbies who you cannot rely on to do their part of job in group right and no way to distinguish them.
Its like if they would be selling Masters Diplomas for few bucks and they would be as good as these you earned. Wouldn't you think it devaluates your efforts throughout the school?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
if you look at the page for the character templates you can use its pritty lame, Ive played UO and its very very easy to get those stats only a few days of playing a few hours a day will get you that high, Its not like they are setting you up with GM status, the stats they give you is about min for what it takes to fully explore the world, sure its cheating a little bit, but its not so much to give someone an advantage
Which means I have no idea what UO is actually like, but onlike multiplayer RPG type games can't be all that different...but anyway...
I've played Muds for awhile, more than I'd like to admit. And I've come to realize something. The least productive period on a game is the first few levels, where you can't do much of anything, explore anywhere, or look at all respected. And when you have multiple characters in the same system, you tend to sit around doing pointless stuff you've done before with another character just to become halfway decent.
The way this story looks is that they're selling what amounts to mid-level characters. Something that can at least walk around the world and kill a few of the really weak things. At the same time, there is still a lot of upward mobility to be attained. Thus, you still really have to work for your character to make it exceptional. Buying a character off Ebay usually entails starting at the very top and blowing it all away. This is something of a compramise.
Also note, I'd never sell characters on my mud, nor would I ever buy one for Ultima Online. Quite frankly, I'm too poor to buy them, and not poor enough to need the money that badly. However, I do make it a point to try and design my mud so that a starting player doesn't feel completely useless.
These idiots are gonna pay $30 to get a sweet character ripe for the picking when he walks outside the city gates not knowing how to defend himself from getting assraped by everyone. Then he'll sue OSI for his $30 back. :)
As a player of UO, I can confirm the above posts stating that any newbie who buys one of these premade characters is going to be decimated if he tries to play with the big boys.
:)
In fact, a newbie using such an account will probably be at a disadvantage - for never learning how to gain skills, and never experiencing the improvement of his UO gaming skills over time. And UO remains more awesome than EQ etc. *because* character skill only counts for half of your ability...the other part is your personal experience with the world and its quirks.
Veterans like me on the other hand can buy an account to skip over all the boring newbie skill-gaining stuff that we've done a million times. These chars for sale would save me ~10 gametime hours, and 10 hours of my life is worth a lot more than $30 to me.
A well thought out post that I totally agree with. I simply don't have the time to devote to playing a single game for hours upon hours to raise a character to a level I can enjoy. That said, I did play Diablo II from the beginning, but my highest characters were only around level 40 or so. I didn't have the patience to just go and "kill more stuff" to get into the 80+ range. Got bored.
The obvious solution would be to make two seperate game communities - if you buy a pre-made character, you are restricted to only play with other pre-mades. If you start from scratch, you have to stay with other players from scratch.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Actually Anarchy Online seems to be the worst.
Can't remember the company name but there was one firm selling macro'd uber characters a while ago. Took them hardly any time to macro a character to top level.
Working for the (other) man
10x worse than me. You must've regged 10 minutes later >:(
> Maybe now some of us who don't have hours a day
> to waste levelling-up can begin to enjoy MMORPG's.
I accept that this is a problem, but I don't think this is the solution. Perhaps seperating "bought character" servers from the "spent time" ones might.
> Those who are complaining should really think
> about why they're upset, and realise that it's
>because they have an elitist attitude.
It's not that at all, at least for me.
I just got sick of wasting many more hours of
gametime because the n'th level experienced
tough adventury type I met deep in the dangerous
parts of the world turned out to be someone
who'd bought his character on eBay and got me killed over and over because he had no idea how to play the game.
In a game world, I expect a character with level n to have experience and abilities appropriate to the level. When they don't because it's a new player who's bought their way in, that breaks the
world, and the game, for me. And it's not fun.
I do agree that casual gamers should be able to
play these games too, but I think that mixing "bought" characters with "earned" characters destroys the game for the "earned" characters.
- MugginsM
Lets see how far we can take this:
How about an Ultima On-line VISA card - where every purchase you make gets you valuable experience points in the game?
Double points if you buy Electronic Arts merchandise - and every $10,000 will get you a free magic item of your choice!
I sig, therefore I am.
All these on-line games show off spectacular screen shots of high-level characters killing dragons and doing heroic things, but when you actually start you're mucking about in the weeds killing vermin.
Don't get me wrong - I get the value of reward for hard work. If I was in college or simply lacked a life and could spend 4-8 hours/day in the game cranking out the XPs I could put up with several weeks of toil before some kind of payoff. But months? Or Years? I guess I just don't have the patience (not to mention the money - it really started to irk me that I was PAYING for the priveledge of wandering around killing rats).
I've often mentioned to my friends that I'd give online games another shot if I could buy my way past the drudgery and actually have some fun right away. I'd pay real money for xps, weapons, equipment - you name it (assuming the prices were reasonable and reflected that fact that it was a game).
One way to control that spinning out of control would be to just have a subset of equipment/weapons available (perhaps just good quality, yet non-magic), and only allow a certain max number of xps to be bought, thus limiting the "buy-in" potential of new players. Then the uber-characters of 50+ level can still feel like they "put in their time" while we "casual gamers" (or is it "life-balanced gamers") could at least enjoy some aspect of the game besides killing bats and rats.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is I'll not play another online game until some sort of system like this exists in a game I care about. For instance, I'd love to try out Star Wars Galaxies when it comes out, but if I'm going to have to spend a year of real time wandering around killing insects and small rodents because I can't put in more than 1/2 hour a day towards the game then I'm out. Life's too short to screw with that kind of boring, arbitrary beginning play (and to pay for it as well!)
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...since you can whip open the toolkit and give yourself +1 Uber Glowing Longsword of l33tness and 20 levels of XP, it makes the whole collecting-stuff-and-points issue moot. Once that's shoved out of the way the only fun you'll have with the game is with the genuine roleplaying experience -- what do you DO with your glowing sword, once you've got it? Granted, not many NWN modules have gotten to the point where the roleplaying is emphasized over the Monty Haul, but they're definitely getting there and it's an eventuality.
I don't mean to do a 'nwn r0xx0rz uo suxx0rz' post, but really, this is really the problem with any persistent world MMORPG -- yes, they have roleplaying elements, but the core of the game basically Progress Quest. How much l3wt can you acquire? How uber can you get? How many days will it take you to get there, and if there is no limit, how many days until you get bored? It's less a roleplaying game and more a game, if that makes sense.
Once you realize that, paying more and more money just for more points makes perfect sense -- and is nonsense at the same time.