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MMOG Currency Seller Owns Media Network ?
Ogaming is a hub site much like Warcry, with a sub-site about most of the major Massively Multiplayer Games out there. Some enterprising /whois work by the original author of the WowCensus thread led him to realize that OGaming was registered with the same street address used for IGE's New York Office. OGaming's registration information was updated on the 10th, and now displays the name and address of a proxy registration service. Further damning is the thought that at one point a page on the Ogaming site claimed to own Thottbot.com, a universally respected and utilized tool for World of Warcraft in-game information.
The page that once claimed this (an advertising page) is now blank, with the words "under construction" displayed there. The Internet Archive's last update for ogaming.com is this time last year, so there is no way to check on the authenticity of that claim. If it is true it's disquieting to say the least. Thottbot is a massive database of in-game quest, item, character, and drop frequency information. Thottbot's information was gained through the goodwill and work of World of Warcraft players. The popular UI enhancement, Cosmos, included a plugin that sent information from the user's playing experience back to Thottbot. This included locations of enemies, the types of loot dropped, items the character had, and other specific details. While Thottbot claims to only keep information that is pertinent to other players, with the revelation that they may be owned by the disreputable IGE their trustworthiness is out the window.
This revelation didn't stay quiet for long, with MMOG sites CorpNews, Grimwell.com, and Allakhazam all creating discussions of their own about this weighty topic.
The authenticity of this story is hard to prove or disprove at this point, with the OGaming.com and Thottbot.com domains having a proxy listed under their contact information. But if it's hard to believe that IGE would go to the trouble of owning a media outlet and a popular plugin, think again. Garthilk writes "Cindy Bowens, community manager for Sigil Games online and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, outlines their stance on secondary market items, and how they deal with IGE. Most interesting is the fact that IGE approached Sigil, and had offered to cut Sigil in on the revenue that IGE might make in the future."
Update: 02/15 20:07 GMT by Z : Drey pointed out in the comments that, at least for the time being, Google still has a cache of the page listing Thottbot as an Ogaming site.
Frankly this looks very disturbing to me. I'm not saying IGE is going to break into accounts. I'm saying they are getting lots of information they can sort to find the best spots to farm various items and then use that to flood the market. I for one will not be using thottbot any longer.
I'm a regular FFXI player. I just noticed an announcement regarding the suspension of accounts of known violators of the TOS on PlayOnline (the DRM-client-thingy that FFXI runs through). So I log in, do a few searches and not one of the usual known gil-sellers on my server is online. I wonder how badly this is going to hurt their margins.
I wonder how much Thott got for his website, if Im not mistaken, Thott is a player from EQ that developed the website. IGN is known for offering insane amounts of cash to website owners. /shrug
... a faint trace of Brownian motion disturbs the surface of a tea-cup a billion trillion light years away.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
As some one who doesn't play these sorts of games, I'm a little confused about the issue here. What are these people doing wrong?
IGN != IGE
Huh, I just re-read the interview to be sure, and it seemed to me that IGE was quite reasonable in their responses. Even the "PR mouthpiece" ones.
Google's cache still has the page which is now mysteriously blank.
M J: www.ogaming.com/data/2115~VIPClub.php+thottbot+oga ming&hl=en
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:s7q2fzgQje
So, let me get this straight...
People will try and exploit other people for profit.
People will release closed source software that does more than advertised.
People in MMORPGs are asshats, and cause the more honest MMORPG players harm.
Right. Thanks for the heads up, I -never- would've known...
If everyone gets banned off ebay within an hour of their MMORPG item listing, but one seller mysteriously has 10 pages of gold selling on every sever, what do you think is the case. Especially considering the amount of gold being sold would be impossible to obtain without the main company creating it. Also consider this seller is selling this same style for two different MMORPGS(DAOC/AO).
My only guess is that some MMORPGS give selling rights and items to select individuals for a deal. I've done the math, the market this guy had was $100,000 a month, so it wasn't so trivial a company would ignore it.
So don't be suprised if these sellers are actually 'financed' in virtual goods by the MMORPG companies themselves. The key is that they don't want the public to find out or it could negatively impact the MMORPG's image.
God spoke to me.
Has anyone confirmed that this company claims the entire 25th floor of this New York office building? Or perhaps it's shared with a few other companies?
Many office buildings have several companies per floor. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case. But the coincidence is a bit much, I admit.
Why is this even remotely newsworthy? Isn't "Stuff that matters" part of the slogan of Slashdot?
I still don't understand what makes IGE disreputable
They have found a niche market where they can make a lot of money. If it works, fine. Nobody's being harmed or spoiled - they are not breaking any law, so what's all the fuss about that?
They sell in-game content, which purchase the game provider prohibits? Well, fine again, don't buy it if you don't want your game account cancelled.
For all the rich idiots that buy 100 gold in World of Warcraft for 45 USD. Fine again! Have fun! Spend your money!
Anything that helps to dry up the pool of third-world VB programmers is a good thing in my book!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It undermines the spirit of the game "Monopoly". It does not undermine the spirit of the meta-game being played by (in this case) Parker Brothers against other board game manufacturers. If being able to buy Boardwalk for $5 makes Monopoly more fun to play, odds are greater that I'll buy Monopoly. (And if it makes Monopoly suck, I'll be less likely to buy the game.)
IGE (and SOE and Blizzard) are all playing the same MMMORPG, the object of which is to use the MMORPG market to make RL money. MMORPG Producers sell the ability to play WOW, SWG, EQ, EQ2, and so on. IGE sells the ability to more easily play the aforementioned properties.
If the MMMORPG were a game of Monopoly, I would start with representations of sheep (gamers), squares (producers such as SOE or Blizzard), houses/hotels (properties such as SWG or WoW), credits (dollars), bling (in-game loot, in-game credits), and bits (software).
The market has yet to the extent to which folks like IGE make MMORPGs "more" or "less" fun. Consequently, MMORPG producers are still experimenting with the question of whether to ban eBaying for credits, or to encourage it. (An interesting question: how many dollars would you have paid SOE for a Jedi out of the box, rather than craptastically grinding your way through a year and a half of, umm, craptastic grinding, only to find... well, more craptastic grind at the end of the tunnel?)
The MetaMMORPG - how to get the most bucks from the gamer, while not completely eliminating the fun and thereby killing the goose that laid the golden egg - has just begun. Game on.
I use the cosmos XML UI enhancements without the thottbot plugin but I do use the thottbot.org website for lookups.
Why does it matter who owns the thottbot site? It's my understanding that you can look at the plugin and see that it's not sending any extra information back to thottbot.org such as login or password.
Ultimately the worst case scenario I see is that the owner could start charging for access to the sites content that the players have built. Big deal, someone will start a new site.
I personally like the fact that blizzard has really cracked down on people selling gold and items. Selling accounts to me is not as big of a deal. I'm betting blizzard doesn't like this though. If I was completely done with the game, and would never play again, I would have no problems selling my level 60 shaman account.
Am I missing something?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
One day, you'll grow up and move out of mom's basement. On that day, you'll see that the real world is not fair. People who wine about it generally get crushed.
3 1
You may consider it unfair that I can spend an hour on e-bay and get an item that took you months to earn.
I consider it unfair that I have to work 50+ hours a week.
So, I'll make you a deal: You spend 50+ hours a week doing something else besides Fishing and Skinning in WoW, and I'll stop spending real money for virtual items.
They say there's a PA for every moment in your life:
http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-12-
But look at this as reality. You and I started the day it went live. Now you have a nice mount and I just made 25.
Your unfair advantage is that you are willing to play constantly.
My unfair advantage is that I have a good job.
Until there is a law that says the world has to be fair, I guess we are both fucked.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
If people with more money than brains want to be parted from it, in exchange for in-game items and money, then so be it. I don't see anything wrong with this. If there were a flood of super-good items as a result of too much farming, it is only a loss for the people selling them. If everything becomes hideously expensive in-game, then everyone will be able to sell everything for the same hideously expensive prices. The most crucial thing to remember, IMO, is that everyone can do this: it's not like one organization is getting Blizzard to give them free items. I say it's perfectly ethical to make money off stupid, rich people.
Among all the slashdotters having high opinions on that topic, WHO actually has the experience of using such a "service" to advance in a game?
As a hard-core player who just doesn't have time to play, I'm curious what exactly you really gain from it. Satisfaction? Time? What?
WORD
Let me get this straight. Because there's someone that is performing perfectly ethical and legal activities which disagree with the twisted gamer philosophy and political bent (IE, that this is wrong), we're having a smear campaign of sorts on slashdot, pointing out his legit company in the field which can now be DoSed and who knows what by those that are immature enough to bitch about something this trivial?
Urg. My head hurts.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I believe it's spelled "nude".
I don't begrudge the selling of accounts or in-game items. I think that if someone wants to leave a game and get rid of their in-game resources and make a few bucks, that's cool.
The problem arises when people make this a full-time job. They create new accounts or acquire them, then strip them or build them up, then sell them. One person sits in his room with 12 computers all running a program called MacroQuest farming high level items.
When this happens, the game is flooded by materials churned out at a rate much higher than would naturally occur, and the in-game economy suffers.
I mean, really, when it gets down to it, its the way MMOG's are designed that creates a situation where IGE is a bad thing.
I mean, loot is pretty darn predictable in most online games, after playing a for a bit, you know what items drop from what creatures, and for the most part, the best items drop from a single mob that can be killed over and over again. If the predictability of loot drops were removed from these games, that would go a long way towards keeping set-ups like IGE from becoming too important.
Plus, you have games where the entire structure of the game is built upon "The longer you play, the better your character becomes." For people with full-time jobs, its hard to play at the same level as someone who doesn't need a full-time job or has free time for other reasons. If someone can afford to throw down $20 for an in-game item that might take him 3-4 hours to get otherwise, there really is not anything wrong with it, I mean, it is just a game after all.
In the end though, this is only a big deal if IGE is somehow manipulating the information in a way that player's wouldn't want. You can't just assume that because they have connections to Thottbot that they should automatically be proclaimed as "evil."
as someone already pointed out, it's a lot like real life. if someone can buy the gold and not have to work for it in game like you (whoever) do then you better get ready to deal with that in reality. i work only 40 hours a week...so if i can buy some gold here and there instead of spending the time i DO have to play farming for gold, i think i will buy instead.
you can give all the excuses you want about why it's bad, but it ends up sounding like you (whoever again) are bitter that some people are able to chose the buy way instead of the grind way. if you want to talk about why it's so "unfair" that some people can buy some gold and you can't, maybe you should take a look at why you can't buy the gold yourself...
this isn't meant as a troll or a flame. no comments about basements and parents.i am just really tired of hearing about this. if you can't afford it don't hate on the people that can, because that's how life works. if you know a way around things being unfair, let me know kk? so again...why is this an issue?
oh that's right! it's because the MMOG companies don't sell the gold or credits or whatever themselves.i know one game does it now (i don't remember which one sorry) but that's it. IGE just seems to be stepping in where most of these companies failed to themselves.
My sister picked up wow 2 weeks ago. When she was told by a friend that you could buy gold for it, her reaction was "well that makes sense to me."
me too!
There are purists, who play for the love of the game, who love the staisfaction of a job well done and knowing "everything I have, I earned it through patience and time." These are the people who play MMORPG's in character, who don't ask others to guide them through quests without having to do the work.
There are (believe it or not) other people in the world, who just like to kick a**. Never mind whether I earned it or not--I want to be able to play with the shiny cool toy. These are the people who love first person shooters, with the cheat codes on please.
I don't think one group is inherently better or worse than the other. They simply have different objectives in "what they want in the gaming experience." Given that objectives vary, this seems primed for self-selection. Set up "purist" servers and "wahoo" servers, "nice" servers and "wild wild west" servers. Different rules for behavior and language, different levels of enforcement. And let players choose where to play (or, at least, which kind of server to play on).
Someone selling gold on a "purist" server will not have much of a market, and so won't bother--they'll be selling on the "wahoo" servers, where there is a larger customer base more willing to pay.
Of course, the issue here is with lamerz, who will play on the purist server just to be a jerk to everyone, hoping for a bigger reaction. But my argument is that having different levels of behavior being tolerated on different servers makes it easier to enforce rules--"purist" servers have less open tolerance of such behavior, so it's easier to ban or otherwise sanction players who don't abide...
I haven't played a MMO since SWG first hit, so I'm just now gettting what Thottbot, IGN, etc is... but here's my question:
If paying real money for in-game items is cheating, then isn't using an out-of-game utlility to locate items in-game also cheating as well?
Both involve doing something out-of-game that affects what's in game... This seems to me like the pot calling the kettle black!
Obviously, since Thottbot is an add-on, not every player has it. So even though it's a free add-on, it still unfairly gives some players an advantage over other players, which is essentially what's being argued.
Actually, you're confusing ethics and morality. Morality is what society says is right. Therefore, society as a whole frowns on, say, cheating on your boyfriend/girlfriend, and calls it immoral, even if there's no specific law against it (cheating on your spouse, OTOH, is another matter). Ethics, however, is the province of what is actually right or wrong, irrespective of society. Because people typically do not agree perfectly on what is right or wrong, one person's view of ethics will be different from other people's. Those parts of ethics which typically do agree with most people's are subsumed into morals, of course. Continuing with the above example, many girls in Rio de Janeiro don't think it's much of a big deal to have more than one boyfriend at a time (though typically two or three is the maximum they can juggle if the boyfriends don't know about or don't care for each other). So it's not unethical in their view, even though it is immoral.
Too many who say this behavior is right will not acknowledge they are changing the rules of the game. This might not be cheating per se but as the "ref" I can see how Bliz, SOE, etc. are perturbed by having their rules changed out from under them.
Another anology that works better than the Monopoly one is that these MMOGs have constructed rules much like the line at McD's. Everyone gets in line and waits for their turn. The problem with IGE and their bunch is that they cater to the people who don't want to stand in line for any length of time. IGE sells a "service" where they will stand in line for you instead.
I don't think Bliz, SOE, etc. care if anyone makes money playing their games (beyond trying to make the profits their profit too) but it seems to really irritate designers and developers to have their carefully crafted situations governed by carefully crafted rules ignored.
Hi Troll, I'll bite :-)
One day, you'll grow up and move out of mom's basement. On that day, you'll see that the real world is not fair. People who wine about it generally get crushed.
What you're saying is that it's unfair in the real world that other people have more time available than you to spend playing MMORPGs. Grow up sometime soon will you, you're the one whining about the real world. Your response to this unfairness in the real world is to cheat in the virtual world (where your ability to cheat is actually governed by the same inequalities in the real world) and so through your own selfishness extend these real world inequalities (that you whine on about) to the virtual.
FYI: I myself haven't lived with my parents for many many years (more than you I'd say judging by your immature post) and I'd be willing to wager I work more hours than you do - I don't have a subscription to a MMORPG anymore because I simply don't have the time - hasn't that occured to you?
The unfairness is indeed that you don't have the time to play so much as other people - but does that give you the right to cheat - no. You do however have the right to stop playing and find something else to do with your time.
With light of your selfish, socially backward behaviour I hope you get crushed sooner rather than later.
What people are upset about is that in a virtual world that they are paying to take part in people are breaking the rules, detracting from their enjoyment and effectivley ruining the game. That's the thing about playing games - it's an escape from the real world, why is it any different for a MMORPG?
That means that through your socially-unacceptable behaviour (in either the virtual or real world) you are depriving others of their fun and the hard earned cash that they've invested in a subscription. Now thinking about this means that you're actually depriving people in the real world of their resources (to you obviously a subscription to a game world is trivial, to some (many?) it's the vast proportion of their expendable cash).
There is a law in the virtual worlds that says that it has to be fair - it's a law layed down by god if you like (where god is the creater and contoller of the world eg, Blizzard). The reason they do this is because they want people to play in a fair system as that's where the enjoyment comes from.
Finally just because the world isn't fair that makes it neither moral or ethical for anyone to exploit that.
The same holds for anyone in a position of power (yup, money gives power so in this case you) be that person a CEO, president, judge, monk or infact a corporate identity either. You can read many slashdot stories to see how upset people get about abuses of power.
In your case this exploitation is made even worse by the fact you're simply doing it for your own pleasure.
Please go away and find some other form of entertainment that doesn't involve depriving others of theirs until you've grown up enough to realize that the whole idea of a MMORPG game is it's somewhere people go to escape the real world and play together on an equal footing.
You're evidently young and have plenty of expendable income, it's not like you have no choice - why not spend some of that time with real people in the real world - or they dislike you're air of selfish arrogance as much as me?
>What are these people doing wrong?
If they are violating the game's rules, then you could say that is wrong.
In the greater sense, I don't think they are doing anything wrong. They are providing a valuable service for those who want to enjoy the content but don't have the time to do so.
Some people suggest that buying in-game items or advantage is somehow unfair or inequitable. I would argue that these games take a long time to play, so the fact that I work full time and have little time to play whereas some players can spend a lot more time in-game is also unfair.
So some have more time, and some have more money. I don't see a problem with people trading one for another, especially when it has next to no impact on other players in-game.
Some may complain about how farming converts games into a "queue" system where you wait your turn. WOW have solved some of this with bind-on-pickup items and instances, as has been previously mentioned.
I'd say the blame for any problem beyond this must be placed on the game designers. I mean, it's pretty obvious by now that people will try to sell in-game currency and items, isn't it? It isn't exactly a new service that should take designers completely by surprise.
- Thomas.
MyLinkVault - online bookmarks with a fast drag-and-dr
So how did you all get WoW to run on Linux anyway? Is there a nethack style port that I'm missing? ;)
Sorry... *waves goodbye to his Karma*
Good thing cosmos is more bloated than a turkey before thanksgiving. CTMod is infinitely cleaner and easier to use.
I mean seriously, who needs minigames in a UI mod? Just another reason not to use cosmos for me. That is all.
Just a question, does thottbot get it's information from anything else other than cosmos?
You all are missing the point entirely.
The point isn't that someone that paid his way through the game without having to farm any money or items at all is now level 60.
The point is the economy will go bad from it. What happens when a good third of the players that are under level 60 have a damn near infinite pool of money they can buy?
Everything they need is going to be bought from the AH at whatever price they can find it. People see they can get more for junk, and prices go up.
Pretty soon its 25 gold for a level 40 weapon, whereas now its 3-10 for an 'uncommon' one.
The same thing happened in Diablo 2. You could buy stacks of an often-duped ring (The Stone of Jordan, or SoJ) for cheap online. Same with the other items. You could buy whatever you wanted out of game and have it delivered to your in game character.
The economy took a nose dive. Suddenly, no one wanted ANYTHING for trade unless it was the absolute best. You couldn't get a goddamn Bonesnap for anything less than a Stormshield. And the path is going there with the other games, too.
I played FFXI before this. It was just starting to get bad there. The prices would consistantly go up, from say 1500z for a stack of crystals, to 2500z, to 3000z all within a month. It went from affordable, to downright lame for a price.
The people that want to have fun and don't want to have to go buy their money from eBay get screwed. Big time. When they can no longer buy ANYTHING of value.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I was about to make a comment to this effect. The real problem here is that the games are designed in such a way as to make this situation arise. I won't claim to have the solutions (though I've done a lot of thinking about it, as I'm looking to get into designing games), but I think that the most effective way to combat this problem is simply to design a game where it has no impact.
what you talked about is in the soon-to-be-released (hopefully) Guild Wars
Players have differing levels of sensitivity to meta-gaming, all of which are subjective. Overall, WoW's use of tricks like making most of the boss drops Bind on Pickup items and having instanced dungeons make it so that the groups of item and gold farmers rarely have a reason to get in other players' ways in game. There would be some distortions in the value of the items in the Auction Houses but Blizzard never meant for the Auction Houses to be a fair market place anyways. This is evident from their choice of implementation and later defense of said implementation.
Blizzard does not hound the out-of-game sellers for the express purpose of making some players feel good about the time they are sinking into the game. They do it to protect themselves from lawsuits with regard to in-game property. They have to disclaim that everything is virtual and belonging to them, etc. in the ToS because if they didn't, players would have some room to stand on to sue them if their character and inventory data were accidentally lost or corrupted. For Blizzard to be not liable, the in-game properties and characters must not have a real world value, ever. And they must enforce this image in all reasonable ways. This includes going after those who attempt to put a real world value on the in-game property, i.e. the out-of-game sellers.
A world without racism, sexism, a world where age does not matter and people are judged by there actions and not there appreance. A place you can go where the rigors and hardships of everyday life evaporate.
Utopia? It does sound nice doesn't it?
So please stop tainting the perfect world with your greed and ignorance.
It's not hard, all you need is a little respect, perhaps a touch of courtesy. Really, money doesn't have to mean everything...
The issue with IGE is not that they are selling virtual goods and currency, be that legal or not according to the license agreement they signed. It is my belief that the majority of /.ers would be quite hypocritical if they started frantically pointing fingers at EULAs and calling witch (when was the last time you followed an EULA, or even bothered to read one?).
The issue is that IGE and Thottbot may be connected at the hip. As the poster pointed out, having a 99% up-to-date database of EVERYTHING in the game (and I mean EVERYTHING - if you haven't visited thottbot.com, do so now, it is a truly amazing project) is a huge benefit to a virtual currency trader. Now, even that may very well be defended, as thottbot as well as the plugin for thottbot provides useful services that I wouldn't mind someone profiting from, BUT -
there has been no transparency in this process. Users who use the thottbot plugin believes they are gathering information for a community of users, while in fact they are gathering information for a private company with a profit motive. They may be gathering more information than they believe. They are, in effect, deceived and taken advantage of.
If the allegations are true, then the guy will lose all credibility - people will stop using IGE and stop gathering intel for thottbot. If he had come out immediately and said "Feel free to use our UI plugin to gather intel for thottbot. If you like it, why don't you show your support by buying some gold at IGE?" this would not have been a problem.
I would say that the subject of this post is hard to understand at this point.
MANY people are missing the point here.
I play FFXI and will use it as an example. In FFXI gangs of gil (ingame money) sellers kill certain monsters for certain drops 24/7 (they share accounts so someone is logged in all the time). They monopolize the item and drive the ingame price higher. They then sell the gil to IGE. The only way to obtain the items is to pay REAL MONEY to IGE or hope you can outkill the gil-seller gang (very rare and hard to do). THIS HURTS my gaming experience.
Another point. FFXI is entirely players vs enemy. It is against the TOS to do anything to hurt or hinder another player. The game is focussed and geared toward player cooporation. Gil sellers regurly kill other players who try to claim the monsters that they are farming.
People ask, "Who does it hurt?" It hurts me. I am a regular Joe playing the game. Their actions affect the economy and my enjoyment negatively. This is why they should be stopped.
But that's not a problem. At this point, there's not a lot of high end content at all, moneywise or otherwise. Now Blizzard has promised a whole bunch more content, and there's no reason to believe they won't deliver. Part of that new content can easily be new things to sink money in.
Seige equipment for their Battlegrounds would be a good idea. Allow players to dump money into getting devices that help win in PvP combat in teh speical battlegroudns. Given the continus nature of PvP combat (one side doesn't just win and then it's all voer forever) it would be a continous money sink.
So as long as they continue to expand the game, I can't see a problem with more things comming in to spend money on.
It's a service, so they have a right to set rules on its use and deny people access if they violate those. If they choose to disallow selling items for real money, that's their right. Cheating is basically however they define it.
Ok so people don't get why this is bad, because in the real world life isn't fair etc.... first off the obvious answer is because this is a GAME, not REAL LIFE. games are supposed to be FUN, that should be the reason people play games, not to make a profit. The way these companies work is not just some joe selling his stuff because he's done, this is highly organized bot farms that causes the majority of players to not have fun. MMORPG's should not perfectly mirror the real world, so the argument "well it's not fair in the real world so get over it" is completely invalid.
Next up... "if I have more money then spare time why should'nt i move ahead and have more fun?" Well ignoring the fact that your "having more fun" means that the vast majority of people can't have fun, using this logic, if I pay the teller at the grocery store an extra $5 to go in front of everyone, that's ok too huh? So what if someone else pays $10 to get in front of that guy? Then someone else pays $20? And the guy that actually was first in line but can't outbid, well, the world isn't fair but that's ok.
Finally, to those that say "who cares it's only a game".... very true... however like anything that you pay a service for, if someone else disrupts it, why should'nt you get upset? And of course, with that argument you can also say "it's only music, who cares what the RIAA does" or "it's only movies, who cares what the MPAA says you can and can't do"
Yeah the MMO's are much better off with IGE all right... now that prices have sky rocketed to 10x what they were, nobody can fight the big monster because it's overcamped with bots...
The problem here is basically one of game design. Most games that suffer from the unending inflation problem would have eventually suffered from it anyway. Methods of cheating can make the situation occur faster, as can ebay type trading of items for real-world money, but the problem exists regardless of these aspects. And if the game would designed with some real thought put into it the problem in the first place, it wouldn't happen.
There's little difference between the game economics and economics in the real world. And that simply is that when you have too much frickin' currency or other "value" lying about, then prices go through the roof.
Most MMOG games have added trading of gold and items between players, as well as sometimes making it easy for players to set up their own shops and such, but without careful monitoring of the background economics of the world, inflation is inevitable. Especially when wealth is automatically generated.
First, think of the economy as a closed system. You have so many items in the game and you have so much wealth in the game. Prices remain relatively stable, based mainly on rarity of the items and rarity of the currency. Adding *anything* to this system causes a change to the system as a whole:
-Adding more players to this closed system increases demand thus increasing prices.
-Adding more currency to the system increases the prices, as gold is now more common, and prices increase to take that into account.
-Adding more items to the system causes prices to drop, as the rarity of each item is reduced.
In some of these games, no actual thought seems to have been given to the concept of balance.
If the amount of cash currently in the world gets too high, you have heavy inflation. To balance it off, you need to remove cash from the world.
Ideally you do this through cash sinks, such as one time upgrades, or by having methods whereby people have to repair their equipment occassionally (which is a temporary measure only, as the value from the cash is really converted into the extended life of the equipment they're using), or by some other method which encourages people to spend that cash. Or you reduce the amount of cash they get from battles. Or eliminate cash creation from battles entirely and have monsters get their cash by defeating players with cash and stealing theirs. This basically just moves cash around instead of creating it from nothingness.
Items are forms of value too. Have items get destroyed every so often. That shield won't last forever, you know. Armor wears down over time. Swords don't stay sharp forever. That sort of thing. Force players to discard items for better/newer ones, and make 'em pay for the priviledge. Wearing down items is removing value from the world as well, so make sure you have it there to balance out whatever value you're adding to the world.
Of course, in order to avoid inflation from increased demand, you need to add cash/items to the system when new players come into the game. So just randomly add some set amount of cash/items to monsters whenever there's added players.
Allowing infinite cash holdings is no good either, as a few strong players with nothing better to do can take control of your economy. Implement taxation on player owned businesses. Implement armies of tax collectors with muscle from the local king to go beat up and steal some cash from the richest players. Hell, run a revolution if you have to make it clear to the users that they need to band together to defeat the evil rich bastard up on the hill that's fucking up the game. Whatever it takes to redistribute that wealth away from the rich.
Done properly, this sort of thing will eliminate problems with off-game auctions, because wealth being redistributed in the game won't cause inflation problems.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
One day you'll realise that MMORPGs are serivces, and as such they have a right to set terms. They can disallow the selling of in game items on externals forums if they want. They are fully justified in canceling your acocunt without refund, and possibly even suing you for partaking in this activity.
However, that aside, here's what I really want to know: Why would you pay someone else to play a game for you? That's what you are doing, you realise. When you buy items, gold, etc you are paying another person to play the game for you. Well that seems beyond silly to me.
I mean games, other than the few educational titles, are for only one thing I can determine: entertainment. You don't achieve anything by playing them, you don't accomplish anything in life, you don't better the world, etc. The only thing you do is amuse yorself.
Now don't get em wrong, that is valuable. Humans need entertainment and generally we are happier when we get more of it. Video games are just another form of it like TV, fiction, theatre, board games and so on. There is no further justification needed for their existance or the money spent on them. They entertain, and that is all they are meant to do.
So the reason I'm willing to pay money for a game, and in the case of MMORPGs a recurring service fee, is because they entertain me. I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, the time that the monthly fee allows me to play is well spent, I come away happy with the amusement I've recieved.
What then would be the point in paying someone to play for me? What do I gain by having a larger number in some database associated with my account?
In games it's not the destination, it's the journey. I mean for single player games I could just order my system to play the ending sequence and be done with it. Well that's not the reason to have them, the reason is for the entertainment that leads up to that ending. It's just a minor payoff. I don't play a game because it has an awesome ending, with nothing inbetween, I play it because it's a fun ride, and if the ending sucks oh well.
The only reason I can figure for paying someone else to play a game for you is some inferority complex where you feel it necessary to evaulate your worth as a person by how much stuff or how high a level you have in the game. This is similar to people that need material shows of wealth to make themselves feel superior.
If that is the case, I would encourage you to seek counciling, as that's not healthy. It's nothign that's going to ruin your life, but you'll be a happier and more fulfilled person if you can take pride in who you are and what you've done and not rely on some arbitrary and meaningless comparison to other people.
So appreciate games for what they are: Entertainment. If the time you spend playing fails to entertain you, then stop playing that game, adn find one that does. Perhaps MMORPGs aren't your thing, perhaps single player games are more to your likeing. You could also try online games with non-perminant universes like FPSes. No one is ever any higher level, each round starts on a level playing field.
P.S. Before you shoot back, I'm not a kid, I work full time and support myself.
If trading of certain items harms the game playing experience, then game developers should just make those items non-tradeable, no? If buying gold outside the game is a problem, then isn't the obvious technical solution to implement some kind of "fair trade" mechanism that prohibits players from giving away gold without getting something of roughly comparable worth in return? In fact, this would also help prevent noobs from getting taken advantage of by scammers... all I'm saying is, try to fix the game mechanics first before bitching that the system can be taken advantage of by greedy asshats!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
While the amount of gold in a game is effectively infinite (if you spend time 'farming' you can sell items and drops for as long as you want) it is assumed that the ammount of gold/items you have will at least somewhat relate to the amount of time you've spent playing.
;) ). Have your guilds charge dues, whatever will remove cash from the game at the proper rate to offset the cash being introduced into the game.
If this is really true, then inflation is simply inevitable. The amount of cash in the game always increases because the total amount of time players spend in game always increases. Unless the number of players increases accordingly, inflation is an inevitable side effect.
The *only* long term way to offset this is to limit the amount of cash in the game. Make it dependent on the number of active players. This is probably the only stable way to do it.
There's a lot of ways to remove cash from the game. Implement taxation to remove cash on a regular basis, this way players can continue to get cash from monsters and such. Create cash sinks for upgrades to their character. Create cash sinks for things like in-game mail (gotta buy stamps to send a letter!
And eliminate obvious ways to build up large amounts of cash by sitting in front of the thing 20+ hours a day.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In games it's not the destination, it's the journey. I mean for single player games I could just order my system to play the ending sequence and be done with it. Well that's not the reason to have them, the reason is for the entertainment that leads up to that ending. It's just a minor payoff. I don't play a game because it has an awesome ending, with nothing inbetween, I play it because it's a fun ride, and if the ending sucks oh well.
Exactly!
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
MMORPGs are services, not goods. Well I suppose they are a combination, in that the media you buy for the game is a good, however the game itself is a service. You pay a monthly fee for access to their game servers. Part of a service is that they may set terms on that service. They aren't required to let you do whatever you want. you are free not ot use their service if you don't like the terms, but you have to abide by the terms if you want to use it.
Well, one of the terms I've seen in EVERY MMORPG I've ever played is that you may not sell items in game for actual money. While that perhaps seems silly to you, it's their service and their right. To me it seems silly that at some restraunts a suit and tie are required, but none the less I must wear one if I wish to dine there. Their service, their terms.
So, while this isn't necessairly against the law in terms of you could get arrested, it's a breach of the ToS and they have every right to kick you off, and perhaps seek recourse in civil court (that's a little less clear). Also players are perfectly jsutified in being angry at those that break the rules. The rules are spelled out quite clearly, you need to obey them. If you don't liek them, find a game with rules more to your liking.
Just because tackling is allowed in football, doesn't mean it is or should be in basketball. Different games, different rules. Have to obey them too. If you tackle someone in the NBA you'll get susbended and fined at a minimum, maybe kicked out. In the NFL, they pay you a lot of money to do it all the time.
That's why gamers are pissed. Those of us that play by the rules, and believe the rules are there for a reason and are menat to be obeyed, are mad at those that ignore then and see nothing wrong with it.
IGE owns Thott which has a huge database of characters and a LOT of information relating to those characters. IGE looks at the information and sees patterns. Patterns of people fighting in certain areas. Patterns of people getting drops from certain areas. Patterns of people NOT getting drops from those areas. Using this data, they know exactly what to farm and what to market (advertise) to the masses. IMO, this is no different than spyware generating popups on your computer. It's immoral, underhanded, and sneaky. I, for one, am glad this was brought to my attention. While I've always had the thott plugin disabled (as I always thought it was like spyware), now I know there's an underhanded company behind it, and I'll be sure to suggest to everyone I meet to disable it.
Deal-making like this is explicitly allowed in the Monopoly rules. Read them.
So it doesn't undermine the spirit or the actual rules of Monopoly.
All this really does is point out that the game maker makes the rules. As you correctly point out, Monopoly's creaters had different goals than the MM makers, so they favor different rules.
First off, this is all assuming that there are just three types of players: Player Type One is of the mindset that it is the journey that matters, and will work hard to earn what he has in-game. Player Type Two is of the mindset that while they enjoy "The Game", they have "the real job" that prevents them from getting what they deem to be a full gaming experience. And lastly, there is Player Type Three, and this guy is of the mindset that "The Game" just isn't fun unless they are the biggest, baddest, most powerful SuperMegaClass with all of the best equipment and items.
IGE doesn't care about PT One because it isn't their target market, and as a result, they never hear from PT One (neither directly, nor indirectly); and they won't until PT One starts to really feel negative effects on their gaming experiences as a result of the services that IGE offers to PT Two and PT Three. But even then, the backlash won't affect IGE as they bank on there being more PT Two and Threes than there are PT Ones. Not near term, at least. Long term, maybe...it depends on how strong a line "The Company" that runs "The Game" takes on companies like IGE that act as brokerage firms for in-game money, equipment, items and property as a result of however many complaints they get from PT Ones about their now tainted gaming experience.
Now, as far as I see it, we're still going through all of the near term junk. And what I mean by that is that no one, not the users, not the companies making the games, not even these so-called brokerage firms know what to do about this ongoing (and increasingly volatile) issue.
Ban the activity outright, and not only will you alienate a possibly larger than anticipated group of customers, but you're potentially limiting future avenues by which revenue can be generated.
Allow it to continue unchecked, then there will be a disturbing imbalance in the in-game market for rare items (et al); but you will also be saying to your less financially secure customer base that they can enjoy the game to the best of their monetary means...which, in turn, alienates them.
Figure out a way to not only manage the practice, but include it in ways by which the games publisher can make money along with the brokerage houses, you run the risk of people circumventing this through less conventional methods (oh, say asking your friends if they might want something you have for a nominal real-world fee), but also of your user base becoming suspicious about the presence and necessity of some 'rare' items as being nothing more than money generating ploys.
Long term, this will all hash itself out...but not before there is a good deal of discussion on the part of all parties involved. Eventually, companies will adopt a system that they view (after said discussions, hopefully) to be the most pragmatic and fair approach, and while it may not be to everyones liking, rest assured that a good many people will be satisfied. It may even work out that the same company will offer different "entries" in games based on how you might like to play it, but not alter the experience, ie: you play with others who like to buy and sell for real world money; you play with others who like to be rewarded for hard work and continued efforts; etc.
As for the here and now, I have no qualms with brokerage firms like IGE, provided that their methods aren't in violation of whatever TOS is in place, and that said methodology doesn't impede or otherwise infringe on traditional gaming. Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with publishers getting in on the act, so long as they are being transparent and forthcoming about that fact. If they are all hiding it, if they are altering the way the games are played by everyone, then how much is 'society' driving these changes and how much is money driving them (real money)? How signifigantly does this practice affect the overall feel of the game for all types of players, not just one or two groups of the,? Are there any reasons to allow it outright/ban it outright? How
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
My wife and I have been playing a couple hours each night. We party together and level together. It is one of the fun activities we do together.
If you have a horse in the game you can travel around 60% faster.
Her character gets a free horse to ride on at lvl 40, and my character doesn't.
So I bought some IGE WoW gold so I could get a horse at the same time she did. Now we can continue to travel around together.
Is that so bad?
IGE is probably one of the best things to happen to the Chinese economy. Thousands upon thousands of Chinese workers "farm" in-game items and make a living doing so.
IGE is also the best thing for those of us that do not spend 40+ hours a week playing these games. Not all of us are college or high school students anymore and cannot devote our lives to an MMORPG. Paying for levelling and items is our only alternative to keeping up with the other kids that play these games.
All these rationalizations for buying and selling in-game items makes me sick. You are all missing the whole fucking point of a video game. Deny all you want, but video games boil down to escaping reality in some fashion. When people trade in-game crap for real life currency, guess what - real life economic standings are brought right back into the picture. If I wanted to be invovled in a setting where US dollars matter, I wouldn't be playing a video game, I'd play real life! No, life isn't fair, but you sure as hell don't make video games that way too.
Met these guys at E3 when I was working on an MMO, and yes, they were shopping for Devs to 'work with'. They were also sizing up games for their exploitation. I made our game sound quite unappealing.
And damn they looked shifty in RL too.
IGE: they are simply resellers. They buy at fixed prices and mark it up about 100%. IGE is all about volume. A company that claims to own 70% of what they claim is currently an $880M/year market (not that I believe those numbers) cannot afford to spend resources on exploiting games that literally change on a daily basis. That would be just about the most inefficient way of obtaining your product. Labeling farmers as IGE employees or IGE sweatshops is simply all too convenient. Disclaimer: I'm not an IGE employee. I'm not a competitor. I sell different kinds of MMORPG services.
Legality: Publishers claim that they are owners of the intellectual property. I claim that virtual items within a game do not constitute intellectual property. They are... virtual items within a game. They are analogous with nothing we've ever seen before. If the publishers were so sure that they are in the right, and if they are so adamantly against the sale of these items, why haven't they taken IGE, Jon Yantis, Player Auctions, etc, to court? Sony has $8M in CASH as of last balance sheet. Is that not enough to sue another company? Clearly, the publishers aren't entirely sure about their legal foothold on all of this.
Market Forces: The fact of the matter is that you have what will soon become a multi BILLION dollar industry. Clearly, there is a demand. There is nothing that a game company can do, short of making all items non-transferable, to stop it. Making it illegal won't even stop it (see: file sharing). The solution is to embrace it, control it, and profit from it (see: file sharing, ie: iTunes). Publishers can create two classes of servers: one for people to engage in buying and selling and one that does not. The publisher would then BROKER the transactions on the buy/sell server and collect a fee. The biggest threat to IGE is NOT the game companies suing them, but the game companies wising up and making them obsolete. There are already two such games, and IGE has a small / non existent presence in both of them. True, there will still be underground sites for buying/selling on the "good" servers, however, most people will prefer to deal with the system that the game publishers setup as it will be infinity more convenient, and most importantly, SAFE.
Buyer Motivation: These games work off of a monthly fee. It's in the publishers interest to keep you playing as long as possible. Progression takes a lot of time, and a LOT of that time is boring. If you have the disposable income to speed up or entirely skip this BORING time, in order to get to the fun stuff, then why wouldn't you? Some will say that it's not in the spirit of the game. Is sitting on your ass, watching the screen for DAYS at a time, waiting for a rare spawn to pop up, so you can get a rare item that they have, in the spirit of the game? I have done that. It was for an item that was not transferable, so you had to get it directly from the monster than held it. I must have spent at least 30 hours in total, doing nothing but waiting. Everquest fans: It was for "Stormfeather" in "Ice Clad Ocean". There are 1001 instances in life where money will you get ahead. Is it fair? No, we live in a capitalistic society (well, most of us), and that?s the way it is.
EULAs: I don't necessarily agree with everything they have to say, however, I have discovered that if you simply click on the button that says "YES" or sometimes it says "I AGREE" that you can play the game without having to agree or disagree to anything. When has a EULA ever stood up in court? (that's actually NOT a rhetorical question... I am deeply curious). I do submit that the publisher ultimately has control over my game account. Good for them. That's why I haven't disclosed my real username.
Guantanamo island: Prison of Despair. A nice place for sysadmins to teleport your character to when they get annoyed with you...
They pretend they do, and make a lot of loud grumbling, but they don't really care at all. If they did care they would invest a relatively small amount of capital and make this business a living hell for IGE. They could just buy items, and then when the item is delivered take the username, find the account it is bound to, then find the credit card information for that owner, and do a search and ban for every account owned by that credit card holder. Also they could find the ip blocks for those users and flag them suspicious, and do an ip based search of what users are loging in from those IP blocks and then check accounts with newbies with HUGE amounts of plat and if not ban them, then at least log those accounts for monitoring suspicious transactions. Heck you could even put warnings on accounts that transport plat to the suspicious accounts. Most of these guys have to buy the plat from regular players to resell at a higher rate, and that's against the TOS as well.
That method really wouldn't take much work at all and would squash these guys like cockroaches. Game licenses are expensive, monthly fees are expensive, and trying to avoid the game cops would be a real pain.
Fantastic! Excellent, excellent post.
Interestingly the thread I started this afternoon on the Cosmos forums about this was deleted in its entirety when I checked this evening. I find it hard to believe that I was the first to mention it on their forums too, which means that if I wasn't, they've been deleting posts about this for a while.
Unfortunately, World of Warcraft is not a game in the competitive sense. It's a persistent world. Monopoly is a game, albeit not a very good one.
That's the difference.
Admittedly anything can be turned into a game, like "how fast can you get to level 60" or "can you beat this mob," but really, I don't think those rules are any more defined than "no buying gold off ebay."
MMORPG gamers need to realize there is no "game" theory in persistent world simulations. It's entirely masturbatory.
Yes, that is the solution. No more currency of any kind. Just experience. Maybe not even that.
Now you can play 40 hours per week and it's all there, in your character, proof of your glory!
I hear people talk about 'real life' and some MMORPG all the time online. I used to play MMORPGs ( not anymore sick of them... ) a lot. The reality...yes reality is that the internet is another way to communicate _in the ONE real world_ ( maybe there are other dimensions but that's another topic comepletely ). People are not equal. Many things aren't fair in life. These facts get proven over and over. When you play a online game somebody else may be some wacko who wants to cheat. Either by buying ingame items or using 4 computers at the same time. Or partnering with 5 people to hog a ingame area, using a macro to level up really fast, etc. Unfortunately there is no 'real world' && 'rpg world' there's just one world and people cheat and worse =( And other people will make money and sell them stuff to help them cheat and nobody can stop it.
Any body have a copy of Dietmar's output stacker ?