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MMOG Economies Examined
Overanalyzed.com has an interesting (short) piece up on the Economy of World of Warcraft, discussing the way that goods and money flow into and out of player's hands. Commentary is available at Terra Nova. From the article: "Let me preface this by saying that I personally approach MMOs in a different way than most people. While most play for personal enjoyment, I come to them looking to make money. Obviously, while I do still enjoy the time I spend playing the games, I'm much more interested in crossing the boundary and selling my expertise and services in game for real life money."
...he's admitting to violating the WoW terms of service by selling items/gold for money?
The Terms of Service for the World of Warcraft indicate that all items in game are property of Blizzard (lame, yes.) They also ban accounts of users caught selling items for real money. I disagree with the policy, but thats how it is for now.
So after having failed as a day trader this guy wants to make a living on selling items / trading currency guy on the latest MMPORG. He is pissed because Blizzard are aggressively shutting down the Ebay auctions.
Ignoring the IP/Ownership issues, I have little sympathy for him. First and foremost it is meant to be a game, not a method for you to make a living. Why doesn't he go grind Lineage II or FF where this seems to be tolerated by the devs? (Though I understand FF has been cracking down on this a bit lately - maybe due to the arrival of WoW?)
I think you can go ahead and argue the legalities of who owns what and whether they have the right to sell it all you want but if I was paying to play this game, the last thing I would want in it is a legion of professional grinders/sellers spamming the chat channels.
Lastly, there have been a number of informative posts in games.slashdot over the last month or two describing what what effect the "gil sellers" in FF have had - camping items 24/7 basically monopolising level advancement to a certain point in the game. Fuck that.
You agree to a certain number of very specific rules in order to play games like this. One is no selling of in game stuff for real money. If you violate this rule they can and will ban you very quickly. He doesn't have to play the game if he doesn't want to, and it is not designed to provide a source of income to the player.
The player does NOT own their character. They are basically renting space and time from the blizzard servers for the benefit of entertaining themselves. Thats basically all it boils down to. At any time in the contract Blizzard may ban the user and terminate the user paying Blizzard. The user really can't do anything except open a new account.
Blizzard has done a lot of work to prevent selling in-game content. Most equipment earned in instances (dungeons) can't be traded to other players. All equiptment earned from quests can't be traded once they've been equipped. This leaves you with equipment you win but don't want to sell, gold, and stuff crafted with a tradeskill. Also all items have a min. level, so if a low-level character buys an item, they won't be able to use it.
I am an attorney.
The EULA is a contract. Contracts are binding. If you agree not to trade currency to play the game, that commitment is enforceable. Therefore, companies have the right to block trading of their currency because it violates a legally enforceable agreement.
Contracts are flexible, and can change due to current legal conditions. Saying Contracts are like cement and never change is incorrect, they can be changed due to outside factors, missing conditions, or even if the contract was forced without consent.
Also, EULA's have not been proven to be a binding contacts, since its one side saying you agree without your consent. A contract is mulitple parties agreeing, an EULA is forced consent.
And before you say "Well you can walk away", No, you bought a product, then the contract comes into existence after the sale. There are lots of ways to get out of EULA's and forced contracts using this pay first, agree later contract. Paying for the product means you already had a binding agreement.
The whole IP copyright fiasco and copyright limits is a bundle of crap that is hurting everyone.
From the WoW EULA "You may not exploit World of Warcraft for any commercial purpose".
It's not rocket science, DON'T DO IT, and don't encorage or tacitly condone it with articles like this. What next, posts from lusers along the lines of 'I keep trying to steal from my work but I find it's not profitable' and hints on 'How to get rich stealing office supplies'?
Contrary to what this luser is claming, Blizzard have said NOT to do it from the outset (and do note, this guy WAS selling things on eBay, this is NOT just 'research into economic theory'). To quote from his web site "Some of you may know at one time I tried my hand as a professional day-trader." - a day trader, GTG, does his greed and stupidity know no bounds?
He appears to be a useless article that's unable to find a job that he enjoys and that pays reasonbly well and that actually contributes something to society. Apparently unable to compete in a legitimate market (e.g. in a game like Entropy or There.com where it's perfectly acceptible to sell virtual items for real world money) he's left trying to eek out a living by illegally selling items in other games under the counter, with no regard for the cost to others of his own actions.
I would note that you can easily obtain information about the real world value of a curreny from eBay and the various sites that also illicitly sell in game currency.
There is some interesting information in the article but the truth is you don't need to actually break a legally binding contract (which is exactly what this guy has done) in order to do this level of research.
What's laughable is it's not even in depth nor even that accurate. He states 'I personally believe that the next big thing in MMOs will be tighter integration of real-life cash with in-game property. Game like Second Life, Roma Victor, and Project Entropia are just a few that are paving the way.And while each has significant flaws, I believe the first to get it right (or more realistically, right enough) will be the first to break into the mass market.'. Good Fucking Greif - if that's likely, why then has WoW (which has taken the hardest line yet of any recent MMO on the enforcing it's ban on reselling) just spanked their subscription figures into the next decade?
People don't want micropayments for items in a fantasy game, most people don't want to be constantly reminded of their already huge credit card bill and people are already tetchy enough about spending money on subscribing to games as it is (just look at the gap Guild Wars has been made to fill).
While I do there still exists an excellent oppertunity for a Virtual World that isn't a badly implimented pile of crap (like Second Life of there.com - both of which are stunnlingly retarded and apparently written by someone who's never written any software for humans, just in case you've not tried either of them) and that in such an environment I think you could conceiveably have micropayment system, that sort of system is more social activity (where most of the goods being bought are mere 'virtual bling' and the rest unlock specific features and sub games for a given length of time) and is a very distinct from a fantasy game people play to have fun in (like WoW or CoH) where the items themselves are tools (and rewards) for fun, not usually 'fun' in themselves.
In fantasy games (from SWG to WoW to L2) items such as weapons and armour represent something very different. They represent dedication to the game and a certain level of knowledge of, and achivement within the framework of the game , as opposed to say to there.com which is for virtual Chavs with little money but who like to spend what they do have on virtual clothing and bling to make people think they are not the hoop-earring wearing, council house dwelling virtual chavscum they so clearly are.
In short, it's clear people don't want to play fantasy games and pay for items in them with real world money. They have made that patently clear, it's mind boggling that the evidence for this seems to have eluded some people.
If you had taken the time to RTFA you would have seen that it is a rather insightful analysis of MMO economies with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of WoW's.
If you'd read my post (and the article more clearly) you would clearly see that I have and understood it and that it has a nod towards some elements of merit. How on earth do you imagine I managed to pull quotes and make references to it if I hadn't read it?
It's not purely some act of innocent reseach he's doing here. Anyone who thinks that has not really read and understood the article.
He makes it quite clear he has made money selling items from EVE as well and has done this to earn a living, and has even tried to make a living at day trading. He is NOT merely commenting or researching this topic, he's someone actively exploiting the system for his own benifit, but who also happens to be posting his experiences of doing so (and note his disgruntled tone at having his ebay auctions torn down).
I've also pointed out that you don't need to actually sell items to see what they are worth (because exchange rates are posted in numerous places and can be garned from ebay too, which shows how much people are actually paying for items).
I reject the 'Winnower Rider' defence ("I'm not not shoplifing, I'm just researching for a part"), he has has freedly admitted to doing this in order to make personally profit, and he's made it very clear that is a direct goal of his - and that he is doing this material reasons, not the lofty goals of academic research into on line economies.
I suggest you re-read the article and judge it's tone more clearly.
Buying items saves time for people to do other things. Think about it, if I'm rich do I really want to spend hours grinding in a game to get the best weapons, or do I spend my excessive wealth on ways to skip the boring parts of the game to experience the best parts with the best stuff?
There are always people who have the means and will pay for it. There are over a million rich people and I'm sure there are plenty of middle class people who work regular hours who dont have time to sink into MMO's and are willing to pay for in game items, they probably make more in a week or month then it would cost them to spend real world hours playing the game anyway. Think about it.
I dont think people buying in game items is moronic. It's just another way of buying time for yourself to do other things then sit in front of a screen for hours on end where the designers of the game have drawn out the tasks and jobs in the game to try to keep players hooked for months.