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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?"
Wow! That's more money than VA Linux will report on their next quarterly earnings release.
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?
It's worth noting that eBay's AUP forbids the sale of non-tangible items via its service.
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.
George Lucas is going to freeze their balls in carbonite.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.