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Unmaking The Game
Teknogeek writes "Player2Player has just posted an interesting article concerning the massive amounts of platinum being sold on sites like PlayerAuctions, and how it might have been obtained. Quite an interesting read, to be sure!" This is in Everquest, BTW.
Pre-SoL I read a stat from sony that said they finally reached the mark where there was 1,000,000 platnium dropped by monsters (both in straight money, and things you sell to merchants, discounts all things sold to people). So people who have been playing since '99... its reasonable to have more than thier fair share of that plat (I would estimate 10,000 active players per server or less, if you were wondering).
Because that money can buy items that can make a decent amount of money on ebay.
EQ money is just a few steps away from some real nice auctions.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
For about 3 or 4 months around when Velious came out, I had a group of five friends who I would go to the fungi camp in lower guk (at 4am, it was almost always uncamped) once or twice a week. We stayed 'til we all had a fungi tunic (they are lore) or school started. So we each made ~60k-90k plat a week, from 3-4 hours of playing, which is alot easier than this 60,000pp in a week with constant playing.
The guild I am in has over 1 million plat in the guild bank. We kill monsters in game that drop items that sell for up to 400K for ONE item.
So FYI, it is not hard to amass 3 million plat over an entire server. You don't need some NON-exsistent exploit to do it.
I used to play EQ (cancelled my acct just under a month ago). I witnessed the price changes over the time that I did play. I don't really find it all that disturbing though, and it's nothing to get upset over. I played PvP so my experience may be different from bluebies'. On SZ there are enough people who couldn't take the heat of PvP that the economy doesn't get shaken up too much.
Market saturation and subsequent boredom of players I think has to be two reasons that Verant keeps releasing expansions. If you don't give people new and exciting things to do they will get tired and quit. There are drops now that are so rare and that so few guilds can obtain that the same power structures are maintained. By this I mean basically that the mass of goodies have shifted down with newer sweeter pieces filling the top. EQ has changed A LOT from its inception, but this isn't a necessarily bad thing. I know people that pay rent and make good money playing. Of course they don't do much of else though. EQ can become a JOB, and it's everyone choice whether to do so.
So if you are quit bitching. So what, something that cost you a bunch of pp a month ago you can't sell for chicken scraps now. You still used it and there is always ways to make the money back. Let's not forget also that this is a GAME. For most of us who play(ed), we did it for the fun not the RL cash.
sig
The Everquest economy will go bust in ~2 years. This calculation is based on a recent article in the respected Economic Theory journal. Also, for all you lawyers out there, can't this be considered making counterfeit money under U.S. criminal law? I think someone should report this.
your right. does this game work like the real world, where market demand for money is effected by the supply? you can graph this with a simple micro-economics graph and show inefficiency of the game economy...
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
If you can find the news archives for Silvan Rangers guild on Fennin Ro server, or The Mystical Order, from a couple years ago you will find a story of a character named Hafez (and logs of chats with the GM involved). Hafez was a leader of TMO and got his RL friend who was a GM on the server to dupe his ENTIRE character. Keep in mind Hafez was the top enchanter on the server at the time - dragon loot and everything. He then sold the character on ebay (highly controversial!). A week later, suddenly there is another enchanter in TMO named Zefah with the exact same equipment =O. He made a cool 2 grand on ebay, btw.
concept of money is people continuing to pay $12.95 for a game that has no customer service, an obviously flawed monetary system, several "show-stopping" graphics and lag issues, broken zones and loot tables, pathing and xyz axis bugs, and of course very limited in-game support now (except for those playing on the $49.95 a month "Legends" server).
If someone is exploiting the monetary system (and they have for some time) then Verant should step up and fix the problem. However, please don't figure on that happening for at least 6 months. It took Verant 6 months to address the issue of ManaBurn and the affect it had on the "game" and Planes of Power is due for release next week (and with EVERY new release there are several new and fun issues to deal with, not the least of which a day or two of downtime).
Bottom line, it is just a GAME. And because it is just a GAME, you have choices. There are numerous other online roleplaying games (albeit they do not have the population like EQ) people can enjoy (and exploit!).
And this is effecting the economy. Items that used to not be sold are being sold but for prices unobtainable w/o the use of macroing. Items no longer go to the most worthy but to the people who macro or use the various other exploits which exist, (and which VI is aware of as they are of macroing). No longer is skill the determining factor but instead cheating.
But VI/SOE(Verant Interactive/Sony Online Entertainment) have given up on the game. They have an expansion due out next week and most conclusions are that it will be the last for Everquest. Everquest 2 is in development and has been for quite some time. While it is possible that the lack of response to the multiple exploits that have been divulged to VI/SOE is due to the cramming required to release a non-buggy expansion on time, (something the company is not known for), it is also possible that by allowing corruption of the economy along with the loss of customer service that has been identified recently VI/SOE is sinking it's own ship in the hopes that those on board will be forced to swim to one of its newer games, (at higher prices and even more 'alternate' - read pay for power - payment plans).
I am very disguisted with VI/SOE's treatment of it's players recently. Things that were 'against the Vision of the game' have been introduced to ring more cash out of the game. Things such as name changes and server transfers. The Fanfaires that used to be solely run to foster community in everquest are now run instead to make money for the company. I am part of the staff at one of the largest everquest message boards, (currently 37594 registered users). We have an active staff of 10, 9 of which are able to attend this FanFaire. We were originally told by the person in charge of Fanfaires that we would receive vendor badges for the Fanfaire for all our members free. We all made travel plans including a person flying from Germany and another from Britian in good faith. The next email we get back, which we believed would be a confirmation of our badges and table, stated that giving us badges would cost the company 1000 dollars and that we would only receive 4 badges and the table. At 85 dollars per badge, there are those of us who cannot afford it. We are hoping to relinquish such things as the meal in a possible compromise, but the clear backpedaling on their openness to recieve us has definately hurt us since many of us had already spend hundreds on the flights to get us there. It's just another example of the company squeezing money from a product and at the same time killing it to benefit it's next product line.
I do security
... and I was able to automatically level my character to Level 5 with appropriate equipment in order to go through a DM-ran quest. What was even cooler, I can customize my character the way I want to with multiple character classes.
Maybe I did not like my character or my server. I made another one, level him/her if need be and equipped accordingly and go to search for other worlds.
May I will pick a server where I have to start from ground zero. That is okay because I am not worrying about catching up with the Jones' or Smith's because I can actually roleplay my character. If I die due to the storyline, then I can choose to remain dead forever.
I went to one server who had every type of weapon imagined and to help you buy those weapons, you could exchange 1GP for 50,000GP.
In my game, I can play gawds or mere mortals on a whim. I can have weapons which destroys waves of enemies or I can tough it out with a humble longsword and the clothes on my back. I play on servers where there are dedicated staff wanting to help those players. The DM-to-player ratio is no more than 1-to-10.
All of this at the cost of buying the game.
The game I am refering to should be quite obvious.
My gawd, why in the hell do people still play and pay MMORPG's especially UO, EverQuest or DAoC? Do you actually think that spending days upon days in a room killing the same creature over and over again just so you can get one item is fun? Is killing the same MoB's over and over again just so you can level up just so you can do it all over again fun?
That sounds like torture to me. Thanks but no.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com