Asheron's Call Bans eBay Housing, Account Sales

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an official Asheron's Call forum post mentioning that "Turbine has notified eBay to remove auction listings for the sale of Asheron's Call accounts/characters and in-game housing." This move, similar to Sony's ban on EverQuest item selling on eBay which debuted back in 2001, comes after Turbine's purchasing of Asheron's Call back from Microsoft, and it's explained: "Many housing auctions are run by brokers who deprive players from being able to acquire housing through legitimate in-game means; many account sales end up being recalled by the original player, causing grief to the buyer and creating a difficult situation for customer service."

Comments

Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I find it stupid to pay real money for items in an MMORPG (or even full retail price for a disc that's useless without a monthly fee, but that's another rant), I don't see this stopping item auctions at all, just driving them to multiple lesser-known eBay knockoffs.

Re:Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

The more difficult it is for buyers to locate sellers, the smaller the problem.

They send one form letter to eBay, and will likely get a 50% reduction in such troublesome customer support calls.

Sue IGE/Yantis and who knows.

Re:Not likely

[Chris_Jefferson]

True, but I imagine all players will hear about this offical warning, and so anyone who rings up support and says "I bought X off player Y for $Z" will be told buying/selling irl isn't allowed and just ignored.

Re:Not likely

[Lonath]

WhatI never understood is, if buying and selling are illegal, why don't they just delete players when they whine? If you admit that you got screwed then you admit you were buying/selling (probably buying) and people would stop doing it. It would make you lose customers but it would also cut down on the customer service costs. :)

Re:Not likely

[chamblah]

...I don't see this stopping item auctions at all, just driving them to multiple lesser-known eBay knockoffs.

And less legit sites with no sure way of recourse if you do end up getting scammed.

I've sold and bought many accounts through eBay for DAOC and by having the feedback sytem it helps to verify ppl's legitimacy or intention to follow through with the sale.

Bad move - makes the market less transparent

[MBraynard]

Houses and accounts will still be sold, they just won't be done in an open, accessible way. The economics of the market will be tremendously less efficient and more open to fraud (as Ebay at least makes it a little less likely with seller ratings, etc.)

Though maybe it won't be that bad. There are other venues (playerauctions, etc.) that will be publicly available.

GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

And if the transaction takes on a more caveat emptor flavor, LESS sales will be going on. Yes it will still happen, but there will be less of it. More of the people who are ruining housing for legitimate players will suffer, and less of the legitimate players will.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[MBraynard]

No. If you have a house or an account and you want to sell it, you still can. So you wind up selling it to your friend or someone you trust already in your allegiance or something, and the person who does not have these kinds of connections is left out. At least with Ebay they could compete.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[MojoMonkey]

the person who does not have these kinds of connections is left out.

These games are getting more and more realistic every day.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[sweetooth]

Here's the problem. When accounts are sold on Ebay they can later be "recalled" by the original owner. This has happened quite a few times. Basically even though the account information is given to the new owner and the new owner updates the subscription/billing information, the new owner can get the account back at any time. They simply call up MS/Turbine and tell them the cd-key and credit card information the account was originally created with. The password is then reset and the original owner has their account back. The new owner has no rights as far as MS/Turbine are concerned as their purchase of the account was prohibited by the AuP and therefor not valid. This type of thing has been reported repeatedly on the varoius AC forums over the years and if nothing else Turbine is reducing their support costs by actually enforcing the policy and making it known they will be actively enforcing it now.

The other issue is that selling items on ebay is strictly against the code of conduct and acceptable use policies for this game. That makes buying/selling items on ebay no differant from cheating by taking advantage of an exploit (item duping whatever). Taking the trade/sale of in game items outside of the game leaves out people that aren't stupid enough to pay real money for virtual items and that are unwilling to violate those rules. The point of the MMOG is to create a virtual world, in most worlds you would expect to find a thriving barter system. Hopefully this will further reduce the out of game sales to those that are very determined and level the playing field in the game so that to have the best items you don't have to have the most disposable income outside the game world.

In the case of Asheron's Call Turbine is now able to enforce the rules that have been in place since the game was released and Microsoft chose to ignore. This isn't/shouldn't be surprising for anyone that actually bothered to read the AuP or CoC when they signed up for the game.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[MBraynard]

First, I know what I'm talking about here because I have sold and purchased multiple accounts of AC. I haven't played in over a year.

In the case of Asheron's Call Turbine is now able to enforce the rules that have been in place since the game was released and Microsoft chose to ignore. This isn't/shouldn't be surprising for anyone that actually bothered to read the AuP or CoC when they signed up for the game.

No, they aren't 'enforcing' anything. They are just telling Ebay that they can't make money off of it anymore. People can still buy and sell this stuff, just without the convenience and limited security of Ebay.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[sweetooth]

First, I know what I'm talking about here because I have sold and purchased multiple accounts of AC. I haven't played in over a year.

I played the game from release till some time in 2003 when I quit for about 15 months. I recently started playing again because all of the other MMOGs I tried sucked quite badly. I also know what I'm talking about, and with more recent experience.

No, they aren't 'enforcing' anything. They are just telling Ebay that they can't make money off of it anymore. People can still buy and sell this stuff, just without the convenience and limited security of Ebay.

This is enforcing the AuP and CoC. It is of course only one part of enforcment. The AuP and CoC state that you are prohibited from selling any in game items, or accounts. By pulling these sales from known auction sites they are using one type of enforcment. Canceling a prohibited sale. Of course other sales are still going to go through by other means, that doesn't make this any less effective. The harder it is to sell items the fewer people there are doing it.

Another part of enforcment is the banning of accounts found to be used by the worst violaters. Personally I think this is all happening much to late to make a differance. Microsofts failure to enforce the CoC caused irreperable harm to the game and allowed people like Grayson to bring in quite a bit of profit by breaking the rules while those that followed the rules were often "left out" or behind.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[MBraynard]

The harder it is to sell items the fewer people there are doing it.

No. You presume people are too stupid to know about alternatives; I do not. I sold one of Sony's game accounts on an alternative.

The move is a net-negative. Just watch and see how much easier it is to get a house. (No easier). Btw - I was in early beta so nya nya na nya nya.

Re:GREAT Move - makes the market less transparent

[sweetooth]

No. You presume people are too stupid to know about alternatives; I do not. I sold one of Sony's game accounts on an alternative.

I don't presume people are to stupid to know about alternatives. I said quite explicitely the determined will still be able to sell their stuff. Those that aren't aware of the alternatives or are afraid to use something other than ebay will no longer buy/sell their items/accounts.

The move is a net-negative. Just watch and see how much easier it is to get a house. (No easier).

It won't be any easier to get a house because there isn't enough desireable housing (cottages/villas) for the player base; however, you will no longer have people making hundreds of dollars every month on the sale of houses. This is a positive end result for the game as those who play only to buy and sell items add nothing to the game experience but grief for those playing by the rules.

Btw - I was in early beta so nya nya na nya nya.

Who wasn't? (no I'm not talking about the open beta)

About time

[cyberlync]

Its about time this happened. A very small minority of players where using bots and various other means to snap up housing before regular players could get to it. They would then sell these houses on ebay. Its gotten to the point that there is no way for a non-bot using player to compete with these 'brokers' . For the last several months at least the only way to get a house was to buy it from these jerks. Needless to say I do not have a house

Re:About time

[Cecil]

Sounds like a problem with the design of the house-buying system, not a problem with eBay sales. This is the kind of misguided band-aid solution that made me give up Asheron's Call in the first place. "Oh no, everyone is trying to get GSA instead of checking out the pointless new greaves we added in this update! There's only one way to fix this: Let's make GSA suck so they don't want it anymore!"

Re:About time

[sweetooth]

Actually eBay sales have ALWAYS been againce the Code of Conduct and acceptible use policy. Now that Turbine has control of AC they are actually enforcing those rules since Microsoft didn't care to. The reason they mention the housing bots is because while the method wasn't perfect for getting a house it certainly wasn't bad ... up until a few people starting having bots check for available housing every few seconds and then snatching it up any time one became available specifically for the purpose of reselling the house on eBay. With the removal of the brokers houses in theory should become more available. In practice they probably won't as there are more players than cottages, villas, or mansions. This means that the remaining players must settle for apartments. This wouldn't be so bad if the apartments were more than one room hovels with one chest and three hooks for placing items that exist in areas known for being extremely laggy.

Re:About time

[Cecil]

I know they have always been against the code of conduct. So it has been in every MMORPG. It's a legal CYA thing, and a moral objection on the part of the companies. It strikes me as similar to the way most companies approach opensource. They come into it already having made the decision that they want to retain exclusive control over their things, and they see nothing remotely attractive about the complete antithesis of that.

You didn't, however, address my point. If scumbags are abusing their housing system, then some far more direct alternatives should've been the first things they considered. The obvious solution is to limit the number of houses that a single account can buy in a week/month/year. Another solution would be to discourage bots by making the starting price absolutely obscene, and lower it as time goes on if no one buys it. Brokers get much much poorer much much quicker if they still insist on snagging the house at any cost. If you're desperate, you'll pay for it. Much like the real-life real estate market works.

Alternately, they could take the social-solution-to-a-social-problem approach and make buying houses for the sole purpose of selling them to another player against the code of conduct, and punish the brokers with expulsion from the game. I know that's not Turbine's style (they have always taken a very light-touch, mostly hands-off approach to managing the game) but it's often a better way of dealing with problems than attempting to solve a social problem with a technological solution.

Re:About time

[sweetooth]

You didn't, however, address my point. If scumbags are abusing their housing system, then some far more direct alternatives should've been the first things they considered. The obvious solution is to limit the number of houses that a single account can buy in a week/month/year. Another solution would be to discourage bots by making the starting price absolutely obscene, and lower it as time goes on if no one buys it. Brokers get much much poorer much much quicker if they still insist on snagging the house at any cost. If you're desperate, you'll pay for it. Much like the real-life real estate market works.

This is being done. The first step they are implementing is limiting how many times you can use the built in search feature to find available housing as the bots were using them every 5 seconds or so. The second piece is limiting the number of times an account can buy a house in a given month. Don't want the house you bought and want to trade with someone? Too bad wait till next month. The price would have to be absolutely obsurd to make them unaffordable the economy of the game is so broken hence this method wouldn't really work as even the brokers would be unable to snatch up the houses.

Alternately, they could take the social-solution-to-a-social-problem approach and make buying houses for the sole purpose of selling them to another player against the code of conduct, and punish the brokers with expulsion from the game. I know that's not Turbine's style (they have always taken a very light-touch, mostly hands-off approach to managing the game) but it's often a better way of dealing with problems than attempting to solve a social problem with a technological solution.

They are punishing brokers with expulsion from the game. Yes this is harsher than what Turbine would have typically done but that's probably because it wasn't up to Turbine but MS because MS ran customer service/billing/etc.

Re:About time

[sweetooth]

Even previewing this message I missed the mispelling of absurd... oh well I guess.

Re:About time

[be951]

Actually, a better solution would be to make it harder to use bots to grab up all the housing. I don't play the game, so I don't know how it works now. But having you type a word embedded in an image like some web registrations do would make it harder for bots.

Just my 2 cents

When will we see companies selling virtual items?

[JavaLord]

Sale of MMORPG Items on Ebay is commonplace. The question is, will a company ever embrace the real world value of the items and sell them themselves? Sony could probably make a killing selling Jedi accouts for $1000 a piece to casual gamers who don't have 200 hours to waste on becoming a Jedi. The question is, would it put off gamers who don't have the money for a uber account, or would it attract more casual gamers to the game?

Move it in-game

[SandSpider]

I'm not entirely sure why game studios don't just provide this as a service themselves. It's an instant revenue stream, and you'll have much more control over the process, as well as being able to track the value of items from an in-game perspective as well as real world.

The only real niggle is putting safeguards in place that prevent employees from making unique or rare items and selling them, but really that's no different than if they made the items and sold them on eBay.

=Brian

This sucks!!!

[tini1212]

This sucks, now I can't sell my fleet of Cowboyneal Asheron's Call characters.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[birder]

Sony has already announced they are going to offer the option to buy in game abilities, items or perks. Currently planned for some of their PS2 online titles.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[Chase]

How about right now?

There.com sells ThereBucks at an exchange rate of ~1700 TB per US Dollar.

You use the ThereBucks to buy stuff in the game. I don't know of any way to cash your ThereBucks out of the game but the company is definately selling them.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[SuperMo0]

I happen to be of the school that paying for something that can also be attained through hard work makes one rather jealous. I don't have $100 to spend on making my account instantly powerful, I have to work for it. The people that can blow this kind of money on games sometimes irk me.

Bogus

[RoderickMcDougall]

I think its hilarious that you can do things like this and I am totally against banning it. I just love the fact that people are so desperate to win the game that they will resort to paying for the priveledge of increased standing. Its great to see that there is a forum for these poor silly fools to come and waste their money. Thing of it this way, if they don't have the option to sell your characters then we may see armed robbery for theft of game characters. People really are that stupid. As Leary would have put it, they are clearly futants.

Re:Bogus

[SuperMo0]

However, these privileges are things that you are supposed to work for months to get, and in turn paying the company who made the game multiple months' worth of fees to do so. By paying someone else for the privilege/house/item/whatever, you bypass the monthly fee and the work involved and, by doing so, rob indirectly the game maker of some of their money. This is their rationale behind it, and it's a damn good one. People doing things like this ruin the in-game economy, because instead of "How much gold does that item cost"? It's "How much $$ does it cost?"

Re:Bogus

[RoderickMcDougall]

Undoubtedly there are moral issues surrounding it, but that is the benefit of being an impartial outsider. That and the fact that I think anybody who values winning so much that they will spend lots of money on it deserves to have that wish granted. I mean what type of pointless life must you be living if this is important so much that you are prepared to spend big money on winning? I say everybody deserves some happiness after all.

Re:Bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

By paying someone else for the privilege/house/item/whatever, you bypass the monthly fee and the work involved and, by doing so, rob indirectly the game maker of some of their money.

Not really, since the first person paid for the time to make the house. The buying party might never have bothered making the house if he/she had not bought it. This is especially true when it comes to whole accounts.

Re:Bogus

[Gio Angles]

However, these privileges are things that you are supposed to work for months to get, and in turn paying the company who made the game multiple months' worth of fees to do so. By paying someone else for the privilege/house/item/whatever, you bypass the monthly fee and the work involved and, by doing so, rob indirectly the game maker of some of their money.

The in-game work involved doesn't get avoided because the seller has to acquire it from the game before he can sell it.

Right now, you can buy 1 million SWG credits for $15-20, depending on the server. In a sense, you're not buying the credits. You're paying for the time it took that person to accumulate those credits, and the convenience they provide in delivering them to you, in-game.

It's more like paying for a service than for an actual good.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[realdpk]

It's not just jealousy in this case. If it were a single player game, it would hardly matter if someone could buy a boost. But in a game where the competition revolves solely around the monsters available to fight, and the number of monsters available to fight does not scale with the level of the player base, then artifical boosts in player power will have a significant negative effect on the players who do not choose to pay extra.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to be of the school that paying for something that can also be attained through hard work makes one rather jealous. I don't have $100 to spend on making my account instantly powerful, I have to work for it. The people that can blow this kind of money on games sometimes irk me.

why? Unless they are extremely rich, they are just exchanging money for time. For example, if you pay $1000 for an account that would have taken 200 hours to make, you are paying about $5 an hour for it. If you are a 20 something single in America, odds are that isn't a high price to pay. Especially if you fall into the demographics of people over 20 that play MMORPGs. You are just exchanging your hard work (at work) for the "work" of leveling in a MMO. Which is REALLY work?

too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps if they did this a few years ago it might have made a difference.

I see no impact now.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[kook04]

"Sony could probably make a killing selling Jedi accouts for $1000 a piece to casual gamers..."

Ok, am I the only one who sees the problem with this logic? What "casual gamer" would spend $1000 on such a thing? When I think casual gamer, I think of someone who debates whether spending $49 on a new game is worth it.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, am I the only one who sees the problem with this logic? What "casual gamer" would spend $1000 on such a thing? When I think casual gamer, I think of someone who debates whether spending $49 on a new game is worth it.

Gamers that used to be hardcore, but grow up and get real jobs that eat away the time they used to spend playing. For them $1000 might be worth the better experence.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[be951]

I thought the same thing. Serious but frustrated gamer maybe....

You can look on ebay to gauge the market rate for a Jedi account. There is one listing over $1000 with bids, many at $1000 with no bids, a couple in the $700 range, and a few "almost a Jedi" with bids ranging $180-375ish. So clearly they're not quite going like hotcakes in the $1000 range. I could see the value going up a bit if it was an official product, but I doubt the market would be very large.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[Carnildo]

You can't turn them directly into cash, but the Gaming Open Market will let you sell them to another player. Current exchange rate is 2151 TB to the dollar.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[JavaLord]

You can look on ebay to gauge the market rate for a Jedi account. There is one listing over $1000 with bids, many at $1000 with no bids, a couple in the $700 range, and a few "almost a Jedi" with bids ranging $180-375ish. So clearly they're not quite going like hotcakes in the $1000 range. I could see the value going up a bit if it was an official product, but I doubt the market would be very large.

track one of the bids in your "my ebay" tracker and watch how much it shoots up in the last hour. Most of the time they go for $1500 - 2000

I can fly

[Moo Moo Cow of Death]

Hi, I'm a poor game designer. To cover up the fact that I can't properly adjust game balance, figure out how to fairly set up housing, fix multiple problems since the games birth and a myriad of other problems I'm going to attack the end result of my incompetance instead of the root of the problem.

Watch me ban eBay sales, because everyone knows when I do that, none of it will ever go on again, just look at Everquest, they stomped out eBay sales and look where it's got them (IGE, Playerauctions, etc)! 500K players must be the end result of crushing a single output of a mini-game that some players prefer to play over the normal game (*cough* me).

Me thinks the marketting execs, need a checkup from the neckup, this age old practice is archaic and outdated in comparision with the quite commonplace sub-market that exists now. Work with it or get out.

P.S. I haven't played AC in years, just many other MMOGs.

Re:When will we see companies selling virtual item

[Gio Angles]

"Ok, am I the only one who sees the problem with this logic? What "casual gamer" would spend $1000 on such a thing? When I think casual gamer, I think of someone who debates whether spending $49 on a new game is worth it."

"Casual gamer" usually refers to someone that has a mild interest in gaming, but it can also refer to someone that doesn't have the time to devote 2-3 hours/day for gaming. It was much easier to find playing time before I worked full-time, and it took another hit after I got married. As much as I'd love to play for six hours straight, it just isn't possible for me anymore.

I'm exactly the type of player that those e-Bay auctions are targeting. Hardcore gamers with good paying jobs (that get even better with overtime!), and never enough time to play. Lucky for me, I got over my MMORPG addiction (Ultima Online), and I haven't allowed myself to get sucked into any of the newer ones.

I have nothing against buying resources, housing, in-game items, or even advanced characters because for the most part, getting these items yourself involves "work". Of course, there's some satisfaction in working towards gaining these skills/items/money for yourself, but for the most part, the game requires you to endlessly repeat a tedious, boring activity until you're sufficiently skilled or rich enough to start having fun.

The truth is, many aspects of skill or resource gathering are less like "gaming" and more like "work". Sometimes it's possible to macro skills and leave it running during non-gaming hours, but in my experience, you need to be at least semi-active in the game.

If I'm getting zero enjoyment out of resource gathering, I'm not going to want to waste my ever precious gaming time on "work", especially since the typical MMORPG requires several hours of it to get anywhere. As to whether I'd consider buying in-game currency on e-Bay, it all boils down to choosing the option that involves the least amount of work for me.

My job is a relatively comfortable one, so working overtime isn't much of an inconvenience, especially since my hourly rate jumps an extra 50%.

Let's say I want to buy something that will greatly increase my enjoyment of the game, and it'll cost me X amount of resources. If it takes me three hours to accumulate X amount of resources in-game, but only 30 minutes worth of RL overtime to cover the cost of buying it on e-Bay, I'd PayPal that money in a heartbeat. It doesn't even have to be overtime, since I budget a certain amount of my income for entertainment anyways, but either way, it's a more effective use of my time than grinding it out in-game.

If I was barely making ends meet working a minimum wage job, then obviously I wouldn't be in a position to spend the rent money on anything gaming-related. Likewise, if I was making 150k a year, I probably wouldn't mind dropping $1,000 for an account that would take me 200 hours to make, assuming it's a game that I'm very interested in playing long-term.

Sounds like we need to coin a new term for hard-core gamers with little time to devote to games. Considering the latest demographic surveys, I can't be the only one like this.