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Star Wars Galaxies Auctions Afoot
Fusty writes "Game Girl Advance is running a story about the first wave of Star Wars Galaxies auctions on Ebay. Items, credits and characters are already selling for over $250, not even a month after launch. Will Sony/Verant shut down SWG auctions, like they did the EverQuest Auctions?"
Does anyone care? If someone wants to spend $250 on a virtual light dildo (err, I mean saber), let them. It's their money.
I thought the game was too boring, bug-ridden, and repetative to take seriously. Isn't everyone gonna wait 2 or 3 years for it to shape up?
Caffeine Good
Wow! That's more money than VA Linux will report on their next quarterly earnings release.
What kind of a loser does it take to buy their way into a higher game standing? Same kind that buy the strategy books I suppose...
Pisses me off that these cheap bastards are trying to make bucks off the intellectual property of others.
Pay the fuck up!
Sony only succeded with e-bay, and only partially. playerauctions.com provides all the same features outside of sony's grasp.
The question shouldn't be: "Will Sony/Verant shut down SWG auctions, like they did the EverQuest Auctions?" The question should be did you guys get permission to use the name Sony/Verant.
Want Root?
$250 will buy a lot of drugs, sex and rock and roll in the real world. Then again, SWG is addictive like drugs, you can get plenty of no-hassle porn online, and P2P will get you many gigs of rock and roll if the RIAA can be kept at bay.
How to Download YouTube Videos
It's worth noting that eBay's AUP forbids the sale of non-tangible items via its service.
If you enabled NTFS read/write support in the Linux kernel, you are to blame. NTFS write support is APTLY labeled 'DANGEROUS'. So most likely you hosed the partition. Congratulations, time to get your backup and do a restore.
"I drank what?" -Socrates
Here's how you need to fix this:
You will need
a) A car battery
b) a long wire
c) a large iron nail
1. Wrap wire around nail, leave a bit hanging off either end
2. Connect one end to the battery anode and another to the cathode
3. Move the entire apparatus up and down over the surface of the hard drive repeatedly
4. Repeat 3 until satisfied
That should solve your problem - and remember, dual booting is bad for karma!
No, I'm using the read only drivers. I think this is a hardware error, because everything else on the disk reads fine.
Sure, buying property in UO makes sense, because property is scarce. But in SWG or SB, you can still earn things. So go earn things, and feel good about them; not like you merely bought them.
while this is probably a troll, I'll go ahead and reply with a useful suggestion. Easy Recovery Pro 6.0 by OnTrack technologies will recover most of the lost data from hard disks that are still recognized by the ide channel and somewhat readable. Seems like you can at least mount the drive, so by connecting the HDD into a Windows 2000/XP machine and running easy recovery should get most of your data back. Keep in mind, it'll take a while (last time I ran this on a virus-damaged 60GB hdd, it took about 6 hours), and recovered about 80% of the data.
What do they have to lose from it, does it cost them money, does it make them money, or do nothing, what is so wrong with it?
Yes.
(Lucas Arts is even more of a control freak than Sony.)
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
No, I'm no troll. I've already recovered 90% of the data with Linux, however it won't even let me list the directory contents of "documents and settings" or let me access anything within. It keeps coming up with those I/O errors...
I was gonna post a comment, until I scrolled down on the reference page and clicked on the "rez + vibrator" link.
Funny, Star Wars MMORGP just doesn't seem as important to me at the moment...
...maybe it's because I don't play these games...but...could anyone point out why Sony/Verant would care? The only reason I see first off is that users are making money, and not the game creators. But other then that, they aren't losing anything (or am I being naive, and not noticing something).
...they'll figure out how to make money off what the punters want.
RIAA?!?!?!?!!! Hello?!??!!!!!?!?!!!!
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I mean for every famous MMORPG out there, if there's a huge player base it is expected that at least 1% of them are willing to shell-out money for some rare items/weapons/equipments.
:)
It's a good thing I'm not into MMORPG but more into MUD. You might want to try Wheel of Time MUD, really nice environment, and cool and helpful moderators (Hi Nass!). Best of all it's free and doesn't require a state of the art PC to play it
Something featured on Slashdot that nobody really cares about? Naw... really?
In other news, bears shit in the woods.
George Lucas is going to freeze their balls in carbonite.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I wonder if that has to do with NTFS encryption, perhaps you enabled encrypted storage for your profiles directory?
Nope, it allowed me to read documents and settings under Linux prior to Windows hard booting on an IDE lockup...
Offer a piece of paper as well for auction. Now you have a tangible item.
what a sad world we live in.
796F75206D75737420626520626F726564
He already did that to everyone who paid to see Episodes I & II.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I'd much rather just read this article again... mmm...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...wins. So when are there going to be e-bay only items for auction rather then in the game. For example, you have to pay for that uber rare item as it would never be found in the game. If Lucas Arts held such auctions, that would act as a second form of revenue rather thne just though monthly payments from players.
Life is not for the lazy.
Nothing
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
nt
is gambling! Go to the local cantina, and try to win a starship. What's more Star Wars than that? The answer to that question seems to be killing womp rats, from everything I've heard about the game (I haven't played it).
Republic credits will be fine..... ....these are not the droids you are looking for.
1) People who started playing SW:G are getting bored/annoyed by the bugs already, and are selling their accounts.
2) People started playing the game with the intention of investing a large amount of time to farm cash/items, and sell them.
In either case, this is interesting, it means either SW:G sucks, or there are some people who really need to go out and get jobs (I find it hard to believe that the cash that can be made from playing online games is a reasonable substitute for a paying job).
I've never really understood the people who buy items for use in an online game, surely if they don't have the time to invest to actually earn cash and items themselves, with the accompanying sense of achievement, it's not worth playing the game at all? As an ex-player of Ultima Online though, I can sympathise with some of the sellers. For example, I sold my account when I quit, which was easily enough to recoup the subscription fees I'd payed for playing. There seem to be no reasons why people would be selling accounts this early in the game though, except for those I described above, both of which are a little worrying.
1. Your casual player, just having fun. They extract their enjoyment from playing and figuring out quests, discovery, and exploration, and achievment within the confines of the game.
2. Your Ebay player. They have fun playing, but additionaly, the have fun from actually transfering the time they spend in game into real life money. Auctioning can be quite addicting, and the money can be quite good ... enough to offset the monthly price, cost of game, and typicaly all the upgrades to your computer to play the advanced ones.
3. Your automated player. These types I'm sure that the peeps (mmorpg slang for people) from /. understand, not only get their enjoyment from playing, ebay'ing, but also derive a certain snug satisfaction by "beating" the game somewhat. I mean creating elaborate unattended play scripts or macros for their toons (slang for their characters).
Now of course there are others, mostly variations of the above with different levels of dedication and interest.
Like, the "Corporations". Power gamers intent on making huge $$$ by selling items, money and toons from the game to those casual players who really have little hope or little time to get them through ordinary games means. These are peeps, few in number mostly, but share the common trait of having multiple computers and multiple accounts. They bludgeon their way to riches, then as the prices come down, they auction of thier toons on ebay and move on to the latest games.
Then of course there are the "outside devs", they are the ones that break the program, hack the packets and develope automated play tools, then sell access or subscriptions to the tools, occasionaly even offering and fufulling support.
Then, on to the 'Sploiters. The ones that don't really develope, but find and abuse and exploit bugs to their advantage. The mmorpg addage goes, exploit early and exploit often, because once discovered, they are quickly fixed. Typicaly with no punishment to those that abused.
All in all, each category is deriving fun and satisfaction from some aspect of the game. Even if it is an unattended aspect.
On to next topic ... It's a delicate balance that the mmorpg game developers and server and fees maintainers tread when they enforce their COC and license rules. Just like in real life, these are the Enforcers. They understand that a little bit of hanky panky is going to happen, they just don't want it rampant to the point were it hurts the name brand and the game itself. They also dont' want to come down too hard and chase off revenue. And they will chase off revenue if they do come down hard. The reason is, they are limiting the types of players to those of basicaly the worst sort ... the casual gamer who loses attention to the repetativeness of the game.
Anyway, before you go off knocking those who enjoy these games in the myriad of ways that they provide, look closely at what you do for your own personal entertainment. I havn't watched TV for over 5 years now. Have two top of the line computers, programming tools, and books all provided for by my hobby. I've met good people, bad people, learned certain aspects about myself (that I am inherently good and incapable of true evil), and I get to communicate with my children in a playfull and rich medium that these games provide, even though they live 1500 miles away.
MMORPGS are a sort of entertainment and therapy that perhaps most of you don't understand. I see nothing but positives with MMORPGS for the future. I see military training possibilities, I see Prisoner rehabilitation, advanced learning, and a whole new economy that is just in it's infant stage. 30 to 40 years from now who knows what value mmorpg will have been passed off to the next generation of young people. It may be that we'll all be living like thx1178 and our only real freedoms will be virtual freedoms, or it could be that we all spread out a bit and report into work every morning by logging into our work based mmorpg.
Some individuals can't invest 3-4 hours a day to create a high level character. So by purchasing an item/char they are making the game more fun for themselves. Maybe if buying an item/char was not possible these individuals would not even be playing the game.
The question is whether or not Sony/Verant wants these kinds of people to play their game. Even if they are just out for making bucks they should facilitate the sale of virtual goods/chars.
Then let's say they took a 3% commission off each sale they could make some extra cash while at the same time give people the assurance that their sale is authorized by Sony. This could cut down on people cheating others on virtual sales.
you make me very scared for the future of humanity.
ill Sony/Verant shut down SWG auctions, like they did the EverQuest Auctions?
It only makes sense to me for them to keep it going. People pay to play to get paid and others who always have to be winners buy this stuff and play who would otherwise get frustrated and fed up and after a shot while not pay!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Huru ut Schulustuc, wu tuku cupyrught unfrungumunt vury suruuusly. Uur luwyurs wull bu cuntuctung yuu suun. Yuu uru nut us ununymuus us yuu thunk.
- Thu Schulustuc Lugul Tuum
who read "Pehaps you can measure the popularity of an MMOG based on its auction potential", and immediately thought of this story?
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Makes sense to a degree... don't you have more fun when you have a powerful character that can roam the land freely? One who doesn't have to fear the first bunch of orcs they run across?
If people want to purchase a pre-leveled character and skip the grunt work (let's be honest... you're just doing it to get a higher-level character and the fun/freedom that comes with that character), then why not?
Personally, my time is valuable... I'd be a bloody fool to spend hours scraping up experience points in an online world. If there's someone who has more time on their hands, and they are willing to sell it that cheaply, then bully for them. If I am willing to spend real world dollars for their time, then good on me.
Enjoyment comes in all shapes and sizes... if someone wants to spend dollars for it, then somebody will fill that market.
I wouldn't do it... those kind of online games are not my thing. However, I can see there from here. Yes, I know money theoretically shouldn't provide an advantage, but all online worlds have to have SOME resemblance to the real world in them... this is perfect. What real-world element could be more appropriate than this "golden rule?" (ie. the one with the gold makes the rules)
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Moderators, the guy above just cut and pasted an AC comment from the previous SWG story on /.. Please do not mod this plagarizer.
Anything crazy like this should actually be a good thing to the makers...
Any publicity is good publicity.
In SWG, not all animals are equal. If you want to play a "force sensitive" character ( i.e. a Jedi ), you first need to unlock something known as the Force Sensitive Character Slot on your account ( as detailed here ). Nobody seems to be sure yet how exactly this is done.
Now, this is going to create a huge market for accounts, in my eyes. Being a Jedi is the big goal for a lot of people playing this game, and if they're willing to shed a few real life bucks to buy a house, I imagine they'd be very happy to part with more to be given the inside line on what will probably be the best part of the game. Especially if the FSCS unlock method is not widely known at the time.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
The post was and is a whole creation of original thought from me and me alone. I didn't cut and past from anywhere, nor did I read any such article and paraphrase it. If it is similar to anything else, it is mere coincidence. Moderators, moderate anyway you like. Chris K.
$200 for that character. My beta character was twice what that guy was and I did it in the last week before wipe.
Hardcore StarWars fans: one of the most fiercely loyal, and ravenous fan-bases. They eat up anything with the starwars tag on it.
Hardcore MMORPG players: Willing to spend 2/3 of their waking lives playing a game that is largely clicking on a monster and then getting a few imaginary credits for said action.
Combine the two, and what did you expect? No matter how bad the game is (I personally think it's terrible, though I respect other opinions) people will:
A) play it
B) Spend REAL money to get imaginary status
Fools and their money, thats what i say. If sony was smart, instead of banning these sales all together, they would charge a 10% transaction fee.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
That other Anonymous Coward (sorry, too lazy to login atm) copied your text to another thread. Check the dates and times.
but why aren't slashdot accounts for sale? you know... good accounts for ... good purposes?!
Actually, this is a bit of a dilemma for Lucas Arts.
I was at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Jose listening to Raph Koster (the Creative Director of SWG) during a full ballroom packed presentation he gave on designing and running MMPORGs.
He was wearing two hats during the presentation: With his corporate business hat on he said (something to the effect) "eBay is very bad and it is against the terms of service and all violators will be prosecuted" then with the developers hat he said (stte) "eBay is vey good and will tell you how well your game's economy is doing and you should watch it religously."
Basically, all the MMORPG devs use eBay to see the going rate for different virtual property thereby having one extremelly good metric for the health of their game's economy.
One example Raph gave was when one particular monthly update for Everquest(?) caused the exchange rate of in game currency to US dollars on eBay to plummet. This was a very good indication they had really screwed the pooch with the update.
-)----- B
My memory is fuzzy so facts could be wrong. Raph has a web site where he discusses such things if you are really interested.
It looks like we found Katz at last!
But will he allow them to sell their frozen balls on Ebay?
Where else can you find people willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for merchendise that doesn't physicaly exist?
I wish I had thought of this sooner; it's simple supply and demand.
Damn. Just put the mouse down and back away from the monitor...slowly....slowly....
If the lock-up damaged some part of your data (i.e. Windows doesn't boot anymore) it could very well have affected that area of your disc as well. That's my guess.
Of course, the scary part will be when Jabba the Hutt purchases your frozen balls for his private collection.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
It's either the disk or the IDE controller chip going bad.
Put the disk in another machine and mount it and see if it does the same thing there. If you don't have another machines, borrow one, or buy or borrow an IDE controller card and plug it in to that instead of the built in IDE on the motherboard.
In Asheron's Call they didnt have any rules against this at first. In time there was a lot of high level characters for sale on Ebay. Well a meanharted group of players bought up a bunch of accounts and begain to take over the worlds, most notably Darktide which is 24/7 Pvp and caused trouble on other worlds such as quest jumping among other things.
Now while any group of people can still level up the normal way on Darktide you ended up with a guild of players that could go out and kill any group of players in the game. It ruined things for many who played there and before they came there was a thriving sense of certian guilds owning certain areas of the game. These guys ruined it. SO many left the game never to return.
This can happen to any game and I'm sure SOE/Lucas Arts do not want it to happen. And I applaud any gaming company efforts to stop this.
Also unlike the real world where money = class in the virtual world a poor kid can become very rich. What becomes unfair is Rich kids becoming very rich in the game becuase his pocketbook is supporting his character while the poor kid now has to struggle to maintain his level of fun/play against the more well to do kids.
The problem is it weakens the game. Because now when you meet that High-Level Jedi master with the double-ended lightsabre, how do you know it's not just a newbie with a trust fund, who decided to take a crack at "that new star wars game" but didn't want to go through the effort of earning anything himself in SWG anymore than he does in real life?
It's better to keep the game world and the real world from spilling over into each other as far as resources and wealth, to maintain the internal consistency of the game world.
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
Next youll tell me that hunting rats,hitting them twenty times with blasters, and running for twenty minutes at a time is Star Wars!
why? things change, they always do. you're just afraid of change. remember: the more things change, the more they stay the same. our basic human nature isn't changing, jus the expression of it. you're scare of your own shadow.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
IANAL, but the way I see it is that if they allow people to sell in game items as "real" property, then those in-game items take on "real" tangible value. And with our society the way it is, in America, anyway, that means lawsuits. So, if your $3000 lightsaber is lost due to a server crash, you could sue them.
And what of theft? If you have $5,000 real-life worth of in-game items, and I kill your character, and steal them, could that consitute theft in real-life? Would they be liable for allowing that to happen in-game?
These are all questions they do not want to have to deal with. By taking the stand that they do not allow real-world selling of in-game assets, and by enforcing that stance by account deletion, etc, they are creating a legal barrier to prevent any of that from happening. If they turn a blind eye and allow the sales to continue, they are giving de facto approval, and thus allowing real-life value to be assigned to in-game items. I can't imagine any other action than them shutting down these sales.
The annoying part in all this is that we, as a society, have only ourselves to blame for ruining our own fun.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
Just send a couple of bounty hunters after anyone who auctions off their gear, and track down the person who bought it. The black market should exist, thrive even, but it should have its risks.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The client is free, but they get their money from selling items.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Who wants afoot? Maybe if it's Luke Skywalker's foot or something. But what people really want to get is ahead...
This is a perfectly natural turn of events.
This has happend with every MMORGP ever released. Items and characters themselves are a comodity and represent the time spent by players achieving them. The fact that they're sold does not,with-in itself, mean that players are bored, or that the game itself is boring or that G. Lucast is out to make money. This is simply players choosing what parts of the game they want to expirience and how.
No doubt the reason Sony is against these auctions is to reduce their liability. If they admit that the items have real cash value, they are open to a damage law suit the moment they ban somebody or the server crashes and players loose some items.
However, from the player prespective, this kind of thing is vital. I would not even touch a game that does not have a healthy economic system both in game and in reality. Not because I'd want to use it, but because a stable economy shows that the game is well balanced and alive.
As a side note, 250$ does not really sound like a lot. Especially considering that prices right at the game release are several orders of magnitude greater than they will be in couple of months, per item. Probably per time invested it works out.
So am I allowed to have a garage sale or not?!?!?
...a fool and his money are soon parted.
If you can not tell the difference between a newbie with a trust fund and a legitimate player, I have to seriosly question you knowlage of that particular game. As somebody who has played EverQuest at hiegh levels I can tell you with absolute certanty that an ebayers does not have a snow balls chance in hall of hiding the fact. An expirienced player will pickup on a dozen ques, from the reletive position of the character, to timing in responses both to the world and other players and not the least of all questions and comments. Think of it as hiring an English Major for system level development. His lack of knowlage and etiquete will stand out like a sore thumb within minutes for anybody worth their salt. Anyway, there is nothing wrong in practice in principle. If somebody is able to buy an account and play it with skill that the level demands, what is the difference?
Quite honestly, I don't care what they decide to do. If they want to allow selling, then ignore it. If they say it's not allowed, then come down as hard as a hammer on those selling.
But under no circumstances should they do what Mythic has done to ruin Dark Age of Camelot: Ignore their own rules, let cheaters prosper, and destroy the integrity of the game, all for the sake of not losing accounts.
I spent countless hours leveling up with my own money and crafting my way to legendary, only to be undercut by people who used cheats to craft and obtain money, and level.
Mythic did NOTHING when handed damning evidence, because they'd lose accounts if they banned people. As a result, there's no point in playing for anyone or any purpose except your own damned skin. Thanks Mythic.
So Sony, do what you will. Just do it for real.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
As I've seen on more than one game (Diablo 2 comes to mind as the best/worst example), when items become worth big $$ IRL, there always comes a huge problem with cheating. People finding ways to make hacked items to sell, or ways to raise the odds that THEY will get all the best stuff (sometimes at the expense of other players).
:P ), none of this will matter to you. But...if you're one of the people who use the game as recreation, let alone one of the people who is giving up a large chunk of life for the game, this just plain sucks. Either way, the company takes a popularity hit, and loses players (and thus future customers).
There have been weeks when game servers are virtually unplayable when some new hack comes out, and the script kiddies are rushing in to get the latest uber item and sell a few hundred on Ebay before the bottom of the market drops out.
Now, if you're not a gamer (and if not, why are you even reading this?
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Players have been selling their wares for MMORPG for a while now so I don't see a problem in it at all. Personally RPG's move too slow for me and don't hold my interest. I did like Diablo but the cheater's ruined it. When I play a game and find a cheater I look into the hacks involved so I can come back and give them a dose of their own medicine.
I did buy Everquest but after looking through the manual I decided that I didn't have the time to invest in it. I have a all or nothing attitude so I tend to get a new game and play it until I'm burned out with no time off inbetween. Trying to balance that out with a job, woman, pets, and all of that is not easy. I've had a girlfriend tell me she was jealous of my pc but she's dead now so I guess she's over it:) I would say I'm lucky that my girlfriends are so hot (not bragging...true) that they make me not want to play all of the time. I need my booty time more than any other time! You can be a geek/gamer and still pull hot women.
Seriously I have to make myself not play because I tend to play too much if I like the game. I'm into FPS's more than anything and I'm most happy with BF1942 right now. There's something about meeting new people online and killing them that makes me smile.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
I am pleased that you "deleted" what appears to be a misuse of the word looser, which means "less tightly fitted." Context would indicate that a more appropriate word is loser. It's a good thing you corrected the error.
Proudly correcting Slashdot's most irritating linguistic error since 2002.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
If I'm making $70/hour and I enjoy acquiring the most powerful characters in Galaxies, is it not worth it to me to pay a college kid what amounts to $1-2/hour to get the character I want?
Saving 200 hours of my time is well worth $250. $250 at the end of the semester for beer is well worth it for the college student. Everyone wins.
Note: Hourly wage inflated to protect my ego.
paintball
YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
paintball
Starwars Galaxies is based on DikuMUD, and allowing characters to be sold is a clear violation of the DikuMUD license.
Or they're just greedy bastards, one of the two.
paintball
Please stop moderating this. It has received every category under the sun, and has moved from 2 -> 0 ->3 -> 2 -> 5. There are worthwhile posts to be moderated. Something that's 3 at the top of the discussion isn't going to get a benefit from being 5 at the top of the discussion. But hey, what do I know? I'm just a fucking AC.
You could sell your computers, buy fewer books, and go see your kids... in person.
I've heard a lot of gaming addict rationals in my time, but "lets me spend quality time with my kids" has got to be a new one.
That's right up there with the pot addict parent extolling the virtues of that pot smoking family time.
paintball
What is the world coming to when we need to maintain "fairness" in virtual worlds so poor kids can feel equal to rich kids?
Poor kids should do what poor kids did to rich kids when I was growing up...
Beat them up and take their lunch money.
paintball
YOU SPOONY BARD!!
you have failed. and it did have to be done-the consequence of your failure is another victory for the forces of gnaa. try harder next time
I played in the beta for SWG. Trust me there is no reason to play this game for any period of time unless you are trying to make money off it. It does suck.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
This is the fifth post. please post a link to pictures verifying the act.
> "Most of the auctions are for credits (20k credits on Bria server, etc). Some are for buildings, or accounts."
What this highlights is that the in-game markets aren't working. If SOE provide better in-game fora for these transfers, they can nip this in the bud right now.
Of course, it's far more exciting to debate how stoooopid people are for paying $$$ for blasters. You can get back to doing that now.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's apparent that you've never played such a game for any appreciable length of time. When it's kept reasonable in length, the treadmill is very rewarding (and not just in an addictive/fix kind of way).
It's *fun* to be scared of those little orcs at first.
It's fun when you can first start killing them.
It's fun to reduce killing them to a methodical science (shortly before you move on to killing trolls).
And it's the most fun to return to a dungeon that used to have you twitching in fear and be able to walk through it with orcs bouncing off you like spitballs.
Someone who buys a high level character misses this experience entirely. The spitball effect is only truly rewarding when you remember being scared of those things 2 months ago.
I'm not against player auctions by any means. Different strokes and all, but you are completely missing a huge part of the appeal of MMOG's.
Furthermore, there's a huge skill component gained in levelling your own character. Back in the EQ beta days, a brother of the CEO (kelly Flock) and a friend of his came through Runnyeye decked out in top notch gear.
They were a disaster. They had no idea what they were doing, fell off ledges, got surrounded by goblins that they would have been able to handle easily if fought properly, and ended up dead. We were a few levels lower than they were, relatively poorly equipped, and helped them get their corpses if memory serves.
It's like giving a 10 year old boy an M1 Abrams tank. They just don't do well.
Disclaimer: I am not a treadmill player kicking Innoruuk's head around at level 60. I bailed out at level 28. I think the treadmill gets far too flat at the upper levels of EQ.
Actual it is a direct copy of an ac post go to the end of the page and its there word for word either he is the orignal AC thats fair enough or he has Plagiarised it and thats the Litary equivelent of piracy it is a good point that needs atributing to the correct person.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Quite unlikely. If you read the linux-ntfs project we pages you can find that write is disabled for XP in the *old*, unmaintained driver and the limited write support is said to be safe using the *new* NTFS driver developed by the project. There is also a short list there what NTFS driver vendors use.
The fact is, they are already taking down auctions through the VeRO program. You can even see some of these mails that users has posted on the official SWG forums. One warning first, do it again and you're screwed, basically. For some reason, they let most of them remain, though, and I think this is because they are trying to track down the sellers and tie them to one/several game accounts. I wouldn't be suprised if they are bidding on the auctions themselves.
Dumbass, as was already pointed out, the AC post there was posted *after* the parent here.
I play Galaxies, and my character is not really built up that much... but I can honestly say that in one hour, I could easily accumulate 20,000 credits, which is going for upwards of $20 on eBay?!?! That sounds like a sweet summer job to me (I'm still a lowly college student, so that's not a bad rate at all). Hooray for dumb rich kids!
I used to play Asheron's Call..... I would say that it was probably an addiction. Every new patch I scoured the land for new items and while they were valuable I would trade them in game. ;)
Then one day, I found out about ebay. I took a look and saw that a particular piece of armor I had was selling for 300$ US. Having this piece of armor didn't really make or break the game for me. I could do without it so I decided to give ebay a whirl.
I sold the piece of armor for 300$US and at that moment decided if people are foolish enough to spend real money on virtual items, then it might as well be me taking their money.
After I sold my first item I went to my wife and passed her a piece of paper. On it I had written a sequence of 1's and 0's. I asked her, "Would you pay 300$ US for that?" She looked at me kinda awkward and said, "No..." I told her someone just did. I laughed, she still looked at me awkwardly.
As far as i'm concerned, if someone has the disposible income and want to spend their money on this, go ahead. If I was paid a few bucks an hour to get some of the items I sold on ebay for 300$, then that person got a really good deal.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
the game is lame. Except, of course, my buddy's dancin' maniac pink wookie. They spent more time on the dancing engine than they did on the rest of the game. Believe me, you haven't lived until you've seen an 8' wookie doing the Running Man only to swing into a Moon Walk and finish it off with a jumping mid-air splits.
Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. -Hawking
In SWG, the devs have running logs of the economy which keeps track of all transactions. This is how they adjusted the money system in beta. If things seemed too high, they would decrease the inflow of money (it only comes from missions) and/or increase the outflow (maintenance on player-made structures). It was fairly accurate in their macroeconomic sense.
They stopped the EQ Auctings? Funny, 50 or so websites must not have gotten the news. There are people making $100,000+ a year selling plat, items, and characters on EQ. Sad, really.
"Eagles may soar, but Weasel's don't get sucked into Jet Engines!"
If things seemed too high,
But how would they *know* if things are too high? Running logs only tell the what transactions occured. Now enter Ebay. If people are willing to pay $500 for 1 credit then the game obviously has a severe shortage of money. If 100M credits are going for $1 on Ebay then there is a glut of money in game. The challenging part left is to figure out what is the balance between real money and game money so that the game functions properly. My guess would be that it is a function between the time it takes in game to earn that much money and the monthly fee that you pay.
Will they stop the auctions? No way. They learned how much can be made. They are going to have their own auctions, but not publicly admit it.
What a great way to help the bottom line, $500 bucks for half a million credits?
Use the Paypal.
Loser has one one "o", loser.
I used to be a big MMORPG player a year ago approx. I quitted this way of life when i got tired of seeing people with better wallets and the will to spend favored by the companies maintaining these games. Since then, i vowed never to spend a single buck on a game that wouldn't restrict the players' investments with a strict rule set and/or an environment which favors strict investments from its community. I guess the less time you spend on the game, the more incline you will be to buy those bits on Ebay, then shame on you for not playing fairly. If you want to become a baseball player, will you go buy your freakin stats to be recruited in MLB? Do you think good quake players bought their fame out of some black box? Frankly, i wish Online RPG games wouldn't be the exception in the gaming world, but they are. Why? Cause they're freakin money cows, that's why..
.. i'm a stupid kid who doesn't understand shit.." ok? Thanks. ;-)
Kids, this isn't how life goes so don't reply the usual: ".. it's life bla bla bla
( Got tired of that answer already also )
it was FascDotKilledMyPr or something like that. The winner was promised the nick and the history of the name.
As a game administrator myself, I can tell you that it's actually virtually impossible to stop people selling stuff; players display a remarkable ability to find loopholes and ways to cheat against every law. To totally prevent it, you'd have to prevent transfer of all EQ, and how could you reasonably stop people giving stuff away?
Wearing a game administrator hat, as far as I'm concerned, just let them. However, wearing a finance hat, I'd want to make some money off those trades, so if I were Sony I'd probably make it a supported game feature (ability to buy and sell for money), add some functionality that makes it much easier to do so in a Sony-sponsored marketplace (forum,ecommerce setup, whatever), but skim some money off the top.
I started playing SWG a few days after it came out. I am new to MMORPGs and after the initial shock of the gameplay learning curve I am having quite a bit of fun.
I have noticed reciently that a vast majority of old school MMORPGers get there thrills from bitching and complaining about EVERYTHING. I have all but stopped reading the general message boards at the SOE site as its all ranting on various stupid crap.
I can honestly say that in the last two weeks of game play, I have not been effected by people selling credits on eBay. Or creature handlers gaining massive amounts if XP. Or any of the other crap people are whining about.
Str8Dog
using System.Darkside; public
Irony is watching people brag about being able to spell loser correctly.
For me, one of the good things that has come out of playing MMO games over the past year or so is that the $12 a month is a great investment to keep me from going out all the time and spending even more money on junk I don't need...
I've saved up more money in the past year than ever, and might even use it for a down payment on a house... =)
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
SoE President: "We're not afraid of these online auctions."
Yoda: "You will be. You willllll be...."
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
The comment ends with a deep comment that took me by surprise:
MMORPGS are a sort of entertainment and therapy that perhaps most of you don't understand. I see nothing but positives with MMORPGS for the future. I see military training possibilities, I see Prisoner rehabilitation, advanced learning, and a whole new economy that is just in it's infant stage.
I wasn't looking for depth today, just mind candy, but this is a nice tidbit. But it's a bit simplistic to call these "nothing but positives," don't you think? Advanced learning and an RPG workplace are great, but what about...
Military Training: There's a whole thread's worth of discussion on whether that would be a Good Thing. Actually, didn't the Army already use something similar as a recruitment tool? (too lazy to look for links, sorry)
Prisoner Rehabilitation: Talk about the law of unintended consequences. I remember the hubbub when it was discovered that prisons were contracting out services for processing credit cards, or some such private data. I like the idea of using the MMORPG concept to help educate those who are willing to learn, but don't forget that there are Bad Guys in prison, too. Imagine interacting with a virtual Charles Manson? Without knowing it?
On the other hand, I just this week finally watched The Matrix (the first one!). The Agent was right about humanity -- something in us rejects the notion of a perfect world. We *need* complexity and ambiguity in our lives to make them "real". I still can't decide if I'd go for Red or Blue, myself.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I pity the fool who fails to properly guard his balls.
Carthago delenda est!
And who do you think wrote tha AC post in the first place? He says he did. Why don't you believe him -- did you write it?
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
I'm amazed that EQ/SWG (or any other online game service) doesn't just implement a safe escrow service and take a cut of the inevitable auction action.
If the game server could lock and summarize escrowed "assets" like characters or houses or whatever is valuable, then (1) players couldn't be scammed, (2) auctions could be flagged so social issues are minimized.
Rich Player visits eBay and finds there's a 60th Level Turnkey Mage named "LoRd.DoOfUs" (asset key 0xDEADBEEF) available. He verifies it on auctions.evercrack.com (yup, lvl60 mage 0xDEADBEEF is certified). He plunks down the $6000, and a fee goes to evercrack to effect the secure transfer of 0xDEADBEEF from one account to the other. Rich Player is allowed to change the name once, and a notice on announcements.evercrack.com proclaims that "LoRd.DoOfUs" has forever left the realms but meet "Paladink" with similar statistics.
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And the best part will be when Leia shows up to rescue them with kisses and hugs, and tells them she loves them.
And then gets put in a revealing costume.
What's the bidding start at?
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
[Balls] I... I can't get it up!
[Leia] You have hibernation sickness. Your semen will return in time.